I laugh in the face of Sub Zero!

Date: 8th Jan 2010
Weather: Yesterday's -11 makes today's -7 look tropical.
Footwear: Unsexy walking boots for the "commute" to work, in the office I'm sporting my brown, heeled shuboots again. A cardinal sin wearing the same shoes twice in the same for me...

Happy Friday blog world!!! Its the end of the first full week in 2010, I hope everyone has had a productive one.

I hit the gym at 6:40am, planning on just a gentle 40 mins on the X-trainer as Andy told me not to run but do something today. But Paul hijacked me, convinced me I needed to get to his spin class at 7am because it was gonna be a good one. So I do 15 mins of X trainer warm up, skip up the stairs to spin, set the bike up and proceed to gradually knacker myself in the space of 45 mins. Great class, good music and good variety of moves to do, but bloody hell was it hard work. I love spin, but I hate it when its just a basic stand up/sit down/ cycle fast/ stand up... Certainly need to get back to more of the Spinning classes at my gym.

This week I've managed to... ( in no particular order)..

• Run 21k over 4 days - an achievement considering this time last year I'd never even ran 21k in my LIFE!!
• Rearrange my bedroom so its tidy (yey!), logical and organised. Lets see if that lasts past the weekend.
• Arrange flights and travel for my work people even though every airport, airline and cloud seemed against us. PA's are miracle workers don't ya know.
• Upset some people who are important to me with a silly remark, working on resolving this but goodness knows.... I'm sorry!
• Sorted out my finances for when I get paid.
• Wrote out a kit list for Kilimanjaro.
• Signed up for the 3 peaks challenge - I'm classing this as "training" for the biggy in September.

Its been a busy ol week for me, but its been very productive. Next week I'm hoping to have more than 30k under my belt distance wise and I also want to get a grip of my diet. Its been very so so recently, not super bad or anything, but not as great as it once was. Naughty Kmac.

Kilimanjaro is becoming a very real event now, the team and I are getting some PR from our gym (Bannatynes) and we've been talking about the hard core training you need to do. I'm hoping to get some pictures up on here of our training, fundraising and general antics soon!!

Fudgy and I are running (read that as SKATING!) a 5k tomorrow, so expect an update after the event. But before that I'd love to share a text message I got from the Fudge last night. To explain, we are both in different starting zones because of our past racing time...... "We can still hang about until the start and then meet in the first aid tent" You can tell we are both very optimistic about getting through the race injury free!!

If anyone reading this is a first aider in Edinburgh/Doctor in Edinburgh/Nurse in Edinburgh/Paramedic in Edinburgh I look forward to seeing you tomorrow :o)

Catch up with you all laters

Kmac xx

You've gotta swim.

Date: 6th Jan 2010
Weather: Still snowy. The entire country is at a standstill, Scotrail have given in, Schools are closed but yet most of us get to work.... hummmm.
Shoes: Black leather kneehigh boots with 4ins heel, teamed with black dress and pink shirt combo.


6 days into the New Year and already I'm hearing whisperings of "Oh I've broken my resolution already" or "I'll start the diet tomorrow". 6 days people! Jeebus. I guess you have to be 100% committed to the resolution for it to work, which makes me question why people make them to begin with?

To put it in context, if you said you'd do something at work to your boss (the resolution) and then a couple of days later you'd given up how would you explain it to him/her? So why should giving up on yourself be any different? Surely the one person you can count on and rely on should be yourself.

The last 12 months have taught me that I have to listen to my body, my instinct and those close to me. I know I can rely on my ultimate judgement, but its taken me a while to get to that point.

So the moral of the story is - DON'T GIVE IN. People are amazing creatures, and are able to do so much but the one thing we are all guilty of is underestimating our ability. Push yourself, push the line and then see how good you feel.

My Kilimanjaro training is coming along nicely, so far this week I've clocked up just over 11k on the running distance and I've been pushing the weights like its going out of fashion. But I'm on a rest day today. My back is a little tight from yesterday's gym antics so dont want to risk and injury.

Fudgy and I are still going to be running the 5k on Saturday around Holyrood Park, however just how fast we run or indeed how injury free we remain is still yet to be decided!!

Thats all from me for today folks...

Kmac xx

Still 256 days to day.... Official post 1

Date: 4 Jan 2010
Weather: Snow and Ice on the ground, cold in the air and bugger all gritters on the roads
Footwear of choice : Brown Kurt Geiger Shu-Boots in the office, Brown unsexy walking boots for outdoors.


Great start to the day... I didn't sleep much last night, maybe 4 hours max. So I decided to get up and head to the gym.

Managed to knock out about 6k on the treadmill before I felt my leg muscles yelp in protest. I'm running the Bupa "fun" run 5k on Saturday with my fabby friend Claire (check out her blog...
http://fudgeyrun.blogspot.com ) so need to start getting the running practice in. I'm not made for running. I look somewhat like a chicken being chased by Bernard Matthews. Honestly.


Got into work and felt amazing. The run made me feel grand so the day has been Rosy so far.

Other news.

Need to start buying kit for Kilimanjaro and if there is one thing I'm good at right now is shopping. This is the part of the process I'm looking forward to. I'll be hitting the mountain dressed in pink, think Barbie and you've hit it right there. I've promised Kilimanjaro Barbie so I will deliver Kili Barbie. My sister has picked a sea blue/green colour. As soon as we have our kit I shall post pics and you can decide how crazy we look!


Tonight's plan is to get to Radio Lollipop without falling on my bottom and then home for an early night. I'm planning 2 x 6k runs tomorrow in the gym so need my rest to make sure I get up in time.

Adios!

Kmac xx

256 Days to go

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to my little blog.

Most of you reading will know me, the hair brained things I tend to get up to and the fun I love to have along the way. If you don't know me... I'm sure this will become apparent very quickly.

Living in Edinburgh, working away I love my wee life. I've been lucky enough to be blessed with good health, good friends and great family - these are the people and things that keep me going and keep me motivated. But I started to get itchy feet. I wanted to help others who maybe weren't as lucky as me.

Cue CCLASP becoming charity of the year at my work. CCLASP is a charity based in Edinburgh for Children with Cancer and Leukaemia, Advice and Support for Parents. And they do just what it says on the tin. CCLASP treat every child the same, whether they are ill or not and they are there for the entire family. The charity represented something close to my heart and I'm so glad I've been able to help out in the last 18 months.

In August 2009 I started to think about possibly doing something "big" to raise money for CCLASP outwith the office, this was when the Kilimanjaro idea was passed around. A number of weeks later we (Richard and I, and a couple of others who for various reasons had to pull out) agreed to do it. We were going to climb the worlds largest freestanding mountain.

All great in theory. But I'm a 25 year old shopaholic who couldn't tell you the different between a slope and a Munroe. How the hell was I going to drag my Kurt Geigered feet up that mountain? Enter a gym membership and fantastic personal trainer to stage left.

Between the support of family and friends and Andy kicking my ass every week in the gym I'm determined to get there. And this blog is my way of documenting my journey from stiletto wearer to accomplished mountain hiker type lassie!!