Saturday at the lake

Saturday:

Thursday was ANZAC day (when Australia and New Zealand thank our war heros) and Tim took Friday off so we're having a nice family long weekend. We couldn't go away because my mum was staying with us, and also I still have editing work to finish.

I always stress about food when mum comes to visit. The irony is, of course, that she would be happy to have cheese on toast or something. She always gives us the same thing when we visit her. But I like to show off my culinary skills. Unfortunately my mum is affected by salicylates which are heavily concentrated in a lot of vegetables and fruit and almost all spices. And processed or packaged foods. And she is not that keen on eating a lot of meat. Which doesn't leave a lot of choice. Starches and fat, basically.

Anyway, we've had a calorie-laden weekend. Home-made chocolate cookies and banana bread, fried pork schnitzel and potato bake, croissants for breakfast, and we went to Pancake Parlour for lunch today as an early Mother's Day celebration. She went home this afternoon but it's not over yet -- still lots of left-overs!

After she'd gone we went out to the lake for some exercise. The kids took their razor scooters and Tim kept pace with me as I did my zombie run. He's much fitter than me so it's kind of embarrassing for him to see me struggling but it was also nice for us all to be out together.

Week 4 of the program was a bit different; it had alternating slow and fast walking, knee lifts (which are hard) and 30 second running intervals. There was a 5 minute free run at the start and a 15 minute one at the end -- I continued to do 30 second intervals but not that many. I didn't feel like I got in as much running as last session but it was harder nonetheless.

My shins hurt straight away on the first run after the warm-up and Tim had to remind me to stretch, so we stopped to do that a few times and it really helped. A bit more pain than last session, but it was ok. Not as much as poor Jasmine who came off her scooter half-way around and hurt her knees and hands.

Tim and I are in agreement that it is harder to get back on the healthy wagon after a binge; it is a downward spiral. But it must be done.