That's not really funny

Time is moving faster than I can keep up. I'm not really feeling any fitter and that scares me a little, but if I'm really honest I know that I haven't been training hard enough lately. Life has been a little hectic and my exercise routine was the first thing to suffer.

I had a long conversation with flatmate this weekend and vented a lot of the stuff that has been weighing pretty heavily on my mind. She reminded me that I'm not someone who fails when I put my mind to something, and I have to admit that I do feel a little better about things for talking to her about it all.

She helped me come up with a plan of action and will support me as much as she can over the next few months. I suffer from depression which can at times be crippling, and sometimes I need someone like flatmate to give me a slight kick up the arse and push me to do what I know is good for me. Today we started by going on a walk. I had actually left the house with the intention of going to the gym, but before I reached the end of our road, Fi-Fi walked round the corner and insisted that the day was far too beautiful to spend in a gym. So off on a walk we went.

We had only been walking for a few minutes when Fi-Fi pointed out our destination at the top of a distant hill. I have to admit that at that point I honestly didn't think I would make it so far, but the day was beautiful and I had to start somewhere, so I decided to stop being freaked out by the big picture and just take it a step at a time, see where that got me.

We first tried walking along a public footpath through fields, until we discovered that the farmer had taken down all the signs and clearly didn't want to encourage walkers. There were a few dicey moments as we got a little closer to the farmhouse than we had anticipated and the sound of barking dogs was putting us both on edge. Eventually we spotted a public footpath sign which was thankfully taking us back onto a road. That would be the last 'off road' portion of our walk, which was a little annoying as there was a lot of traffic heading up the hill to a well known local beauty spot, I suppose unsurprising on a sunny Sunday morning/afternoon.

I suppose my fitness is showing slight improvement, because the one thing I have noticed is that while I still get really out of breath just walking up a bit of a slope, my recovery time is so much quicker. A few seconds rest and I'm almost back to normal. You have to start somewhere, so I'm holding on to that.

Eventually, we reached the top of the hill and our destination. I couldn't believe that we had made it so far and that I was feeling pretty much fine. It helped that I was greeted with this view. The crap camera on my phone doesn't do it justice.

 

By this point we had been walking for a couple of hours and flatmate was starting to get hungry, so we headed back . By the time we got home I was exhausted, but happily so. The plan is to make our walk a regular thing, and I really appreciate the fact that she's going to help me through this.

Tomorrow my plan is to head to the gym after work, get the new week off to the right start.