So someone here, I can’t remember who, recommended the ‘Yoga with Adriene’ 30 day challenge and I thought I’d give it a whirl. Day 1 was sabotaged by children yesterday, so today became Day 1 Take 2.
Lordy! I thought I was reasonably flexible from climbing, but when Adriene lithely got into position and blithely asked us to listen to our body telling us where we were tight, I wasn’t sure which bit to pay most attention to! It was definitely more of a work out than I had been expecting and in hindsight, not to be treated as a warm up for a run.
Actually, it was very good. I have tried a few YouTube yoga videos in the past and this was the first one where I felt I was doing it properly, due to her clear instructions.
I felt quite heavy after the 40 minute session, somewhere between relaxed and grounded. Really, I would have preferred at that point to lie back, put some cool cucumbers over my eyes and contemplate existential matters, but there was a run to do!
It’s blowing a hooley out there today. 18mph winds from the south. It felt like the south was very much in my face a lot of the way. The volume through the bone conductor headphones wasn’t loud enough to combat the gusting bellows. Turning it up would have required taking my gloves off to fiddle with the phone buried in a zipped pocket or the tiny buttons on the headset too small to see without glasses. Too cold for that, and too much effort in my post-yoga state.
Despite the fact it was a chilly wind, I found myself overheating. I’m going to put ‘peri-menopausal’ out there to see if it comes up as a tag. I stopped twice to strip off and ended up doing the last 1k in a sports bra and leggings. In a blustery January! My white (and less toned than I would like after Christmas) belly was held in check only by the two knots of the discarded tops. Thankfully only the postman saw me as I plodded homeward along the muddy track.
I did a steady 6k in the end, with only a few pitstops for the disrobing and catching of breath. I’m quite pleased overall; I got out there, ploughed through adverse conditions; and Garmin tells me this activity was ‘highly impactful’ as opposed to ‘overreaching’, has bumped me back up to the VO2max ‘excellent’ category, and says I need only 52 hours rather than 72 hours to recover. A plodding runner takes comfort from these things!
2020 total: 3 runs, 17.8km.
Slow run in the cold
[5K+ speed] Laura, you're such a teaser!
