A Healthy Mind, Body and Spirit!

In Terms of keeping fit this week has been a real success! I have been very busy, I have ran short distances, hiked 6 miles and I have discovered the joys of swimming in a 50metres Olympic size pool at Manchester aquatics centre! I was rather impressed with this venue and the fact that it has 2 sauna’s, a Jacuzzi a steam room and two rather large slides makes me think that I might start visiting this place on a regular basis!

At the start of this week, I was talking to a dear friend who is in his 60’s. He is a rather sprightly old boy. He is not a fitness freak and as far as I know hasn’t been near a gym in years! I asked him what his secret of health and vitality was. He advised me that if you listen to your body it will look after you. This got me thinking about what health really is and it made me think how people can build a more balanced life style. This made me think about a Japanese philosophy that I picked up from one of my old Judo teachers when I was 14. The message was to build a healthy mind, body and spirit.

In terms of building fitness this week has been rather successful, I have had more energy as I have only worked 4 days last week and everyone who I bump into seems to be filled with New Year’s optimism.

My exercise regime has been as follows

Monday 2^nd January: Run from my house to Lime Trees Park 0.7 miles

Tuesday 3^rd January: Run from my house to Lime Trees Park 0.7 miles and swam 10 lengths at Moston Baths

Wednesday 4^th January: walked 0.7 miles

Thursday 5^th January: Swam 200 metres

Saturday 7^th January: Completed a 6 mile walk around the village of Moberly in deepest darkest Cheshire

Today I have set a date for a challenge which will take place on Sunday 8^th July. The event is the Manchester - Blackpool bike ride this event will raise money for the Christie.

I am hoping that some of my friends will check out the link and will join me on this event as well. The link to register is below

http://www.christie.nhs.uk/the-christie-charity/whats-on/sporting-events/cycling/manchester-to-blackpool-bike-ride.aspx

I am not an experienced cyclist but as summer is a long time away I am hoping that I can gradually build up to this event, doing long bike rides with my friends and shorter fun ones with my daughter, with a bit of luck she will also catch the Olympic bug and a month before this event I will take her to evening celebration event to welcome the Olympic Torch to Manchester on Saturday 23^rd June

This week I suspect reality will kick in, as work pressure builds up and driving to and from work in the dark as well as driving to collect my daughter from Newcastle this Friday. So I will now plan some activities that will push & me and challenge me and are yet obtainable! I wonder what I will have achieved next week?

New Year, New Start

It seems to me that at this time of year many people make crazy new years resolutions that they can't keep! People come up with ideas like losing a stone in weight or getting the perfect body with washboard abs! With the busy pace of life consisting of long working hours , friends and family commitments, by the end of January most peoples new year resolutions will have probably fizzled out.

I think that people will only achieve their goals if they are obtainable and if the training regime consists of fresh challenges! I am thinkng of taking up activities that are fun and socialable and don't involve completely killing myself on day one! I have decided to set a goal to take part in 5 activities over the course of 2012, I have not yet decided upon which one yet but my ideas are as follows

Running a 5K and or a 10K race
walking up some famous mountains in the Uk, snowdon, helvelyn or ben nevis
some kind of bike ride
some kind of kayaking or canoeing adventure

The main reason why I have created this blog so that I can track my progress and hopefully people can encourage me along the way. I also have an alterior motive of  developing my IT skills as they are rather mediocre at the moment! So please forgive me if the layout of the blog is crap but hopefully it will improve on the way. I hope that my friends will make suggestions and join in along the way