Belated New Year Wisdom

My dear friend (for the sake of this blog entry I'll call SS), who's a bit of a traveller/free spirit, but simultaneously very grounded, sent her friends a New Year email message.

Her words come from her own experience and insight, which includes most recently upping sticks to spend at least a year living in Lviv, Ukraine where she has recently rediscovered family. Her father escaped Poland when the Second World War broke out, and he ended up as a refugee in the UK. He'd believed until about 2 years ago that all of his family - parents, siblings, cousins etc - had been killed. Only to discover that most of them survived! What a shock that must have been....many have died from natural causes, but he's met his sister again after 60+ years. SS's rediscovered family are now Ukranian because of border changes which occurred around the time of war.

SS has decided to reconnect with this lost part of her heritage and background. She's over there learning the Ukrainian language, and teaching English to the Lvivians! Perhaps living with her family in an Eastern European country which is not part of the EU, has helped her to see life in a different way. I don't intend for this to sound patronising; I send much respect and love her way.....so over to SS :) :

I want to remind you all of something really really simple that I realised recently: Time is the most valuable and finite resource that we have and it seems ridiculous to me that so many of us waste it doing things that don't enrich our lives or the lives of the people around us, or trade it for money - which there's an infinite amount of in the world (okay, maybe it's not in our pockets, but is it really more important than time?).

Doing the things that you feel you should do, or doing something just because you've always done it might just be a great big waste of time. It's all too easy to get sucked into the vortex of doom and gloom created by the press - a week reading the British papers has made that all too clear - but life is pretty much what you make of it and it has occurred to me that there are a million and one great things going on out there. At least. So make up your mind that you want to be a part of it! Forget about making the usual trite New Year's resolutions that you will fail to keep (you know it's true - that's why you make them at New Year, because the fact that it's traditional to fail provides you with every excuse not to see them through!). Make 2008 really count. Take a risk and do the stuff that you WANT to do and the stuff that will make you, and the people you care most about, happy. Don't make excuses.

First Run with a Running Club

Today I embarked on a trial run with a running club, to see if I would like to join them. They meet every Saturday morning and once a week in the evening after work. I arrived at the leisure centre this morning where they have a runner's locker room; I was almost late because the bus was delayed.

Nevertheless, I was able to join all the other runners; and after a warmup we ran around some parks.

I was with a group of runners (both new and established regulars) who were running around 2 parks. Before we did this, I did a mile warmup run to the park with one of the veteran runners - a lovely chap called Bob who's been with the club since 1983, and who started running in 1982 when he was 51, so I think he's about 76?! Our speeds were quite well matched!! But he was telling me he has run 18 marathons, and it was evident he used to be much, much quicker. He has also run the Bath Half Marathon which, knee-pending, I will do March. He did it in 84 minutes....I will be lucky if I complete it in double that time haha!

So anyway, after our warmup and stretch we ran around 2 parks - equating to 4.3 miles. I did this without stopping at all, yippee! Ok, so I ended up pretty much AT THE BACK, with Bob and another lady about 50 yards behind me. But hey, I am not in this for the competition, I am in it for my health. I haven't really run properly for about 2 weeks, and I wasn't keeping a strict eye on the time but I think I did it in about 45 minutes. So that's about 10 minutes a mile.

I am back home now resting. My knee isn't too bad....I just need to rest it well in between my runs and keep a close eye on it.

I enjoyed running with the club - everyone seemed friendly and chatty, and it was motivating for me to run with others around me - sometimes I ran on my own, and sometimes I ran alongside others. I even chatted a bit when running, but this proved difficult for me- to speak coherently and also listen effectively because my heart was pounding and breath panting!

So I think I will join them and keep it up. At the MOMENT, I WILL run the Bath Half. But before I set up my online sponsorship page, I will just test my knee a little bit more to check it has the endurance required.

Happy New Year!

A happy new year to all my readers, wherever you are, however many of you there may be - I hope it's a good one full of love, happiness, fun, joy, green, growth, awareness, peace etc etc you get the picture! :)

I am looking forward to 2008 being a bigger, better, brighter year.

One of my friends forwarded me this link and I just thought it was really sad and frankly unnecessary.

Today I met my friend at a shopping centre and we had breakfast and did a bit of mooching around. I bought a present for another friend's son who turned 4 on Thursday - it's his birthday party tomorrow so I will go along to that for a shimmy and a shake.

I want to go running and am intending to join a running club next weekend. However my left knee is a bit dodgy (I fell over, and onto both knees just before Christmas right outside where I work, it was not a good look) so I need to rest and allow it to recover really. But this is a little bit worrying as I am running the Bath Half Marathon in March - it's only about 10 weeks away! At this rate that run is only going to happen for me if my knee sorts itself out! So I might try and get an appointment with my physiotherapist at work to determine if this problem is bigger than I want it to be - as it's an intermittent niggle and not painful as such.

Now supping beer after listening to Tom Baxter perform a couple of songs on Radio 2. He's fabulous and I'm going to see him with my friend in concert at the end of this month!