Body conscious

Since I've started trying to decide what should go on my to do list (more on that soon), a lot of the ideas that have popped up have to do with physical challenges, trying to push my body beyond what I have done in the past. Loathe though I am to sound like an old fogey, I think when you're younger - certainly when I was younger - you take your body and it's smooth functioning for granted. Until I started university I did almost no exercise, and gave very little consideration to what I ate. As a teenager I was fortunate enough to have a pretty speedy metabolism and really didn't start worrying that much about my body until much later. At university I rowed on and off at different intensities for 7 years. Because rowing burns a lot of calories, I was fairly content to pump my body full of whatever fuel came to hand - mostly pasta. When I finally quit in 2011 I was determined I wasn't going to lose the discipline I had built up and that I would avoid the dreaded post rowing bulge, a common problem as it's very hard to adjust your calorie intake back to something normal. I had discovered I actually enjoyed many elements of training, having a schedule and goals and measurable improvement, which hopefully will help a lot with achieving my 30 things. I learnt to eat more healthily and  dabbled with lots of different types of exercise, from spin classes to Zumba, and finally became determined to overcoming my hatred of running.
After chalking up my first 5 and 10k races, I ran my first half marathon last October and was completely overwhelmed by what a joyful experience it was. I have subsequently been training for the Paris half marathon on the 2nd of March, but unfortunately have been struck down by a tendon injury in my left foot which has put me way behind in my training. It's made me aware - as I have become increasingly over the last few years - that my body is a durable and surprisingly capable machine, but that I am not always in tune with its needs and limitations. In order to speed my recovery and take a different approach to training I have been attending Bikram Yoga classes: 90 minutes in a room at 40 degrees and 60% humidity, bending in ways that I'm not entirely sure my body is capable of. It's been a great insight into new ways I can push myself, and it's a practice I would love to continue - if only it wasn't so prohibitively expensive. Increasingly I think it is the discipline that I love and that most benefits me; having a routine that you stick to no matter how you feel, repeating the same exercises but learning something new every time. I would really like to find a way to incorporate that quiet self-contemplation into my 30 things, making room in my life to become more aware of my body and it's needs and of myself so that I can take on some of the other big physical challenges on the list without breaking myself before I'm 30.

Happy New Year!

It would be easy to describe this blog as a new year's resolution, but that's not quite true. The seed was sown a few months ago, at time when I was planning a trip to attend a friend's wedding, and seemed to constantly be reading or hearing about my friends and contemporaries announcing engagements, pregnancies, even the birth of second or third children. I've always known that marriage and babies weren't for me, and that it was just fine, my life was going to be just as full and meaningful as everyone else's. But suddenly people around me actually starting taking these big, recognisable steps in life, and I began to wonder what my big landmarks would be. Just under a month a go I realised I had exactly 2.5 years until I hit the big 30 - which obviously is a totally arbitrary age and no more significant than any other day. But, human nature being what it is, it seems like a good, round number and a fitting milestone by which point to have 'made something' of myself. Which leads us to...

The Plan.

Simple really: thirty big things - achievements, changes, new skills, adventures - before I'm thirty. Now I'm still young enough to think that two and a half years is a good long time, but 30 vague goals over such a long time might easily fall by the way side and I'm old enough to know the years will flit by a lot quicker than I'm expecting. That's where the blog falls in, to keep me honest and on track, remind me what I've got planned and when I need to get it done - and maybe entertain the occasional reader and let you know what's been helping me along the way.

1/30

Although there are a few things I'd definitely like to put on the list, I'm confident that many ideas will change, grow, fall by the wayside or be totally replaced by new and exciting things that I will discover over the next few years. They won't necessarily be achieved in the order I might expect. Some are going to be decidedly trickier to measure than others so I'll have to come up with different ways measure my success. I'll be cobbling together an initial list of ideas soon, that can be prodded and poked as we go. But the first one is an easy pick, even though it's probably one of the hardest tasks I'll set myself here: run a marathon. I won't be doing it tomorrow, but I'd like to think - injuries allowing - it's something I'll have done by the end of 2013.

After that, the other 29 will seem like a breeze, right?