Day One of 14 Weeks of Torture

Just kidding, it's not that bad (or is it?) Normally my half marathon training should have started yesterday, but since Linda and I had a meeting with the owners of a yoga studio who want us to hold one of our workshops there, and the fact that it was pouring down rain in the morning, I just couldn't swing it and had to shift everything by a day. Which meant a tempo workout this morning... (and by the way, we got the workshop all set up and will be doing it in March, just a month before our own workshops in April - very exciting! The topic for the yoga studio will be on vegetarianism and how and why to incorporate it into your life, which is something we have done before, and I personally really enjoy, because it is all about inspiring people to make healthy changes to their lives.)

Anyway... not only did I forget my water bottle, when I got to the gym I realized I also forgot my Mp3 player... my mind was very foggy this morning, which definitely has to do with my cutting back on caffeine since last Friday. I've been doing a sort of pre-holiday "detox" (per Carol Vorderman) and cutting out caffeine, wheat, refined foods, etc. (Meat, fish and dairy too, but I already do that, so that was easy) Probably the hardest thing for me is the caffeine and bread. Not that I am a huge caffeine addict but I was having two or three cups of green tea and always one coffee each day. And I miss my toast for breakfast! But other than that, it's going well, and I am actually noticing that I feel less bloated the last couple days. But the brain fog just doesn't seem to want to lift...so I have been allowing myself ONE cup of green tea (my favorite is the Earl Gray) each day, just so I can think straight.

Do you see what I mean about the brain fog, I get totally off track...where was I? Oh yes, the gym. I needed to do 6 one-minute fast segments with 2 minute recovery segments on the treadmill, which I thought was going to be TERRIBLE without my music, but actually it was fine, and probably helped me to concentrate a little bit more on the running. There is nothing worse when you have to start a fast segment and there is some slow music playing on the Ipod and you have to click, click, click to find something more appropriate - ugh! Those are the times I feel like I am going to fly off the treadmill and hit the wall. But this time I was very focussed and got my fast parts up to 11 km/hr (been a long time since I ran that fast!) and ended up doing 3.2 km total in 22 minutes, and then moved on to strength training.

On my way home, there were two police motorcycles with their lights and sirens going that made us pull over to the side and I could see up ahead there was a big convoy coming through, and I quickly got out my phone to tape it, because guess what it was?

The big Christmas tree for in front of our town hall here in Leuven! I can't wait to go downtown one of these evenings and see it all lit up, especially since I practically got smacked in the face by its branches as it passed me by.