Week 5 – Journals and Photos

Week 5 began with choosing a present. At the start of this madness I had promised myself that at the end of each 4 week block I would buy myself a treat. I was no longer drinking or eating out and, given my previous wine habit (which cost at least £40 a week) I figured that I could spurge on a pair of Sweaty Betty leggings.

I was so excited about my first pair of Sweaty Betty leggings. I had heard so much about them and I simply couldn’t wait for them to arrive.

Day 29:

Day 29 started with a large dose of bagginess in the jeans department. My excitement completely overshadowed the fact that when Luke asked how I was I replied: “I am completely battered today so I”m going to have a rest day today and do cardio tomorrow. I’m going to find some gentle yoga to do this afternoon because every inch of me is hurting!“

I was in an excellent mood. I felt sore but thrilled with the results that I’d achieved in my first 4 weeks.

By the early afternoon I was completely exhausted and had a snooze. I could have slept all day, in fact, the only reason that I got up was because I was hungry.

It was a beautiful day and we had the first BBQ of the year. In true comedy fashion, when it came to getting the sausages out we had no gas, however an old bag of charcoal was discovered at the back of the garage. The men spent the next 45 minutes trying to light the expired charcoal with a blow torch whilst my mum and I quietly set about cooking everything in the oven.

I was proud of myself – I loaded up on veg and didn’t have any carbs.

Day 30:

I woke feeling less tired and wanted to get my cardio over with early. I’d intended to do an hour on the exercise bike later in the day as well, but the running had made my good knee flare up. In the end I spent 5 hours washing and clipping my dog.

I have absolutely no idea why I ate 4 Doritos. I don’t even like them. Everyone was eating them and I was just chatting and not really thinking about it. I had really bad heartburn for 2 hours afterwards.

Day 31:

I was in a great mood but was sore after yesterday. I felt less tired and loved the day’s workout. If my knees hadn’t been complaining so much then I would have done another round.

Day 32:

Really sore muscles this morning. It was pouring with rain so I got on the exercise bike to loosen up a bit. I only intended to do 30 mins but did an hour. My right knee was a bit grumpy all day.

Day 33:

Wednesday lunchtime is when I do a full hour with Luke. Today’s session was hard but I felt amazing afterwards.

However, by about 16:30 both my arms and legs refused to work. It wasn’t so much ‘delayed onset muscle soreness’ as ‘almost immediate muscle soreness’ on top of ‘pre-existing muscle soreness’.

I was so sore that I could only walk down the stairs with straight legs and it actually hurt to text!

I seriously considered getting someone to cut my dinner up and put it on the floor, so I could lie flat and inhale the food off the plate.

Day 34:

I woke, realised that I couldn’t move, and lay in bed having a debate with myself about whether I was going to be able to brush my teeth (the answer was no).

I was still lying in bed when Luke texted me to ask how I was. My response (which was dictated because my arms wouldn’t work) was: “There is no easy way to put this…I think that I might be dying”.

I’d been up at 1am taking ibuprofen which had been no help at all.

Despite the looming certain death there was one small ray of sunshine in my final hours – my Sweaty Betty leggings were arriving today. Or at least I thought that they were – until I received a text from the unspeakable bastards at Hermes to say that they weren’t.

So that was it, I wouldn’t even get to die in a pair of Sweaty Betty leggings.

I lay in bed a bit longer designing a surf board on wheels/pulley arrangement that could be installed between my bed and the bathroom so I could transport myself to the loo whilst remaining horizontal. When I realised that I couldn’t get my brilliant system installed before I needed the loo I started looking at trainers (my ‘go to’ search when I’m cyberloafing).

I eventually crawled out of bed and convinced my legs that we needed to go for a walk to loosen up.

I did a slow walk around the fields – anyone observing me would have concluded from the way that I was walking that I’d pooed myself. My legs were not in the mood to work, at all. However, the walk didn’t finish me off and I spent the rest of the day feeling absolutely starving.

Luke was no help at all – he seemed mildly amused by my suffering and said that as my trainer the soreness was music to his ears. There was not even the tiniest hint of sympathy!!

By 3pm my soreness had gone but I didn’t work out today – I just couldn’t. At 8:30pm I was in bed exhausted.

Day 35:

My muscles were still sore when woke up on day 35, but I went for a short walk to help ease the pain in my legs.

I had a short session with Luke at lunchtime and felt much better.

When I saw my wonderful mum later in the day she said “You are looking fitter and fitter every day”. Mums are great.

Progress photos:

I didn’t take any progress photos this week. It had been a really stressful week and I spent the evening of day 35 getting ready to take the Lovely Girls to say goodbye to their Grandma the following day.

My mother in law was in the late stages of her secondary cancer and we decided that it was important to say goodbye despite the lockdown. We checked the rules and concluded that saying a final goodbye to a terminally ill relative who had days left to live would be ok.

The arrangements for the following day were up in the air as we simply didn’t know whether Grandma would be well enough to come outside into the garden to say a socially distanced goodbye.