Today it was a rest day from my training programme, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

When the alarm went off this morning (the first alarm, that is), my first instinct, as usual, was to turn over and slide the app button to stop it. I don’t snooze my alarms, I set a few at different times. This morning, as any other morning, I turned around and when I swung my arm to pick the phone from the floor, a piercing pain shot through my chest and arm.

I was sore from Monday’s workout. Very sore.

Struggling, I managed to stop the alarm and carefully rolled back on my back again, facing the ceiling, what I could only muster what sounded like uuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrhhhhhh or something like that. Mentally, I went over every single muscle in my body to check the damage and let me tell you, it was brutal.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m following a Nike Training Club program (NTC), and on Monday the workout was called body flexor. It had a variety of exercises, from plank row to modified press ups (I hate press ups so much), or sumo squat jabs. It was only 30 minutes, and even though you don’t have someone shouting at you through the screen and pumped up music blasting in the background, it’s hard work (and it’s also amazing, and free, you should try it).

I felt it this morning. My biceps and deltoids were sore. The pectorals were so painful I couldn’t breathe deep for most of the day. The external obliques were painful every time I turned around… All day long. I kept thinking if I sneezed, I was going to pass out (I did sneeze several times, and I’m still here… it seems I’m a tough cookie, after all!).

Anyway, I finally managed to get up, an hour later (yup, there were three alarms involved this morning) and managed to get ready. After over a year of being annoyed with the buses in Lewisham, I finally decided that I was going to start walking to the station. It should be about 15 minutes and it’s a nice walk. It also adds a nice number of steps to my daily count.

Since today was a rest day, there was no gym session (tomorrow’s session is called body buffer and it lasts 45 minutes. My guess is that I’m going to die then…

After work, Oummou and I walked back to Waterloo to get our train there. It’s nice to see that by the end of the day I’ve walked over 10k steps, with little to none effort from my part – other than the effort required for walking around with muscle pain, that is.

I feel like I’m failing though… Laziness gets the best of me.

Every morning, my goal is to get up at 6am, so I can prepare myself a smoothie, and take my time in the morning before going to work. Every morning, I stop the 6am alarm, and also stop the 6.30am one, only getting up at 7am, which sucks a bit. During the day, at work, I’m usually OK. I don’t snack, and I’m trying to eat less terrible food, but so far I’m buying, and not cooking. Dinner is a different story. I find it very difficult to get home and cook a healthy dinner, especially if I’ve been to the gym. I need to find a better plan to make it work because if I want to write on the blog on top of that, and maybe do other stuff, then I run out of time and end up going to be really late (so the next 6am won’t happen again!).

Oummou and I have been talking about signing up to boxercise again. I miss it a lot, it was such a great, tough, fun workout. I think I’m going to try to go one day a week. I also miss doing Zumba and pilates, but I really can’t do everything. Maybe this week, we’re doing a free day pass at the gym, to see if we like it and to sign up. I don’t think I’ll get a membership, but I want to check it out because they have classes and a swimming pool, and you can PAYG and buy 10-pass tickets. I think I could do that!

So this is it. The engine is getting back to its usual running state. It feels very rusty, but that’s because it hasn’t been used for long… I’m hoping once I go through all the basics a couple of times, it will all be a breeze.

On a different note, The Great British Sewing Bee is starting again next week (if we’re friends on Facebook, then you’ve seen me posting about it already). I’m very excited about it, and tempted to have a look at the past season again, to get in the mood.

Why am I mentioning this again?

Well, this evening I received an email from Minerva Crafts in which they were very excited about the program and explained all the changes they’ve done to the website. I’ve used them in the past to buy fabric, and I get some of their emails.

I can’t wait to dust off the machine and fabrics and start sewing again, because I haven’t done it in a while. Also, I am looking forward to seeing Patrick Grant again, that man is the epitome of style!

Expect many posts about crafts in the coming weeks!