Goal + Action = Reality

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Thanks, @Tileenah (and for the translation), @NancyTree @Fremen and @Montserrat

Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 28 - the 90-min walks are a bit of a challenge. Route-wise, I mean. I had to stay close to home today (because I only managed to get out later in the afternoon) but that was fine as I'd already had my route kind of picked out, and I wanted it to be a little taxing.
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We had rain later this evening and I watched it coming in. (A Turner-esque sky?)

:v: Code of Abs Day 19

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 12
:v: Leg Day Everyday Day 28
:v: Tricep Dips Day 29
:v: Upperbody Day 29

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

I have no problem with Life stepping in and changing my plans. After all, that's what Life does. What I resent is other people's discourtesy wasting my time. I was expecting someone within the hour and, without bothering to let me know, that person decided to go somewhere else first and finally got to me over 2½ hours later! Much of my day wasted with waiting, when a simple text would have been so easy...
Angry Get Out GIF


On an upnote, however, my mum sent me a surprise - a photo book of the walks we'd done together recently, using my photos. They do look good in an A4 format. Phones now have such good cameras that anyone can take a decent snap. :)
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 29 - It had rained quite heavily last night, and a bit mid-afternoon and it's raining fairly solidly again now, but when I went out around 3:30, there was only a drizzle. Got rather wet though. Funny how heavy wet jeans are! The backs of them were relatively dry, but it probably hadn't been a good idea to walk through the scrub, brushing past all those dripping grasses. I enjoyed it though. Grist to the creative mill. The cats keep knocking my saturated shoes off the heating vents so that they can sleep on them (the vents, that is). Today, my shoes have priority!
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Sometimes, though, I had to straddle a veritable creek!

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I thought this creeper looked pretty.

:v: Code of Abs Day 20

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 13
:v: Leg Day Everyday Day 29
:v: Tricep Dips Day 30
:v: Upperbody Day 30

:v: Writing - Off to the Library again today. T and E there again. Normally just the three of us. Very busy and noisy in the cafe and after about an hour, we repaired downstairs where people were working and it was blissfully quiet. Got a decent bit done.
:v: Reading
 
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TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
@Tileenah @TortoiseVibe @Montserrat @Anek @Fremen :love:

Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 30 - so there's the first month done. Glad today was only 45 minutes because it was absolutely beastly out and staring at the yellow wall in front of the treadmill is frightfully dull.
:v: Code of Abs Day 21

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 14
:v: Leg Day Everyday Day 30

Have to decide which other challenges to do, other than the May challenge...

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Have been wondering if I'll do boxing again this term. Realised that if I'm wondering if I will, it means I don't really want to. If I did really want to, you see, I wouldn't wonder if I would do it. It's taken me a while to realise this about my thinking. Pretty obvious, really though. If there were no question about my wanting to do it, I wouldn't ask. I first realised this only last year, when I was contemplating changing Taekwondo clubs. If I hadn't wanted to change clubs, I wouldn't even have thought about changing clubs. So hey, I've decided to listen to myself! Not all the time, of course (hmm, should I have another biscuit or not? Hah! Of course I'm going to have another biscuit!) but more often than I have. Not when it comes to being lazy or avoiding things I know I ought to be doing or that would be good for me, though. I think we often know answers to questions we don't want to ask ourselves. Or even if we do ask those questions, we don't listen to the answer we don't want to hear or that are too much trouble to implement. I think that if I (we?) question the status quo, that means I (we?) am (are) unhappy with said status quo. My status quo in this immediate instance is going to boxing. But I never wanted to box, merely to learn how to do it. I've learnt an enormous amount this last term, to the extent that my shadow boxing is purposeful now and it doesn't (I hope!) look like I'm merely flailing around. I've learnt about lifting my shoulder, where to keep my hands, basic footwork, slipping and ducking. That's really all I wanted to know. All I need to do is practice it from time to time to remember it. So there you go. A lengthy paragraph saying, Hey, TN's not doing boxing this term. :)
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
April Summary
# of runs: 9 (sort of, A mix of walk and run from the Challenge)
Longest distance: not really applicable yet.
# of bike rides: 0 - I had wanted to change this, but the Walking programme takes up too much time for me to put cycling in as well. Next month will likely also see this as a zero, but the month after... Well, who knows?
Hikes/walks: 30
Total distance: 110km - I've included only the ones recorded on Strava - because I'm too lazy to check anything else. ;)
Strength work/Upperbody work: Need to rethink how I'm going to address this deficit. I did boxing only once this month and then the holidays kicked in.
Writing: Going well. Completed CampNaNo this month and wrote/researched for over 36 hours and have almost completed the second draft of the second book.
Reading: 19 books, all fiction. Should salt the mix with a bit of non-fiction.

Been too slack with my physio exercises, doing them only sometimes and not often enough.

Not a great summary this month. If it were a school report, the comment would probably be "could do better".
Trying Never Give Up GIF by Britannia
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 32
:v: Code of Abs Day 23

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 16
:v: Lower Abs Day 2 - Still living dangerously = -1

:v: Virtual Row. 20 minutes. One day I'll get a machine with a working display...

:v: Taekwondo. This term's focus is going to be the back kick. Jumping back kick, spinning back kick - in short, the back kick in its many variations. I like that it's going to be a focus. My back kick is not as bad as it once was and a focus on it will do us both a world of good. We did two self-defences that involve a right-to-right-hand grab, one that had the right elbow pressed down, the other that had the right arm twisted up behind the back. My right arm is wondering why my left arm never gets this poorly treated!

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Ooh, just noticed - 1,111 posts!
 
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TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 33
:v: Code of Abs Day 24

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 17
:v: Lower Abs Day 3 - Argh, they got me! +1

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Had to do maths this evening! Second-born confessed that she has test tomorrow on algebra and she doesn't understand it. Er, how about coming to me a little sooner then? So a rapid romp through a bit of algebra before and after dinner. Makes me want to study some physics. Yeah, I don't know why either.
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Thanks, @CODawn

Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 34
:v: Code of Abs Day 25

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 18
:v: Lower Abs Day 4 - If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room = -1

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

:v: Taekwondo. I never thought I'd actually enjoy this sort of warm-up, but tonight I found it rather fun. We had 30 seconds of each exercise, with a breath in between during which the coach said what the next exercise was. Started with jumping jacks, then - well, the order's all wrong because I don't remember exactly, but we did mountain climbers ("get your hands to your feet!" Easy.), push-ups, high knees but sticking for a moment and knees above waist-height, squats (very impressed that I managed 30 seconds of AtG squats without the knees complaining!), and what the coach called "stand-ups" which was basically a burpee but without the jump (you just stood up), and if you had to, you could just step your feet out and back (unless you were a black belt :p), and we ended with a 30-sec squat hold, as low as you can go, so I sat right down where it was totally easy to keep the chest up and knees out and could have sat there for ages. It was the standing up again that took the effort. :LOL: In partners, we did axe kick. Not so many people here tonight so my partner was one of the shorter women. When told to hold the paddle at chin height (with axe kick, you'd generally be looking at landing the foot on the clavicle), she looked at me and held it above her head. For her, I held it just above my floating ribs. Ah, variability!

Funny thing I've noticed about myself. (Keeping this thread is a good way of seeing patterns.) If something happens that's not part of my ordinary, it completely ennervates me, strips me completely of any desire to do much of anything physical. Peculiar. I've noted it, I know it happens, but it seems I can (as yet) do little about it. I'll have to work hard to change that. For example, yesterday I had to go out (shops, library) and before I left, I thought I'd do some rowing when I got home, but it was all I could do to shift my lazy self into doing my 'regular' stuff. Today I had my plans, but I had to take my second-born in to school late and that also kind of spoilt it for me. Though I went for my walk, it was a slow one (but at least I enjoyed it). When I came home, I couldn't be bothered doing anything extra, so I just hacked down some bramble-berry canes to give the meter-man access to the electricity box - it definitely had to be done! (Has anyone ever invented gardening gloves that are impervious to bramble-berry prickles?!) Tomorrow I hope nothing out of my ordinary will happen.
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 35 - tried a new route today. A couple of hikes ago, I stopped somewhere further along and met up with an underpass that would take me to the adjacent nature reserve, so that's where I went today. Only 'bad' thing about it was that the outer walking track was within ear-shot of a fairly busy fast road but I went inward as soon as I could. There was not much tree cover so I was t-shirted until it got shady again and I put my jacket back on. The air is already quite cold, even around midday. (I just looked it up. Apparently the temperature was almost 8 degrees and felt like 6 when I set off. See, winter's already kicking in!)

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Sometimes you've got to bend so as not to break. A lesson for us all.

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There were still low clouds in the mountains but most had lifted from around here.

:v: Code of Abs Day 26

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 19
:v: Lower Abs Day 5 - Hah! missed me = -1

:v: Virtual row - 15 minutes. Actually managed to get on to this despite the morning's disruption (yes, more *sigh*) and then was interrupted, hence 15 minutes. Oh well.

:v: Writing
:v: Reading
 
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TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Glad you like them, @CODawn and @NancyTree

Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 42 - yeah, it should have been day 36 but I got carried away, trying as-yet untrodden (by me) tracks, and it was such a splendid day so I decided that today could be next Friday's 90-min walk - just in case I can't do it then for whatever reason. Not a hard walk, but rigorous enough:
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And here - some 'roo tracks in the drying mud:
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:v: Code of Abs Day 27

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 20
:v: Lower Abs Day 6 - dangerous indeed = +1

:v: Writing - could hardly wait to get home because I was struck by inspiration about 30 minutes into my walk.
:v: Reading

My mum wants me to go over and visit her for a while, abandoning cats, chicken and children. It's tempting. I haven't had a holiday since 2013 (and an overseas trip with a 3½-year old isn't that relaxing!), and I realise that I haven't spent a single night without at least one of my children under the same roof since the first one was born! Maybe I do need a break...
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 37 - brief moment of sun so I headed out but ended up getting rained on. A little later, it snowed. Just wet snow that never lasts long but apparently some decent falls in the mountains. And it's only early May! Did autumn get cancelled? Good thing the trees didn't get the memo - splashes of brilliant red and orange among the greys:
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:v: Code of Abs Day 28

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 21
:v: Lower Abs Day 7 - Hah again! =-1

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Starting to get excited about the idea of a trip. Years ago I had wanted to take the children on a road trip, even planned it out, but - it didn't happen. So now I'm going to do something a bit similar but by myself. I need a tent...
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programmes:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 39 - decided to go up a mountain I've only been up once before. I had been a bit disappointed because the track, though steep, was all tarmac and steps and it wasn't so interesting. But there had to be other routes, right? There always are. And I found one. And it was certainly challenging! Part of the track had an incline of 24% - which for those of you who, like me, have (in my case, had) no idea what that actually means, it means that for every 10cm forward I moved, I also moved 2.4cm upward. It certainly had me panting! It was tough. The masochist in me says to do it again!
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Left or right? I chose left. (This was the easier bit...)

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Dogs get something to drink. People had to bring their own!

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And you can just make out a bit of snow from the recent fall on Mt Gingera.
Still in a t-shirt but sometimes the wind made it rather chilly. Might not be too long now before the long sleeve stay on.

:v: Code of Abs Day 30

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 23
:v: One-Minute Meditation Day 2
:v: Lower Abs Day 9 = -1

:v: Taekwondo. My partner observed today that I wasn't even really trying with a drill we had to do. In the first one, he held a paddle at chin height (my chin) and I was just to swing my leg up (rather than actually do an instep kick) and hit the paddle and if it looked too easy, the holder was to lift the paddle. Yeah, that was pretty easy. The next drill was outswing (or outer crescent) kick, again more of a swing than a kick requiring power so that was also very easy for me. I'm not bad at outswing because I'm flexible and can generally get my leg to brush past my chest. The leg goes out across the body, up and over to the side in a wide arc. You can get higher and hit a closer opponent if you can get your leg closer to your body as it swings around. So he held the paddle and I swung my leg up and over and he lifted the paddle and stepped closer and it was all a bit of fun. Lots of side kick training today - on the floor, against the wall, then actually doing it, first in steps then as a whole.

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

I've been thinking about my proposed trip, trying not to feel guilty for leaving my children to go off on a merry frolic of my own. Thought I'd got over that, actually, then the Lad asked today if I were leaving tomorrow. I said no, and asked when he wanted me to leave. He asked, "Can I say the year?" The answer was 1 Jan, 3000! I guess it's because I've always been here. I've been the constant. They can all troop off to wherever they want - camp, down the coast, sleepovers at friends' places, wherever, but they know that I'm always always here. And now I'm proposing, for a few weeks, not to be here. Bloody guilt.
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Thanks, @Tileenah and @Montserrat :flowers:

Programme:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 40

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 24
:v: One-Minute Meditation Day 3
:v: Lower Abs Day 10 - good thing I like to live dangerously! = +1

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Been working out my route. Decided to take my time, go to some sight-seeing spots, museums, suchlike. The route (not including any small side trips) is about 1742km. Thought it would take me three days but when I'm working things out, trying to make sure I get to places while they are open or when there's still enough light, I think it might take longer... After all, if I'm going to be camping in a National Park, I might like to have a bit of a look around while I'm there and not just shoot off at the crack of dawn! Getting very excited. :LOL:
 

TopNotch

Well-known member
Ranger from Australia
Posts: 1,951
"Motivation is temporary. Discipline is forever."
Programme:
:v: 60 Days of Walking Day 46

Challenges:
:v: From Walking to Running Day 30
:v: One-Minute Meditation Day 9
:v: Lower Abs Day 16 = +1 I spoke too soon. :LOL:

:v: Writing
:v: Reading

Pile of stuff here in the spare room waiting to be loaded into the car but as it's going in for a service tomorrow (and apparently they'll also clean it!) I can't pack it up yet. Discovered that there's no phone etc reception at the first camp site - I'm bringing a few books. And my bokken. I got me some practicing to do!

Martial Arts Fighting GIF
 
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