Weekly Rundown: Back to Work

I have had a lovely ten days off so it was a bit of a shock to have to get back into the swing of things with work again. It was a bit of a shock to the system to go from nothing to a full five day week, but it went quite quickly. Unfortunately the weekend is going by equally quickly, but I've got a trip to Wales coming up to look forward to.

I've started the New Year with a reread of The Lord of the Rings and I'm currently about halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring. Since I'm taking part in my Walk Middle-earth group, I felt like I needed a little reminder of the books to help me come up with challenges and keep up with the more knowledgeable members of the group. In the past I've read it quite quickly but I'm going pretty slowly this time around.

I overtook my walking progress with the book this week. As much as I'd love to read it at the same speed I'm walking, if I did that I'd still be around the third chapter!

Speaking of walking, I'm doing very well towards my target of 458 miles this year. Yesterday my sister-in-law came to visit with her partner and we went for a lovely long walk around the estate which meant that for the second day in a row I managed to hit my Fitbit goal of 10,000 steps. On Friday night I was only 1,300 away by bedtime, so I paced up and down the living room whilst catching up online to hit the required steps. I did it mainly to see what happened when you reach your goal on the Fitbit; yesterday I managed it before lunch!

So far I've hit my target of walking 1.2 miles per day. It was fairly easy to attain while I was off work, but now I'm back, I'm having to make more time to get out walking. It was tempting to just count all walking that my Fitbit registered, but now that I have it, I can't help but want to continue walking an extra 1.2 miles anyway. It certainly gets my steps up.

The hardest thing about going walking with Tara has been the fact that it's so dark. I've been walking in the morning alone, but at night it's so dark and creepy I've been dragging Mr Click with me as well. I think he's been enjoying these dark and scary walks, possibly because I insist on holding his hand the whole way! I've now figured out that by doing the walk to the bottom of the hill in the morning gives me about half a mile, while the walk to the bump and back in the evening is 0.7, giving me exactly the total I need. Where possible, I'll walk a little extra to give me a buffer against days when I can't walk.

My view as I walked to town for Star Wars.

I even walked to the cinema last week, when we went to see Star Wars. I did have to do an extra lap outside the cinema to make up the 0.11 that I was short for the day. It's amazing how much more active the combination of the challenge and the Fitbit are making me. Here's to a far healthier 2016!


How is your 2016 shaping up now we're returning to normal after the holidays?