Today has felt very similar to yesterday. I spent most of the day wrangling with some Excel permissions and server calls that shouldn’t have been happening. It looks like it’s going to go into a third day and I’d hoped to have it finished yesterday afternoon. Not good. That, and the usual domestic duties meant that the changes in the day were generally defined by differences in food eaten and that’s about it. Well, there were some differences.

I went to get the children from school – walking again – and I headed out a couple of minutes before 3pm this time, to make sure that I got my 30 minutes walk registered. I took the long route which included cutting up from Country Road to Cottage Lane to add a few minutes, plus walking past St Annes church and through the car park to add a few more minutes.

Unfortunately St Bedes school closes at 3:15, and so I had to battle against a tide of homeward bound teenagers for the last part of the walk, which slowed things down quite a lot. I’m not sure I approve of a school closing so early, but I suppose they run out of stuff to teach the kids by 3pm.

For the purposes of logging, the walk back was classed as a second walk. This is going to sound pedantic, but the first being the daily 30 minute walk is attempted at some sort of brisk pace while the walk home with the children is more of a slow meander. Today’s fun included walking 5m behind Lily for most of the journey so that she could prove to me that she could walk home by herself. I’d say that she could – but sadly for her, I’ve taken to walking to school to pick them up as part of my regular exercise. So we might have to find some middle way, perhaps with me walking home in one direction with Joel and Lily walking home in a different direction. That just seems wrong.

The training schedule said running, and the plan was to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I’ve grown tired and grumpily intolerant of running on the treadmill. I never really liked it and most of the recent times I’ve really struggled. I much prefer outside, but I would like to build my tolerance for the treadmill as well – especially if the weather turns cold.

So it was 9:30, after the children had gone to bed, that I got on the machine.

I set the speed at 5.5 mph. Nothing too fast or challenging, just knuckling down and getting the exercise out of the way. I’ve been told that intervals breaks up the monotony, but I’d prefer to build up the stamina of spending time on the machine. At the end I was pouring with sweat, unlike anything I’ve been like running outside or recently in the gym. I’ll take it as a good sign.

So day seven complete with 4.4km run on the treadmill and 5km walked.

In weight related news, I jumped on the scales today to see that my rolling average weight has finally started to come down after the Christmas and New Year lardathon. Curiously though, my body fat percentage was fairly steady over the holidays, going up a bit, but has now dipped under 20% to 19.1%. I think I’d want to see that for a few days because I think that scales can get that number wrong depending on water retention and other factors. However, it had been hovering a bit above the 20% mark for a few weeks, so it might be in the right ball-park. I find it hard to believe, but if it’s right it probably means that the vast majority of the fat I’m carrying is around my middle. Twas ever thus.