I’ve slipped into a bit of a routine with the running, gym and walking. Things are about to be shaken up tomorrow with the start of the 10k running programme, but just for the moment I’ve had a standard Monday.

I was off to the Youth Zone in the morning, looking at tweaking some of the biometric work there for volunteers. I love this project. The set up there is fantastic and it’s hard to believe that it’s right there in the middle of the town. I could complain a lot about Wigan and how it has changed, or not, over the past 20 years. The Youth Zone has been a brilliant development, and it’s a real pleasure being involved, even if only a little bit.

It was also the world’s best meeting: a clear idea what we were there to discuss, a brief but thorough discussion of what needed doing, and some definite actions and deliverables. It was all sorted in twenty minutes, and I was soon back on the road home. Lovely!

That gave me time to get my teeth into another project that I’d been meaning to look at over the weekend. More on that later, but work-wise it was all good, and I had done a full day’s worth by about 3-3:30pm. That said, I’m going to look at it a bit more after writing this (!)

My plan was to go to the gym before picking up the children. Dinner was to be a tarka dal as it can sit and slowly cook while I’m out. The gym session went well. The programme told me to do four sets of six reps today – upping the weights to counter the reduced number of repetitions. So everything got upped by quite a bit – I even had to set the cable machine to the top weight for the lateral pull-downs, which is something that wouldn’t have been possible a few months ago.

I also did a quick (well, 5:20min) kilometer as my warm-up run and so that I could say that I’ve had a run each day this month. All good.

Dinner was tasty, nothing spectacular: the usual lentil goop with some fried onions and chillis piled on top. Lily even wolfed hers down, which makes me very happy. Not that long ago she wouldn’t have touched anything a bit spicy, but now she seems content to wolf it down. Perhaps she’s realised that there isn’t a plan B with the food, and she needs to eat what’s on her plate. Regardless of what the reason is, I’m glad that there has been a change of heart.

We’ve also heard from Jude! To be fair, we got a note yesterday after the dark few days while she was on safari, but it’s always good to hear from her. There are some pictures of her working in a Nairobi school, serving breakfast, and it’s obvious that they’re all doing an amazing job out there. It will be interesting to see if she wants to go back on her return.

The day’s walk was scheduled to be part of the Monday juggling of Scouts and Cubs. Joel goes to Cubs at 6, I then drop off Lily and pick up Joel between 7:15 and 7:30, and then pick up Lily at 9pm. The plan was to drive at 6 and 9, and to walk for the exchange in the middle – thus having half the walk with Lily and half the walk with Joel.

Again, I was impressed with Lily striding out. Normally, she is a few paces behind me even when I feel like I’m going very slowly. This time she was there by my side all the way to the hall (about 1.8km by direct route). My phone battery died, but checking the time when we left and got back it looked like Joel and I did about the same time for the return walk. In total, it was about 3.6km in roughly 40 minutes. It’s not the tremendous pace or distance achievable when walking alone, but on balance, I think that it’s better to try and get the children walking more.

So that’s the day – a 1km run, gym session and 3.6k walk. I’ll quietly avoid mentioning the bread that I forgot was in the oven! Not my finest culinary moment.