My favourite part of marathon training was by far the carb loading, my god do I love a good carb! Apart from being oh so satisfying it also really helped with the energy levels during training. Now that the marathon is over I have found it extremely difficult to break it to my body that it can no longer devour that loaf of bread or eat enough pizza to feed a small pizza loving village.

My body was, of course, very much so against my suggestion that it limit itself to one normal human serving instead of its preferred village serving and continued on munching away like a herd of grazing cattle on everything in sight. Nutella, cake, couch cushions etc. When my favourite pair of jeans rejected me I decided that I needed to do something about it and start exercising before work in the morning. The gym clothes were laid out and the alarm was set for 5.30am.

Day 1: (didn’t go) (have a vague memory of laughing while switching off the alarm)

Day 2: got to the gym 23 minutes late, attempted a push up, immediately pulled a muscle and had to leave

Day 3: arrived late, as I’m getting ready to go to work after the rushed workout I realised I had forgotten to pack a pair of pants, (since not wearing pants to work is generally frowned upon) I had to rush back home and get a pair, making myself late for work and in my rush accidentally leaving my new winter jacket in the gym, lost more calories from stress than actual exercise

Cleary this method of relying on myself for motivation was not working. And then I heard about the bootcamp, a boxing bootcamp to be exact. 3 mornings a weeks from 6am til 7am. I immediately signed myself up.
Now you are probably expecting this blog to go on to tell some story about me doing something stupid or embarrassing at bootcamp, and while I have done many stupid things that have clearly shown me to be the worlds worst boxer this blog is actually about what happened after bootcamp one day.

I was in the changing room after one workout when another girl from the class came in. I smiled and asked her what she thought of the class, both of us sweaty and exhausted we chatted away while we got ready for our days ahead. We chatted about workouts and local events, discovered we had a few friends in common. We laughed and chatted away like old friends as we shared a mirror. Our hair was now dry and our make up was now on, my hair pulled back in a ponytail with a bit of tinted moisturiser on my face, her make up immaculate as she pulled the straighteners through her hair.
Still the conversation flowed as we began putting on our work clothes. And then suddenly we were facing each other, taking the other girl in. The conversation halted. I stood there in my painters overalls while she checked for wrinkles in her office attire, her ballet pumps sizing up my work boots. It was the weirdest thing but it felt like tiny builder ninjas had rushed in and constructed a physical wall between us, unable to think of anything to say all of a sudden, we gave each other a polite nod and walked out the door to our completely different worlds. 

The whole situation played on my mind all day and I thought what a luxury it is to be nothing but yourself, that first few seconds of meeting someone before the inevitable “and what do you do?” question pops up. When you catch someone’s eye in a pub, when you sit beside someone on an airplane, when you are just another girl in a boxing fitness class that can’t punch to save her life but tries her damn hardest anyway. Those few moments when you are not a lawyer, or an accountant or a waitress. Those few moments when you are a nice smile, a kind heart, a funny story or a helping hand. 

So take advantage of life’s little luxuries, don’t ask me what uniform I put on to pay the bills, ask me how I am, tell me the last thing that made you laugh, just be you and I’ll be me and I have a feeling we will have so much more to talk about.

Have a great weekend 🙂

Xxx