My latest fad?

I have a tendency to have hobbies that I go nuts about for a few months, then drop like a hot potato. I might knit like crazy for six months, quit for ages, then pick it up again two years later. My other half calls them my "Flavour of the Month." He's not far wrong. I worried about this when I signed up for the marathon. What if I started to train, then got fed up with the idea three or four months down the line? I suppose the worst that could happen would be that I drop out and lose my entry fee. Initially that was the worst that could happen. I was persuaded that I shouldn't go to all that trouble without getting sponsorship. A friend said that twenty-six miles was worth something, and what charity had I signed up to help?

I gave it some thought. My family has experience of autism, so I chose PEAT NI, Parents Education as Autism Therapist NI and set up a Just Giving page. That way people can sign up or not, without any direct pressure from me, and a charity does get a small benefit from my effort.

That now means that if the marathon thing was to become a victim of my fickle nature, the kind folks who've offered money to PEAT would be let down, so hopefully that will keep me motivated.

Another possible flavour of the month is the item I've ordered on line, only this morning. My mum got one of these months ago, and she swears by it. I've been thinking of getting one, and there it was, on the telly this morning. It was on special offer, and in theory, it should be delivered this week, while I'm on a week's leave. That would work out very conveniently. So it seemed that all the stars had aligned to tell me it was meant to be. I ordered a vibrating exercise thingamy! I'm quite excited about it. You set it in motion, stand or sit on it in a variety of positions, with or without use of resistance bands, and it helps you to get fit and gain muscle tone. Surely this can only aid in my running efforts? So long as it does no harm. A few minutes, every other day, is what is recommended. I've been running regularly again for over a month, so I think I will be able to manage more than a few minutes, even initially. But I will see what the DVD workouts are like. I don't want to go too crazy at first. I think the OH will look at me as if I'm nuts, but that won't be anything new :-)

As far as food has been concerned over the weekend, I haven't done well. Everything non paleo that I don't normally eat has been staple fare for me. Ice cream, cheese and bread were all consumed in vast quantities. So I shudder to think what the scales will say when I finally step on them. I'm not doing paleo or the marathon for weight loss, even though I need to lose weight. It's for health. But I don't want to gain weight even if I'm not actively trying to lose it! So I need to reign it in.

From now on, I'm going to try to put in to practice the three rules that I learnt from Ruth Field in her fabulously motivating book "Run, Fat Bitch, Run."

1. Run
2. Drink water
3. Eat less crap

Simple but not easy. I love the symmetrical nature of those three rules. Rule one has one word, rule two has two words and rule three.... You see where that's going. And they are so straight forward! I love the feeling I get when I tick off each one that I've followed. But, obviously, the one I have the most problems with at the moment is No 3. I'm working on it.