Blog

When we watch the ending of a movie or read the final chapter of a book, it is easy to assume that the rest of the story will continue that way: “And they lived happily ever after…” But real life doesn’t work that way - we can arrive but not stay forever. Yet, that seems to be the expectation and, I believe, a lie we tell ourselves. Yes, we get to end projects - and the world can certainly do with more people completing what they’ve started - but what happens after the end is more important - and perhaps the more difficult journey. ...

Edna’s interview with me. We talk about my book, Eighty kilos of Shame, specifically two chapters that resonated with Edna. She didn’t tell me beforehand which two chapters, which made the interview very interesting…

You are invited. Yes, that time is correct. Yes, I am going to be there for a while if you cannot make 7:30, no problem. Yes, I will bring copies of my first book (both English and Afrikaans versions) as well. Card facilities will be available.

It’s, I believe, too early into the new year to already feel like I just want to stay in bed, and especially like I do not want to exercise. Yet, here I am, feeling this way already on the 5th day of the year. The rain is of course not helping. It scares me when days like these make me feel like nothing I do works and make me wonder if it all really is worth it. All the early mornings… All the exercises that I cannot do, yet try my best to get right… All futile… ...

For the third consecutive week, my Wednesday training brief is a 60-minute run with a 20-minute faster finish. The first time I attempted this session with a mindset of: I always fail when attempting a faster finish, but I’ll try… I didn’t mess it up completely, but I ran out of oomph when it mattered. The second time I tried rectifying some of my previous mistakes. I reckon I ran that session rather well. My split graph resembled a faster finish, even though I was still in the red zone and not meeting the last 20 minutes’ required pace. ...

As it turns out, running 15 km after nearly five weeks of not running further than 10 km is not as easy as one-two-three. (I wanted to say “as easy as riding a bike”, but I didn’t want to offend any cyclists.) Despite sticking to a low heart rate zone and not pushing myself, I found today’s 15 km run challenging. Strictly speaking, I did do more than my workout brief - the slightest of slightly more. Today’s workout was supposed to be only two hours long, but when two hours had elapsed, I had two kilometres left to reach 15, so I decided to go for it. ...

Today’s strength training session was… different. We did simple exercises, but many (MANY) repetitions of those exercises. There was no single exercise I couldn’t do or even struggled with - unlike what sometimes happens during a strength session. One would think I would’ve cruised through today’s session, but I did not. It was challenging! By the time of my work’s morning stand-up meeting, my legs were still shaking. Strength training still remains one of my biggest workout challenges. Even, it seems, when the exercises are within my means.

I have to word this carefully as I do not want it to sound pessimistic. I find things don’t work for me as it does for others. When I rest, I become unfit quickly. Although it was hard work training for a marathon, marathon training caused me to run slower. I know we were training to run further, not faster. But still… My experience is that I have to be exceptionally disciplined with everything, otherwise it does not work as it should. But I have been working for years to break my “all or nothing” patterns — which usually resulted in nothing. I try to live by an “always something”-mentality. It doesn’t seem to serve me well, though. As if “always something” is not enough. ...

Today’s training was a 40-minute strength session. My workout included sets of hold, flow and high-energy exercises. I found the hold exercises in each set the most strenuous. There were squat, plank, lunge, pilates-hundreds (I am unsure if this name is correct) and bear-crawl positions to hold for as long as 40 seconds at a time. These exercises were challenging! The flow and high-energy exercises were easier to manage, but I struggled whenever I needed to jump out of a position — someday I will get this right. At the end of today’s session, Jateen said he found the chest-to-floor-getups one of the easier exercises of the day. I do not share his viewpoint. ...