How not to hit

Yep, FraidyKat learned a punch last night called an Over. Either named because it comes from over your head or because at some point you will need to get over the fact you have just destroyed your knuckles.
When landed properly the Over is a seriously strong technique and it sounds great against a pad, but it's a nontraditional technique and it takes some getting used to - hence the lovely colour of my knuckles right now.
Lessoned learned. Jarred wrist avoided, bruised knuckles not so. Now FraidyKat just looks like she has been in a fight with questionable success.

On a more positive note, my weight might not have changed (or it might have, scale inaccuracy is something that's really messing with my head - as previously posted) but I put on a pair of my old skinnier days jeans and rhey actually fitted. Two weeks ago the same jeans yielded theuffin top from hell. Has FraidyKat gained some muscle recently?

Here's hoping.

My little cat is currently on high alert at the window. She is not going outside though, perhaps the ninja elephants are out there taunting her, otherwise she would already be in the field torturing tiny rodents.

One can only wonder quite what my poor Mogs did to earn the eternal emnity of the highly trained invisible pacaderm killers, but it must have been something spectacular.

FraidyKat Runs - to avoid hitting

Following the plan & having incentive

As promised, here is my diet plan:

My supplements column is a bit lacklustre but I can't have anything more exotic yet thanks to my darling littlest.
I don't really like combining low fat and low carb, it doesn't seem particularly sustainable, but again the low fat is non-negotiable and I onlywant to give my body a little kick. I haven't done much weight loss in the last few weeks so a little shake up is called for.

Darling partner has it better, I'd like to be following his plan. He's having Reflex One Stop twice a day - after a lot of searching this turned out to be the only supplement that combined everything he needs without taking loads of pills every day. It's perfect for helping him get lean and gain muscle at the same time. It's higher in carbs than is ideal but then again he's working out most days and carbs are hardly the enemy when they're being utilised (only unused carbs become fat, if you can burn off that large portion of chips then there's no guilt attached the eating them).
He also gets Cauliflower cheese (yummy) when I have to make do with a vegetable stirfry and he gets cream with his sugar free jelly when I have fat free yoghurt. Oh how I miss fat...


Hopefully, in a week's time I will have lost some weight and then I will be able to assess just how doable this fusion diet is when I am exercising six days a week as well - we'll see if I can exist on so little carbs or whether I have to add some more in to keep me going.


In other news, FraidyKat has gained extra incentive to lose fat in the form of the BODPOD. I discovered it recently, it's a small pod you sit in and it uses air displacement to measure your body composition. Supposedly, the only more accurate way to measure body composition (other than a detailed MRI) is water displacement, but unless you're a professional athlete or a researcher's guinea pig you're not likely to get that done.
In fact, you're not likely to get to use the BODPOD unless you happen to live near one of the few in the UK or US (they're the only ones I've found anywaybut perhaps someone elese where can correct me)
As someone who's never been anywhere near skinny, the idea of an accurate and unbiased report on my body composition is a scary one - I can't exactly leave one leg out of the pod! - but it's one of those ways to be honest with myself and not hide behind excuses.
Lucky me, I live near enough to the University Hospital in Coventry to get one of their rarely available appointments for the public (only the first Friday of every month is kept free for mere normal people), but I won't be going until September. That's one month of fear, panic and serious paranoia lending a huge incentive boost to weight loss.
Argh, no more excuses to delay stripping the fat.


Pain pixies and nano-gremlins unite! FraidyKat's thighs are a perfect party venue and now is the time to have a summer chill out, so crack open a bottle and join "The mosh pit on the Quads". Join in the fun and give FraidyKat a dose of agony!
Hard training followed by a full on Grading in the summer heat are a perfect recipe for a bodily pain crafted by artistes. You will not experience another gathering like it for a long time (hopefully), so get your torture impliments together and head over to the party!


FraidyKat Runs - For a New Plan

Sally is evil

Oh yes, behind that pretty girl's name hides a monster.
Go on to youtube and look up Moby's Green Sally Up. You might recognise it from Gone in Sixty Seconds. I used to like the song, it has a good beat and yet something laid back about it.
Well, that was before Sally was perverted onto a workout torture by the intstructors at Defence Lab.

Here's the evil group version - everyone get into a circle facing in (so you can see the pain to come) and get into press up position. Every time you hear Green Sally Up you push up, every time you hear Green Sally Down you lower yourself down (but not all the way, only to the normal bottom of a press up). The person who lasts the longest is the most likely to need surgery for torn arm muscles. The person who gives up first is probably the sanest in the room. Our senior instructor, Mikey, was the only one to manage the whole song.

But that was last night. This morning, still aching from Sally, FraidyKat lined up to get her second grade, a simple yellow band with the Defence Lab logo emblazoned on it. It is something so small that means so much and oh boy were we worked hard to get it. Officially we won't know until Monday if we have made the grade but they don't let you attempt it if they don't believe you are good enough to get it.

This makes FraidyKat feel a little better. I still have a lot of work to do but the diet is planned - I will publish it later - and so is the new workout schedule. This weekend I shop for the food, Monday I start following or plan. I suppose I should say we, dear partner is going to be joining me on a slightly modified diet of his own.
I will let you know it goes.

Today the air is suspiciously sweet, there is no odour of rotting flesh. Where have all the zombies gone? Have they found a nice cold, dark, crypt to share with the vampires? Hmm, I must check the cellar to make sure they are lurking under my feet.

FraidyKat Runs - Away from Sally

Time for honesty and a bit of a rant

FraidyKat sucks at this.

That's pretty much what I have been thinking about most things recently and I guess that's behind my lack of posts over the last couple of weeks.

It's weird how something so simple can set you off and turn into a downward spiral.
So where did it all start? I guess it was upset at getting the evil deity's curse of shin splints compounded by my stupid scales deciding over night (literally over night) that I had gained 3kg.
Intellectually I know that I did not magically gain that much weight over night, I was eating the right things and exercising so there was nothing to do it. At first I figured it was the batteries running out, so I changed them but the number did not go down. Then I concluded they must have been jumped on by the elder chaos daemon (bless her boundless, reckless, energy) and thrown out of calibration. It was no big deal, I would just pick up where I left off and count the drops not the overall weight.
That was a great theory but not a good reality.

Theory - the weight does not matter, only the consistant drop in fat.
Reality - the numbers are a score card, they tell you how you are doing and a when those numbers shift unexpectedly it's a real morale killer.

To anyone out there struggling to lose weight - FraidyKat knows your pain.

Of course, the start was enough. The old FraidyKat would have promptly gone off on a comfort food binge and then lost the plot with the sudden and genuine weight gain from being silly, but like a baby who's had their comforter stolen away I don't have the option of a comfort binge and it makes me cranky.

• Maybe an evening sat with a family bucket of chocolate after a greasy takeaway would be a little temporary sedative against the world, but Gallbladder disease means that old self medicated cure is not an option (not without a hospital stay immediately after it).

• A few glasses of legalised impure poison (wine by it's socially accepted name) might be a good substitute, but FraidyKat has a young family to protect from the Zombie hoard and maurauding Goblin tribes so now is not the time to be off her game.

• A run would be theraputic, it's hard to feel much of anything when exhausted and the endorphins are a welcome rush, but slow healing shin splints make that also impractical.

So where am I left?
Sitting at home guarding against the fantasy invaders, trying to re-evaluate and re-order my silly life while the reality cheque bounces like a space hopper into a parallel universe of perfect nutrition and adonis like bodily perfection.



According to my fickle scales I have anywhere between 2 and 5kg to lose by 16th August, that's three weeks. 1kg a week is possible if I am super good (without a bootcamp or personal trainers it's as realistic as I can get right now), so that's the aim. Or perhaps with the lack of accuracy of the scales I should instead point at a pair too tight trousers and aim to get into them without the aid of a corset or surgery...

For now, FraidyKat has resorted to the spreadsheet to create an eating plan for the coming weeks and serve as a reminder of what is needed. It maybea slight touch of the Rimmer method of revising for exams - 3months to create a spreadsheet leaving 1 night to cram in all the revision (Red Dwarf, Series 1). This spreadsheet has also been extended to dear partner (in search of the elusive six-pack, and who am I to complain?) and the little chaos darlings in a looser form, after all they eat a massive amount for their size (Chaos the elder seems to have a natural bond blackholes in that respect) and it has to be factored in to the weekly food shop.


Confidence kicks, trampled self-esteem and constant injury will not defeat me this time. I have a very important reason to drop the weight and gain the fitness, and it's not just ToughMudder, it's more important than that :-

The Zombies are far easier to detect in this current weather, but not for any pleasant reasons. Swarms of flys and a truely terrible smell give an easy way to know when they are around. I suppose we should be thankful that decaying fingers have trouble handling aerosols, deoderant and raid would really give us trouble.


FraidyKat Runs - to trample the Scales

#!!&**##!!!! Shin Splints

FraidyKat thought she had banished the bain of runners many long and painful moons ago but it appears they are as infectous as nano-gremlins and zombie bites. Just when you think you're safe the dreaded shin splints strike.

First it's a vague aching down the shin bone, then a persistant niggle, then pounding jarring pain on the run (with the occasional blissful stretch of numbness if you're lucky), then you are reduced to a pained hobble for several weeks until it heals. If you don't modify your training after that you'll just go through the cycle all over again. - I know, I made that mistake.
Most of the time, again if you're lucky, you'll just have strained the muscles around your skin bone or perhaps inflamed the protective sheath around the bone. If you're really unlucky you'll have damaged the bone to the point of fracture, tiny stress fractures that Doctor's struggle to diagnose until it's so far gone you're virtually unable to walk without agony.
I get the former, muscle and inflammation, painful but not ruinous with the judicious application of ice, ibruprofen and rest (tubigrip helps too if you don't mind the sexy skin ridges when you take it off!).
The latter, well, catch it early and give it healing time, it's all you can do. FraidyKat went to Uni with someone who didn't get it in time and was forced to take a medical discharge from the Army when he was told it would take several years to properly heal because it was left for so long. It was a hard thing for him come to terms with. Don't ever let it get that far.

In the spirit of catching it early I have taken the very reluctant decision to take another break from running. As it is only at the vague ache stage I have only had a short break, a 2miler on Tuesday and no more running until tomorrow. I'll see how it goes and if it's bad I'll cut the run short and have a longer break. What a #*&^*£"&!!!! Sorry for the top row speech but it's so frustrating to keep getting set backs.
If it is worse than I hope then I'll be hitting the weights so I at least get some training done. No excuse to vegetate just because I can't do high impact work and especiailly when my strength still needs improvement.
Update to come, ice blocks at the ready...


Also on the top row speech hit list at the moment are my previously trusty bathroom scales.
Somehow at the beginning of the week I suddenly put on 3kg, over night. Not believing this I asked dear partner to jump on said scales. It turns out he had also gained 3kg. Sigh, I guess that means one of the chaos daemons has jumped on them too often and knocked the calibration out. I could live with it if the weight had just jumped and remained there, it would be a hard thing to swallow but I could at least keep track of the loss, but that was not to be. I can now step on and off and seconds later step back on to find my weight has changed by up to 4kg. Oh well, more pennies to spend for a new one.
Okay, so a lot of people would say don't bother, find somewhere with scales a weigh in less often, or just go by body weight, but I need to see progress or I get demoralised really quickly (my flaw, one of many).
And I spent a few pennies, £14 actually, on a cheap set of bog standard scales, no body composition stuff (normally rubbishly inaccurate anyway according to all of the reviews), just weight. A quick jump on and, half way through the day, I have lost 1kg in the last week - that's about right and good enough for me.


Attack of the mutant zombie moles!
It would make for such a good B movie film title, but sadly it's not a film. Dear partner spent a long time in the garden today excavating the hills and it's his considered expert (?!!) opinion that they are no ordinary moles and extreme measures will be required to get rid of them. Time to get back in the lab and create some extra skinny armoured ninja ferrets. That should do the trick, just have to make sure they are immune to the virus so we don't then have zombie ferrets to deal with. Now that would be awkward.


FraidyKat Runs - with a limp

Unnatural Beauty

Today I was fortunate enough to run a beautiful route through the countryside. It was peaceful (apart from the odd zombie attack), green and lushous. It was easy to forget that I was not running through a rural paradise but an artifical industrial enterprise that during it's creation had at least as much impact as the high speed rail link, and just as much political warfare.
I was running along the old water highway that is the Grand Union Canal.
Once upon a time it was the heavy haulage M1, now it's the preserve of holidaymakers and the slightly excentric boat owners who make the waterways their home.
I am doubly lucky to live along a rural stretch that means I am not competing for towpath space with commuters and dogwalkers.
It's an unnaturally beautiful place to run and even in the rain I wouldn't trade it for a tarmac path on a road or, perish the evil thought and wash my mouth out with caustic soap, a treadmill in a gym.

There was a slight oops on the run though, a good oops in the end but it was a silly FraidyKat being distracted moment. I got so absorbed in the Zombies Run mission that I didn't look out for the landscape marker telling me it was time to turn around and go home. That oops meant that instead of a 3.5mile run it was in fact a 4mile run (well, 4.2 if you count the cool down walk up the hill to home). A good result in the end, a longer run that proved I can go further than I thought - although the real proof tomorrow will be in finding out what my muscle to nano-gremlin ratio is.
If FraidyKat can't walk tomorrow then FraidyKat isn't really ready for the 4 miles yet.
If FraidyKat can walk tomorrow then next weekend it's a 5mile run.
I really hope FraidyKat can walk because she'll be doing DefenceLab either way.


The weather today has been quite strange, heavy dark clouds one minute, brilliant sunshine the next, and no more that the odd light shower despite an oppressive humidity all day.
And now there is debate over whether the ice in Antarctica is melting or getting thicker.
I'm not planning on getting into the Global Warming debate (FraidyKat has an Environmental Degree so has been over it way too many times - including a fun debate with a GreenPeace fundraiser that ended with him in tears, but that's a story for another day), but I have to wonder on the conspiracy line... Is someone experimenting with weather control?
After all, the UK is the best place to experiment. We are obsessed with the weather but at the same time it is drilled in from a very young age that we should expect everything and anything to fall from the sky no matter the season. If we have snow in the summer we just chalk it up to experience and mutter about how it's good they installed a cover over the centre court at Wimbledon. A hot day in mid winter? We all flock to the beach and get winter sunburn before showing of the reddness in the pub beer garden.
Hurricanes and floods are only noteworthy because they're such a darned nuisance. 
So, evil masterminds with weather control devices - calibrate over the UK, no one will ever notice. We complain whatever the weather!


FraidyKat Runs - in unnatural beauty spots

Tarzan!

Today FraidyKat swung through the trees just like Tarzan - at least the way Tarzan would after having to submit a Risk Assessment and Method Statement and get them approved by the HSE Monkeys.
Nonetheless, I did have a lot of fun at Go Ape in Woburn Safari Park.
Most of the course consists of variations on rope bridges of the like you would not be surprised to see in a childrens playground, it's just that children don't normally run across rope bridges in the treetops (okay, I may have done just that as a child but I know I'm not a typical example), so it's more of a mental challenge than anything else. That said, I'm going to have a good collection of bruises tomorrow. I blame those on a combination of rain making the course slippery and FraidyKat not being as well coordinated as she would like.
A good purple bruise can be pretty in a twisted sort of way, it's a badge of honour when you can say you got it doing something a little adventurous. That gives me a reason to not hide them and to smile when people ask how I got them.

While getting wet and dirty in the trees the question of zombie longevity came up (I don't know why, it's the sort of weird conversation that comes up in our household). In certain fantasy/horror universes they can linger for years, in others they are gone in a few months. I suppose it depends on the definition of a zombie as much as anything else.
I will have to devise a trap and safe containment area to test a few of the local zombies. What variety do we have here?

FraidyKat Runs - Through the trees

Give up the sofa

Well, not literally. I'm not selling my sofa or anything that drastic (although if you think about there are other ways of being comfortable. Hmmm, alternative living... Nope, that's a subject for another day), I'm just trying to give up sitting on the sofa all the time when I could be exercising.

Dear partner pointed out to me recently that with all the weight I'm losing I soon won't have any clothes that fit but we can't afflord to spend a lot on a new wardrobe. That got me thinking, aside from buying everything when it's on sale (naturally, I love bargain shopping), how do I pay for my new skinny clothes? There's no miracle - unless of course we win the lottery but I don't think there's much chance of that - but maybe I can save up.

Here it is, my simple motivation and savings tool. The Fitness Jar. Its home is on the fireplace, where I can always see it.
It's a cleaned out jam jar that will now do moneybox duty. It's a couch potato's swear box, you put £1 in every time you do a workout.
I suppose a similar one for weight loss could a £ for a lb. I wouldn't mind getting paid to lose weight, I have heard of people who have done it by making bets on their weight loss and making deals with their partners - because who doesn't want their partner to look good for them?


It's oh so quiet, it's oh so still...
It's so hot and muggy that even the kobolds and goblins and lying low. I expact they'll be out again tonight but for now they're hiding in the shade. It's giving me time to set up appropriate traps around the edges of the garden. I bait them with socks, odd socks of course and dirty for preference but clean will do at a pinch. I don't know what they do with them but they do like their odd socks, they put a considerable amount of effort into sneaking into the house so they can steal them out of the washing basket.


FraidyKat Runs - for new clothes

Run like your life depends on it

Because it probably does...
(especially if the scary BMI information is to be believed, the list of ailments for the obese and overweight is scarier than the thought of sore muscles and nano-gremlins feeding on lactic acid)

The best quote I've heard recently is this: It doesn't matter how slow you run because you'll still be lapping the people on the sofa.

If you have time to read this blog, play Clash of Clans or Candy Crush Saga, you have time to exercise. It doesn't have to be two hours in the gym, two minutes of press ups will do. Keep Calm and get moving.

Sometimes I hate motivational quotes, but sometimes I find them helpful. They can put things in perspective and remind you how ridiculous you sound with all of your excuses of just why you can't do it.

Time for something that made FraidyKat smile:

So tonight when FraidyKat runs, I'll be looking over my shoulder to see if the T-rex is gaining ground!
Speaking of which, someone had fun with this photo:

Okay, so I have been out for my run and I was far too busy running away from zombies to worry about the T-rex.
Earlier today I downloaded the "Zombies, Run" app. It was £2.99 and being a miser I normally wouldn't spend that much on an app but the reviews were good and it sounded fun.
It was fun.
Admittedly, I am a bit of a geek and zombies are in the collection in many forms: Resident Evil (films and wii games, various), 28 days (&weeks) laters, zombieland, shaun of the dead, married with zombies (funny book about a couple who turn up for marriage counselling and discover their therapist has turned into a zombie - saving their marriage becomes the least of their problems), ad nauseum.
See, I'm into zombie stuff, so my over furtile imagination liked the concept of running away from the things. I also love the idea that you're collecting supplies as you run the missions and you earn things to upgrade your base with every run you do.
You have the option of running with or without music, the story fades in and out every few minutes, and you can choose to up the jeopardy by turning your runs into interval training (I didn't today, too chicken) where you have to up your speed occasionally to escape the zombies and you can choose each mission whether it lasts 30mins or an hour.
I will DEFINITELY, be using it for my next run.


If our world is inhabited by both dinosaurs and zombies, is it possible to get zombie dinosaurs?
And why am I now seeing a T-rex dancing to Thriller?
I must track them down and get that on video. Oh, the image of a pterodactyl dancing, that's going to keep me smiling for hours.


FraidyKat Runs - away from dancing zombies