A good yoga practice this morning; some fascinating work with straps and bricks, moving towards dhanurasana or bow pose. This is a back bend and, hard as they are, I do love these sequences. I carry a lot of tightness and stress in my lower back, which eventually locks up enough to cause twisting in my hips and sometimes sciatica. Back bends go quite a long way towards releasing that - it seems counterintuitive but it seems to loosen everything up.
So, pretty much everyone who's made it this far is celebrating the end of Janathon today! Congrats to everyone who took part, especially those hardcore people who ran every day. Phew. Technically I still have a few days to go because I started late due to illness, but I won't be blogging every day. You can assume I'll go to karate, USWIM Masters and yoga over the next three days as usual! I'll probably try and do a weekly summary or something for my own records and if anyone stays around to read then...thank you :)
So what have I learned from Janathon?
This. Absolutely this.
* We stepped up karate just before Christmas as we knew grading was impending, and that's been fantastic - Wednesday class has a different character (and characters!) from Saturday and although we see about half the same people at each class, there's always something new to learn. I feel like I've made big strides, particularly with kihon kata, but I know I still have a lot to do before grading. Blocks, footwork and kumite all need work. (7hrs)
* I couldn't stay away from twice-weekly yoga, either. The gains are coming a little slower now but mentally I'm more grounded and mindful than I've ever been. Again, still a very long path ahead of me, but I can feel I'm getting fractionally deeper into the poses each time; there's more control and more strength. Plus I understand a lot more about how anatomy works and specifically, how my anatomy works. (7hrs)
* Swimming should have taken up more hours but I've spent a lot of this month working on my form, with shorter sessions. And, well, I was not feeling great about sharing a busy public pool. I think I've improved a lot but the proof will be in the follow-up video analysis in March. Sadly all our Polar sessions have been cancelled, so unless I'm wildly lucky I won't clock any open water miles til April. This gives me a major sad. (7hrs 20mins)
* I dislike running. Or rather, I dislike running in the cold, the wet, and when I'm out of condition. I need to persist with it within reason, though, because it will build stamina. Something like that, anyway. I think I need to put my money down on an event or I won't be bothered to keep going out. (30mins or so)
* My overall fitness is on the up, without a doubt. My weight has started to go down - I have a feeling there won't be much change this week as I have been a little naughty, but I'm 4lbs down from Christmas and finding my calorie count fairly easy to stick to.
Overall? I'm on the right track. I need to be a bit more organised and less lazy on the self-driven stuff like pull-ups and getting off my arse to swim and run by myself. So, a big thanks to the Janathon community and to Cathy for organising. I'm really pleased to have got through it and I may even do Juneathon - perhaps I'll be better at getting out for a run when it's not so cold!
Oh, and February?
Bring it on.
