Proud Mary

The diet has been going incredibly well over the past five days with just a couple of small misdemeanours - such as half a bottle of red wine, some of the pastry from the top of a steak pie and a sliver of mint aero cheesecake.

The latter two actually happened when we were at a friend's house for dinner. You know what it's like - hard to say no without being rude. I did insist on a tiny slice and when it arrived I passed it over to TB as it was still massive - and had to ask for an even smaller one.

I also seem to have found my running groove. I actually feel like this is the best I have ever been at running. Even better than when I did the half marathon - which was six and a half years ago! God, I was just about to turn 27. That seems like yesterday.  So I was younger but I still seem to be running better now. I don't know what's happened!

I've got a 5.2km route I do, down past the beach. I can do that no problem and my pace seems to be as good as it is going to get - the past few runs have been within a few seconds of each other. On Friday I ventured out, in the frost,  to complete it as per usual and I decided that if I felt good, I would try and extend it. Good I felt, extend it I did. Whaddya know - I had another 1.3km in me.

Yesterday I toyed with the thought of going back to bodypump but  I was actually quite keen to try running a bit longer again. That's right. I just used KEEN and RUNNING in the same sentence! WTF? So  off I trotted. And then I trotted some more. And I kept trotting until I had trotted a total of 7km - and it was my fastest pace yet! I couldn't believe it. I am so pleased with myself.

That achievement and also feeling a bit slimmer... I feel really great just now. I'm proud of myself and I just need to keep rolling.

I'm also proud of all the hard work we're putting into our home - and TB's dad too.  We've spent hours each week preparing and painting our front room. We've finally finished the wood work and have undercoated a good bit too - goodbye green ceiling! At the weekend we even managed to get some of the colour on the walls. THANK GOD. I cannot wait to be finished and to do fun stuff like rearranging cushions!  My hand can't take much more.