The fitness bug takes hold

Booking a hiking trip to Nepal, pushed me to get more active. I had done some hiking but never anything like this trip. I was worried that my fitness wasn’t going to hold up. Would I spend my days gasping for air at high altitude desperately trying to keep up with a group of fit mountain walkers? And what if I couldn’t keep up? Would they abandon me?

I increased my regular runs to 20 minutes and added some cycling and hiking on weekends. It worked. I got to Nepal and my body withstood the abuse. The mountains were spectacular. My group was fit and feeling inspired by the scenery. We progressed up the mountain well ahead of schedule, even so, my travel-partner and I raced ahead. Perhaps a little too fast, by the end of day three he had collapsed and I was having nosebleeds and altitude headaches straight from hell. We had felt great but needed to slow down to let our bodies adjust to the altitude. When dysentery hit, I felt sick and completely depleted. I was in pain. Still, I could keep going — albeit slowly. By the time the trip was over I was restored to full health and felt simply amazing.

I came back from Nepal a changed woman. I felt great — happy, strong, fit, lean. I wanted to stay that way.

At first I started running 30mins almost daily. It felt good. Towards the end of the year I started doing more cycling. When I discovered I could skip the arduous bus ride to work for a faster and much more beautiful cycle through natural reserves, I started commuting by bike. I started cycling everywhere and soon enough even my weekends were crammed with cycling adventures. I was covering huge distances by bike and running fell my the wayside.

But that didn’t matter, I was staying fit and while I wasn’t running I now knew I could run. Running was still a tool I could turn to if I needed a fast, easy way to get active or clear my head. And so it was when I moved to Edinburgh. I’d had a huge cycling accident slipping on metal tram tracks in crappy wet weather in Melbourne and when faced with the icy Edinburgh winter I wasn’t feeling inspired to hop on my bike. Without a pressing need to commute, I fell out of the habit.

After a period of adjustment, inactivity and weight gain; I needed to move. So out came my sneakers. And wow, where Edinburgh had failed me as a cyclist it just blew me away as a runner. The hills, the lochs, the ocean, the old city — what a runner’s paradise. I was spoilt for choice and struggled to pick a route. Did I want to see the castle and city steps? Did I want to head towards the ocean for a vivid pink sunset? Perhaps Holyrood park with it’s volcanic hills and 360 views of the city? My running habit was well and truly reignited.