Marvellous May

Today is the start of my Marvellous May Challenge.

After a great January, I have kind of allowed things to slip somewhat and have become quite lax with my exercising (except for the running) and what I eat. I haven't put on weight but I'm not toning up and losing weight either and I want to do something about it.

Everyday I am going to exercise. I shall keep up with the running but am now on Week 6 Day 2 on C25K and once I have reached the end of week 9 I am going to start at the beginning again. This time though, I'm going to give barefoot running a go. I've read about the good and bad points of barefoot and am intrigued so thought this way would be a good way to see if it suits me.

This is my main running 'track' so I think that it would work well while I'm in the beginner stages of my barefoot running and if it turns out to suit me then I can always find other places to run. I might ever get a pair of barefoot shoes (an oxymoron if ever there was one) when I start to run across more challenging terrain but for now I'll jog on to the field and just take off my shoes and see how it goes.

On the days when I am not running I am going to do a weights workout and focus on toning so crunches and core strengthening. I might even do the crunches on the running days too as they only take 15 minutes.

On top of all this I am also going to try and eat a diet free of dairy, processed sugar, grains, legumes and (sob) alcohol for the whole of May. I have a shopping list and am going out after work to fill up the fridge with lovely things to eat and will be pulling recipes from the Everyday Paleo book I have on my kindle as well as using some web based Paleo recipe sites. If it's not on those, it's not being eaten.

I hope at the end of the month to be a little more fit, a little more healthy and hopefully a little more tone.

New Year New Challenge

I have found a new project to play with over the coming year. The UK Sock Knitters group on Ravelry are having a Year Long A-Z KAL. Starting on the 1st of January we're going to be casting on a sock that starts with the letter A,then 2 weeks later it'll be a sock that starts with B and so on and so on until all of the alphabet is completed.

I went through my queue on Ravelry and deleted all of the projects that had been languishing there never being looked at and now in their place is a list of 25 fabulous sock patterns. The only letter I couldn't find was X but I'm sure that someone will design one in time or we can always play one of our two wildcards.

Luckily the socks don't have to be finished in the 2 week period,just cast on. As long as they are finished by Saturday 12th January 2012 then all will be well. Just as well really as I have selected some completed ones, some knee length ones, some easy ones, 4 ply ones, double knit ones, aran weight ones and some I have no idea what they'll be like as they have only had a few projects completed.

This is also a cunning way to get rid of my stash as I'm on a yarn diet until I get rid of most of my existing stash. In the future I want a stash that is full of beautiful yarns with which I actually make amazing things, not random balls of bits that could, if I scrabbled enough of the bits together could, if you squinted in the right light, look okay.

If you'd like to join us in this astonishing challenge then check out the UK Sock Knitters group on Ravelry. If you're not up to the entire year long adventure then it's quite all right to dip in and out as the weeks come up.