A Step in the Right Direction

Joy here...On June 14th we arrived in Kuala Lumpur for our 12 to 24 month trial (which might turn into resettlement if all goes well).  We spent the first night in our new apartment on July 4th, had our first dinner guests over for pizza on July 5th, our second for cold dinner July 7th, and were able to cook a real meal with our stove on July 8th.  The Man's mom finally came by to check out our new place on July 10th, and we moved our bags over from my cousins' house where we had been staying on the weekend of July 13th.  On July 17th our first guests from Canada arrived, and on August 5th our guests left.

The man waving from the screened-in patio of our new place!

In there we hosted a house-warming party, had friends and colleagues over, met new friends, headed out to dinners/drinks with friends/colleagues; we bought a car, registered and insured it, and even managed to ding it already; we bought bits of furniture for our apartment (including a sofabed that's big enough for guests); we went through all the paperwork to register our consulting company in Malaysia; we continued with our own work-related projects - The Man working on a few articles and conference papers, especially in preparation for our upcoming trip to Australia where he will be featured on Aussie TV, and me working on Canadian Museum for Human Rights-related issues (including participating in numerous conference calls beginning at 4am KL time!) as well as a number of other editing/writing and education-related projects that I have on the go - we balanced bill-payments and responsibilities of a home in Ottawa and one in Kuala Lumpur, and generally we have been busy, busy, busy.

So maybe it's not surprising that I've felt my fitness wane in direct proportion to the increase of my midsection.

The bright, late afternoon sky and the condos up on the hill
overlooking our little taman that lies midway up the hill.

I've blogged about my lack of commitment to training during this busy transition period as well as opting for playing tour-guide and hostess to working out, but slowly I'm getting back into the swing of things.

For the past four weeks, Coach Woods has scheduled 4.5hours of workouts for me each week.  And, well, on week #1 I did 0 hours, on week #2 I did .5 hours, on week #3 I did 1.5 hours, and at the close of week #4 I completed 2.75 hours.  Now those hour counts are sadly embarrassing.  I mean, I should be up to around 7 hours per week (which is only an average of 1 hour per day!), and even though I've fallen far short of a very conservative plan, at least I'm moving in the right direction!

So at the start of week #5, I had a 60 minute run scheduled.  I had the best of intentions to get out there for the full 60 minutes; I thought I had timed everything properly, but with a taxi booked to take our guests to the airport at 7pm and the need to run, shower, make dinner, and eat it before-hand, somehow the day just got away from me, and I was lucky to squeeze in half of that planned workout.

Let's see how the rest of this week goes!!!

Over and out,
Joy

Run Stats for Monday:
Ran for 27:10.26 for a distance of 5.01km with an average pace of 5:26min/km.