Autumn

Good morning

Like most people, I'm mourning the passing of our very brief summer and looking at the long nights and short days with a fair amount of contempt.  But secretly I'm also quite pleased.

Autumn is my favourite time of year to run - it's cool but not too cold and I prefer to run when it's dark rather than during the day.  I also quite like running in the rain.  Don't ask me to rationalise it because I can't.  The only thing I can come up with is that perhaps I feel like I've worked a bit harder, or it's a greater test of my dedication.  But really I have no idea why I like it so much.

Whilst autumn brings my favourite running conditions it also brings Christmas preparations and so more time gets filled up with seeing friends and family before we all take a well earned break from work.  It just means being a bit more creative with fitting in some training.

Since my last post I've done two more runs - both over the 1.5 mile route I have round the town.  I've had a bit more of an ache the following day each time but all in all I'm feeling pretty good.  It feels good to be able to do two a week and not feel like I'm made of glass.

I'm in the process of planning out a 2 mile run for my next outing which will probably be Saturday morning.  I feel a bit daft exulting a 1.5 or 2 mile run.  Before my injury I wouldn't have considered going out for less than about 2.5 miles but things obviously change.  I think I've got about another 6 weeks (or 12 runs) before I really have to start putting in a distance run once a week - I think that will be a real test of how capable my body is of holding out for the actual marathon.

With regards to diabetes, it's been another fairly successful week - I had one blip last night/this morning where I seemto have miscalculated m dosage on a piece of parkin but all should be back to normal by lunchtime.

Again, the run up to Christmas brings its own challenges for diabetes.  More meals out with friends certainly means extra calories (which I don't particularly welcome) but it also means a lot of uncertainty about looking after yourself.  It's quite easy to get carried away with it all and tell yourself it's only a treat.  The problem is that it gets easier and easier to justify that to yourself and you slip out of good habits and back into bad ones.

Of course I'm not advocating some sort of horribly strict diet over Christmas - diabetes doesn't stop you being human.  But it's not always the worst thing in the world to just go out and have a salad instead of a burger once in a while.

Whilst this may not be strictly true, the way I once had it explained to me was this:

Your diet as a diabetic should be as varied and balanced as everyone else's diet should be.  It's just the consequences of it not being balanced are worse for you than they are for other people.

I think that's fairly sensible advice (although I'm happy to be challenged).  Being diabetic won't get in the way of my customary Chocolate Orange at Christmas.  It just means that it'll get eaten over a fortnight and not a couple of days.

One final point before I sign off, I had a quick medical review at the doctors last night which ended up with them weighing me.  Aftera few weeks of not feeling quite right with myself, my weight was back to 88.5kg (or 195lbs in old money).  Again, I know it's not something to be shouting about from the rooftops, but it's good to know I've lost about 18lbs and all in all, managed to pretty much keep it off.

I'm not sure if this has been a particularly good read or not but thanks for stopping by and sticking with it.  I appreciate you taking the time to do so.

I can always be found lurking on twitter (@BroomOwl) or at the other end of broomowl@gmail.com if the comments pages are playing up again.  I hope you have a good rest of your week and I'll post again soon.

Take care

Andy