Wednesday 10 June 2009

Win a Caribbean holiday!

Really pleased to see the British Heart Foundation and Fitness First getting together to encourage the nation to run and cycle one million miles during May & June. This is a great example of a two companies with common interest in wellness getting together and setting goals to make people fitter and reward them.




Next they could use some technology, an exercise management system, shoe chip, or similar, and this would make it even easier and more interesting than log cards and online forms.

Monday 8 June 2009

When will it get better?

I was with a coaching client (manager at a gym) recently, and she asked me before our appointment “When will it get better?” I asked her what she meant, and she said “I’ve got more responsibility, less resource, and more is expected of me each week… when will it stop?”

The short answer that she came to herself after a few minutes discussion was, “It won’t stop”. This was not very motivating, but knowing the answer to the (second) question was a start, and we moved back to making it “get better”.

Any number of time management courses or productivity techniques might help, but the first point we came to was to accept that you’re not going to get everything done. This lifts a weight from your shoulders, removes the worry of the never-ending task list, and frees you to get on with the most important task(s).

Mentoring over, we went back to coaching, and found (through some challenging questions) that there were quite a few areas that could be delegated, as well as some tasks that weren’t as critical as first thought.

We all seem to have more and more to do, and seemingly less and less time. There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do. Just don’t let this get you down. If you know what the most important things to do today are, there will always be enough time to do them.

Thursday 4 June 2009

Canary Wharf 10k – British Heart Foundation

Knees hurting. A lot. Running on roads & pavements bad for joints.

The 2008 Canary Wharf Jog was my fastest, but in 2009 it was my slowest. Without my GPS buddy, I’m not certain, but the fact that it was 11 laps of the Canary office blocks tells me that it really was 10k this time around. My time was a paltry 57 mins 12 secs, so there’s plenty of room for improvement at the next 10k!

As usual, registration closed a few weeks before the race, which left a few people disappointed on the sidelines, but 1,000 eager runners (10% apparently from Barclays) set-off at 6:30pm after a good warm-up.

Running on the roads and pavements rather than in nice grassy parks (or moats) really did take its toll on my knees this year around the wharf. I’m not one for stopping in a 10k race anymore, but had to take a couple of pauses to ease the pain – goodness knows how marathon runners do it!

Sponsorship total stands at £946, hopefully one more nudge to my contact list will tip it over the thousand pound mark. Any suggestions for more 10k runs over the remainder of the year would be welcome, please leave a comment!