What Have I Been Up To?

What Have I Been Up To?

Well, I definitely have been a bit lapse with my posting, it's been over a year since my last post. So, what have I been up to? It has been a busy 13 months - 1/2 marathons, new house, Butlins, new baby, new car, Buddhism and fatigue.

Cardiff 1/2 Marathon, October 2011

Well, as mentioned back in June I was training for Cardiff 1/2 marathon which I did enter and finished, not in my time of 1 hour 30 minutes but in respectable 1 hour, 44 minutes and 54 seconds. I adjusted my target time as my training wasn't going the best so I just simply went out running for the enjoyment of running. Even so, I set a target of 1:45 which I just ducked inside so I am very happy with that.

Unfortunately, after the race my training stopped as my tiredness and fatigue started to take hold of me again (more about that later). So, as a result I haven't been out running since.

Buying a house

Another huge change in my life is that me and Bernadette have finally stopped renting and bought our own home. It's only taken my 41 years, but I have finally got a mortgage and I am a home owner. We bought a house in the heart of Barry, Wales and moved into the house back in February, 2012. The move from Penarth to Barry went relatively smoothly, I hired a van for 3 days and moved the furniture ourselves. I quite enjoyed being White Van Man for that time, was a bit said to give the van back.

Butlins, another baby and new car

After the move, to give ourselves a nice break, we went back to Butlins in Bognor Regis for a weeks holiday and Robert has been really looking forward to going back there. That's all he had been going on about for the past year. So, we went the week after Easter and, although the weather wasn't the best, we still had a wonderful time.

It was towards the end of the holiday that Bernadette suspected that she might be pregnant, so when we got home we made a quick visit to Boots to get the 'kit' and it confirmed she was pregnant. I wasn't too sure at the time if I wanted to be a dad again, but over past few weeks I have grown to accept it and it might be quite nice to bring up a new baby again. We've been for the first scan, everything is fine and the baby is due 13 December, 2012. The first trimester wasn't the best as Bernadette was very bad morning-noon-and-night sickness, as well as dizziness and tiredness. As a result I had to look after Robert, drop him off and pick him up from school. This didn't help my tiredness, and did effect my work a bit.

Bernadette is now feeling better so things have returned to normal, where she is taking Rob to and from school and I'm catching the train into work. We have also traded in our rusty old Corsa for a bigger Renault Scenic to accommodate the second child seat an excess baby luggage.

Buddhism and my spiritual progress

To get back to what this blog is about, my spiritual progress. Since my move to Barry and I have found it more difficult to get to the Cardiff Sri Chinmoy centre for my meditation. I started to realise that the path I was taking was not working for me and I was feeling it more a hindrance. My meditation had all but stopped and I stopped enjoying my time again, reverting back to how I felt before I started the mindfulness course with Vicki. The ideologies taught by Sri Chinmoy are wonderful and I don't regret for one instance following his teachings and the path. I will even take a lot of what he said with me on my future path.

But I have come to the conclusion that it is the Buddhist path I want to follow and, as such, I've started to meditate every Wednesday at the Barry Meditation Centre which is only a mile down the road from where I live. I have also attend my first Puja  the 24 June at the Cardiff Buddhist Centre which was an amazing experience. I am now back to studying Buddhism and meditating mindfully, and I'm slowly returning to the path of my Journey to Enlightenment.

Fatigue and Acupuncture

One final point, not a good one, is that, as mentioned earlier, my fatigue and tiredness has returned. I have not been out running since last year and all I want to do at the weekends is stay in bed. I'm starting to have difficulty sleeping at night and enjoying my time with my wife and son. As a result, I have started another course of acupuncture with Chinese lady at a place in Bridgend. I have only had 2 treatments, so it's still early days so I'm going to wait and see what happens.

I am determined to either overcome, or even learn to live with my fatigue without a visit to the doctors, although I might arrange an appointment with them just to give myself an M.O.T. and make sure there is nothing more seriously wrong with me. To do this, I am starting to meditate at least once a day, eat healthily and get to bed early. I am keeping a record of everything I do in a private blog, so I'll keep you all informed how I progress in this blog.

That's all folks!

Well, that's a brief summary what I have been up to, when I get the chance again I'll post more. I'll also try a post some more positive messages as well.

om mani padme hum
peace, love and happiness

Running and Impatience. Spritual progress

Running

Well, I am am still continuing with my running and have entered Cardiff half marathon so there is no stopping now. I have even started running into work instead of cycling to get my mileage up.

The problem is I am a bit impatient, I would like to be running at at least a 7 minute mile pace as I would like to do 1 hour 30 minutes or better in the half marathon and after 3 weeks of running I have not achieved that pace. I did start letting this distract me too much, but on Wednesday on the train going into work, I decided to meditate for 5 minutes as I approached Llantwit station and calm myself before my 3 mile run into work.

During my run as well, I was not worried about what pace I was doing or how far I've got to run, I simply got into a rhythm and enjoyed the run. As a result of this I felt very good during the run and did actually do my fastest time so far running from Llantwit station to my office. My average pace for the month so far is 8:24 per mile, but that is not what matters, I must remember to run to enjoy it and not to let it worry me that I'm not running as fast as I would like. I've only been back running for 4 weeks so I must learn to be patient and let things happen when they are supposed to happen and not try and force it too much.

So I am not back to enjoying my running and I do feel good about myself.  You can keep track of my progress on Endomondo web site, where you can view my workouts, both cycling and running, and see where I've run and how far. I use the app on my Android phone to log all my workouts, it's a very nice little tool making good use of the phones features.

So far, as of today (Friday 17 June), according to Endomondo I have run a total distance of 57.86 miles in a time of 8h:15m:59s over 19 workouts. My average pace is 8m:34s so that is not too bad. One nice little feature, it says I've burned 6484 callories which is equivalent to 12 burgers! I wonder if they are veggie burgers?

Spiritual progress

So far my spiritual progress has not been going too good, it seems like I am struggling to find my true self and meaning. The past couple of weeks have not been the best spiritually, and I have been a bit lapse with my meditations and, when I do meditate, I have not really gained anything from them. I went camping at the start of the month with Bernadette, Robert and some of out friends, but it didn't prove that successful and I came back from the trip not feeling too happy. I wanted a perfect camping trip and I was expecting too much from it and that didn't help at all. This was wrong as I should have enjoyed the trip and overcome all the problems and upsets that happened, but I was unable to do it. I felt a bit of a failure.

Even though I have been running and that has been making me feel good, I still could not get back into my mediation. I felt I was spiralling out of control. But, as a result of my run on Wednesday and a successful meditation at the Sri Chinmoy centre that evening, I feel I am now back on the path as I am feeling happy again as I am starting to get some control back to my life.

Running Again :-)

Just to recap, I started running back in May 2001 were I trained for Cardiff Marathon in September that year. Training went well and I completed the marathon in a respectable time of 3 hours 38 minutes, if I remember right. Since then I went on to run quite a few other marathons, half marathon and shorter races but never beating my time I set in Cardiff marathon. My best time for a half marathon was 1 hour 34 minutes.

I finally managed to gain entry into London Marathon in 2006 by running for Ty Hafan children hospice. I was hoping to run faster than 3 hours 30 minutes and beat my PB, but it never happened. At 13 miles I was on target for 3:30 but by about 20 miles I started to flag, but thanks to the cheers of the crown, I half ran, half hobbled the final 6 miles and still finished in 3 hours 44 minutes. Running London Marathon was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and something I will never forget. If I got time I might write up more about it.

Because I pushed myself so much in my training and the race, I decided to have a break from running for a couple of months to let my legs recover. During that time my wife got pregnant and my wonderful son was born and I found it more and more difficult to get back into my running. As I've mentioned in previous posts, my fatigue started to get worse, I wasn't sleeping well at night and I started getting very depressed. As a result, my break for a couple of months unfortunately lasted for 5 years!!!

Now I'm back out running, done two 3 1/2 mile runs this week through Penarth Mariner and I am hoping to get my fitness back up to enter Cardiff marathon. Using Endomondo on my HTC Desire, a GPS tracking app which logs run including, distance, times, running speed and route, my workouts were:

Monday 23 May - 3.44 miles in 32m:28s
Thursday 28 May - 3.55 miles in 30m:20s

I'm improving already.

I've put my motivation for my running thanks to the inspiration I received from the Sri Chimnoy disciples and the races I helped organise. I now go out running not with the aim to run further or faster, although I do like to achieve this, but for the enjoyment of running and using it as a meditation to "unlock the true potential of the human spirit" (Sri Chinmoy).

Although I've only been running twice, I have never felt better and I will be going out for another run tonight. This is another positive step along my Journey to Enlightenment