WINNER!

It's Sunday night, after one incredibly busy weekend. I shot a wedding yesterday, and went back to enjoy the evening reception as a guest, and today, despite the vicious hangover (my first in months), I went out to photograph 13 kids under the age of 10, and their 6 mothers. The condition I'm in right now is far from the general mood in which I usually update this blog. Usually, I come crashing in from a run, have a shower, then smugly type up my latest achievement making sure everyone knows whichever milestone it is I've just strode past.

So it's about time I set down the 2 things which made me so proud of myself yesterday.

I've been back up to running around 10k every other day for the last week or 2, and it feels fantastic. I'm down to about 12 1/2 stone, and delighted. Everything is so much easier. I look in the mirror and I recognise myself again. These things are fabulous, but they fall into the shadow cast by what I managed yesterday on a nice hour long jaunt in a fairly new circular route I use occasionally.

1) I finally killed the hill.

You know the one. The one that creeps up from the main road, with the woods on one side. The one that doesn't look so steep, it's nothing compared to Kirkstall Lane, which I now do about every other day in the middle of my 9 0r 10k. The one I've had so many fights with in the past. The one I've avoided since about April.

THAT hill.

Well I DID it. HA!

My breathing did sound like a seal yelping an alarm cry by the time I landed on the wall outside my house, but I flipping well did it! And now I'm going to have to do it again to prove it to myself. Next run. I know I can do it now.

And:

2) I had to buy a belt yesterday. To hold up the trousers I started wearing for work again about a month ago, which I fitted back into again for the first time in 3 years (my old size 18 work trousers have no beltloops, and my hips, tummy and bum are now no longer able to hold them up). Because they're falling down. And the belt I bought from Primark for £2 was a medium/large. At first I didn't think it would go round me, after years of knowing this would be true. But it fastened, and not even on the 1st hole. Or the second. I am on the 3rd hole.

Now that might be the reason why when I got back to the reception, I ended up spending about 2 hours on the dance-floor last night, getting sweaty and silly and loving every minute of it. And that's not happened for a very long time, if ever before. Proper, daft, bouncy, noisy dancing.

I'm healthier, I have more energy, I'm slimmer, and I'm far happier.

I love what running has done for me.