Knuckling Down

The sky is that awful leaden grey that doesn't change its tone from daybreak to dusk - a sharp contrast to yesterday's frosty sunshine. It is far, far less tolerable. I heard the water trickling off the roof into the gutters during the night and knew we'd awaken to more gloomy weather. It is getting beyond a joke.
I went down to the rowing club this morning and we were discussing that we hadn't seen the bottom towpath (which means it's safe for all classes of boats and experience to go on the river) since mid-December. The leisure squad's Christmas outing was undertaken in v-e-r-y marginal conditions; high water levels and fast stream, but with experienced steersmen and a safety launch accompanying the quads, but the river hasn't really dropped since then. It's been one of those winter's when we might as well have said 'no rowing for three months' so sporadic have been our outings. One head-race was cancelled last Saturday due to adverse weather conditions and I can quite forsee that's going to be a recurring theme over the next few months.
I suppose we're in a far better situation here that down south, where the Thames Valley is now severely flooded, as are the Somerset Levels and all the rivers in the south-west have burst their banks.
Touch wood, the Yorkshire Ouse hasn't come as high as it did last year when we had to evacuate the boathouse THREE times in almost as many weeks. But then after that, we had an exceptionally benign Spring/Summer/Autumn conditions-wise.
So this morning, a gym session it was; weights for me and ergos for the hardy leisure squad souls that bothered to turn up.
Not much fun (or leisure) for them, but there was at least some sense of achievement.
Hopefully I will still be able to move in 48 hours time - last week's legs session left me barely able to walk, with muscles so tender I could bear them to be touched, let alone knocked in any way.
It's always very, very difficult in the early stages of a fitness/strength campaign to just knuckle down and get the reps/miles in. It would have been the easiest thing this morning to look out of the window and think 'Naaah - don't fancy it today' and pull the metaphorical duvet over the head.
Taking the l-o-n-g view means thinking how I'll feel sitting in my all-in-one lycra, in the boat, in the Summer: relatively pleased with the training results, or wishing I'd done those reps? How I'll feel on the beach....happy in a bikini, or opting for the big T-shirt?
Yes, I know, I know....I talked only yesterday of not being vain, and really I'm not. But I like to feel strong and - I suppose - to look like I've made a bit of an effort training-wise.
As I've always maintained, I'm more interested in what people can DO, rather than what they LOOK
like.
That goes for me too.

Autumn Break Point

I have actually ground to a halt. My best intentions to write 500 words per day for my thesis are foundering in slack-jawed apathy. The dissertation is growing - in fact, it's probably growing too much. My latest chapter (so nearly completed!) is now over 52,000 words, and it's going to need some heavy pruning before submission. But it's nearly one-thirty on Friday afternoon, and here I am blogging - not doing academic stuff, carelessly frittering the remains of the day away.
My elderly parents came round this morning and regaled me with tales of their holiday in the Italian Lakes and I started to feel restless and very twitchy. I need a break, preferably abroad for a few days, but I have a feeling that just ain't going to happen this autumn. It's the financial climate, I guess. That, plus the rowing club fees are due for all for of us (and NO direct debit facility - ridiculous!), Daughter #3 wants to go on a residential school trip, the car needed taxing, new school uniforms, birthdays...the whole routine. Nor did we manage to get away this spring either as Daughter #2's second baby was due near the half-term holidays and I was on standby for minding the delightful Bouncing Babba #1.
It really aggravates me how hotel prices shoot up in half-term holidays (cynical or what?) but we are practically threatened with excommunication if we take the kids out of school in term-time. I did think about going to Rome for the weekend, taking them out of school for the Friday and claiming it was a pilgrimage. Well, it would have been - to the Tazza d'Oro coffee shop near the Piazza Navona as much as to go to St Peter's!
The weekend looms with all its usual activities. I just can't imagine what 'normal' (i.e. non-rowing) families do. Just lately, Saturdays consist of the rowing-convert Husband cycling off to the rowing club for 8am, hopeful of calm conditions, and me walking into town later to meet him for a much-needed latte and listen to his exploits.
Sundays usually start early again with me accompanying him to rowing and helping him out with the boat, boating up etc., or with me arriving an hour later (9am) with Daughter #3 and the Bright-Eyed Boy for the junior rowing training session, where I'll either coach singles from the riverbank (trying not to slip on the goose-shit and fall into the water) or cox a quad (getting noticeably chillier by the day).
Last Sunday the river was high, so the Husband and his cronies opted to stay in the gym (ffs!). The juniors put them to shame by blithely boating up and paddling off, although it was a bit 'exciting' on occasion, judging where to land etc. This again is followed by a welcome hot drink, coffee and rowing chat at the local Costa, which I surely must have shares in by now (that's probably where all the money's gone!).
Both Saturday and Sunday afternoons see us two adults (and occasionally children, too) down at the recreational gym near our house (much nicer than the boathouse gym), trying to fit in the weights sessions that we have failed to do during the week (more correctly the guilt-wracked Husband has failed to do - I'm a goody two-shoes and get there most days before I start my work). Into this we must fit the usual colossal school/work clothes wash and iron, prepare and cook food, homework (for the Husband too, sadly), and shop for the forthcoming week's packed lunches etc. Housework and gardening doesn't get a look in, not that I'm really that sorry, but I'm increasingly aware of disapproving glances at the fluff-wads and overgrown grass and weeds. Sunday night and we're knackered -slumped with a pile of food and glass of wine having a marathon sport-watching session of stuff we've recorded whilst out.
So yeah - I could do with a break, a complete break from the routine. We're going to tot up the air miles again and scan RyanAir and EasyJet. I seriously doubt it'll be on the cards...and if it is the only cards it'll be on is the Mastercard. I might have to live with that. Seize the day etc. Autumn on the banks of the Tiber....lovely!