Tag: fitness

Health and fitness, Thoughts, Writing

Hobbies I’ve Tried Over The Years

minceandskirlie

Over the years I have tried a LOT of hobbies. Despite being a bit introverted, I really enjoy trying new things and learning new skills. There is quite probably a neurodivergent reason for a lot of this, but getting diagnosed as an adult is a bit of a non-starter round here. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I thought it would be interesting to go through a list of as many of them as I could remember, from when I was at school to where I am now as an adult in his mid-forties.

Anyway, many of these haven’t stuck with me, but a few I’ve carried on over the years or picked up again after some long gaps. My main takeaway is never be afraid to try new things, everyone was a beginner sometime and the vast majority of hobby communities and clubs (online and in real life) are very welcoming and encouraging to newcomers.

In no particular order:

  • Football – never progressed past kickabouts with friends really and going to watch a couple of games per season at Pittodrie.
  • Video games – a constant throughout my life, from the spectrum to the PS5. I really can’t imagine never being a gamer.
  • Warhammer – Started with 40k 2nd edition box set in early 90s. Then picked it up again a few years ago and now have a lot of plastic lying around in various painted states.
  • Guitar – another constant since I started at 14. Sometimes I go through spells of not playing much, but always pick up a guitar again eventually. I enjoy the variety it offers, from playing heavy metal bangers, to fingerpicking folk songs on my acoustic, to bluesy jams, and even picking up some jazz recently.
  • ITF Taekwondo – did this for about 6 or 7 years on and off until a bad injury. Still really miss it but don’t think my back would forgive me if I tried martial arts again.
  • WTF Taekwondo – went to a couple of classes at uni but didn’t gel with it
  • Hung Ga Kung Fu – did it for a year or so in between TKD spells
  • Airfix model airplane kits – built a few as a kid and picked up a few recently as an adult
  • Golf – I still have clubs but have always been pretty awful at it
  • Badminton – Played a bit at school, was rubbish at it.
  • Drawing – Made a half hearted effort to improve at this a few years ago. Can only sometimes produce something I’m happy with.
  • Juggling – I was given some juggling boobs as a leaving gift from a previous workplace, so felt obliged to learn.
  • Playing in bands – From the age of 18 to my early 30s this was a big part of my life. Hopefully I can revisit it again someday.
  • Mandolin -Picked it up when I got into some trad music and still enjoy picking away at it regularly.
  • Piano – Have tried learning a few times over the years
  • Photography -Got a nice camera when our eldest was born and really got into it for a while
  • D&D – A few sessions as a kid and then played with a regular group again for the last few years
  • Cycling – Always had a bike, but took it seriously for a while when I got a road bike over a decade ago. Still ride it!
  • Indoor climbing – Tried this before the kids were born as something we could do together. I still go back to try it every few months. I’ve never progressed past the easiest grades.
  • Going to the gym – Was a regular gym user for a while when I had easy access through work.
  • Running – I started this about 20 years ago when someone asked me if I wanted to a 10k for charity. Has been the one exercise I’ve seriously committed to long term and still do today.
  • Hill running – Joined a club for a few years and even ran up some munros with them. Great fun and miss being that fit!
  • Hill walking – Haven’t been out on the hills for a few years now due to injuries but really miss being out there. This is one I’ll definitely get back to some day.
  • Swimming – Took this quite seriously for a few months, trying to improve my technique to maybe see if I could enter a very short triathlon. Could never get much past the barely drowning stage.
  • Birdwatching – Always loved birds since I was a kid and really started getting back into IDing them a few years ago. As simple as just figuring out what was in the garden really.
  • Environmental Science – Been doing this degree for 7 years with the OU in my spare time.
  • Tinkering with electronics – Built a couple of effects pedal kits, have a load of raspberrypi and arduino kits. Haven’t ever done much with them.
  • Programming – I started getting BASIC coding books out of the library as soon as I could read. Kept it up over the years and was even a developer professionally for a while. Hardly touch code now.
  • Web design – Learned HTML, Javascript and PHP in the late 90s and 2000s. Again, was useful in a work setting for a while too but not anymore.
  • Magic The Gathering – Got into this a couple of years ago and now have way to many boxes of cardboard in the house.
  • Fishing – Bought a cheap rod and a load of tackle. Lost most of it to seaweed without catching anything.
  • Archery – After the last olympics I wanted to try something new while getting over my back injury. This fit the bill and I’m still really enjoying going along to our club sessions every week.
  • Racing and flight sims – Yes I do need a racing wheel rig and a HOTAS setup to play my very serious video games. No I’m not any good at them.
  • Singing – Oh god I’m so bad, but I keep trying.
  • Rubiks cube – My daughter got really into these a couple of years ago and so I got her to teach me and we had a few months of trying to beat each other’s times. She won.
  • Linocut printing – Bought a small kit on a total whim and loved the result I was able to get with my very basic drawing skill.
  • Cooking – Don’t do this as seriously as I used to, but this blog started as a foodie site. Sharing recipes and restaurants. For a while I was really proud of how good the food I could make was.
  • Writing prose and poetry – Again, I took this very seriously for a long time. Was part of a local writers group and even got a few pieces published locally. Kind of lost the enthusiasm for it over the pandemic lockdowns.
  • Lockpicking – This is a recent one. I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole and found a kit with some picks and a couple of practice locks for not a lot of money. It’s surprisingly simple!
  • Homebrewing beer – Great if you like your beer extra yeasty flavoured. Did a few batches and realised my time was better spent buying good beer from people who knew what they were doing.
  • Learning French – One day I’ll actually do this properly.
  • Twitch streaming – This was interesting and I do want to go back to it. As someone who has, er, a few hobbies but doesn’t necessarily have anyone that shares my varied interests, it was nice to be able to just turn the stream on and yap for a few hours.
  • Yoga – Did this to try and recover from injury a few years ago and found it really good fun and easy to fit in. Then just stopped after a few months. Should go back to it really.
  • Kayaking – We took a few lessons in a local swimming pool. Which was a bit chaotic. Would be nice to have one to play with in the summer, but never took it any further.
  • Chess – Played a bit in primary school and then spent a couple of months earlier this year addicted to chess.com and the chess side of YouTube. Considered joining a local club, but probably got enough going on just now.
  • Calisthenics – Like yoga, I got really into this as a way of conditioning for injury prevention. Also like yoga I just slowly stopped doing it and should pick it up again.
  • Snorkeling – Tried it on holiday, thought it was the best thing ever. There’s a big difference between doing it in the Mediterranean and doing it in the North Sea.
  • Trad music – Bought a mandolin and went along to some session classes a few years ago. Enjoy helping out at the local folk festival and still pick away at a load of tunes. My mandolin stays handy on a hook on my desk.
  • Boardgames – I’ve bought so many boardgames over the years and never play them.
  • Poker – There was a few years in the late 2000s when everyone was playing poker and it was on TV. Played a lot with friends then realised everyone took it way too seriously and I wasn’t enjoying it.
  • Building drones – Bought a cheap drone and it was fun. Built a small indoor one and it was fun. Started researching parts for a racing / stunt drone and realised it was going to be a horrendously expensive hobby and I didn’t need that in my life. Would still quite like a wee DJI drone to mess about with sometime for videos and photography.
  • Blogging – I took blogging and online writing quite seriously for a few years. Doing this food blog and some more tech orientated pieces on another site. Until, like a lot of my hobbies, I started focusing more on other things and just slowly stopped doing it.

Wow, that’s a lot! I count fifty two different hobbies. Some of those could probably be broken down a bit more if I really wanted to separate them out too. Also I’ve not included things like reading, watching TV, going to the cinema or going to the pub with friends. Things which I guess have taken up huge amounts of time over the years but it’s not like you’re practicing and developing skills for them. It’s just living a normal life. What I’ve listed are all pastimes that you need to consciously improve at and which take a bit of effort.

I’ve enjoyed all these hobbies I’ve tried over the years. Even the ones I’ve not carried through into middle age or just tried a few times and decided they weren’t for me. My one big regret I guess, is that I can’t help but think how much better I could have been at some of my favourite hobbies if I hadn’t been distracted by trying new things all the time. The old jack of all trades, master of none thing.

I like that it’s always been a mix of creative hobbies, exercise, and play. These are all sides of me that I think are equally important, though I often neglect one aspect when focussing on another. For example I have been skipping a lot of opportunities to get outside and be active recently because I got a new guitar and I’m keen to spend time playing that instead. It’s probably better to force myself to be more balanced when I can. Let me know what you think and how many hobbies you’ve tried over the years in the comments below!

Health and fitness, Thoughts

Reasons it’s OK to stop on a run

minceandskirlie

I watched a recent video by The Running Channel on YouTube where the presenter beat themselves up for stopping near the end of their long training run. I’ve seen other runners do the same, being annoyed with themselves for stopping on a run or walking a short distance. With the caveat that I am not a fast runner, or a coach, I’m just a recreational runner that’s been doing this for a long time, let me just say to everyone – it’s OK to stop!

Walking for a minute or stopping for a few seconds won’t suddenly undo the rest of the good work you’ve done during the session. If you’ve been working hard for weeks during a training block, aiming for a specific event that’s coming up, one short rest won’t knock back the weeks of effort you’ve put in leading up to it. So give yourself a break!

Here’s some reasons why you should stop during a run:

1 – To get a rest
This is the obvious reason. Maybe you’re coming down with something, maybe you’re still getting over that interval session the other day, maybe you just aren’t having a good running day. Take a minute, catch a breath and then get going again once you’ve reset.

2 – To cross the road
Another obvious reason. Not all of us have access to miles of uninterrupted running and occasionally, or quite often in an urban environment, you need to stop to safely cross the road. Remember to look both ways.

3 – To admire the scenery
You’re out for a trail run, you turn the corner just as the sun peaks out from the clouds for the first time, lighting up a majestic mountain which reveals itself in the distance and making the landscape around you glow. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, sonnets are being written in your head at the sights in front of you. If you can’t stop for a second to check out the view, why are you even running off-road?

4 – Squirrel!
Channel you’re inner Dug. It’s OK to be distracted by a squirrel, fox, stoat, eagle, kestrel, owlbear. Just like number 3, one of the reasons I love running on hills and trails is to be surrounded by nature, and fill up my inner well with the beauty of the landscape and wildlife around us. If I hear a skylark high above me, damn right I’m stopping for a second to try and spot it. If I see a stoat running along the edge of a field, I’ll watch it until it disappears.

5 – To refuel
On race day, going for your PB, you can force yourself to eat a cereal bar or squeeze down a gel while you’re running. When you’re out on your long run in the spring sunshine and you’ve had months of a cold, wet, windy winter (as we have in Scotland), then it’s OK to stop to take on a gel, soak up some warmth for the sun, find a bin or a pocket to put the wrapper in, then set off running again.

6 – Because it hurts
If something hurts while you’re running. Stop! At least to see if it goes away. If it doesn’t go away and it’s affecting how you run – changing your gait, slowing you down – or it gets worse (especially if the pain is sharp), then really stop. Cancel the run and walk home or phone for a lift. Carrying on and making it worse will just lead to long term injury and even less running in the short term. Having said that, a bit of muscle ache is fine, no-one said it would be easy.

So there’s a few reasons why I think it’s OK to stop the next time you’re out on a training run. Obviously, some people are more hardcore than me and if you really don’t want to stop, that’s OK too. I’m not saying you have to, I’m just saying if you do stop then don’t be hard on yourself about it. At the end of the day most of us are doing this because we enjoy running, it keeps us fit, and gets us outside. Make the most of it and keep it fun.

Thoughts

Goals for a new year

minceandskirlie

So 2016 was a year that happened. Frankly it’s developed a pretty bad rep, as well as quite a body count. It would be easy to wallow in all the bad shit that happened last year. Sod that, I want to waltz into 2017 on a cloud of positivity.

We had two fantastic family holidays in 2016, to Mallorca in June then Dornoch in October. I ran (slowly) the fantastic 15 mile Illuminator night race in Glen Tanar in September.  We had some great weekends away and I got to endure the hardship of being sent to Paris for a few days to work. I also celebrated some important birthdays with my extended family, went to some brilliant weddings and received news of some more to come.

Above all else, the year was full of the sound of my daughter and nephew laughing and playing.

Now it comes to the start of a new year and I naturally start thinking about what lies ahead. Hopefully a lot more of my daughter’s laughter, but what else? I toyed with the idea of setting vague resolutions like “Play more music” or “Run more”. However I work best when I have a set goal in mind, like a 15 mile night race to train for without my feet exploding halfway through.

With that in mind here’s a few (achievable) things I would like to accomplish this year:

  1.  Record an EP
  2.  Publish a poem or a short story
  3.  Run a sub-2 hour half marathon
  4.  Get my weight down to 11 stone

A couple of these are a little more difficult than the others but should still be achievable over the course of the year, or at least have significant progress towards them.

Record an EP

I’ve played guitar since I was fourteen and for most of my adult life I’ve written music and played in local bands. I left my last band a few years ago to concentrate on a solo music project I was working on, but once my daughter arrived I slowly played less and less until I pretty much put my instruments down one day last year and never really picked them up again.

Over the last month I’ve made a conscious effort to get back on the horse and pick up either a guitar or mandolin almost every day. The aim is basically to get involved again and start pushing the project I started 4 years ago back into being. Eventually I hope to play some gigs but I think my self-confidence is a long way from that milestone. For now I’d be happy getting my playing and my singing into a good enough condition to record the EP I wrote down a tracklisting for shortly after I left that band.

Publish a poem or short story

As a member of local writing group Mearns Writers, I’ve produced a number of poems and short stories over the last two years. While I’ve submitted a few of these occasionally to some local poetry magazines and the odd competition I’ve not made a serious effort to get anything published (aside from posting a few on this site and the groups own self-published anthology). I need to step up my submission game in 2017 and see if I can at least place in some competitions and get some good feedback.

Run a sub-2 hour half marathon

This is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest of my 2017 goals. I should have a sub-2 hour half in my legs. I’ve ran 2:01 at Skye, which is bloody hilly and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to break that barrier. At the same time I’ve not been running nearly as much as I used to and I need to get my routine fixed and stick to it if I’m going to get anywhere close to this goal.

The Great Aberdeen Run is at the end of August and I entered on the day it was announced. That’s the target, though I might try a warm up race at the start of summer to see how I’m getting on.

Get my weight down to 11 stone

This goal will tie in with the previous one. If I train properly for a sub-2 hour half marathon I should lose weight. Since I started getting into fitness and sorted my weight issues over 10 years ago I’ve been stuck floating around the 12 stone mark. At the peak of my running routine, before my daughter arrived, I did manage to get down to under 11 and a half stone but that didn’t last long. I’m now back up to 12 and a half. That needs to be reversed.

Getting back below 12 stone should be easy. Exercise will fix that. Slimming down to 11 stone will need a bit more determination and willpower but hopefully I can get there by the end of the year.

There are of course plenty of other things I would like to do this year. I would like to worry less, focus at work more, cut out internet habits which reinforce negative thoughts, climb more hills and cycle many miles. Those are all good things to aim for but I think if I concentrate on these four achievable goals then I’ll be well on the way to a memorable year without putting too much pressure on myself.

Health and fitness

Looking after yourself

minceandskirlie

I haven’t written a piece for the blog for what seems like months. Probably because it has been months. The truth is I don’t know what to write here anymore. I’ve started a few pieces only to delete them after they’ve sat unfinished for weeks. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything to write about; I’m still cooking (although much less since my daughter was born), still playing music (although much less since my daughter was born) and still running and cycling (although… well… you get the idea). I’m also writing poetry and fiction and have managed to pick up a few more small interests which could make for interesting blog topics.

My problem is that there’s a whopping big elephant in the room. Before I can get back to writing about the hobbies that really interest and excite me, I feel like I should write about the big issue I’ve been trying to overcome for the last year. Since the middle of 2015 I’ve been treated for anxiety and depression.

But you know what? I’m not going to. I’ve been feeling like I owe it myself and others to go into a detailed post writing about my journey through this illness. The truth is I don’t. I don’t owe it to anyone to make myself ill again by going over the ground that got me here in detail.

Instead I’m going to say this. If you feel under pressure. If you feel stressed. If your little ball of occasional anxiety is growing every day until you dread going to work, seeing friends or doing the things in life you enjoy. If you feel down and don’t know why. If you feel down and you do know why! Talk to someone. Do what you can to get help and take it when it’s offered.

Talk to those closest to you and don’t just assume they know what’s going on and understand. It can take some explaining, but it’s absolutely worth doing so they can support you through this.

The best advice I can give anyone though is to look after yourself. Find a sport or hobby that you want to do, anything that keeps you fit and gets you active a couple of times a week. If you don’t already do something, try something. Don’t assume you can’t do something because you have to be a certain level of fitness. Everyone has to start somewhere and you’ll be amazed at the improvement in your personal fitness you can see in the first few months of trying a new hobby.

Take time out and relax. Get outside and sit in the sun or walk along a beach. Read a book in your garden with a glass of wine.

Eat well and eat balanced. Treat yourself only occasionally (but do treat yourself) and cut down on booze. All these things, exercise, diet, physical fitness and mental health are intrinsically linked. While it can be hard to juggle everything, if you find that you’re completely ignoring aspects of your health it will end up impacting your overall welfare.

Look after yourselves. Don’t keep problems bottled up. Get help if you need it.

Health and fitness

Running 2014

minceandskirlie

I’ve not posted anything about my running for a long time. To be fair, I’ve not posted much at all for a long time! Forgive me. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve been pretty busy with my day job and I’ve not found much time or inclination to come up with blog posts. Sad times.

Anyway, last year’s running season was greatly hampered by a chronic knee injury (Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome) which hugely limited my mileage in the first half of the year and it wasn’t until the end of summer that I was anywhere close to normal again. I only entered one proper race all year, a 10k near Forres which although it got me a new PB it fell short of getting me under the 50 minute mark for the first time. Continue reading “Running 2014” →