I have a confession...

I start this blog with a confession. Remember how I made an executive decision to quit smoking? Well I did, for all of 3 days. There I said it! (I feel much better getting that out)

Don’t worry, the goal to quit (properly) is still on for my birthday, 18 June. I will do it, I clearly wasn’t quite ready, even after almost having my heart pop out that afternoon on the Knob.

On Friday I purposely left my cigarettes in the car as I knew if I took them on the Crossing it was highly likely I’d light up once I reached the top. Stupidly I did have one about 40mins before I started the Crossing and boy did I pay for it on the first set of steps. That’s what I get for caving right.

However, on the flip side I’m thrilled to share that I have lost a total of 18.1 kilos since 4 January. That means I’m 8.9 kilos away from that magic 27 (although I won’t be stopping there)

The picture on the right is me in December last year. The one of the left is from a couple of weeks ago.

The picture on the left was taken about this time last year.

While I have more to lose, I'm pretty chuffed with the progress so far so onwards and upwards we go.

So where to from here?

Well, there’s still the magic 27. I am also going to be signing up for the Cook Island Squash Open in October this year so that’s something to look forward to.

On Sunday when I was up at the Whitby Lookout I meet this lovely lady Jocelyn and her two adorable wee fur children Frank and Bruno. We got talking about how lovely the view was and how lucky we were to have beautiful walkways in our area. Of course still buzzing about the Crossing I managed to weave it into our conversation. (I’ll tell anyone who will listen lol) I was telling her how I was keen to keep moving and we agreed that it’s easy to lose momentum once you ticked something off so the sooner I set myself a new challenge the better.

In one of my earlier blogs I talked about how important it was to have goals, a great way to keep your motivation high. I was thinking about what I wanted to focus on next and have played around with some other walks such as Milford Track, Lake Waikaremoana, even the Tongariro Circuit. While I’m definitely keen to do those I’ve decided my next challenge will be….drum roll…..a Half Marathon.

Why? Well I don’t really run so it’s the perfect excuse to really focus on that. Besides, if I really had to I could always walk but the ultimate goal will be to run as much of it as I can. The really weird thing is I can run on the treadmill for up to 20 minutes yet when I try running on the road it’s game over. Weird I know but something to work towards right?!

So if anyone has done any Half Marathons, hit me up with any recommendations and training tips. I’m looking for something ideally between Jan-Mar next year which gives me plenty of time to realistically get in shape. I have my eye on one called the Skyline Traverse in Wanaka, looks amazing but open to any other suggestions.

In the meantime my short-term goal is to do the Colonial Knob 41 times between now and my birthday. Why 41? Well that’s how old I’ll be so why not?

First one under my belt, 40 to go!