Adventures in Feeling Alive

It has been a while since my last post. The main problem is that I've not really done anything out of the ordinary recently, I have continued with my regular swims and those have been wonderful, I have also continued with the shirtless Parkruns and those have been excellent. But as its summer it is nothing really unusual and not much of a challenge to be out with no shirt on. Summer is always good for being shirt free however there really is no challenge in it and it is always hard to get that cold fix or cooler shirtless adventure. It was time to try and arrange something a bit more of a challenge.   Being out for a length of time with no shirt on can be dangerous on sunny days, plus it had been very warm recently so it has been no challenge, so the solution was to be an adventure at night. I am lucky that I have friends who can help at times and so I asked one friend if he was able to set me up a walking challenge one night, he agreed and made the plans.  In the run up ...

          It has been a few weeks since my last blog post, I have had my fair share of swims and runs but I have also been away a LOT which means I had lost the regularity of the outings.  Most recently I spent 6 days working in Blackpool and it WAS my plan to take some time out to go for a run, go for a swim and maybe have a walk but as we ventured up north storm Dudley was just about to hit the UK and scuppered all my plans, for the next 5 days Blackpool was battered by 3 storms which made swimming FAR too dangerous and it really put me off wanting to run or walk anywhere along the promenade.            The work I did in Blackpool was exhausting and on my return I took a much needed day to recover and then on Wednesday I headed down to the beach for a small dip, I went alone as I was only expecting a small dip but it was lovely to be back in the sea.       Friday morning I was back in the sea wit...

This last 10 days has been a pretty awesome one for me, full of little adventures which have helped me feel great. Parkrun I will start off at last Saturday with Parkrun, It was my 3rd Parkrun of the year, I had been out of the country for a couple of weeks plus a little ill so I decided to treat this parkrun carefully, I still ran shirt free but I really concentrated on taking it slow for the whole run, I think I over did it a bit as I came in at a full minute slower than my personal best, this was not a problem and although I did feel a tiny bit down about it I came to realise it was VERY windy and I was still recovering from a small illness. I followed this parkrun with a quick dip in the sea which was cold but energising, what I really love about the Saturday swims is the people I swim with and the cakes they supply. Bliss The next morning I was up nice and early for a run with Matt, it was at Farlington marshes nature reserve which is a regular 5km run for me however it was a new ...

Today is the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, I use an app on my phone called Strava, I use it to log all my runs and walks (and kayak trips too) and I was recently invited to join in a challenge on Strava to walk for 1 hour on the shortest day of the year. I decided that my hour walk was going to be to the top of a local hill called Butser hill to see the sunrise, here is my video of my little trip out.

It is currently the silly season for me, it always is this time of year with my work and today I had a bit of a quieter day for a change, I managed a swim this morning with my swimming ladies Ann and Rachael, and then this afternoon I was sat there thinking about doing something. I've recently been keen on the idea of going for a shirtless hike somewhere and I thought I would use this afternoon as an opportunity to have a little experiment, just an hour or so to see how I get on. I am lucky to have some beautiful countryside and forests within a short drive away so I headed off to a small car park at the back of Queen Elizabeth country park. I then decided to make a spur of the moment video to show how I got on.  Enjoy