My life has turned upside down lately! I started a new job roughly three weeks ago now and it's kept me incredibly busy. Having loads of new information thrown at me has really hit my energy levels, so all I've managed to do after work is cook dinner and flop on the sofa for the rest of the night.

My job required me to travel to Birmingham for training for two days before I actually started in the store. It was madly intense and drained me so much that I felt like I wouldn't make it through!! I know it is actually designed to be demanding so the trainers get a chance to see how well people perform under pressure when they're tired.

The train up to London was rather cosy. Luckily my local station is the starting point to the route so I got a seat.

I really enjoyed being up in Birmingham despite it being so manic. If only I knew that there was a 24/7 gym downstairs to my hotel, I would've packed my gym kit! It never even crossed my mind, all I looked at was if the hotel itself had a gym! Lesson learned for next time eh?


Exercise wise it's all been going pretty well! Depending on work I'm hitting the gym twice a week and then try to top it up with long walks whenever I don't feel like absolute death when I get home. ;) But in all honesty my prep for the rowing competition is going really well, my times on the erg are improving every week and I'm going to have some outside help for resistance training soon! It's great having support from a professional when training towards something so demanding, but I'll write about that later on.




Currently I train on the erg once a week, with aiming to do 5k in 30 minutes every time. The difference in my stamina is absolutely insane, and as the photos below show I'm rowing further in the half an hour I set myself! The photo on the left was my second training session, the one on the right my third. I actually hit 5k at 28 minutes last week, so the 200 extra metres was just a chilled stroll to reward myself haha! Gotta enjoy the achievements.


And no post is complete without food! I have to admit, I have had a few too many cheat meals over the past three weeks. Adjusting to a full working week after only working 20 or so hours a week and then having a few weeks off in between jobs has eaten up loads of energy, so the motivation to cook all my meals has been quite low. It's surprisingly stressful starting a new job, trying to do well right from the start and learn everything as quickly as possible and not make mistakes!

Time to crack the whip on myself again!