Happy Workout Wednesday my darlings! I hope you’re kicking fitness goals, left, right and center and are feeling healthy and motivated and just so dang good!

I have a few fitness crazes and things that are gettin’ me all excitable at the moment …

+ One is yoga. I am like a freakin’ woman possessed (not just because I can spin my torso around exorcist styles) but I am absolutely loving ‘mat time’ and challenging myself with new and exciting postures. Check out WW next week because it’s all about Inversions – a particular series of Yoga moves that will leave you smiling and get your blood flowin’.

+ Number two is the ‘dat ass’ challenge you may have seen floatin’ around the interweb. A 30 day challenge starting at day one and 50 squats, the quota builds by 5 each day until the final day of 235 squats. ‘Do the challenge and get dat ass‘ they said, ‘it will be fun’ they said. My butt is hating me, but I am liking it.

+ And numero tre, and the subject for this post, is Chi Running. Most of you are probably aware of my relationship with running. It scarily resembles a relationship with a bad boyf. I finally decide that running is the ‘one’ and throw all my efforts and energy into committing myself 100% (for a few days/weeks). Then, sure enough, the allure of other sports pull me away and I cheat. I cheat hard. I spend no time with ‘running’, despite it loving me and making me feel really happy. I sneak off and have night time sesh’s with ole mate ‘yoga’ and running’s ultimate frenemy ‘walking’, quickly sneaking in a few visits to the gym. And, before I know it, running and I haven’t spent any quality time together and it’s crying and asking me why I’ve neglected it because all it ever did was love me and want what’s best for me. Yes my friends, I am the bad boyfriend in this terrible, terrible analogy. But I have good news! This is a love story with a happy ending! I came to realise just how badly I wanted to change and make this thing work, so I agreed to attend a couple’s workshop (literal interpretation – chi running program) to get to know my lover a little more and understand why are so good together.

For those of you who made it to the end of that ridiculous analogy, although not going to lie I am pretty proud of it, well done and I will reward you with an abundant little bag o’ info on Chi Running and how you can utilise it’s techniques to put the va-va-voom back in your relationship (last one promise)!

Head over to the Chi Running official website and read up on what exactly this approach is about. I am currently reading the guide to chi running by Danny Dreyer – and already there have been so many aspects of this book, his approach and his mission that have resonated with me. Danny makes you think back to when you were young and chasing your friends around the oval, or running from your friends’ house to go and get your toy and running, smile beaming, all the way back. Before we separated from running and brought a whole lot of ‘thinking’ to the process, running was enjoyable and relatively effortless. Chi running was founded on this same premise, that by bringing running back to its more simple form, you will amp up the enjoyment and lessen the risk of injury. A promise of running in flow and total rhythm – uh, yes please!

I’m about a third of the way through the book and yet to actually ‘start’ the program, given a minor running setback on the weekend with an ankle roll and butt stack, but my reading has already stirred up feelings that I thought were long gone. I feel excited, driven, determined by and connected with running. I have done a few little jogs here and there over the week, very light and very easy effort, and it has felt great. I keep coming back to running, I keep finding my eyes drifting off to running magazines and new running shoes and upcoming fun runs, I keep busting out mid walk jogs. Something in me is telling me to not give up on running, that it has a lot more to offer me and our journey together ain’t over. 

Blessings from my unconventional and difficult, but beautiful none the less, love affair with Running x