Look Good – Feel Good

Here are a few hints on feeling happier, healthier, boosting self-esteem and general well-being.

• Get Outdoors
• Get Eco-Training

Why Eco-Training and why outdoors?

Outdoors because there you will find the inspiration and motivation to train, you will be able to breathe fresh air and reap the benefits of sunshine, which your body uses in several ways, not least to manufacture vitamin D which in turn is important in the production of Serotonin.

Eco-Training, running mixed with body weight exercises like press-ups, because this is the best and natural way to get fitter, get stronger to boost the production of Serotonin.

What’s so important about Serotonin? This is a Monoamine neurotransmitter that is found naturally in the body which is responsible for many things. As far as wellness and well being are concerned it is not only an anti-depressant but during and after exercise, especially running, it stops us feeling hungry. A really good training session will also keep Serotonin in the system for longer before it is re-absorbed.

The very fact that we’ve just been out enjoying the beautiful sights, sounds, fresh air and sunshine will also make us feel pretty good, all we need to do is remember how good it was to keep feeling better and guess what, that keeps that Serotonin working longer too!

Sawing and Splitting

At my brother’s place in St Martin there has been a giant pile of logs for quite a long time. It’s been waiting for attention and the incentive of some unusually cold -5C weather.

To cut a long story short, I’m staying at Will’s place for the weekend and last night was cold, very cold. Well, he has a really nice wood burning stove in the lounge and this equally nice pile of logs in the back garden, been there for years, just keeps on getting moved around.

Anyway, I got back from EcoFitness training at Grantez this morning with the idea that I’d build a saw-horse from some old pieces of wood that were laying around the place, so I did. It’s a double X trestle type that I cut up and screwed together in about an hour then got started with a nice sharp bow-saw bringing the logs down to a size that can fit into the wood-burner.

Next job was the one I really enjoy which is using the log-splitter to get handy burnable chunks of wood. After spending an hour sawing, then another splitting I ended up with a fair pile of firewood stacked on the patio outside the lounge doors.

The end result, we’ve just spent a very comfortable evening chatting sitting in front a glowing cast iron wood burner occasionally feeding it and enjoying looking at the flames within.

Amazing how the simple things in life can give so much pleasure :)

Stalag Luft III – Trinity Monument

Yesterday, running on a cold, sunny winter’s afternoon through the back lanes of Trinity I needed to stop to make an adjustment. There is a little known monument near Dielament Manor that I hadn’t thought about for quite a long time but I was near and I remember that there was a bench.

The monument is more than the stone  and bench in the picture, there’s also an old wall or gatehouse, a large wooden cross with a stone plaque above it, the arched gateway looking through into the field where the Frenchman Sous-Lt Bernard W M Scheidhauer crash landed on 18 Nov 1942. He was captured by the Germans and ended up in Stalag Luft III which is now in Poland. I drove past the town of Żagań almost a year ago on my way back from Krakow and now here I am sitting where that young pilot’s ill-fated journey began, a field in Jersey.

I’ve been here before and always stop, a moment or two of quiet contemplation about the selflessness and bravery of Sous-Lt Bernard W M Scheidhauer who endured so much, was one of the participants of ‘The Great Escape‘ from Stalag Luft III on March 24/25th, 1944 then, after his recapture was murdered on 29-Mar-1944 by Oberleutnant Leopold Spann, Gestapo Chief at Saarbrucken.

Cold on the Cliffs

There was a strong north-easterly wind blowing as I started my run at lunchtime yesterday from Stinky Bay, though going up the path it was hardly noticeable I was well aware that when I got to the top and ran along the cliffs, I was really going to feel it. I was wearing a vest, trackies and gloves which was probably not the best plan but last winter I had run in Krakow when it was -20C wearing the same kit and ended up sweating in the sunshine.

Wrong!!! Jersey has a very different way of dealing with people like me, the wind is cold, strong, damp and sucks the heat out of a body at unbelievable speed, I had forgotten that or just thought I was tough enough not to notice. Anyway it felt colder than the Carpathians, there wasn’t another fool about and I had to keep moving as fast as possible to keep moderately warm, that part at least was good.

To be honest, when the weather is like that there is not an awful lot to feel inspired about, there were no birds around either, more sense than me. I had to stop a few times to adjust my leg which was squeaking because I hadn’t adjusted the ‘O’ ring seal properly before I started (impatience is something I thought I’d been cured of but it comes back to bite me every now and then :) and I found myself looking for a boulder to sit behind just to get out of the worst of the wind.

Well, I went as far as Gronez Castle then looped back next to the race course, no-one there either, the model airfield was deserted but there was one person sitting in a van, wearing a coat with engine and heater running.

When I reached my car I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to have just climbed Mogielica in the snow, I was much warmer last January when I was there ;)

Oxygen Debt

While I’m house & cat sitting for my sister Jo in Trinity, every other day I’ve been going for a dawn run. I’d forgotten how many valleys there are around this part of Jersey, how steep the sides are and that in order to get anywhere using the lanes, the only way to go is by crossing said valleys several times.

I was climbing up a very steep hill from le Moulin de Ponterrin this morning and rounding a sharp bend where the lane gets even steeper I was thinking that when I reached the top I was just going to to need a minute to recover. Getting into an oxygen debt rhythm after a few minutes of steep uphill is painful, legs and lungs burning, the thought of a rest at the top is just tempting enough to keep me going though.

This particular hill has a point where the climb gets less steep but still nowhere near flat and on reaching this bit I willed myself to keep going. It only takes about thirty second before things get easier, but it seems a lot longer and very unfair that the pain doesn’t go away when the worst of the climb is over. The reward of such perseverance this morning was that, once my breathing had recovered and the oxygen debt repaid, it seemed like I was flying :)

Val de la Mare re-opens

After an extended closure while the Val de la Mare reservoir was drained and the dam wall repaired, not to mention a serious lack of rain & plans to bring water by tanker from a Norwegian fjiord, the paths were re-opened recently.

Starting from the Watersplash I ran along the sea wall in a wind that threatened to take my legs from under me a couple of times, then across the marsh & past the pond going up the escarpment to the church, through the fields of La Petite Cueillette along a footpath that leads to the eastern end of Val de la Mare.

What can I say? It was a real pleasure to be allowed back as it is a lovely place to go for a run, it’s not an easy trail along the northern, St Ouen side, but everything looked the same, the dam was full and I met only a few walkers along the way & thoroughly enjoyed myself :)

Getting Fit – Losing Fat

A healthy mind in a healthy body, you’ve heard it before & it’s the basis of enjoying life to the full. There’s nothing better than getting back to nature in order to feel good & mixing that with excercise is the formula for success!

Want to know how to ditch the excess fat?
Burn more calories than you eat.
How do you do that?
Burn lots of oxygen with aerobic exercise.
How many calories can you eat?
Calculate your BMR then apply Harris-Benedict equation.
Can’t be bothered with calculations?
Just eat a good, healthy, varied diet, be aware of what you’re eating & drinking, which means don’t eat or drink too much.

What we do at OuenLife is alternate walking, running & body weight exercises to keep that heart rate elevated to 80% over an extended period. Interval training for 60 minutes will not only burn more calories during training but will elevate the metabolism to keep burning those calories!