lemongranita

Walking by the ocean sounds lovely. Is it a sand beach or pebbles? Well done on the 100 squats and for moving up to doing tougher ones.

Back handspring or back somersault? (I think there's a UK/US difference in what backflip means) My mum (a gym teacher) taught me to do a back handspring using the method using two spotters holding twisted towels in front and back of your core. First on a trampoline, then on the ground. I'm struggling to find any video of this technique though, so it might be a bit dated.

I visited Nuremburg and Cologne (on a trip that also included Vienna, Prague and Budapest). Fun journey!

Have a great trip! Push-ups are such a good thing to work on while travelling! (I did some on a moving train across Germany last challenge)

Thanks Nuala! Me too - I got to go skating as an 8th birthday treat but didn't skate again until I was an adult. ~~ Just completed the last of the C25k runs that have any walking in them. From here onwards it's all running, all the time. I'm also significantly faster than when I started, according to My Tracks. Hooray! The green gooseberries aren't ripe yet but I picked the red gooseberries this morning. About half are going straight into a gooseberry fool. The rest will become a sauce to eat with mackerel later in the week (an idea borrowed from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's gooseberry special in the Guardian yesterday). http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/29/gooseberry-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

Eggs! Boiled egg and cold sausage would be nicely portable for 2nd breakfast. Thanks both of you!

BBC Radio4 's online service (home of much of the UK's best radio drama and comedy) isn't geographically restricted, so you could always listen to that! I work near the BBC Radio Theatre and often go to recrordings that need a studio audience, thus inspiring my goal to write something.

If I have early morning skating, I tend to have two breakfasts (cos I'm a hobbit at heart) one before skating and one before work. Second breakfast can be a bit, er, cakey (muffin or chocolate croissant etc) since a. I feel like I've earned a treat and b. that's what's for sale near work. I'd love some ideas for non-cake post-exercise 2nd breakfasts.

Good luck with the teeth! Hope your dentist/surgeon is as entertaining as mine was.

A jumping session with my coach this morning. She was most impressed with my improved flips. Tried a drill called pancake jumps -- a two-footed take off and landing from the loop position -- to work on in-air positioning. Lutz is... still not happening. All the take-off drills are fine, but the counter-rotation thing just makes it really uncomfortable to throw power into it. It's like travelling in two directions at once. We then moved onto some Axel prep. Eeee! Axel is my bucket-list jump. They are pretty rare among adult-start skaters, even those of us with a bit of dance/gymnastics in our distant past. But coach doesn't think it's impossible for me, so that's encouraging.

Hope you feel better by the evening!

Thanks ysabet! Yay a bit of sunshine is so nice. tinkerer - so far we're getting good handfuls of strawberries to snack on and all the rhubarb we can cook. Based on Monday's tasting, gooseberries should be ready to pick this weekend. Tonight's skating was sadly curtailed by a fire alarm and evacuation of the rink. Cue lots of skaters crawling into the car park on hands and knees to protect their blades and standing around in socked feet for 20 minutes. I did some yoga poses and chatted with my coach. The good thing was that once the alarm was fixed, most people went and got their shoes and left, so I had 40 minutes of quiet ice for jumping and spinning. If nothing else, working on my Lutz is doing my flip a power of good! I managed several huge clean ones. A couple of clean half Lutzes too (misleadingly named jump, it takes off the same and still rotates 360degrees but lands on the opposite foot and is thus easier but uglier). Actual Lutz attempts underrotated but given those great big flips, I think I probably have the power now and just need to convince myself to use it. Running is still going okay, rather to my surprise. I don't think I'll take that route through the park again though. The child/dog proof safety gates are a right faff to open and close and really put me off my stride. Discovered Ally Pally has regular ParkRun sessions for timed/stewarded 5k runs (not races, just personal times). I'm definitely going to do that once I finish C25k. Walking silently is larks! Mind you, it isn't hard to be quieter than the ambient noise level in daytime London, with a little more attention paid to never scuffing my feet along. The creaky office stairs are pretty much assassin-proof however!

Wow, that all looks really useful and a good mix of things I can do at the side of the rink and at home. Thanks!

Skating goals: Land an axel Pass level 6 tests in order to be able to eventually qualify as a competition judge Compete abroad Compete at “Adult Worlds” in Oberstdorf Go cross-country lake skating in Scandinavia Skate through Ottowa on the Rideau canal Other fitness: Do a 5k race Do an adventure race of some kind Learn more trapeze skills Learned flying knee hang and back somersault dismount. Now want to learn more! Get my BCU 2* kayaking Then get the 3* for whitewater Walk one of the national paths from end to end (probably Ridgeway) Do the London to Brighton bike event Cycle EuroVelo 12 Learn to rock climb Life Goals: Write a book Write a radio play Take A Level Maths Get re-certificated for first aid Learn to fly planes

My calves, especially the right one, are ridiculously tight, knotty and prone to spasm/cramp. It's possible that all the jumping around I do in rigid skate boots doesn't exactly help with that. I do do several 30 sec standing long and short calf stretches after skating, but they only seem to help a bit. Could you point me to anything else that might help please?

The building was hundreds of years old and every step of the staircase had its own unique and familiar creak. But this was where I had worked each day for several years, toiling with my pen and gathering vital information by day in between reporting to the Guild for training and missions. If the Guild Master wanted us to learn to move silently, this staircase, which I climbed several times a day, would be the perfect challenge. Could I travel soundlessly from the heavy front door, past the chief clerk's office on the first floor and reach my desk on the second? I removed the keys from my pocket to avoid clinking and began my ascent. I reached the first turning of the ancient stair successfully when... "Good morning!" A fellow clerk thundered up the stairs behind me, determined to begin a conversation. Ah well, next time. Meanwhile I intended to pay a visit to the druid circle, both on guild business and to see whether they could help with my aching calves. Translation: Yup, my office building was built in the 1700s and it CREAKS. Ought I to do anything in particular to integrate with the druids, or just openly make contact? ETA: Good grief those are some creaky stairs! Walking close to the wall, as per the instructions, does help and I can eliminate the thumping if not the creaks, but I'm sure everyone in the building can still tell there's someone on the stairs.

Another assassin here seeking advice from scouts! I'm planning to finish C25k within this challenge, it's going okay so far. I'd really like some tips on what to do with my brain while either running or swimming. When I'm walking alone I tend to start making plans or writing stories in my head, while skating requires my full concentration. But for me both running and swimming are sort of in-between, needing some attention to form, but not enough to keep my mind on what I'm doing. Do you repeat mantras? Recite times tables? Or does it get easier to do without thinking about it, so I can get back to my ingenious planning while I run (mwahahaha).

Yes, yes you very possibly can! It might not be the same thing, but I had horribly crunchy (and increasingly painful) knees a few years ago and eventually went to a physiotherapist. My kneecaps weren't tracking correctly because of an imbalance in tension between my leg muscles/iliotibial band. She gave me a bunch of exercises to do that made a world of difference. I'd recommend seeing a professional, but otherwise, google: patellar tracking exercises for some things to try.

Yay you! Hope you get the chance to enjoy some outdoor time today, as there appears to be some kind of light and warmth going on out there! (fellow Londoner here)

Welcome! It's amazing how those push-ups improve, just adding a little each time. I couldn't even do more than a couple of kneeling ones this spring. Now doing sets of 9 on toes. Good luck!

Thanks Theanne! This morning I turned down fried breakfast five times (my MiL doesn't easily take "no thanks" for an answer) and danced energetically with my 4yo niece. Made it back to London in time for evening skating, which was very quiet what with everyone watching the football. Since the other jumps were all going okay, I made several attempts at a Lutz. Fell twice, but otherwise am landing on two feet and quite a bit underrotated. It feels possible though. More oomph, both from the jumping ankle and the rotating shoulders should get me there.

I'm away at the in-laws for the weekend, but I did bring my running shoes, so I've just been out for a circuit of the village. Didn't go as far as I thought I had, according to My Tracks. Must be the open vistas confusing me compared to running London streets! Now I need to stick to Steve's BBQ eating advice, since although I don't have a diet goal, if I did it wouldn't be EAT ALL THE THINGS, which tends to be a risk here as the in-laws are big foodies.

It's great when you start looking forward to it isn't it? I've found that a few weeks into doing C25k I'm spending my journey home itching to get there change into my running shoes. Look forward to seeing some of your drawings when they're ready.

Fun group skating class tonight - since it's summer we're down to having nearly as many coaches as students at the Thursday night drop-in class, so they had the three of us in top group doing brackets and some tough edge-change and double-turn drills. Sadly my warm-up jumping efforts on practice ice (waltz, toe loop, loop) were rewarded with a nasty calf cramp, owowowow! So no Lutz attempts at all tonight. Tried filling my bag o'weights up to 7.5kg for bent over rows, which it turns out I can do for 5 reps. Must find more small household heavy things.

Walk Tall, a short film about 1948 Olympic gymnast George Weedon, training with whatever he could build in his back garden. http://thespace.org/items/e00004tg