Off-skates and on.

Man, I am loving this summer holiday. OK, so I'm not loving the weather (coldest, wettest summer I've experienced in year and that includes the motherland!), but I'm loving having a lot of time to myself to set my own agenda and do my own thing.

Omar says go work out. Then watch The Wire.

OK, so my own thing seems to consist of watching The Wire for hours on end, checking the internet and drinking lots of black coffee, but there's also hours upon hours to EXERCISE.

It's so awesome, I don't know where to begin. I've discovered that my sense of guilt at letting a day pass when I don't get out the house to do something energetic to be overwhelming, so I've been able to fit at least an hour's worth of exercise in every day since NYE, usually double that.

Today was especially notable for being my first skate of the year, the first time I've (mostly) run any kind of fitness class, and I made a bit of a breakthrough with my triathlon training. so worth noting I reckon.

I woke up with no firm plan beyond this evenings "Off-skates funtime" event I'd planned. I figured a chance to get fit with some other skaters before the season starts would be fun for everyone and a good way to connect with new people. Having a few (many) hours in hand, I decided to go get my skate on. Oh, and there's a pool next to the only rink that's open? Better do some swimming too then...

The skates needed changing back to indoor wheels (weather's too crap, and there's a bootcamp this weekend), and because I couldn't resist I dicked around with the cushions and trucks as well.

Not pictured: trying not to drown

Swim went great, I'm really trying to focus on my freestyle speed and technique which is rusty as all hell after years of neglect. Today was interval training, 50m freestyle as hard as I could go, then 50m of slow breaststroke, times 6. Today's breakthrough was I can now stroke for 4 reps before needing to come up for air, and I can go pretty damn fast! Felt absolutely destroyed afterwards, the hardest part of doing interval training in this scenario is not drowning when you start getting out of breath and involuntarily gasping. Learning some breathing discipline as I go, hopefully this'll reap rewards come March.

After a coffee and half a One Square Meal (food of champions), it was onwards to the skate rink next door. There's something wonderful about an empty rink, it speaks of opportunities to go really, really fast. So I did.

Nice to know I can still smash out a decent time for the 25 laps (4:23 on my first go). The floor was GROSS (my wheels are filthy) and slippery as all hell but I can still do all the basics that I'll be helping teach this year which is pretty important.

After an hour tearing it up on the track, it was home for a small foods and then a quick run to the park for off-skates. I now know that I can carry a conversation for over 2km with someone on skates (admittedly someone who wasn't skating very hard!).

The off-skates session was fun and very informal. We did a run/power walk to warm up, then a load of core and abs exercises, some more cardio, and finished with a few yoga stretches which seemed to leave everyone in good nick. I'm quite proud of myself for suggesting, organising and running a fitness-based activity that people actually turned up to and seemed to enjoy. It says something about my fitness confidence (is that a thing?) so I'm now feeling happy and utterly knackered. Tomorrow should really be a bike ride and another run, two weeks of school holiday left and I intend on using up every square inch of them...