Wow, my calf muscles were sore this morning! I could hardly walk when I got out of bed! Yesterday’s Badass Yoga, with lots of downward dog stretches, really got my legs working. So I thought I’d put them to the test again with a … wait for it … drumroll … 5km run.

To date, I’d only ever jogged the same 4km path through the forest (a grand total of four times this year! Woo hoo!). This time I wanted to try 5km, so shuffled along my normal walking path towards Möriswil, then instead of going through the village on the bitumen road (which I like to do when walking so I can visit the miniature horses), I took an earlier forest road and didn’t see a soul the entire time. I used to listen to music when jogging, but lately, I’ve really enjoyed just listening to the peace and quiet, and all the birds, too.

The idea of running 5km today came from my friend Bec, who lives just outside Melbourne in Australia. She commented on a previous post, mentioning her fitness goals for 2015, then asked what mine were. I’d never actually written them down before, or thought about them much, other than wanting to feel fitfor15in15. So for the first time, I now have a proper list of fitness goals for 2015. I want to be able to:

1. Do 2 minutes of plank
2. Leave my elbows on the floor while lying on my legs or stretching out between my legs
3. Do the splits comfortably again
4. Fit into the strapless dress I bought after the Camino
5. Have toned/slimmer arms
6. Jog 8km (I’m not a runner though, so that could be unrealistic!)
7. Improve my balance, especially on one leg doing yoga moves

I might add a few more down the track, but for now, that’s pretty good.

And my time running today was pretty good too, I think, finishing the 5km in 32 minutes 46 seconds. I walked for the first two minutes as a warm up, then had a mix of reasonably steady up and down gradients which saw me faster in the third kilometre (I’d like to think I was in the zone, but really, there was more downward gradient running than in the other sections). Now that I know this path is exactly 5km from door to door, I may have run my last 4km on the old track. There are no photos from the new path because I didn’t want to take any pauses, but I can tell you my head was as red as a tomato when I got home.

Thank you Bec, for encouraging me to write down my goals. Written goals are achieved more than those that aren’t, so it was about time I put them on paper. If I want to run 8km by the end of the year, it was time to up the ante, and seeing that inspired me to attempt my first 5km run in many, many years.

On a nervous note, right now, as I’m typing, a group of people who are interested in buying Liliane and Rene’s property – the big farm house, our Stoekli and the land – are wandering around the place. It’s incredibly sad thinking we may not be living here for much longer. The property has been on the market for two years (things don’t move fast here in Switzerland!) and this group have been here a few times before, so I think they’re getting serious. Rene and Liliane have had enough of the responsibility of maintaining everything and would like something smaller that they can lock up and leave easily for when Liliane retires.

Leo and I have often talked about what we’d do if we had the money to buy here. We’d turn some of the apartments into holiday rentals and set up a country B&B. It would be perfect, with all the grass and pool, for families and people who want to get away from it all. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re the ones who will eventually be getting away from it all – by moving! But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, we’ll just keep enjoying what we have, which is pretty darn special.

Wishing you a wonderful day.