What a week!

Blimey. So much can happen in just five days. In short, I have made the following decisions since last Monday:

1. I am 100% staying in Cardiff;
2. I am not moving back to London;
3. I am staying with my fab housemate (and Landlady) when she moves house in June;
4. I am committing to nailing a kick-ass career with my current employer;
5. My Dad is stepping in to help flog my London flat; and
6. I am going to lose at least 7lb of body fat by my 30th birthday (29/3/11).

What prompted these decisions? Well, I booked Monday Tuesday and Wednesday last week off work. I planned a flat-hunting trip in Cardiff with Dad on Monday followed by an appointment with my mortgage lender (ouch!) to see whether I could afford to live on my own. In short, this started a domino-effect in decision-making which made me really focus on selling my London flat which will, in turn, increase my disposable income here in Cardiff. Plus, I am on the cusp of a promotion and I am going to NAIL it in the next few months!

The following day I decided to take some time out and went to Swansea on the train with my friend Matt from work. This was *such* a great day out - we walked from Swansea train station to Mumbles and that took us about 2.5-3 hours! Here's Matt on the beach path playing on some of the installations along the route:

And the views along the beach were absolutely gorgeous. It was a bright day, there was a slight chill in the air and the sun was shining.

And there are even some weird and wonderful sculptures to play around on too. This was my favourite one - an Eagle! But you could only really tell it was an Eagle from a certain angle. You can just about see the Eagle's head behind me here and I am sat on its 'wings':

Then I had a little play on some of the fitness installations on the running trail:

Matt and I had a brilliant day and it was just what I needed to sort out all the thoughts spinning around in my head from the previous days' flat-hunting and bank meetings. When we got to Mumbles we had lunch at Salt and a little walk around the shops. Plus in total we drank about 6 cups of coffee each and Matt was bouncing off the walls by about 3pm! We were both flagging on the train on the way home and by the time I got in I was overwhelmed by natural tiredness and fell asleep on the couch for about 2 hours. Absolutely brilliant.

On Wednesday I did my normal circuits class with Rhys at Laguna Health, Cardiff. He took this picture of the class (me, centre, looking rough as hell):

Can you breathe *and* do press-ups?!

He then took a further 25 mins after class to show me a cool Treadmill interval circuit. He found my "rest" and "sprint" pace on the treadmill (my 'Rest' = level 8, my 'Sprint' = level 16). I did 7 reps of 30 sec sprints with 60 sec rests. On the sprints, you really have to be running as fast as your legs will carry you and you shouldn't be able to run for much longer than the 30 secs. However you *should* push yourself to finish the full 30 secs and if you can't, then decrease the speed slightly. I was totally done in at the end of the 7 sets! Oh, before I forget, Rhys had an article published about his TRX training in the Western Mail this weekend so take a look if you're interested. It is pretty cool! TRX.

This weekend has been great so far too. I started it as I meant it to go on. With an absolutely butt-kicking workout. The fabulous Jo showed me how to really work my glutes, quads and core with a session of squats superset with stiff-leg deadlifts, forward lunges, step-ups and dumbbell swings. Here's Jo showing me how to squat ass to grass:

Pretty impressive form, huh? Whilst I couldn't quite get down as low with my squats, I lifted at the same weight and pushed myself as far as I could.

The difference in the form and depth of our squats is pretty clear from these pictures. It is great for me as I can really set myself clear goals on form just by looking at these photos. (Plus I can also remind myself that I want a firmer ass!) So, that workout was at around 3pm this afternoon. It is now 6.40pm and my legs are JELLY. DOMS have hit after a mere 2 hours - now *that's* a workout. Tomorrow I will be running off the DOMS on a 9-mile run. I'll post some pics as there are some nice views en route. Wish me luck!