The 6 Month Update

6 MONTHS!!!  Can't quite believe it has been 6 months already since I started the 50 challenges.  But yep, I started in April to give myself the full year plus one month for luck.  Thanks for staying with me so far, I know I've been doing quite a lot of people's heads in with this obsession.  Still, those that don't yet want to throttle me - give it time - have been asking how many things I've actually managed to tick off the list.  It's twenty.   Out of fifty.  Doesn't sound a lot really in 6 months but there are another 9 ongoing or long term items I've made a really good start on.   The ones I have ticked off though are:

No. 2: Write a letter to my Mum and Dad with 50 reasons why I love them

No. 6: Learn How To Handle Birds of Prey

No. 8: Climb up Pen Y Fan (highest point in south Wales

No. 10: Race for Life Pretty Muddy 5k

No.11: Take Part in a Dog Walk with at least 50 other dogs

No.13: Collect 50 shiny new pound coins and donate to charity

No. 15: Be a Velonteer for the Welsh Velothon

No. 17: Have a go at glassblowing

No. 20: Try archery properly

No. 21: Ride a Segway

No. 26: Climb Over the Top of the O2

No. 27: Milk a Cow

No. 29: 50 Shade of Pink photo challenge - take a picture of something pink every day for 50 days

No. 30: Grow Strawberries, a sunflower, anything....

No. 33: Bake and decorate 50 cupcakes

No.36: Llanfairpg Cream Cracker Challenge :)

No.37: Be a penguin zookeeper for a day

No. 40: Eat 50 pickled onions in 50 minutes - FAIL

No. 43: Bigger Zipper Challenge - go on the fastest zipwire in the world - and it's in Wales

No. 44 Indoor Skydive

Mmm, not bad?  So far.  Got a few cool ones still to come.   The ones I have made a good start on are:

No. 1: Start a blog and write 50 blog posts - well hey, you're reading this aren't you?  Someone, somewhere, hopefully.....

No. 3: Couch to 5k challenge - I'm getting there.   A couple of weeks I've had to repeat for various reasons but I'm out running quite consistently and so far I've made 25 minutes running non-stop - got to get to 30 minutes.

No. 7: Weatherman Walks - have gone on a couple, but I'm still well short of a minimum of 50 miles.  But we're hoping to average one hike per month and they tend to be a minimum of 5 miles each

No. 9: Compete in 50 pub Quizzes - over half way there and we are trying to visit different venues so that I'll have attended at least 12 different places by the end of the year.  At the moment I've been to 6 different pubs or events and am scouring south Wales for others

No.14: Monthly International Culture Challenge - So far, I've read 6 books by international female authors  from countries ranging from South Korea, to Iceland, to Chile and watched 6 foreign language films, with a lot of really great, well-known films in there.  Today I watched Tsotsi - a South African film which although not the easiest of stories, I truly loved.

No. 22: Can't Cook Won't Cook: make Stewart a meal each month using recipes from around the world. Oh, dear, god, I really shouldn't be let near a kitchen.  The scores for what I've made so far range from ZERO to 9 out of ten.

No.41: Celebrate a National Day of Something Each Month:  to celebrate different National Days so far we have been up a local mountain, I've made chocolate truffles, played a game of crazy golf, I complimented people for a whole day and we celebrated penguins.  This month, I shall mostly be taking a selfie of me wearing a mud mask.  Will explain all at the end of the year.

No.42: 50 Good Deeds - in all honesty, I finished this a while ago but have enjoyed it so much I'm keeping it going to see what else crops up.  I've helped rather a lot of lost people, looked after neighbours cats, sponsored and donated, given positive customer service feedback, cleaned up an upset food waste bin from a neighbours doorstep when I knew they were away and have bought lunch for a homeless girl and gave two homeless guys 6 pieces of fruit last week, randomly!

No.49: Get 50 Selfies - initially this was supposed to be selfies with people met along the way but I rediscovered that in many ways I'm actually very shy and I found this really difficult.  So I kind of changed this to just get 50 selfies.  I am still though trying to get photies with people helping me with the challenges.

So that's it.  20 ticked off, 9 started, 21 remaining!   Got a few coming up over the next month or so and of course I'll keep you updated.  It has been an absolute blast so far and has thrown up some really surprising things - like, I can make chocolate truffles, I quite like wearing helmets, AND, I can run continuously for 25 minutes.

CHEERS and huge hugs and kisses for staying with me so far!

xxx



DONE: NO. 6: Learn How To Handle Birds of Prey

Greetings from my birthday blog!  The 'eagle eyed' (geddit?) of any of you who are following my 50 challenges may have noticed that No 6: Learn How To Handle Birds Of Prey wasn't actually on my original list!   Just wanted to get that out there straight away.  There are two or three things which may be changed over the year for different reasons and I do have plenty of reserve options.  The item which was removed to make way for this one was 'the 50 day plank challenge' - I decided it was not that interesting, would be difficult to evidence and quite frankly my shoulder is not anywhere near being able to do 50 days of planks.   So when this opportunity came - well why not!

So, we went down the Gower in west Wales yesterday to visit Perriswood Farm Archery and Falconry centre.   The views of Oxwich Bay were pretty nice!

We took part in the Arrows, Talons and Tea experience.   Archery you/ll know I've already done, and the 'tea' part was basically tea and welsh cakes in between each activity. We started off with the Bird of Prey display.    The first bird we were introduced to was Robin, a harris hawk.  By the way, if I incorrectly name any of the birds, sorry, I've tried my best to remember.  We were given a lot of information about each of the birds displayed by Brian (I think) the Bird.  Really pleasant young man, obviously really into his birds and quite funny.

This wee birdie was very energetic and was flying all over the place.  All of the birds living at this centre have plenty of opportunity for free flying and all looked seriously happy and healthy.  This was the first of the birds he was asking for volunteers to hold.   Not saying I stomped over young children to be first in line (I didn't) but I was first up.  The following pictures are not good quality but you'll get the gist.

 

 I did have to have to a little bit of sinewy dead animal on the glove but it was fine.   This bird wasn't actually that heavy but had beautiful plumage.

After Robin, came Alice the tawny owl.   I LOVED her!  She was so cute and when I got to hold her it was too tempting to stroke her as she seemed so incredibly soft and fluffy.   Because of the soft and fluffy feathers we were told that when owls fly, they are silent - they really don't make any noise.  We were also told that rather than being 'wise', owls are apparently not the brightest creatures in the planet.  I didn't care, I got to hold Alice the Owl and she was lovely!

After the tawny owl came baby Jasper the snowy owl who is the equivalent of toddler age - still learning, exceedingly loud and very temperamental.  But exceedingly cute.

He was VERY loud and screechy but really interested in everything around him, demonstrated perfectly how far an owl can turn his head and was generally just extremely entertaining just by being himself.

 

We ended the display with a falcon.  I'd hoped we'd get the chance to hold her but apparently this falcon may well have murdered her husband without a regret and had taken to hunting Brian the Bird.  OK, maybe I don't want to go near this bird.   We basically now just got to watch the falcon freeflying and trying to catch the prey - to be honest, when he started twirling the prey round and round it actually reminded me of a scene in one my favourite films, Kes.  We don't have many pictures of the falcon because she was quite frankly too bloody fast!  She was so fast and flew so close to us that she even somehow managed to 'thwack' Stewart with her wings. I'll finish the blog now with a few of the photies we did get of the falcon.

 

DONE: No.10 - Race For Life Pretty Muddy 5k

So, the first of my relatively physical challenges, the Pretty Muddy 5k is done and dusted!  I'm seriously chuffed with this one.  5k course with 8 muddy obstacles and I completed in 40 minutes.  I haven't yet even completed couch potato to 5k, so to go out one chilly Saturday and complete a muddy obstacle course is quite satisfying.   To be honest, the Race for Life challenges are not competitive and not meant to be taken too seriously so there is absolutely no pressure on any of us other than to just get round the courses.  For those outside the UK, Race for Life challenges are meant for women, united in wanting to raise money to combat cancer and in the meantime encourage you to get moving - whether that is running the courses, walking or strolling, it doesn't matter.

But, as I've been trying to complete the couch potato to 5k challenge at the same time I was pretty much intending to see how much of this I could run. And I think I ran most of it - tho aint going to lie, I did walk as well.  So, yesterday morning, up and out early, and this is me all eager at the start line.

We got set off at 15 minute intervals and had to complete a 'warm up' in groups before gathering at the start line, after a couple of Mexican waves, we were off.

 There are no photos for the majority of course - my extra special personal photographer, Stewart, is doing a grand job but even I wouldn't expect him to be able to follow every moment of every challenge.   My main memories of the majority of the course are these:

Obstacle one was climbing through and walking through a mud pit.  Immediately after there was a fire engine stationed with some seriously fit firemen - I swear I don't want to be one of those ladies or sexist or anything but I'm being honest, for the first time in my life I really did think god I wish I was 30 years younger.  They were lovely.  But - they had a fire hose directed straight at me - and it was cold - so I didn't like them quite as much afterwards.   I was soaked already. 

I did manage to keep running for most of the course with a bit of walking - but from what I can remember - and with no photo evidence,  after the initial mud pit, there was a climbing frame, a few tunnels to crawl through with nets immediately afterwards and volunteers constantly chucking buckets of mud through to make it slippier, a hill to do 'roly poly's down, long plastic tubes you had to jump over - I couldn't, I went backwards somehow over them,  a running the gauntlet thing through huge plastic beach ball kind of thing, then the 'ballerina' balance beams, the obstacle I did give up on and walk round which was the space hopper round - I did try but went flying off backwards and could easily have injured other ladies so that one I was happy to give up on and then finally close to the end another net obstacle.

 

When I reached this obstacle, there was a small group of 8 year olds (?) all sitting crossed legged at the side.  Think you can see them in the top photo.  Well, I got absolutely sledged and judged by this wee group.  As I'm going under the net - remembering I'm 49, unfit, still smoking and with a frozen freaking shoulder, and doing this as a solo runner - all I could hear was this wee group having a discussion 'I don't think this lady is doing this right, she's cheating, surely she's crawling across the grass and not the mud, no, this is not right, she's a FAILURE, she's not going through the muddiest part'.  Well, I felt judged I tell you, but I same time I was inwardly peeing my pants cos this was one of the funniest moments of my entire life.  They were SO funny.  I felt knackered and cold and wet and quite proud of myself actually and this really sweet wee group were DESTROYING me.  Still, I got the medal and they don't!

 

 

 Anyways, onwards and upwards, was very close to the finish by now with only the mud slide to conquer.  Wasn't particularly bothered by this - the only niggle throughout this whole experience is how having a frozen shoulder would impact.  I haven't yet really written about what a frozen shoulder is and how it has affected my life, will do at some point, but it's a constant negative but I'm chuffed that so far it hasn't stopped me doing anything.  As  you will see from the next few photies:

 

 

 

So, Pretty Muddy 5k completed. It was fun and I'm happy to have done this.   This was a charity event, a sponsored race but  I haven't really pushed it.  However, if after reading this, and if you do have a personal reason for doing so, I won't say no to accepting sponsorship. Particularly now I know I was actually capable of doing this, my 19th complete challenge.   https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lesley-edge2