I had to take a photo in front of this shed, painted in one of my favourite colours!
The tour guide
Talking Tastebuds by Venetia Falconer back in the UK is one of my favourite podcasts. If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to it, you’ve been missing out all this time because it is amazing. It is about food and it’s role in our lives and influence over our wellbeing. Venetia is an incredible lady and you should really go and follow her on every single social media platform out there. She’s a strong advocate of sustainability in every single sense of the word, from promoting a vegan diet to reducing waste in our every day lives and more recently she’s been using her platforms to promote sustainable fashion. A lady using her social media influence to really do some good in the world, I love her for it. Thank goodness there are people like her on this planet who care but also have the power to influence others to care.
Wow I went off on a bit of a tangent there! Back to my point, in Venetia’s Talking Tastebuds she has set questions she asks everyone who’s a guest on her show. In the most recent series, series three, there was a new addition to these questions which was “What feeds your soul?”. I love this question and yesterday I had a moment when I felt that this right here feeds mine.
It was a pretty normal day, the class in the gym had been a killer! As usual we started off with a strength piece, which on this day was two front squats every minute for 10 minutes. EMOMs (every minute on the minute) are one of my favourite things to do in the gym and I managed to do it with 140lbs which is just over my bodyweight. The last three rep max I tested was 143lbs, so I was really happy that I could do 20 reps at 140! To finish off we had two cardio pieces, they looked pretty alright on the board, however, one thing you learn from Crossfit is that the simplest looking pieces are the ones who floor you. This is exactly what happened.
First we went on the bike for five rounds trying to hold a 72 rpm for as long as possible every two minutes. After that I felt like I was going to throw up. Then after a bit of rest we were on the rowers, 1 min on and 1 min off trying to accumulate as many metres as possible for five rounds. I rolled off the rower after we had finished. All my energy was gone. We were all lying on the ground, contemplating why we do this to ourselves! Usually we do extra work after the class but I don’t think anyone did, no one moved for a good half an hour from their spot.
As I was leaving the gym chatting to PC I thought it was too nice of an evening to just go home so I suggested we should swing by the beach for a cool down walk. He liked the idea and decided to drive us to a beach he’s been talking about for a while called Gnotuck Beach, in Aspendale, which is further down the coast.
We got there and straight away I was blown away. Shoes were taken straight off. The sand was almost snowy white and so soft as I let my feet sink into it as I stepped out onto the beach. How good is that feeling of silky smooth sand between your toes? The water was turquoise and gradually went darker the further from the beach you looked. The sun was slowly setting on the horizon with the clouds looking like beautifully fluffy cotton candy, shifting colours into soft pinks as the the sun was gradually disappearing. We could’ve done without the wind but even with it, you couldn’t complain at all. It was breathtaking and I probably took a million photos because every second the lighting and colours changed slightly and I wanted to capture it all. However, photos just never do justice to sunsets in my opinion. I tried my best.
With a little protein shake to tie me over to dinner (any form of fuel was welcomed after that workout, I felt dead) and the beautiful scenery, I felt myself slowly coming back to life. My energy came back and I just wanted to skip, jump and run out of nowhere. I dipped my legs in the ocean and skipped in the sand. PC must’ve thought I’d gone a bit crazy but I just felt this spark and love for life in that moment, being on that beach and I thought, this is what feeds my soul. Being on the beach, by the sea with a friend talking about life. It’s in those moments you feel like you don’t really have any worries and you’re there in the moment taking it all in. This was especially needed as I the evening before had been feeling a bit down about mum, for some reason I was missing her a bit extra.
As we were walking there I was saying to PC that one of my goals when I worked at lululemon, which I wrote down for our vision and goals you have to do as en employee was to live in a house like the ones facing the beach we were walking on and waking up to that view every day. What more could you need? You could roll out of bed onto the beach every morning. It may feel out of reach at the moment but so did Australia for a long time and I somehow managed to figure that one out! One can always dream.
M xxx
