I managed to get my 20+ minutes on the stepper last night. When was the last time I used it for stepping? I’d have to think hard about that. On the occasions I’ve used it it’s acted more as a weight than a stepper. Ever tried bicep curls with a stepper? Or pressing it like a dumbbell? The “klunk” of an unseen bit on your head can be very enlightening.

It was very hot last night, so I was drenched at the 2 or 3 minute mark. I only got my heart rate into the 140-160 bpm mark, so it's not like I was found collapsed in a puddle on the floor or anything like that. Having said that, my main aim was to get some cardio done, so I should be happy with that.

This week at St John and St James is Art week, and the children had been arranged into different groups in different classrooms, so I had to do a bit of hunting around for them. A piano or keyboard lesson in a 15 minute time slot sounds reasonable, but factor in the time to go and pull them out of lessons, to-ing and fro-ing, then it's not much! Sometimes I get a bit stressed having to fit everything in within that time, and having to spend the lesson listening to them play while filling in their weekly report book, comment on their playing etc. Then repeat the same thing for the next pupil, and do that over 6 hours… Oh well, still, I enjoy what I'm doing and it's much much much! better than teaching in a classroom with 40 kids and trying to cajole them into working, or occupying them with a meaningless task - I never want to go back to anything like that again. One-to-one teaching definitely seems the thing for me - doesn't pay as much as a teacher in a school gets, but the sense of control I have over my life is wonderful.

Enough rambling anyway, as I am wont to do. In addition to my stepping yesterday I lifted for shoulders, and did some pressups as well, so today it will be my favourite workout - arms again. I'll grudgingly do some abs and I guess I’ll be Kate's Alexander Technique practice dummy in the evening.

Tomorrow I should have time to do a run in the evening and I was thinking of running again on my way home on Friday. The thing though, is that I hate to have to run with a sackload of books and an extra change of clothes on my back, so I’ll have to find some way to do it if I’m going to.