Pure inspiration

Something to aim for perhaps….?

A quote

I found a quote today that I’d love to share.

Despite being nearly 100 years old I feel it’s still relevant to so many aspects of life, especially all the conflicting emotions and experiences of our journey leading up to Thailand.

Do you take inspiration from any quotes? I’d love to hear them.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement.”

The countdown begins

Yikes. Only three months to go until we leave for Thailand. Stepping up to fight is really beginning to feel very ambitious but there’s something so exciting about putting yourself out there, taking a leap of faith and just doing it anyway. Haahaah, although ask me how I feel about it afterwards and it might be a different story!

I’ve still so much to learn but it helps to be training with such amazing people such as Emma, Wilf and Cliff. Thanks guys! I definitely couldn’t do it without you.

Has anyone else experienced nerves like this? I’d love to hear how channelled nervous energy in to confidence.

In the meantime, here’s a video to give you a taste of what we’ll be doing out in Thailand.

Feeding a fighter

Of all the aspects of training you’d think the eating part would be the easiest. And normally it is. I love to eat! But until recently I was consuming so much chicken that, despite being really hungry, I’d reached a point where I just wasn’t able to stomach the sight, texture or taste any longer.

It was heart-breaking. Without chicken, all I could see stretching ahead were weeks and weeks of tofu. How was I doing to continue to eat so much daily meat when I was struggling so soon?

Then along came Gourmet Nutrition—a book highly recommended by Cliff.

The lovely people at Precision Nutrition sent me a copy to review and it arrived just in time to rescue me from impending meat madness.

I won’t go in to too much detail just now as I’ll post a full review over the next week or two but let’s face it: A girl’s got to have options; whether it’s shoes, bags, a well-stocked wine list or…..a choice of meat.  Thanks to their wonderful range of inspiring recipes, each with its own taste bud-tickling colour photograph, I’ve eaten a different type of meat every night this week. From turkey burgers to buffalo and beef, every recipe so far has tasted really, really good. I even dared try chicken once more…and loved it.

I’ve never felt as enthusiastically carnivorous as I do right now! And to think I once lasted 10 years as a vegetarian.