You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for a few days. Thirteen to be exact. Unfortunately I have had technical difficulties – as in my Hard Drive died thanks to the Christchurch earthquakes. The good news is that I do back up my computer, and my awesome team of technicians at All-Tech did a fantastic recovery and install on a new hard drive. First, a timely reminder to everyone reading this post – back up ALL your important content once you have finished reading this. I used Norton’s Ghost which takes an image of my entire system.

But this blog is not about computer maintenance. It’s about fun core training. So what have I been up to for the past 13 days?

Summary of Fun Core Training Activity

• Day 11 – Walked for 30 minutes
• Day 12 – One hour of gardening.
• Day 13 – Mall Crawl
• Day 14 – Housework
• Day 15 – Walking up at Ashley Gorge
• Day 16 – Gyroboard workout
• Day 17 – I had a severe headache all day, so decided to make this a rest day!
• Day 18 – Gyroboard workout
• Day 19 – Walking 30 minutes
• Day 20 – Dancing
• Day 21 – Mall crawl and Gyroboard workout
• Day 22 – Walking
• Day 23 – Gyroboard workout

Day 24 – The Walk in the Park

The LeapStars 24 January 2012

So, here we are at Day 24. I headed into Hagley Park to join the team from Leap Fitness & Motivation (find out about them here) and several hundred others, who decided it’d be a good idea to do three laps of a portion of the park. Walk or run, you take your pick.

It’s actually part of the Shoe Clinic Asics 5K Series, which is one of the most popular and longest established athletics events in Christchurch. It is run over three laps of a 1.7km course in Hagley Park North with races weekly on Tuesday evenings over January.

Find out more about the event here. There’s still one more chance for you!

This is the first time I have been social with my exercising since I started on 1 January 2012. It was nice to get out with this awesome, positive bunch of people. The evening was sunny and we all supported and encouraged each other around the course.

Leap Fitness and Motivation also made sure that we stretched before and after, which is essential when you’re exercising! I will definitely be back to Leap 2 It next week… the question remains what then? I heard them utter the words City to Surf so that could be an idea… we’ll see.

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On a summer’s evening, people tend to gather and spend the evenings outdoors. You can hear laughter, music, the sound of people eating, and oh, the smell of food cooking on the barbeque. There really is nothing better to relax you. Even when you are in the middle of a disaster zone, like we are here with the Christchurch Quakes.

Nature has given us a tough time as the planet reminds us that we are just parasites living on it’s back. We’ve been through nearly 10,000 aftershocks (hard to believe we are getting close to that number). But even with all the horror and challenges Nature at its worse presents us, you can also find signs of beauty.

Walking around the neighbourhood, as well as the noises and smells I’ve mentioned above, you also get to experience life at it’s best. Kids happily playing in the park or in their back yards. A well tended garden with beautiful roses within reach, their scent filling the evening air. People out walking or jogging, enjoying the warmth and the sun and each others company.

The thirty minutes went quickly, and as I turned down the street leading to mine, I noticed the damage to the houses, the bricks that have been removed from the walls and replaced with temporary plywood cladding. The widening cracks in the foothpath. The deepening potholes in the road. The liquefaction around lampposts. Even with these reminders of the earthquake, I managed to keep my mood positive. After all, on a night such as this, it’s good to be alive, and I feel grateful that I do have the ability to exercise and improve my health, fitness, energy, moods and well being.

What have you done today to appreciate the good things in  your life?

But first, a quick run down of today’s routine. I decided to repeat the Gyroboard beginner’s workout for a third day. So I did. However today I was finding the exercises easier to do, so I added more reps into each set, including the weights. By the end of my 30 minutes I felt like I had achieved a good work out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=71oNFq-1ihs

I’ve posted the above video to give you an idea of what you can do when you add dumbbells to your routine. Please remember that these videos are to be used for information purposes only. Should you wish to utilise these exercises for your own core strength and injury prehabilitation training, please do so after consulting with qualified professionals, such as sports coaches, personal trainers, or physiotherapists.

It doesn’t actually take too many sessions to start feeling and even seeing the benefits of the Gyroboard. When you get onto the deck and start warming up, I’m told that you are actually using every muscle in your body. That sounds pretty good to me.

Now to the other side effect of exercise. I am a self confessed chocoholic. In the past, when stress gets too much, I reach for some chocolate or other sweet comfort food. But since I’ve started exercising, my desire for comfort food has been reduced dramatically! So this is another side effect that can be added to the increased energy, motivation and focus.

Surely that’s not a bad thing, is it?

Since February 22, 2011 I have had a set of dumbell weights sitting by my front door, which have proved to be a very good door stop. Thanks to the earthquakes we’ve been having in Christchurch, my house is no long upright and level, so the door swings easily shut by itself, hence the need for a door stop. However, I decided on Day 8 to get the weights out of the box and put together one with the lightest discs on the bar. This has a total weight of 2.5kg.

At this point in time it is important to note that I am not a personal trainer! If you want to follow along with what I’m doing, I do recommend that you check everything out with your healthcare provider and a professional trainer. I’m going slowly with any exercises I introduce to my own routine.

This includes adding weights to the Gyroboard beginner’s workout routine. I’m going very easy on what I am doing. I decided that I would just do a few bicep curls, and managed ten on each arm. This was standing on the stable ground of Christchurch, rather than up on the Gyroboard deck. I think I will leave that challenge for a few more weeks!

Aside from finding exercising easier, I am also noticing some other few side effects. Good ones though. I have more energy and motivation and am finding it easier to focus. After the lethargy brought on by the trauma and stress of the Christchurch Quakes, it’s nice to feel more like my old self!

There is another benefit to my exercising including the Gyroboard Beginner’s workout routine, but I’ll share that tomorrow.

If you want to know more about my Christchurch Earthquake experiences, you can do that through this link.

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Warming Up on the Gyroboard

In the interests of full disclosure, I was involved in the early days with the business planning, research and development on the Gyroboard, as well as the marketing when the product was launched. So, I am a bit biased. However, that said, I have over the years used other gym equipment and find the Gyroboard is not only fun, but it is challenging for people of all levels.

When I was helping with the marketing, I worked with a personal trainer to put together an exercise routine for beginners. So I pulled out the poster, and then climbed onto the deck and started with a ten minute warm up.

The Gyroboard has a flat deck attached to a braking mechanism that sits on a steel spring. The board can rotate a full 360 degrees and at varying degrees depending if you have the brake on or released slightly (or fully). It also has a safety locking pin, and for today’s exercise routine, I have that locked in place! I haven’t been on the Gyroboard for quite some time, so I’m not going to take any risks yet.

The warm up I did was standing on the deck, feet spread at either end, and rocked back and forth. It’s a workout in itself as you try to maintain your balance, with the deck wobbling in all directions. The important thing to remember is to keep you belly button pulled in tight and to look straight ahead. If you look anywhere else, you tend to lose your balance.

After the warm up, I went through the exercises on the chart, which used the Gyroboard as a focus. These exercises included squats, tricep dips, press ups, lunges, leg extensions and some abdominal stretching. At the end of the routine I went through the warm down exercises. It took 30 minutes in total, and it certainly felt like I’d had a good fun core training workout by the end!

If you would like to buy a Gyroboard for yourself, and follow along with me as I train you can purchase one in New Zealand through Trade Me.

If you are in North America, Europe or South Africa, you can find out more information by visiting Gyroboard.com.

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For me, a Mall Crawl involves walking as fast as possible from one end of the mall to the other, and back again, without stopping to explore shops. Usually this works well. I’ve reached that stage in life where retail therapy is pointless because a) I seem to have everything I need and b) the budget doesn’t stretch to impulse buys at the moment.

I was doing really well until I discovered that Glassons has either moved or disappeared. In it’s place was an intriguing looking shop called Pongo, with paintings, outdoor furniture, giftware and other interesting items. So I stopped off and ended up talking with the owner, Andrew Rollings. You can learn more about this shop and our conversation HERE.

After that, I continued my walk, and then went into Countdown Supermarket to do some hunting and gathering. Whilst this isn’t ideal fun core training, it certainly had me being rather active for a good couple of hours! I also timed my exit from the mall quite nicely, as once I reached my car my cell phone started buzzing with texts from people wanting to know if I was okay. Huh?

It didn’t take me long to discover we’d had a 4.8M aftershock which I’d missed! Pheweee. I haven’t experienced one of those during a Northlands Mall Crawl, nor do I want to!

Tomorrow, I promise I will do a Gyroboard routine and tell you where you can purchase this fun core training equipment.

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Today’s 30 minutes exercise turned into an hour in the garden, weeding, trimming plants and mowing lawns. I confess I had neglected the garden for quite a few months, a bit like I had neglected my exercise routines. Lots of work to do, but it feels good to even get small patches tidy.

I’ve noticed that since I have committed to doing at least 30 minutes a day exercise – no exceptions, I am starting to get more energy, and able to focus better at the tasks I am working on! Yay me! My moods are more positive, and I’m also finding it easier to recover from the shock of the aftershocks. The downside is that at the moment, I seem to be wide awake at night, so I’m having trouble sleeping. That’s a little bit of anxiety playing out, because Mama Nature does not seem to respect our need for sleep.

That said, tonight sleep deprivation has caught up, and I can barely keep my eyes open as I type this up. Seems the gardening has worked at tiring me out. With this in mind, I will leave you with the Silver Ferns physiotherapist, Sharon Kearney, to introduce you the Gyroboard in this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQum9bfAEk

My Poppa, Ivan Donnell, grew up on the farm, which had a New Brighton Road address, and when he married my Nana, Clarice, they moved further along New Brighton Road. I had noticed a few weeks ago that the house had been abandoned, and knowing that demolition of Red Zone residential homes would begin in February, I decided it was a good day to take one last stroll down memory lane.

As soon as I approached the area, I could easily see why the land had been zoned Red. For want of a better term, it had been liquefied. I drove past my grandparents’ old house, down Stour Drive and into Brooker Ave. At first glance, the park looked okay, but once I got out and walked around, I could see huge pockets of liquefaction in the grass. Then I came to the basketball and tennis courts. The damage to them was incredible.

The Tennis Courts are Liquefied

I spent some time walking around the park, then headed down Dunair Drive, out onto New Brighton Road, and along the river to where the Burwood Post Office once stood. I’m sure there used to be a memorial plaque there, but it was either hidden in the overgrown rose bushes, or it had been buried when they did urgent repairs to the river bank.

I remembered coming over here when I was little to visit the person who lived in the old cob cottage. My grandparents told me lots of stories about it, and also shared what they knew for an unsung heroines article at the Christchurch City Library.

And so, across the road to my grandparents house. It was definitely abandoned. There was so much liquefaction on the property. How heartbreaking for the people who had lived there. I could see they had started renovating the old house. I looked in windows and the memories came flooding back. So many happy holidays there. My Nana had always loved her view of the river and across to the Port Hills. I felt relieved that this had not happened in their life time.

I lived around the corner from them for a few years. I remember one night coming to visit them, and asking my Poppa if the River Avon had ever flooded and burst its banks. Not in his lifetime, he said. Sadly it took the Christchurch Quakes to make that happen.

In the abandoned garden I could see a rose bush blooming. I remembered it from my childhood. I cheekily picked a rose to take home.

Then I headed back to Donnell Sports Park, via Stour Drive. I looked at all the houses in this area, the ones that had been built during my childhood, and thought that I’d probably played in most of them as they were being constructed. Now they were all condemned.

I was glad to get back to my car, to escape the fine dust that the liquefaction silt turns into. My walk took 45 minutes in all, and my heart goes out to the people that have lost their homes in the area. Some have already left, whilst others are hanging in there until they can clear their heads enough to make a decision about their future. And even though it’s been several years since we left the area, I feel as if a huge chunk of my own history and memories are being liquefied thanks to the Christchurch Quakes. Kia Kaha, my fellow Earthquake Veterans.

Deb Donnell

One of the popular Christchurch Quake games is "Pick Up Books"

So what to do for exercise today? Looking around my house, I decided that giving it a good clean up from the Christchurch Quake would be a good way to get the muscles moving and burn up some calories. I spend a lot of time sitting at the computer screen, both with my day job and working on my business in the evenings, so at the moment, any activity is good activity.

I spent four hours giving the place a thorough clean, rearranging furniture to make it a bit more spacious, hanging some of my own artwork up on the walls, blu tacking ornaments down. I’ve decided I need to reclaim my space as my own.

For people who haven’t been living through the Christchurch Quakes, or experienced similar disasters elsewhere in the world, each time we have a major event (normally somewhere in the 5.5 magnitude range or higher) you arrive home to find furniture and contents have been shaken about your house.

We’ve had eleven of these events now, so you can imagine that it does get a bit tiring having to pick up everything and reorganise your house this many times. And you’d think that by now we would have learned the fix, fasten and forget rule off by heart. The thing is that we humans are optimistic and in the past, we didn’t think this would happen to us eleven times! I mean once was bad enough, twice was devastating, but eleven??? Most of my contents have been boxed up since June because three times was too much to be honest.

After eleven big shake ups though, it’s clear that we are still living through this event, and also that it’s going to be some time before a decision is made on whether my house will be repaired or rebuilt, and even longer before it will return to pre Christchurch Quake damaged state. In the meantime, I want to make my home as nice as possible, and so today’s clean up has gone quite a way to doing that, and proven to be fun exercise.

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The latest round of earthquakes have been violent, and seem to rock on for longer than normal. The one at 5:45am went on for over 40 seconds, which is a lifetime for Christchurch Earthquake Veterans. I’m not sure how I could describe the experience to you. The best I can do is to get you to imagine lying in a bunk on a boat on a stormy ocean that rocks violently for almost a minute.

If you have ever flown, and struck severe turbulence, it comes marginally close to the feeling of being in an earthquake. When I flew to Canada last year, the flight was turbulent. I kept myself calm by comparing it to earthquakes. What magnitude would this be? I asked myself. The worst it got was comparable to a 4.5, I think!

Mid afternoon I got in my car and drove aimlessly around the city, thinking I should go for a 30 minute walk, but not sure where. I confess I was not feeling safe anywhere, on full alert, just waiting for another aftershock. Our city has broken records today, with 48 aftershocks in 24 hours. No wonder I was on edge.

I ended up at Nunweek Park, in Bishopdale. The large open space seemed safe. So I forced myself from my car and lethargically walked around the park, and still had ten minutes to spare, so had to do another circuit. The area was new to me, so that was sort of interesting. But a park is a park, and I was aware, in the back of my mind, about the fact that the subdivision next to it had suffered a lot of liquefaction in February. It didn’t feel as safe as I would have liked. I’m not sure anywhere in Christchurch does anymore.

So, did I feel better after my walk? Marginally. It was enough to get my brain functioning again so that I could get through the rest of the day.

Let’s hope that we will all get a good night’s sleep and that the earth will not rock too violently.

Deb Donnell

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