After Work Run Update

I'm now into my third week of running 3km after work and I'm loving it. It's cold and wet right now, but I'm really seeing through that and focusing on the run. Run after run, I've pushed myself to try and do more and more and yesterday, I finally managed the whole thing. I was worried today that I wouldn't be able to do it again, but I did.

I'm hoping things stay like that, but as the week goes on, I tend to feel more rundown. The best performances tend to happen at the beginning of the week.

I'm really pleased that I've shaved over three minutes of the time too.

All that's left is to keep at it and get quicker.

Latest 5km Run

I was very bitter this weekend because I woke up on Saturday with a fierce shooting pain in my leg, resulting in me hobbling around. This meant I could not complete this month's 5km run. I'm extra peeved because the snow in December meant I missed that one too. In terms of me running a 5km race every month, this is not cool.

The good thing was that I managed to sleep it off (don't ask!) so I still fitted in my weights session.

This puts me in the dilemma of now either running two runs in February (I'm busy this weekend), or sticking another one at the end of the year, which following the snow, I've already done.

I'm inclined to do two runs in Feb, but watch this space, I'll get back to you on that.

Feeling Refreshed

I've just had a day of weights, stretching, running and press ups and I'm feeling revitalised and refreshed.

Last week was tough because it was the new year and I think I was trying to do too much, especially considering I hadn't worked out for a few weeks over Christmas.

I know it sounds like a lot, but what I'm trying to aim for on a weekly basis is the following:

4 Runs
3 Weight Sessions
2 Punchbag Sessions
1 Football Game

I didn't achieve this last week and I'm being realistic when I say I don't think I'll be achieving it this week. Last week it looked more like this (actual times I exercised in brackets):

4 Runs (2)
3 Weight Sessions (2)
2 Punchbag Sessions (0)
1 Football Game (1)

So out of ten sessions, I managed just half at five. I guess it's not that bad to start the year off, but I'm definitely looking to shoot that up to eight and then the full ten next week.

I'm worried about fatigue and feeling rundown, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

New Strategy 5

I'm absolutely shattered this week following the running, football and weight sessions. I've had to take a rest today because I feel so run down. I guess as I didn't workout over the Christmas period, I can't exactly come back with intense exercises and expect to do every session. That's something for me to build on in the weeks to come.

Anyway, before I move on to the final part of strategy for the first quarter of 2011, here's a quick reminder of what we've gone through this week:

Exercise
Weighing
Alcohol
Diet

The final part of this strategy is just plain old chilling. Relaxing. Taking it easy. That's it.

In the past, I've had too many downward spirals where I've perhaps had a chocolate in the day which has given me the attitude of 'well I've blown the good eating today, might as well carry on and start again tomorrow'. This would result in more chocolate, cakes and sweets, followed by a takeaway, cheesecake and possibly some booze. Not good.

During this new year, I've tried to change my attitude that it's ok to to go wrong here and there. For instance, on two occasions this week, I've had a chocolate flapjack which is roughly the size of two Dairy Milk squares. The key thing is, I didn't panic and stress and stuff my face. I ate it, got the taste from it, savoured it and that's it. Over. Back to normal. No binging or downward spirals. Just back to normal.

I'm beginning to realise that relaxing is a major element of a well balanced diet. You NEED those meals once a week where you get a takeaway and have a dessert. It keeps you going until the next time and most importantly won't make you go crazy and binge.

That's the new strategy as a whole. Just some small tweaks to what I've been doing really. Feel free to use!

New Strategy 2

Right, I told you yesterday about my amended work out schedule as of 2011 yesterday, including my 'running home from work' bit (you can read the post here)

The next change I've made is that I will now weigh myself once a week, rather than everyday. Click here to see a post as to why I still think there are advantages to weighing yourself everyday.

The reason I've now opted to try this out is because I'm hoping it will be a different way of adding 'pressure' to a weight loss programme. For example, if you weigh yourself one day and have a target loss in seven days time, then you'll be under pressure in those seven days to lose the weight as you don't know what you're weighing in at on a daily basis. You'll find out seven days later.

I still feel that weighing daily, weekly and monthly do have their pro's and con's. You use what works for you.

Tomorrow I'll let you know about my new target system.

New Strategy 1

Hope you're well and enjoying the new year!

All of this week I plan to let you know about a 'new strategy' that I devised for myself prior to Christmas. I'm not sure if its going to work, but I can only try. Please feel free to take any tips from it and use them yourself.

The first major thing I've worked on is the exercise. Last year I'd be doing three weigh sessions and three 5km running sessions with just Sunday as rest. This year, I'll be sticking with the three weight sessions a week, but I've introduced five shorter runs EVERY week day. I now get my wife to drop me 3km from home after work and I run back.

I think the shorter runs will be more effective and will allow me the whole weekend to recuperate.

I've also decided to commit to five-a-side on a weekly basis, so I'll drop the run on the day I'm playing. The group of people I play football with is always huge, so you don't get a game every week. Whenever I don't play, I'll run.

We'll see how this goes for a couple of weeks because it could be exhausting. I'll adjust as we go along.

Tomorrow, on to a look at the diet.

Knee injury

Totally PEEVED this morning!!! Woke up at 7am to hit the road for an early morning jog thinking I'd be fine, but my leg was in so much pain. Even more than when I actually tripped over yesterday!!!

I've got a new running programme I'm starting on Monday, but more on that next week. I'll need to rest it until then.

Still need to get back on track with the food following the Xmas period too. More on that to tomorrow.

Annoying cold

Was hoping to start running this morning, but still can't fully shake off this cold I've had since Thursday. The worst of the illness has gone, but still sneezing away with a runny nose. Hopefully will be back on track tomorrow.

Punchbag Work

Normally I would use my punchbag for warming up before my weights session, but from this morning I'm turning into a form of cardio straight after the session.

To get in the sort of time I would when running, I'm trying out 30 x 45 seconds on the punchbag with 15 seconds rest in between each set.

Needless to say, I didn't manage to get through the 30 sets today, but hopefully it'll be a different story by the end of the week.

Either was still totally shattered after, so should be on the right track.

Working out barefoot

It was a very busy week work wise last week and I was totally shattered by the weekend. Admittedly, I didn't do much running last week, but I still stuck with all of my weight workouts, despite my freezing cold garage, and did quite a bit of cardio work on the punch bag too.

One thing that I've been doing for a few months now and I'd highly recommend is working out barefoot. The theory behind this one is that when working with weights, you need to have a solid, supportive core structure, from your chest and abs, down to your legs and feet. Working out barefoot actually helps to develops muscles in your feet while you workout the other muscles in your body, so in a way it doubles your workout just by taking your trainers off. It makes for stronger feet to support the rest of your body.

I guess this is the way caveman would've trained back in the day, walking and running barefoot. Ideally, if you like to run, running on a soft surface barefoot would be the ultimate way to strengthen your feet, but unfortunately that environment isn't available to everyone.

Try working out barefoot for a week and see how you get on. I found it tough at first, but months later, my feet honestly feel stronger for it. I can feel the difference, especially in squats, lunges and calf raises. Trainers squash and mould your feet in an unnatural position, going barefoot allows them to breathe and be free they way they should be.

Business as usual

Just got out of the gym, went for a run. Hopefully I'm back in the swing of things.

The next 5km run is coming up. More details on that later.

Respect to @donnyrax on Twitter too, he's enjoying the old peanut butted on wholemeal bread vibe!

Mini challenge update

I've got until the end of this month to complete the mini challenge I've set with my cousin (see http://mytwelvemonthmission.blogspot.com/2010/09/training-partner.html)

I'm excited about telling you the details of it, but I'll wait until this Sunday to let you know when we've finished.

I will tell you I'm feeling really good right now, though. Energised.

Weighing Everyday

I know a lot of people are against it, but I've found myself checking my weight everyday. I always make sure I check it as soon as I get up in the morning.

I've heard many people say you shouldn't do it because it seems too obsessive, but I don't see why you can't do it.

Things are going well in terms of weight loss at the moment, so stepping on the scales in the morning is something I actually look forward to, knowing I've done a day of good eating and exercise.

It's really up to you whether you decide to go for weekly or daily weigh ins. If you're looking for huge losses and eating well and exercising right, then maybe holding off to once a week is the way to go. On the other hand, if you're like me and want to feel like you want to see daily results, albeit a smaller amount of loss per day compared to a week, then do it daily.

Do what suits you, but don't let people tell you it's obsessive if you weigh yourself daily!

5km Race Update

Disappointed with my 5km run this month. Managed 28.23, about 1.12 slower than last month. Here's how it stands...

July 5km - 34.02
August 5km - 30.22
September 5km - 27.11
October 5km - 28.23

I was really excited about this run, I genuinely thought I could achieve 25 mins. I've been working very hard on my interval running over this month, notching up about 8km in 45 mins.

I knew I had to run each km at 5 mins max, so I started off very strong, keeping up with the first half of the runners. At 1km, I clocked in at 5.07. So I was a little bit behind and i started to panic. I ended up doing too much in the second km which made things worse in the third and didn't leave me much to salvage in the last 2km.

I'll need to make some tweaks to my training now. I've already got a few things in mind. I'll start working on it from Tuesday.

I'm booked up to January for the 5km races. I'll definitely make an improvement in November.

Nike+ Sensor

So got that Nike+ Sensor over the weekend. Finally used it today and it's brilliant.

If you've not seen one before, here's what it looks like...



Basically, you've got two sensors, one that you connect to the bottom of your iPod and a second which goes inside your trainer. It only works with Nike+ trainers, because they have a little slot in the inside of the left shoe that you connect the sensor to.

Once you're up and running, you can set all sorts of runs, ie distance runs, timed runs, calorie burning runs. I used it for a 50 minute run, and every 10 minutes, it alerts you in your headphones how long you've run. I'm sure if I'd set it to 5km, it would alert me every km.

It's brilliant, I love it. You can get spoken feedback as you're running, so it keeps you going. It's got a power song feature too, which kicks in a chosen track for you when you need it for the last part of the run... I'm sure you might be thinking Eye Of The Tiger haha!!!

It's a good addition to your running, well recommended.

Positive Comments

Got some really good comments over the weekend. Saw some family that I haven't seen in a while and a couple of them commented on how I'd got more definition around my shoulders and bigger arms (although I still think there's only a slight increase in them!)

I guess it helps if you're doing something like this and you see people who you haven't seen in a while because they'd really be able to see the big differences in you. When people see you everyday, including looking in the mirror yourself, you may not be able to see the differences as much as others.

Anyway, they were positive comments for me to take on board and to keep me carrying on. Brilliant.

Training Partner

If you're looking to follow a work out programme or just eat better, I think one of the best things you can do is find a person or group of people who have similar goals to you as a way of keeping you on track. You may read about it all the time, and I know different things work for different people, but for me I think it's a brilliant idea that I'd recommend.

I was talking to a close cousin of mine over the weekend and we've devised a plan that hopefully we'll stick to that should keep each other on track with our goals. Last year, when we challenged each other over two months, I managed to lose my target of two stone and he completed his target too. We've got a chemistry that blends both support and healthy competition and it definitely works. If you can find someone or a group of people like this, trust me, you'll enjoy it the new found motivation.

So the plan we've come up with differs from our plan last year, in which we both wanted to be a certain weight at the end of two months. This time round, we're going to set monthly targets to stick to. The interesting thing is, they're not always going to be weight targets. One month I may say, 'I want to be x kg's', the following month I may say 'I want to get my 5km time down to x minutes' and the month after, 'I want to be able to bench x kg's'.

I think mixing these goals up on a monthly basis keeps the motivation and competition going and adds a freshness to your goals. You might get bored with constantly looking at weight as a target, so using other markers can mix things up for you.

We only started yesterday and we've both set weight targets for the end of the month. I'll let you know how I get on. We said we'd do it for six months initially, but there's no reason why you couldn't do it for life. You don't need to constantly need to lose weight, for instance if you reach an ideal weight, you could use the same weight target the following month to see if you can maintain that level. It is, however, useful to challenge yourself physically.

If you can find someone or a group of people who'll do this with you, it could really be worthwhile. If you're doing it already, good stuff and why didn't you tell me before!?

Third 5km Race Down... Nine To Go...

I'm writing this as my body is aching from pains from yesterday's 5km race. Good news is it was worth the pain because I've notched up my best ever 5km time now, beating the last record by OVER THREE MINUTES!!! I managed to complete yesterday's race in 27 minutes and 11 seconds! Brilliant!!!

Here's the progress so far:

July 5km - 34.02
August 5km - 30.22
September 5km - 27.11

It's really encouraging to see the figures going down. I know there's a drastic decrease from race to race, I'm sure that gap will get smaller as we go along, but I'm totally over the moon about this latest result. Break the 25 minute barrier for the next race in October? Let's not jump the gun yet, we'll wait and see.

This was a charity fun run rather than a race like the last competition I was involved in. There were lots of different abilities here. I made the usual mistake again that I did last time too. After 1km, I looked around for someone who was running at a similar pace to me and stuck with him, but at around 3km I thought I'd leave him behind. By about 4.5km, I was flagging and he just jogged right by me and finished before me. I really need to learn to keep a reasonable pace for 4km and then really up the intensity as best I can for the final km. I had a nice sprint finish though.

Even though I'm doing the 10km obstacle course in October, I've booked myself in for a 5km run in October too, even though I said I wouldn't because of the obstacle course. Sod it, I've booked it now. In fact, I've booked the next three races until December. That'll be six by then, half way there.

Surely I should be under 25 minutes by then?

Kung Fu Fighting

Had my first lesson in Kung Fu last night in yen years and it was brilliant. My body is in so much pain this morning and that can only be a good thing. I remembered some of the moves and techniques from when I used to practice years ago. Main thing is, I enjoyed it, I found it challenging and hopefully I'm in it for the long haul.

Only thing is now, I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew! Thing is, Kung Fu won't work if I only go to a club once a week. I'll need to practice the techniques at least every other day, and this comes with having to stretch every day to get the flexibility for better techniques, especially kicking. Add this to the Press Up Challenge, running and weight sessions, basically I'm going to go mad!

Sod it, it's done now, I'll stick with it!

Got a 5km run coming up, will post up after it's done.

September Weigh In

It's the first of the month, and time for another weigh in.

After stepping off the scales this morning, I weighed in at 84.1kg, 0.9kg less than last month. Here's how it stands so far:

1st June - 79.5kg (12 stone 7.3lbs)
1st July - 85kg (13 stone 5.4lbs)
1st August - 85kg (13 stone 5.4lbs)
1st September - 84.1g (13st 3.40lbs)

Now I've got mixed emotions today. I guess I should be happy that I've managed to at least lose some weight, albeit a very very small amount. Unfortunately though, August was another one of those months where I actually got my weight down to roughly 80kg. It took about 2-3 weeks to do it, and then it just took the remainder of the month to put all the crap back on.

I went away for the second to last weekend of August, but here's the problem. I binged about a day before I went away (there was no need to), totally drank and ate lots of rubbish while there and then carried it on for the rest of the week and following weekend. Basically, I only got my act together on Monday just gone.

When you compare the weight to what it was in June, I am still technically going backwards. The only thing I can attribute it to is the food. Once I binge, I can't stop! As always, it's something I have to get under control myself.

Onto some positives now, my body is totally aching right now because I've still kept up with my exercise. Plenty of running and plenty of weight sessions. Even during that weekend that I was away, I found the gym and made sure I did plenty of running.

I've finished the football now. Part of this challenge was to get involved in a football tournament, which I did with my work lot. Unfortunately, we didn't make it beyond the group stage so it had a pretty abrupt ending. To replace that now, I'll be starting Kung Fu tomorrow. I used to do it about ten years ago and thought I'd take it up again because I know it will help with my flexibility. I'm looking forward to it. It's late tomorrow night so will let you know on Friday how it was.

Finally, my arms are looking as big as they've ever looked. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking Arnie arms here. I think I may have added roughly about half an inch to them. It's not a big amount, but it's definitely spurring me on because as I said, they're looking the best they've ever looked.

Got the next 5km coming up soon, so training for that too.

Will update you on Friday with the Kung Fu.

I may have some recruits for the Three Peaks Challenge next year too! That should be fun.