Andrew is getting fit

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The weigh in gods have been kind to me this week and I’ve knocked another half kg off my total.

I’m down to 92.87 kgs (204.7 pounds) now which is unbelievably low for me.  If I didn’t lose another gram I’d be happy to tell the truth but I’ll keep pushing on.   In many respects I think I’m no longer really trying for weightloss - I’m much more interested in my fitness.  Which is a great place to be.

I did day 01 of week 02 of the 100 pushup challenge in the gym today.  Today I was required to do 12, 12, 9 , 7 and max (min 10). I did 12, 12, 9, 7 and 12. I had no trouble at all today.  I guess it’s a bit of an easier session after the tough one at the end of week 01.

I’m getting a bit lazy with the max set of pushups so I’m going to make a real effort on Wednesday to do quite a few more than the minimum.  I know I could have done more today but the spirit was weak even though the flesh was willing.

I also participated in a virtual 5K today.  Technically I was supposed to do it yesterday but I figured it’s still the 29th in America so I’m fine.

I did it on the treadmill as I wanted to go to the gym as well.  Ironically the weather is glorious today and it would have been a perfect day for a run outside.

I think I did my fastest 5k ever on the treadmill with a time of 26:41.  I felt really good so I carried on and did another 5K which came in at 29:30 which, when you add them up (56:11), means I got a treadmill PR in both the 5K and the 10K!

Tags: PR, Weigh in, fitness, running by AndrewE
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I redid day 03 of week 01 of the 100 pushup challenge yesterday evening.  I couldn’t complete day 3 of week 01 last week.

However, this week I’m happy to report that I managed to do 15, 13, 10, 10 and then 16 pushups which means I qualify to move on to week 02 as I only had to do 15 for the last set.  To be honest I probably could have gutted out a few more but I wussed out and stopped after doing 1 more than the minimum.

The weather has been rather wintry (funny that) here in Auckland this week and today was no exception.  There’s been thunder, lightning and lots of cold rain.  Having said that, I needed to get my run in so I decided I would just wear my jacket and head out anyway.  While I was getting changed the rain started really crashing down and I started making excuses in my head but fortunately it stopped by the time I got to the front door.

I normally like to run by the coastline but after my experience with the high winds the other day I decided that I would be better off sticking inland today so I headed out towards One Tree Hill.

It was really nice out once I warmed up and the rain wasn’t really a problem.  I think the fear of rain is more of a problem than the rain itself which is probably true of most of our fears in life.  I was strangely happy to be out in the rain actually.  I think I get quite a kick out of doing things that I would have thought were the height of lunacy not too long ago.

Most of the run was along suburban streets except for the bit where I ran around One Tree Hill in Cornwall Park.  The park was rather deserted today.  Normally it is teeming with people out exercising but I guess the conditions weren’t really conducive to a nice day out.  I saw three other runners and one guy going flat out who zoomed past me.  I had a look behind me to see if he was being chased by the police but I guess he was just fast.

I passed quite a few bakeries and coffee shops on my route and I have to say it was a real struggle of the will to run past them but I managed.

Overall I did 13.9km in 1:25:33 for an overall pace of 6:09 minutes per km.

I’ve been having issues with snacking the last few days which is really annoying.  I’m a bit of a stress eater and I’m booked in for surgery next Friday and I guess it’s leading me to cookies and chocolate.

There has been a positive that has come out of finding out I need surgery next week.  It’s confirmed my status as a runner.  You see,  the first question I asked the doctor after he finished explaining the procedure was “How long until I can start running again?” He said about a week so I should be ok for my 10K race on Sunday.  I’ll just treat it as a nice slow long run.  Any time I set will be a PR so might as well make it one that is easy to beat!

Tags: fitness, running by AndrewE
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I was woken up a few times by the sound of heavy, heavy rain in the night and I remember thinking Damn, I’m going to have to use the treadmill! It was really thundering down.

However, I was heading towards the gym this morning when I thought This weather isn’t really that bad is it? So, instead of doing a nice indoor run I headed off down the street.

Things really didn’t seem to be too bad during the early part of my run and I was very pleased with my decision.  However, I started to get a bit apprehensive as I approached the coastline and the electronic signs on the approach to our harbour bridge said “Warning, strong wind on bridge.” It can’t be that bad I said to myself as I blithely trotted on.

Oh boy, how wrong can one be?  As soon as I got into an exposed area my forward momentum slowed right down and I was having trouble staying on the pavement the wind was so strong.  To add insult to injury my city loop went very steeply uphill at that point.  My garmin reckons I climbed 900 ft but that seems excessive to me.

I managed to survive but had to resort to walking a few times.  It didn’t help that I felt certain internal rumblings and couldn’t find a bathroom for quite a while.

Overall I did 11.69 km in 1:15:46 at a quite leisurely pace of 6:29/km.  I walked at least a km of the loop so my overall running pace wasn’t too bad I guess.  This was definitely one of those runs that I did not enjoy.  I’m sure the next one will be better.  Two more months to Spring!

Tags: running by AndrewE
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A quickie lesson today:  Celebrate all your achievements.  No matter how little or silly.

Losing weight consistently is damn hard work and we need all the encouragement we can get.  Sometimes that encouragement has to come from ourselves and so we need to celebrate how well we are doing.

I break down all my goals into mini goals and whenever I reach one I celebrate it.  The celebration may involve buying new clothes, a little victory dance or a boastful exclamation!  One of the reasons I record my weight in pounds instead of kilograms is so that I have more milestones to celebrate.  It’s brilliant.

If you’d like to see all the posts in the series so far click here.

In other updates:

I redid day 2 of week 01 of the 100 pushup challenge this evening. The program calls for 12, 12, 10, 10 and max (min10).  I did 12, 12, 10, 10 and 20 for my max which I was really happy with.  A search for muscles victory dance may have been performed but I did not get busted by my wife.

I’ve got high hopes that I will complete week 01 day 03 this time.  I think doing the pushups in the evening has been brilliant.  The only hazard is that my daughter came and pushed my head down while I was on my max set on Monday which killed all further efforts.

Tags: Lessons by AndrewE
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As you know I’ve lost 100 pounds now and am sharing some of the lessons I’ve learnt. If you’d like to see all the posts in the series so far click here.

The lesson I learned is that I need to track what I’m eating.  Calories in have to be less than calories out if you want to lose weight.  I think a lot of us get frustrated at times as we believe that we are not eating much at all but the scale doesn’t move.  When this happens to me then I start writing what I’m eating down and working out the calories.  I soon find that that extra cup of Milo, that helping of grapes and those 3 cookies liberated from the baby have a surprisingly high calorie count.

Skinny Guy has just written a post on this:

Keeping a food journal will help you see not only what you eat, but also how much you eat. It is a strategy that will help you become more mindful of your eating habits and become more aware of how what you eat affects your body.

Your journal can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like. I know some folks who carry around a folded piece of paper and a pencil while others use spreadsheets and other high tech solutions, including web sites such as FitDay…

I’m pretty lazy so I don’t record everything I eat everyday, but when my weightloss slows down or I start noticing I’m eating stuff I shouldn’t be then I start to record everything for a few days, just to remind myself of the energy coming in that needs to be expended.

Tags: Lessons by AndrewE
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I restarted the 100 pushup challenge yesterday evening.  As you may recall I couldn’t complete day 3 of week 01 last week so I’m redoing week 01 this week.

I’ve decided I will do my pushups in the evening instead of first thing in the morning as I have this suspicion that attempting a lot of pushups on an empty stomache is not a good idea.  Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Anyways, I was supposed to do 10, 10, 8, 6 and max (min 7).  I did all the required and a max of 16 so there is already a 100% improvement from last week when I could only do 8 for my max.

I did a gym run this morning as the weather is still nasty.  Winter has finally arrived in New Zealand and it looks like we’ll have rain for a while.  I’ll run in heavy rain for a race but not for my normal runs on a workday.  I did 7.5km in 40 minutes which is a bit faster than I normally run and it was good.

My beloved scale has gone wonky.  I replaced the batteries and now it thinks I’m 37 kgs heavier than I am. Boy it brought back some memories seeing those high numbers flash up this morning!  I’ll have to go and get it replaced or fixed as I can’t do without my daily weigh in!

Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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I’m very pleased to be recording a loss this week as I haven’t exercised since Wednesday (except for my race yesterday) as I’ve been sick and I’ve been eating cookies and cake like nobody’s business (and they were gooood!).

And in some none scale victories I went shopping yesterday afternoon and bought pants and a shirt and they were both size “L”.  That is frigging amazing!  It wasn’t too long ago that I was a XXXXL.

Results from my race yesterday are in and I finished 2nd in my age group and 11th overall! It just goes to show that some regulars may be faster but they’re softer and allergic to rain. :)

Tags: Weigh in, running by AndrewE
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The weather forecast for today was for thunderstorms and lightning.  I’m pleased to announce that they were wrong.  As usual!  Instead it rained and it was one of those days that when it rains it pours!

My darling daughter was rather unsettled last night so I was awake, off and on, from about 2am onwards.  Every time I woke up it seemed like the rain had gotten heavier so I was feeling a bit nervous about the race itself.  However, I’ve been looking forward to this race for a while as it’s my last 5K (I’m switching to 10Ks) for a while and have been training quite hard for it.  So when the time to get up and get dressed came around I was up and at ‘em!

The weather didn’t seem too bad at first when I was driving to the event.  Having said that, about 2 km away from Western Springs the heavens opened and I had to slow right down on the motorway as I couldn’t really see the road ahead.  At this point I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea to turn around and go home.  That cannot happen I said to myself and pushed on.

I got there a little bit too early (as usual) and so sat in my car reading my book for a while.  My mate Richard and his flatmate had sent me a text message saying that only crazy people would be running in this weather so he was still at home in bed.  About 30 minutes before the event was due to start I went out looking for Marshmallow who had picked this event to do her first 5K in.  Truth be told I was wondering if she would turn up but I was fairly convinced that she would as she is a nut.  Well she was there and all psyched up and good to go.

We had a bit of a chat and a chuckle at the nuttiness of everybody and wondered if we would be allowed to run with umbrellas.

The race organisers decided that because it was so wet we would all start together.  Normally the 5kers start 5 to 10 minutes behind the 10kers so that we don’t get in their way.  The crowd was significantly smaller today so that was never going to be a problem.

The race itself was great.  I felt really good right from the get go.  There was a reasonably long hill climb right in the beginning and I overtook a lot of people on that.  I think all my hill training has paid off.  What goes up must go down and there was a very steep downhill about 3 km in to the race and I think I went a lot slower on the downhill than I did going uphill as the road was very slippery and there were rivulets of water making the footing rather treacherous.

There was a shortish sharp climb after the sharp descent and once more I passed heaps of people going up the hill.  I didn’t have any inclination to walk and just kept powering up it.  Unfortunately my shoelace came undone and I lost a bit of time trying to redo it.  My fingers were too cold and it too me a good twenty seconds to actually tie them.

I’d been using a fastish looking girl as my pace bunny and had decided to pass her going up that second hill but she repassed me while I was fumbling with my laces.

So in the last kilometer I made it my task to chase her down again.   I got to within 5 meters of her with about 100 meters to go and decided I had to pass her so I did my first sprint finish of the series.  I was amazed how much gas I actually had at the end and I finished quite a bit ahead of her so that was a nice mini victory.

My final time was 27:27 which is nowhere close to a PR but it was a very satisfying run nonetheless.  I felt like a winner just getting out on the course today!

Tags: running by AndrewE
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As you know I’ve lost 100 pounds now and am sharing some of the lessons I’ve learnt. If you’d like to see all the posts in the series so far click here.

Today’s lesson is start a blog and share your journey! I think starting this blog has really helped me in so many ways.

I know that when I first started running there were times that I wanted to give up and it was all too hard but I didn’t want to report failure to my readers so I gutted it out.  I always find that knowing I’m going to be reporting in to my readers incredibly motivating.  It has given me a sense of accountability in a way.  I’ve always been accountable to myself but knowing that there are other people out there who will be looking in at what I’m doing really helps to keep me going.

It’s also good being able to share when things don’t go according to plan.  Like this weekend when I’ve eaten way too many cookies and not done enough push-ups. It really helps when you get great support when things aren’t going exactly the way you would like them to.

It’s funny how the support network just appears when you start a blog.   It’s rather humbling that so many great people regularly visit my blog to cheer me on, offer advice and support.  You are all a great source of inspiration and I credit a lot of my success so far to you.

The other part of this lesson is that you should also read other people’s blogs.  I find so many of you inspirational and amazing.  And one thing I’ve learnt is that we are all in this together.  Some of our journeys are going well, some not so well but we are all taking action.  That has to be a good thing!

Just as an aside:  The weather forecast for my race tomorrow is thunder and lightning!

Tags: Lessons by AndrewE
19 Comments »

I attempted day 3 of the 100 pushup challenge today and it looks like I’ll be repeating week 01.  The program calls for 15, 13, 10, 10 and max (min 15) with 2 minutes rest between each set.

I managed 15, 13, 8, 8 and 8.  In the past this may have caused me to give up but I will just repeat week 01 until I can do it properly.  Hopefully the rest of you are having more luck.

Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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