A slack week and a bit of link love
It’s been a bit of a slack week with regard to my running. Monday and Tuesday were great. 14km and 13km respectively. Wednesday I was away all day at our local Microsoft headoffice as I had some student groups presenting in the Imagine Cup finals. Thursday we had a staff retreat and on Friday I had to go in very early to catch up on the work that I hadn’t done while being out of the office. I probably could have done a bit better with my planning and gotten some runs in but I think the rest will do me good so I’m not too fussed.
This morning (it’s Saturday here in NZ) I got up early (5AM) and headed out for a run. I love the early runs as I love running along and watching the sun come up:
Conditions were great and it was really nice to get out and stretch the legs. Once the sun was up it got a bit warmer:
But it was still great!
I’ve done 252 km in February and 516 km (321 miles) for the year so far. That’s not bad if I say so myself.
In other news, Brandon over at So long, fatass has issued a Weekend warriors challenge which I think I’ll enter. He’s noticed that he’s great at healthy living during the week but not so great on weekends. That’s one of my biggest weaknesses as well. So the idea is that next weekend we live healthy as well and see what results we can get.
Kepa, from The Lazy Fat Guy (and a fellow New Zealander), met and fell in love with Mary over at A Merry Life. She’s recently been here in NZ to visit him and now that she’s back in the States he’s pining away for her. He wants to visit her but he’s a poor student so he’s asking for donations. The blogosphere has been very kind to him so far and he’s almost raised enough money for his trip. If you’ve got a minute head over to his blog and read his story. He’s quite an impressive fellow who started off at over 500 pounds and has recently hit his first goal of getting under 220 pounds. He got on the TV news for that!
One Hundred Push-ups in a Row
It’s been a long time coming but I’m pleased to announce that I have completed the hundred push-up challenge. I’ve started this challenge at least 7 times and it just goes to show that if you stick with it you can actually do it. The last ten push-ups were not pretty but I don’t care. I’m done! I think I’ll stick to doing 50 push-ups every few days as a maintenance program but I never want to go through all those levels again!
Weigh-in post #8 2010: Onderland!
A bit of a slower week this week with only .8 kg (1.8 pounds) lost. I sort of expected that as I ate rather poorly while away and it took me a few days to get totally back into my routine.
So far it’s been an all green year:
A small milestone this week in that I dropped below the 200 pound mark. I also crossed the 50 kg lost mark for us metric folk.
I’m down to single figures in terms of pounds to go to my initial goal of getting into the normal BMI. 
A wee run around Wellington
I mentioned in my previous post that I would be away travelling this week. I went to Christchurch on Tuesday and Wellington on Wednesday to present at an academic roadshow organised by Microsoft NZ.
It was most enjoyable but to be honest the highlight of my trip was that I got to go running in Wellington!
I got up at 5am and had a quick breakfast of some instant oats and a coffee and then headed out the door.
Wellington is famous for it’s wind but conditions were perfect on Wednesday. My hotel is one of the buildings on the right of this image.
I really liked this sign:
I actually ran so far that I ran right out of the city. All of a sudden the buildings all disappeared and it was just winding coast road!
On my way back to the hotel I ran around our parliament building which is known as the beehive because it’s got a beehive shape.
Here’s my route map:
It was really great to go for a run somewhere new and I really enjoyed it. It was especially enjoyable knowing that my fellow roadshow attendees thought I was nuts!
I did 20.2km which was just as well as I had to offset the extra eating I did. These events are always catered and I was eating out a lot so I was a bit worried. Fortunately it turns out that I actually lost weight while I was away. Not much but I came back lighter than when I left. I must admit I was somewhat surprised by that as I thought I’d eaten one cookie too many! But I’ll take it!
Weigh in post #7 2010: Hear the Tiger roar!
Another all green week with 1.37 kg (3 pounds) lost off my trend line. As you can see by the upward slope on the green it was a close run thing. The reason for this is simple: I ate too much! In my defence, it was Chinese New Year (it’s now the year of the Tiger) and we had a big family gathering and you are supposed to eat well so I did! And it was good. Having said that I did not go nuts and still managed to post a loss so I’m quite happy.
Looking at the chart for the year below I think you can definitely tell where the weekends are! But I’m happy with it.
I’ve got a consistent weekly loss with mainly healthy eating and a bit of variety on the weekends. I’m still avoiding bread at home and I still think that that is one of the keys to my success. Bread is really my kryptonite.
One other thing I’ve noticed is that when I have sugar (like I did Saturday evening for Chinese New Year’s Eve) then it is a real struggle the next day to avoid it. I definitely believe I’m addicted to sugar and avoidance is the best policy overall. I think I’ll try and stick to savoury snacks instead of sweet. I’ve also found that after not eating sugar for a while that sugary snacks are just not as nice as I remember although after having them I still long for more. :p
I’m travelling to Christchurch and Wellington for two days this week and it’s going to be interesting to see how I manage my eating while having mainly restaurant food. I’m going to pack my running gear too so expect to see at least one post about running in a different city!
Running up One Tree Hill
About ten years ago some nutter attempted to chop down the tree on One Tree Hill here in Auckland. It was quite an iconic symbol of Auckland and unfortunately it eventually died because of the attack and had to be pulled down.
The photo on the left shows the supports that the council placed on the tree to try and support it but to no avail.
Last night on the news they showed some new trees that they were going to plant. There’s been a lot of political wrangling about what type of trees etc. to plant and it seems like they’ve decided to plant 9 trees. No word on if they are changing the name to Nine Tree Hill yet!
As such, I decided I would take a run up One Tree Hill to go and have a look at these new trees.
Unfortunately it seems like they’d only been put up there for a photo opportunity as when I got to the top there was only a bare patch of ground where they had shown trees on the news!
It was a rather beautiful dawn moment as I got close to the top:
There were a lot of walkers going up – I guess with the same idea as me – and I felt really hardcore as I was the only I saw running up even though some of the walkers came perilously close to overtaking me!
Overall I did 22.5 km this morning. Which brings my total weekly mileage to 74.2 km (46.1 miles) which is the most I’ve run in a week ever! A great little milestone.
And here is a little music for you:
Mad dogs and Englishmen
I had a really early meeting yesterday morning so I decided it was better to go for my run at lunchtime. There’s an expression: Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Well, technically I’m an Englishman as I travel on a British passport but I was born in South Africa and now am a citizen of New Zealand so I guess that makes me more of a mad dog!
Conditions were HOT!
I didn’t carry any water either as there were water fountains along the way but they seemed few and the distance between them seemed to stretch off into infinity.
That red sail you can see in the distance is one of our former America’s cup winning boats.
Here it is again:
And a a contrast here are the conditions at about 7AM on Monday morning:
I much prefer running in the early morning. It is just such a nice way to start the day. I found that I was sitting in my meetings thinking so many more hours till I can go run!
I enjoyed my hot run even though I drank a solid two litres of water afterwards! Weight loss through extreme dehydration is not really part of my plan though! So far 40 km this week and it’s only Wednesday.
Changing habits with Habit Changer
I was offered the chance to try a habit changing program by the folks at Habit Changer. They asked if I’d take one of their 42-day programs and then blog about it–whether my “experience was positive or not.” I decided I could live with that so accepted. This is my review: Read more
Weigh in post #6 2010: Now with push-ups!
It’s been another great week for my health and fitness goals. The weight side of the equation is going well. Another all green week with 1.28 kg (2.8 pounds) lost off my trend line.
For those who don’t know, I record my weight at PhysicsDiet.com every morning and it computes a trend line which smooths out the daily fluctuations. If my actual weight is lower than the trend my graph stays green. If it goes higher the graph switches to red. I use my trend line weight as my actual weight as that is what I’m maintaining even though my scale weight is about a kg (2 pounds) lighter. Once I move closer to my goal the line between trend and actual should merge.
And so far it has been an all green year!
If you look at the chart for the year I think it is reasonably easy to see where the weekends where I overindulged are! This last weekend’s eating was reasonably good overall although I did have some cake at a friends birthday party and the sugar did make me long for junkfood in the evening. However I resisted and so had a reasonably good weigh-in this morning.
In other news I did the end of week 04 push-up test yesterday morning and did a whopping 75 push-ups in a row! That is a new personal best for me. The hundred push-up challenge rocks!
A great Saturday
It’s been a wonderful Saturday here in sunny New Zealand.
My wife and I started the day right by going out for a run together. She’s ramping up her long runs again and I was having a cutback week so we did 13 km. A long run for her and a nice easy run for me. It was really nice running with her and the conditions were just perfect.
We got home, showered and then went to the Parnell markets and did a bit of shopping. At the first market we bought some lemon kurd and at the second one, some feta cheese and some stuffed peppers. Unfortunately we forgot to take them out of the car and we had to throw the cheese out later in the day but such is life sometimes.
We then went and picked up my wife’s cousin and his wife and went down to Okahu Bay where there was a big Waitangi Day festival on. Waitangi day celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi which is sort of New Zealand’s founding document. So we have a public holiday on a Saturday. :p
My monkey and I went on the spinning tea cups and had great fun:
Afterwards we went to a cafe for Ice Coffees and cake. I did say I eat healthy Monday to Friday in my last post!
I’ve been planning a vegetable garden so afterwards we went out to Bunnings (a large hardware/building/garden supplies store) where I bought all the supplies to make a small raised vege garden. I built the box. It’s about 4ft by 4ft. I filled it with a mixture of organic compost, pumice stone, peatmoss and organic fertilisers and then planted some vegetables I’d bought. I also sowed a few seeds.
It came out pretty good if I say so myself:
As I said, it’s been a great Saturday.
Daily Mile
-
RoadID
