Andrew is getting fit

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Don’t decide to do a run with a lot of hills when you are recovering from a cold!

I woke up this morning at 4:45am as my daughter was demanding her bottle in the way babies do. It sounded like it was raining so I thought bugger running and I went back to bed after feeding her. I then got rudely awakened again at 7am by my darling daughter who had decided that it was time to get up and play. This is actually quite a good lie in so I wasn’t too unhappy.

I was feeling very phlegmy and it was drizzling so again I thought bugger running and went off to get my breakfast. After my coffee and a lovely omelette I was feeling a bit more lively and looked out the window again and the sun was shining and I thought bugger running but went and got my running gear on.

I wanted to do about 10 km this morning as I haven’t run as much as I should this week due to my cold. I decided that I would do a loop that incorporated parts of some of the other runs I have done as it should be approximately 10K. The advantage of this loop is that it starts and stops at my house so there was no need to drive anywhere. However, one thing I hadn’t factored in was that this loop was rather hilly.

I started off by running along Shore Rd which is the route I take when I’m walking home. I then ran up a very steep hill to St Stephens Ave and down to Resolution Pt. A quick gander at the beautiful view and then down to Tamaki drive and along to the Boat Sheds. I was then in the home stretch but when I looked at my Garmin I realised that I had only done about 7 km so I veered off into the Orakei Basin and ran through it.

I passed a walker as I went into the Basin. There is a little pier in the Basin and I ran to the end of it and had a quick pause to swig some of my water and admire the view. As I was doing this the walker passed me. I then continued running and quickly passed her again and she very nicely got out of my way saying “I’m a lot slower than you.” Hah! About 100 metres further along there were some a hell of a lot of stairs and they totally wiped me out. Guess who should come along and comfortably sprint up them. That damn walker. “I’m a lot slower than you” I said as she sprinted past grinning. Thankfully once I got to the top it was pretty much downhill all the way home.

Overall I did 10.5 km in 1:10:12 which I was rather pleased with. I felt really tired and wiped out by the hills but I recovered quickly once I finished which shows that my fitness is improving. I’m so glad that I decided to go for my run even though I wasn’t feeling 100%. Hopefully it helps me knock this head cold out as well.

Tags: fitness by AndrewE
18 Comments »

Today I weighed in at 98 kgs (216) flat. That’s 1.7 kgs (3.75 pounds) down from last week. You may recall that last week I was a bit peeved that I lost only .1 kgs but I guess I was just experiencing a fluctuation on the day. That is one of the perils of weighing in daily.

I checked the official results of my race yesterday and laughed once I saw them. I finished 5th in my age group and 20th overall. Not bad for my second race! If only the leading pack could go the wrong way more often. In the future I will know not to follow them!

Tags: Toys, fitness by AndrewE
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I met up with the lovely Marshmallow for a drink and some curly fries after work today.

I’d won a prize in her scavenger hunt competition and it was a handy excuse to meet up and indulge in some delicious curly fries. They may not look like much but, oh boy, they were delicious!

They were definitely not part of my healthy eating plan but I don’t really care (The second plateful was probably a mistake however)!

I blogged a few weeks ago about how I wanted to start riding my bike again and today was the day. It was another beautiful sunny day and I just wanted to get outside and do some exercise as a preemptive strike against the curly fries. I went for a run yesterday so I thought it would be a good to do something different and start cycling again.

So I got my bike off the hook in the garage and pumped up the tyres. Then I had to try and find my helmet. We have mandatory helmet laws here in NZ so I couldn’t go out without it. After 15 minutes of increasingly frenetic searching I found it and headed out.

I made a bit of an inauspicious start as I got my gear selection wrong which made me feel a bit silly. It’s been a while since I’ve been on my bike!

I got onto the road and started cycling along. Within 500m I remembered why I didn’t like cycling that much. Auckland traffic is terrible! I had a close call with a bus so, first chance I had, I headed off road into a park.

The Orakei Basin is very close to my house and there is a very nice track that goes around the edges of the lake (it’s actually a tidal estuary but it looks like a lake). It was a great ride along a gravel track under some huge trees. There were heaps of people out walking their dogs and truth be told I got chased a few times. However, I’m faster than dogs! I followed the track until I couldn’t go any further then turned around and headed out of the park and into suburbia.

Once I was off the main road I found the traffic wasn’t really a problem. The next part of my ride was mainly uphill but I found it wasn’t really a problem. I think I’ve lost quite a bit of weight since my last bike ride and I really noticed the difference.

I got to the top of the hill and then it was a high speed run downhill all the way back home. That’s one thing I really like about biking - downhills!

My bike is back hanging from the ceiling of my garage but I think it will be seeing a few more outings in the near future. I think I need to invest in a bike rack for the car. I much prefer off road biking and there are quite a few good biking tracks around town.

Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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I normally only mention my weight on Mondays with my weekly weigh in posts. However, I do actually weigh myself daily and record it on my skinnyr graph as I find it helps keep me on program.

Today I reached a major if unofficial goal of mine. I weighed in at under 100 kilograms! 99.8 kg (220 pounds) to be exact. I realise that I’m probably not quite there yet as my weight does tend to fluctuate a bit but it has been sighted so it will be a reality very soon. I am now at the lightest weight I have been since I was about 21 which was almost 13 years ago. More and more people have been commenting so the difference must be becoming more apparent.

While my primary focus is getting fit I still do want to lose weight as I am still carrying too much excess baggage around the middle. I really believe that the running has helped me facilitate both goals and, more surprisingly, it has turned out to be a really enjoyable activity (when I’m not hating it!).

After the shenanigans of my Tuesday run I needed to go for another one on Wednesday to make up for the fact that I didn’t hit my distance or time goal. So I decided to take it easy and do a 30 minute run at 10 kph the whole way. That would give me 5K in 30 minutes. I managed to do this reasonably comfortably (on the treadmill) so I am back on track with the OHR program.

Tags: Milestones, fitness by AndrewE
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I mentioned previously that I had booked in for a fitness assessment. Well, today was the fateful day.

It started off fairly innocuously as the instructor was late. So the first ten minutes of my test were spent sitting down. Average heartrate 54 bpm.

Once he arrived, we then had to climb 4 flights of stairs up to the testing room. Average heartrate 100 bpm. Much to my disappointment that was not part of the test.

We then sat down and he explained what he was going to measure and asked for a bit of my history etc. He was absolutely floored when I told him I had already lost 81 pounds. He said he’d seen me in the gym before and never would have guessed I’d lost that much weight.

The first thing that he tested was my blood pressure. This came in as 120/80 which is in the high end of the normal range apparently.

The next test was the one I was dreading. The body fat test. He started off by telling me that over 25% was obese and that he’d never had anyone go that high before. I immediately thought oh shit I’m going to be the first. He asked me if I had any idea of what my rating was and I told him by scale says about 22-24 depending on which way the wind is blowing. He measured me up and the rating came in at 18.9% which I was sure was a mistake so he did it again and got the same. Friggin hell that’s in the normal range for men! Now I still think he’s off by a hell of a lot a bit but hey, he’s the expert not me.

I also got my waist to hip ratio done and that was in the normal range as well. The dreaded BMI was computed and as expected it came in as overweight.

The next test was for estimated VO2 max and it involved cycling while he took some measurements of my heart rate and adjusted knobs and buttons to make it harder. My estimated VO2 max is 50 which he said was ok.

I then had to do the strength tests. The first of these was to do as many pushups in a row as I could. I did 25 as I knew I could do 25 then piked out. I should have done a few more but oh well. Once more he said that my effort was in the fair to good range for my age group. The next test was the sit up test. For this one I had to do as many sit ups as I could in 1 minute. I got to 40 which rates as good but I’m going to do a voluntary downgrade to fair as I’m fairly sure that the last few weren’t quite up to form.

I also had to do some flexibility tests which I aced. There were 3 sets, a touching the hands behind the back, one arm from above, one from below. I surprised myself when I did that one I’ll tell you. Then there was a hamstring test which was fine. And last but not least the old touch the toes test. I’ve been able to touch my toes ever since I started doing squats. Squats are great for improving your flexibility I reckon. Everyone should do them.

I must admit I was quite surprised by my results. I appear to be a lot fitter than I thought I was. The trainer said I should work more on my strength as my cardio fitness is good. I won’t quite change the name of my blog to Andrew is fit yet however. I still have a significant amount of weight to lose from around my stomach area. But it does appear that I am no longer unfit which is something to celebrate.

I think the next test that I will do will be the beep test. I’ve never done one of these and I’m told they are quite tough.

Tags: Interesting, fitness by AndrewE
21 Comments »

I went along to Round the Bays today.  Round the Bays has been an annual event in Auckland since 1972, when the Auckland Joggers Club initiated it. The first run attracted 1200 participants and has now grown to be one of the world’s largest fun-runs with an estimated 70,000 participants.

The run is 8.4km long over a flat course that follows the contours of Auckland’s harbour.

The course is really beautiful, and winds along the coast.

I walked this with my lovely wife. My original plan was to take the little monster my lovely daughter along and carry her in my baby backpack. But fortunately my wife’s cousin volunteered to babysit and all of a sudden that seemed like a much better idea.

We got dropped off near the start line about half an hour before the start. Unfortunately the marshals were on to sneaky buggers like us and we got sent to the back of the pack which was about 1km away.

Once we got going we started to meet up with people we knew and a group of us walked along for about 4 km. It was really nice as there was thousands and thousands of people walking and jogging. I never saw the serious runners as they were too far ahead of us.

About 4km into the race my wife really needed a pitstop and so joined the queue outside the bathrooms at Okahu Bay. Forty five minutes later she rejoined me. That is not a typo! It really took over 45 minutes for the ladies queue! While she was queuing the police and marshals had passed us closing the course so I thought we were going to come in dead last! I had sent all our friends on after waiting about ten minutes as I had figured that she wouldn’t be too long and we could catch up. Once she came out we decided that it would be good to try and catch up so we alternated bursts of running with some extremely fast walking and we caught up with them about 750 metres before the end. We did not finish last at all as we managed to pass a lot of people (with baby strollers and what not). In the end we took 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete the course and considering the long pit stop involved we were ok with that.

It was a really great day. The atmosphere was brilliant and it was a lot of fun. It’s the first time I’ve taken part in an event like this and I’d definitely like to do it again.

Tags: Life, fitness by AndrewE
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Yesterday, I completed the Couch to 5K program. I started the program in mid January and now, in Mid March, I can run 5 km in a row.

Along the way I’ve done the following:

1. I ran at least 46.5 km. I didn’t start recording my distance until I got up to20 minute runs so I have actually run a little more.
2. I got bronchitis and didn’t let it derail me! In many respects this was the biggest change for the improvement for me. In the past whenever I’ve gotten sick I’ve used it as an excuse to return to my old habits i.e. overindulging in comfort food, giving up on the gym etc. I’m very pleased that I did not give up on everything when it happened this time. I really think that having this blog helped me stay on track and focused.
3. I’ve lost about 20 pounds.
4. I’ve been called a bastard. (Sorry Marshie, couldn’t resist!)
5. I’ve been called an inspiration.
6. I posed with a lot of butter!
7. I attracted a lot of strange people who are doing google searches for “naked fit men in the gym” with this post.
8. I’ve entered my first 5K race. Less than 2 weeks to go!
9. I’ve amazed myself and a few others I think. I never believed that I would be able to run and now I can.

I still find it really incredible how quickly our bodies can adapt to the various stresses we put upon them. I’ve learnt quite a bit about myself over the last few weeks and have a better appreciation of what I am capable of now.

I’d like to thank all of you who read my blog and have offered such great supportive comments and helpful bits of advice. I don’t think I could have done it without you. I’d especially like to thank my ever suffering wife who has had to put up with me being a bit obsessed and single minded about things lately. She has supported me in all my decisions and darling, if you read this, I love you.

Next week I start the One Hour Runner program!

Tags: C25K, Life, Milestones, fitness by AndrewE
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Seeing as I ran 5K on Monday I have decided to treat this as my final week on C25K. On Friday I should finish the program so I need to decide what I will do next. One of the goals I have set myself is to do the Quarter marathon at the Auckland Marathon this year. The quarter is 10.2 km so I need to train myself up to run 10K. Fortunately this is in November so I have some time to get there but I think it would be good to start training for it early.

I find I tend to do well when I can follow a program so I’ve decided that I will follow another training program to get me to 10 km.

There seem to be two major programs recommended to take you to 10K (or one hour of running).

The first is Hal Higdon’s Spring Training. This takes 12 weeks to get you to 6 miles (approx 10K) but it involves running most days and that might be a bit awkward.

The second is Cool Running’s The One Hour Runner. This takes a minimum of ten weeks (depending on how you go you can add weeks in) and involves running 3 times a week.

I quite like the routine of running 3 times a week only so I’ve decided to go with that.

The One Hour Runner program is as follows:

Weeks 1 - 3: Right now you are running 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week. Your weekly commitment of time is 90 minutes. Continue doing this for three weeks.

Week 4: Run 30 minutes, 29 minutes, 35 minutes. Weekly total: 94 minutes

Week 5: Run 30 minutes, 32 minutes, 38 minutes Weekly total: 100 minutes

Week 6: Run 30 minutes, 33 minutes, 41 minutes Weekly total: 104 minutes

Week 7: Run 30 minutes, 34 minutes, 45 minutes Weekly total: 109 minutes

Week 8: Run 30 minutes, 36 minutes , 49 minute Weekly total: 115 minutes

Week 9: Run 30 minutes, 38 minutes, 54 minutes Weekly total: 122 minutes

Week 10: Run 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes Weekly total: 130 minutes

So what I will do is finish C25K this week and then launch straight into OHR as the first 3 weeks of OHR are the same as the last week of C25K.

I’m also going to run all of the Run Auckland series races (circumstances permitting). These are 5K or 10K races so I will aim to run them on my 30 minute days as I’m planning on doing them as 5K races. Having said that I may do the last one as a 10K if I have managed to run 10 km by then. Of course, this all assumes that I enjoy the 1st 5K event which is about 3 weeks away

Boy, times have changed for me. A few months ago I would have said you were nuts if you told me I’d be pondering which running program to take.

Tags: C25K, OHR, fitness, running by AndrewE
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Well, I gave out a loud and proud “Hell yeah!” today when I RAN 5KM!

This was a tough, tough run. I started off thinking it would be nice to run the full 5K today so I thought I would start out a little faster than normal and started off at 10.5kph. I kept this up till halfway and truth be told up until then it wasn’t too bad. However, the second half was really tough. I kept on thinking one more minute and by the time the last 5 minutes rolled up I had abandoned all pretensions of completing the 5K. I was thinking …today’s run is only supposed to be 28 minutes I’ll stop then… However, 28 minutes arrived and I had done 4.6 km so I thought…one more lap…I can do this. So I ran a bit more. And I made it. 5KM in 29:36.

C25K rocks!

Tags: C25K, Milestones, fitness, running by AndrewE
18 Comments »

Eight months ago when I decided I was going to try and get fit, I bought a nice shiny new bike. I got a Giant Sedona LX. When I was young I used to cycle everywhere so I knew I liked cycling. I also used to cycle to University back when I was a student (until some sod stole my bike).

I did quite a bit of research online and decided that this bike met my needs. It had all the fancy bits that I wanted but didn’t really need like disk brakes, shock absorbers etc. It could go both on road and off road. In short it is a brilliant bike.

I bought it on a Sunday but unfortunately it was pouring down with rain and I did not want to take it for it’s inaugral ride in the wet for a number of reasons:

1. It was still shiny and new. Mud spatters on my new bike! No way!
2. I wear glasses and they fog up terribly when I exercise in the wet. I once tried to put on anti fog liquid but almost passed out from the fumes (apparently you are only supposed to put a tiny bit on - who reads instructions eh?).
3. As previously established, I’m soft.

Anyways, back to my story. I had bought the bike and was planning on going for a cycle the next day (weather permitting).

However, at about 4am my wife woke me up and said her waters had broken about 4 hours earlier. Oh, didn’t I mention that my wife was pregnant at the time? Anyways, 3 days later my daughter finally made it into the world. Here’s a photo of me looking happy but tired on her second evening in the world. Needless to say the bike, shiny and new though it was, got neglected for a while.

I don’t think I actually took it for a ride until about two months later. But when I did, it was good. It had everything that you would want in a bike, except an engine. Boy, it needs an engine.

So I have ridden my poor bike about four times in the last eight months. This is its current status. It is hanging from the roof in my garage.

I think I need to go for a ride on it. Maybe this weekend.

Weather permitting.

Tags: Life, Toys, fitness by AndrewE
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