Ironman Mark

A good week.  I did just over ten hours and most of them were proper sessions rather than just 30 minute fillers.

Highlights:

- My swimming is very poor.  I’ve decided that I go to the pool and just get disappointed with my times.  So for the next couple of weeks I am going to mainly concentrate on form.  Swimming smoothly and quietly.  Breathing smoothly every three strokes.  Streamlined and long.  I tried that on Saturday but only had 20 minutes before the pool closed.

- I did my “Chrissie Wellington” run.  No idea if she does this but I call it this as I try to smile and grin at the end of the intervals.  Basically, it’s 12x 1 min at 20kph (the treadmill won’t go any quicker) with 1 min intervals.

- I also went out on my bike for the first time since October!  Only 43 minutes but I went out.  I didn’t go far but it did snow.

Eating went well and I lost 0.6kg (1.6 pounds). That’s 3.7kg (8.2 pounds) in four weeks.

Not a good week.  Very busy.  Very little sleep.  Too many unexpected meetings. Too little training.

Most days, I just did a single 30 minutes section.  Normally late in the evening because I was too tired or had a short-notice lunch meeting.  The only “good” session was an 1hr45 min run.

Eating has been the worst of the three weeks.  I thought I had a calorie deficit of 5,000 or so calories but only lost 0.1kg (0.2 pounds) over the week (but when I weighed myself on Saturday morning, I thought I had lost 1.2 pounds).  I guess the body works in strange ways over the short-term.

So, that’s 3.1kgs (6.8 pounds) over the last three weeks.

Today (Day 22) has been good – except we went to the Harvester and, despite eating a healthy-ish meal, I over ate big time.

As well as a swim and a short bike session, I did a short barefoot run on the treadmill.  I put some shoes on after 22 mins as I was feeling the heat of friction on the sole of my feet.

Another successful week.  I did all ten sessions in the week and ate pretty well.

Highlights of the week were a 5,050m pool swim and a 64 min run in the Vibram Five Fingers I bought yesterday.  I am disappointed with the time spent of the bike.  All the sessions were 30 minute fillers to get a second session in during the week.  This is because I’ve been very tired in the mornings and not done as many sessions first thing in the morning.

Eating, has been exceptionally good compared with normal.  On Thursday I was home during the day and I had a “lets eat lots of toast” day and only realised how many calories are in bread in the evening when I totted up how much I had eaten.

In all, I think I had a deficit of just under 7,000 calories in the week.   This represents 0.9kg of fat (1.9 pounds of fat).

When I weighed myself this morning I found I’d lost another 1.2kg (2.6 pounds) since last week.  This means I’ve lost 3kg (6.6 pounds) in the last two weeks.  Much, much more than I expected.

I weighed myself this morning and I have lost 1.8kgs – woohoo!

Some of that will have been real weightloss, some dehydration and so on. 

Whatever, it’s a good start.

Success!

I’ve done 11 sessions in the week and eaten well. 

I’ve trained every day.  But to be honest though, Thursday and Friday were just 30 mins on the turbo to get a session in.  Work was very hard and I couldn’t do anything in the morning or lunch time.  The swimming pool being closed between Sunday and Tuesday didn’t help things either.

In terms of hours for the week, it’s a start.  Not too many but it will increase.

I’ve counted calories properly for the first time in my life, using The Daily Plate.  It’s surprisingly easy to use.  I’ve also recorded the calories I have used in exercise.  The numbers have been taken from the display treadmills or just from the standard numbers on The Daily Plate website for that exercise.

I know that the calorie numbers are not accurate.  I don’t weigh every last apple I’ve been eating.  Same with the exercise.  It’s just a guess. 

Eating well has been easier than I expected.  The evenings have been the hardest, especially Friday evening.  I didn’t do well, snacking on one thing, then another, then getting a couple of slices of toast with peanut butter (and I had a proper meal too!).

On the exercise side, I am very impressed with how many calories running uses.  However, I have done relatively little easy running.

The summary attached shows how I have done.  Based on a notional 2,194 calories a day needed to maintain my weight (per The Daily Plate), I have had a calories deficit of 9,500 calories.  Apparently, there are 7,700 calories in 1 kg of fat.  So I might have lost just over 1 kg.  Or I might not have.  We’ll see tomorrow when I weigh in!

What a day!  Left for work at 5:40am, worked through lunch but home by 6:30pm.  So I did a token 30 minutes on the turbo.  Tomorrow is planned to be better.

Eating was great during the day but this evening I have been nibbling on stuff in the house and eaten too much junk.  Overall, it is going very well though.

A bit of a close run thing today.  Couldn’t get up this morning.  Then had to work through lunch.  Finished work about 8:30pm and then went on the turbo for 30 mins.

Tomorrow’s not looking good.  I need to be in the middle of London by 7:45 with lots of stuff already printed off.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get up early!

Eating has gone less well today.  I’ve only been able to eat at regular meal times and so I’ve felt hungry, especially this evening (and I’ve eaten some stuff that I would probably prefer not to have eaten).

Day 1 has gone well.

Plan was to:

- Bike: Short session on the turbo to get in the hang of getting up early – up at 5am, then did 30 minutes on the bike

- Swim: Got to the pool just before it opened only to find out it was closed because the thermostat had gone wrong.  They wouldn’t let me get my wetsuit and so I went back to bed.

- Run: Did a hilly 16k on the same paths and tracks I did on Wednesday in the snow.  I was so much quicker today (1 hour 33) than on Wednesday (1 hour 58, including a couple of minutes of helping a bloke with his dog).  Only trouble is I slipped and fell over.  My Inov-8′s are great on mud but pretty useless on ice – should have been using my Northface Hedgehogs, absolutely fantastic on snow and ice.

Also went to the gym with my family and played a bit of badminton and did a bit of rowing and running.  I did get a bit carried away and I tried to get the running machine to get to 100 calories before my son got to 30 on his recovery walk on the treadmill.  Despite putting the treadmill up to its max speed (12mph) I did not beat him – as he decided to push the speed up to.  None of this counts for my challenge though as I didn’t do 30 minutes.

Food: I’ve done really well with my eating and am really chuffed.

My motivation has been pretty poor recently.

So, I have decided to do a challenge:

100 session in ten weeks

The main goal is to get consistent in my training.  A secondary one is to lose a little weight.

The “rules” of the challenge are:

- Do ten sessions per week for the next ten weeks

- Each session must be at least 30 minutes

- I must do a session every day unless I am injured or too poorly (unless I am obviously poorly, I will do a gentle 20 minutes and see how I feel after that).

- A brick work out counts as two sessions if each of the bike and run bits lasts more than 30 minutes

- Every day, I will record what I eat and drink.