I couldn’t believe how heavy I looked, even just 4 weeks ago. Wow.

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But I will put the stats here in print for yesterday’s weigh-in.

Weighed in at 277 lbs, down 1 lb from last week and down 16 lbs total from 6 weeks ago.

My run improved as well. I ran 1.13 miles in 12 minutes. The best part of the run is that this time I was able to crank the speed up to 6 mph and maintain it for the last 10+ minutes. Week 1, the most I could do was 5.2 mph, and NO WAY could I have maintained it. I was ready to pass out after about 5 minutes of 5.2 mph.

So, here’s a ‘talking head’ movie of me in my home studio and I cover the last 5 days. Its about 10 minutes long. Enjoy.

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So, this new workout all in all is going to be a real butt-kicker, I can tell. My hope though, is that because of the increased running distances in the strength routines will make running longer distances easier. Also, I can tell already that the weight training is just going to keep getting more and more intense.

Finally, I’m still putting in some late nights on side jobs (and this blog, for that matter) and need to continue to find ways to eliminate a lot of this extra work. Its something I’ve been wanting to do anyway, but now I’ve got a really good motivator.

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I crawled my butt out of her bed and plopped in mine, checking the clock as I crashed. It was before 10. Good. Turn off the alarm because I’d surely wake up about 6 and have plenty of time to sleep.

I woke up at 8am, surprised I’d slept 10 hours. Then woke up the wife and kid. She was late for school. Got dressed, ate, and got to work. But I was still dead tired. All day, I was tired. I told Mike at the gym today. He just smiled and said “good.” Apparently its because my body was getting used to the old workout, but this new one is kicking my butt.

As a side note, the state of being hungry all the time has eased quite a bit over the last few weeks. I now feel like its time to eat about every 3 hours, but no more constant hunger. Apparently I’ve slipped from hungry to tired. Fun is…

Today’s workout had a number of “oh, my god” moments. Working muscles I hadn’t worked before.

I also talked to Mike a bit more about the 3rd “optional” day. He thought I could only swim on Friday’s for some reason, and didn’t want me to move Friday’s weight workout to Thursday, since that would be too many weight days in a row. Once I told him that I was swimming on Tuesdays, he was happy to hear that I would in fact be weight training 3 days a week. So, that’s good.

A bit of irony hit me today. Just over a month ago, running a mile to a mile and a half was my entire workout. Today I finished my hour-long workout with a mile run. Which did in fact kicked my butt. But, still.

As I typed this log entry up, I just watched Leno put together a snickers pie. Wow. I’d like a giant slice of that. Its getting close to Pecan Pie season. One of my ’stumblers’. We’ll see how I handle those. I’m talking to Jamie tomorrow, so we’ll see what she says.

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So, first things first.

I did .99 miles on my 12 minute run. Bummer. that’s .01 miles worse than last week. Brett says I got comfortable for the first few minutes and should have jacked my speed up earlier. Yeah, figured that out myself.

I weighed in 3.5 lbs less than last week, for a total loss of 13.5 lbs for the first month.

My body fat is 36.5%, for a decrease of 1.5% the first month.

I did 27 pushups, for an increase of 8 pushups over last months 19. Next month I’ll do 50. Just watch.

As for the new workout, I’ll let Mike post the particulars, but basically, we’ve gone to a m-w-f schedule for weight training, with different exercises on each day. So, watch for that post and his explanation of what it is, and why we’re changing it up.

I can say that we’ve now moved a bit out of my comfort zone. That darned exercise ball is back, and a medicine ball has now entered my life. But, I’ll work through it.

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Enjoy!

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I shot it yesterday, but didn’t have time to post it until this evening.

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When it came time to do the weights, Mike decided that since I’d been doing so well, he wanted to up my weight circuit to 3x. I knew this was coming, but didn’t expect it so early. While we’re talking of expectations, I’m expecting him at some point (perhaps after the first month?) to up the number of days that I do weights.

Now, if I’m supposed to be swimming, biking and running, why the emphasis on strength training? Well, the really big reason is that while a great round of cardio can burn a lot of calories during the workout, and perhaps even for a little while afterwards, muscle mass burns calories 24 hours a day. Also, by strength training, we force our bodies to increase its muscle mass during periods of decreased calorie intake, where the natural tendency of the body might be to shed muscle in order to preserve food stores (fat).

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So, we did our first day of swimming. Now, swimming is a favorite thing of mine. I’ve been swimming as long as I can remember, and all the way thru high-school I swam competitively. In fact, my freshman year I earned my first varsity letter. Of course, high-school was 18 years ago, so while I should still have most of the skills, I’m nowhere near varsity shape anymore.

Scot wanted to see how much I could do, to get a baseline for helping me get faster and building endurance. I clocked my 100yd swim at 1:32 and completed 34 laps consecutively. I could have gone a little longer, but we got there late, I had to purchase a membership and we shot some footage outside ahead of time, so we were on a short clock. Feeling good, but also feeling sluggish. Also, some of the muscles that I worked on yesterday with the weights were really feeling the double-duty today.

I actually did some flip-turns during the dash, but none during the consecutive swim. The reason is that while flip turns will give me a better race time, they tend to kill my oxygen and tire me out faster. Also, I reasoned that there won’t be any flip-turning in a triathlon.

I think (not sure, though) that on Monday we might be able to put together a solid weekly routine. Mike has already Laid out Monday and Thursdays for weights, so that leaves me with 3 cardio disciplines, and I just happen to have 3 sports to prep for, swimming, running and riding. Sounds like we just need to figure out the order. Also, I’m guessing that we still need to set some baselines for riding and running. We’ll all find out more on Monday.

Have a GREAT weekend!

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Well, since I’ll have so many other things going on (running, biking, swimming, etc), apparently we’re doing ALL the weights at once. Its a superset of something like 10 different dumbell and machine exercises that target all the major muscle groups.

So, Mike started me off with 5 minutes cardio warm-up, then 12 repetitions of each exercise (quickly, no resting), then 6 minutes of cardio, then I repeated the circuit, but Mike upped the weight just a bit while reducing the repetitions to 10 each. Then, 6 more minutes of cardio. He tells me he’s raising the weights next week. Also, keep and eye out. Either today or the next day, he’s going to post the actual workout sheet for you to see. Adjust the weights according to your own strengths.

TIPS:

If you’re unaccustomed to lifting weights, an important rule to remember is to breathe in and out on every repetition. Breathe out when exerting (when going UP on a bench press or curl, for example) and breathe in when returning to your starting position (when going DOWN on a bench press or curl). While it seems exaggerated and people make fun of this, you often hear weight lifters grunting while they breathe out on the hard part, but that’s the reason why. If they were breathing in, they wouldn’t be able to grunt.

Tomorrow, I’m swimming! Can’t wait, its one of my top 10 favorite things to do.

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Today was another day of baseline measurement. Did a 12-minute run/walk on the treadmill to see how far I could go in that time. I was able to jog the entire 12 minutes. I wasn’t worried about it really, since I can run 2 miles on a good day and I knew I’d only cover just under 1 mile in the 12 minutes.

If you look at the training plan, you’ll see all of the stats Mike has collected over the last 2 days. Mike also tells me that I’ll be doing 2 tests every week. We’ve decided on Mondays.
One is the scale, to gauge my weight. The second is the 12 minute
cardio test. The idea there is that I should be able to run farther
each week than the last. Other testing will be done every 4 weeks.

So, on top of the work-out, I learned a couple of things.

TIPS:

First, you can calculate you “max” target heart rate by the rule of thumb: Subtract your age from 220. Since I’m 36, my max heart rate is 184. That’s more or less where I was at by the end of today’s exercise.

Second, my shoes are too heavy. Causing my shins to hurt. I guess I’ll be looking for a new pair of running shoes.

Third, when using the treadmill, I should run with at least a .5 incline. It’ll reduce the amount of work my shins need to do, and move the impact of running to my calves, which are built to take such abuse.

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A number of things came out of this.

First, I weighed in at 293. Its the heaviest I’ve ever been and its much farther down this road than I ever hoped to go.

Second, realistically, I’m looking to drop about 50-60 lbs of fat between now and next summer. Not the 90-100 I was hoping for, but still, that’ll be a great start.

Third, (and I already knew this) my blood pressure came in at 150/100. That’s kind of high. I’ve been living with borderline-high blood pressure for at least 7 years now. Its something that with my limited exercise regimine that I’ve been able to keep from getting worse, but haven’t been able to reverse.

Fourth, I was able to do 19 push-ups. That was a good news - bad news item for me. I’m glad that I could do 19 push-ups from a cold start. Haven’t really done push-ups regularly for over 10 years. On the other hand, when I was in the military, I could do 50+ without a problem, and often did more than 70 for the Physical Fitness Tests. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

I also haven’t pushed myself to muscle failure in quite a while. Its a foreign sensation to me these days, and trying to type, write or even mouse after pushing my arms to failure is proving quite interesting.

Well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. They tell me I’m running tomorrow.

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