Jul 31 2008
Day 40
Wow, I am nearly at the half way stage of Phase 1. In a few days I will have hit that first milestone and I am looking forward to revealing the stats of my progress.
I managed to go for a cycle this morning on the road bike. The soreness had gone from my knees and I quite enjoyed an easy paced and relatively flat (compared to the last two routes) ride. I followed a reasonably long established route of mine taking in Sulby Bridge, Andreas, Leodest Road, Jurby and The Cronk. The distance of this ride is 15 miles and I covered it today in 58:45 minutes. This is one of the fastest times I have posted on this route despite it being an ‘easy’ ride.
A couple of the raw meals I had today included a marinara sauce over courgette (zucchini) spaghetti and some vegetable nori rolls containing avocado, bell pepper, carrot and cucumber. I also made a pesto sauce to try over the courgette spaghetti. I had never been a big fan of herbs before but they really bring out a strong flavour in these healthy raw meals. I did find some of these strong flavours repeating on me a few hours later!
Since waking up today I have had sore shoulders and can’t work out why this is the case. I don’t know if it from sleeping funny last night or if it is a delayed reaction to the mountain bike ride. Coming down some of the bumpy stony paths was very demanding on the forearms and grip. Perhaps it put an extra load on my shoulders too. I am sure like everything else it will sort itself out within a couple of days.
We have also booked to go away for an 8 day holiday later in the month. I am concerned about my eating and exercise routines being affected but the family needs a holiday. I will be looking for tips to keep things on track while away.
To finish off the day I went on the Bowflex for my resistance exercises. On Day 1 I created a 6 week plan of resistance exercises. Today is the last session on the sheet. I have managed to stick to every exercise on every planned day for the past 6 weeks. Starting next week I will create a new workout plan. While the first workout has served me well it is now starting to become too much to fit in to each session as I have become stronger. A feel like a split workout may be better for the second 6 weeks but I will decide over the next few days.
For the first time the workout was extremely difficult. I didn’t make any progress today and in some lifts I didn’t match the last workout. I think that the longer duration cycle rides have taken something out of me. My hamstrings were weaker, and not surprisingly my shoulders were weaker also. After the third exercise I thought about calling it a day and I remembered my accountability. I had to push myself through it even if it was just to try and match my previous lifts. Now that I have finished I am glad I did.
