Project Ripped

Being the first day back at work was a bit of a shock to the system. It was probably just a late night trying to get ready followed by an early morning but I was exhausted.

After getting home from work and having tea I fell asleep for several hours. I awoke really stiff and sore in the legs as if they were repairing themselves.

After all that the day was over – sorry, no picture today.

I awoke this morning to an upset stomach and so decided not to go for the bicycle ride. I thought I might get out later in the day but listening to my body decided to rest completely today and let me body recover.

I have lost a couple of pounds of weight over the last week and for the first time my body stats tell me that some of that weight loss is from lean body mass (just a tiny bit!!). There is not a lot of other change but for some strange reason my thigh is 0.5″ smaller than it was last week.

While all of the running and cycling has been good I need to get back to resistance training and abdominal training this week.

The side shot still shows the most progress.

You would think that these two photographs were a different size but they are not. After 11 weeks I really can see a big difference from the front now.

These two also look vastly different. I still have fat deposits around my waist but the rest of my back is so much leaner.

Looking at these photos with just a week left of Phase 1 makes me think that Phase 2 is going to be all about getting rid of those fatty deposits around my waist.

Today, day 77 of Phase 1, takes me to the end of my eleventh week out of twelve. To be honest, I didn’t think I would make it this far. Although twelve weeks doesn’t sound like a lot it is the best part of a quarter of a year. So I am pleased to still be entering daily logs of my progress.

I went for my run this afternoon as I want to make sure my legs get a little more rest before my cycle in the morning. With the railway track still being waterlogged I went for another circular road based run. The shortest circuit I could do was about 2.5 miles. My knee started to bother me more today than it has  the past. I looked it up and it looks like it is something called Iliotibial Band Syndrome. So it looks like I need to do a little stretching, rest, ice and anti-inflammatories. So no run for a few days then!

I have a cycle scheduled at 9:00 am in the morning. It seems a bit early for my last day off work so I will see if I am up in time. If I don’t make it for that ride I have a backup plan.

“Rain, rain go away come again another day….”

Today it has rained continuously. From the minute I woke up until after dark, as I write this, it has poured down. It has been switching between heavy and very heavy. Our gutters are overflowing, the roads are flooded with big pools of standing water and fields have turned in to lakes.

I felt the need to run again today. I want to keep it going each day through September. Running down the railway line today was out of the question as the it would have just been a mud bath. So, I chose a road based route. I had entered a few different routes in to nikeplus.com a few weeks back and today was an opportunity to try a new one. I have been running about 2 miles so far and my new road route was to take me 3 miles. This was also a good opportunity to try out some wet running gear for the autumn weather that we will be facing soon. So I put on a cap to keep the driving rain out of my face and set off. I kept an easy pace and was surprised that I didn’t feel overly exhausted with the extra distance. My knee did give me some grief during the last mile but I still managed to run through it.

I am not sure if I can do 3 miles again tomorrow so I will see how I feel in the morning. I have planned a long off-road cycle on Sunday with a work colleague but if the weather is this bad then I fear the ride may be too dangerous to go ahead.

I didn’t get around to my exercise until about 5:00 pm today. I went out for a long road cycle up the mountain. This is the same circuit I have done a few times before. The distance is 25 miles and I completed it in 103 minutes – 6 minutes quicker than last time out. While climbing up the steep mountain climb I set my front chain ring to the middle and left it there for the whole climb. I was never able to do this previously and had to use the small chain ring to lower my gearing further. My legs are getting stronger and I was pleased that I could cope with this. I managed the climb this section in 28.5 minutes which is 3.5 minutes quicker than my last climb.

On my decent I reached 47 mph which was quite frightening and my brakes weren’t really up to the job of stopping me but were adequate for bringing my speed down to about 30 mph for the approaching corner.

I rested for about 20 minutes when I got home and then decided to go for a run. It was easy to not run today but if I don’t run every day then I will make it difficult to hit the magic ‘100′ miles this month, I will only be delaying the problem. I ran for a couple of miles and felt quite good for the first mile. During the second mile my knee started to show signs of discomfort and I wanted to stop running several times. I didn’t stop and was pleased to complete my distance. I was a bit tired tonight but I am not surprised after the long cycle.

I have seen a few work colleagues over the last couple of days that I haven’t seen for at least 6 weeks. It was great for them to tell me that firstly I looked good and secondly that I look like I have lost a lot of weight. This was all without any prompt or trying to get their attention.

I have run out of raw chocolate and must make a new batch over the weekend.

I will keep it short today as I have been busy preparing lessons for school starting next week.

Hooray, I have managed to run 3 times in 3 days. In my mind I want to run every day during September. If I am to hit 100 miles by the end of the month I need to average just over 3 miles per day. As I am currently running 2 miles per day I will need to up this to 3 miles per day soon and perhaps even to 4 miles per day as we come to the end of the month.

Providing my knee holds out I don’t see a problem with this as I am starting to feel quite comfortable running 2 miles now.

I have just read online that in the Isle of Man we have had the wettest August since 1956. I can believe it, the Summer has never been so glum!

The thing I like about the NikePlus is the statistics for each run. I can see my ‘per mile time’ coming down with each run – it it is good to see progress.

I had to go in to school today for a bit of preparatory work for next week, and to find out how well the students have done in their exams. I decided to cycle in as I would like to try and cycle to work again a few days per week once term begins.

The 9.7 mile journey took me 38.5 minutes on the way in (into a light headwind) and 35 minutes on the way back (with a light tailwind). The last time I cycled to work was Day 34 and these times are faster than that day (although I was on my mountain bike then). This journey has very little flat and at least 3 good climbs each way.

I felt quite good after that and decided to try out a run again. After the painful knee yesterday I wasn’t sure if I could run today but I decided to ignore the ‘nagging’ knee and ran for my 2 miles along the railway track. After about 1/2 of a mile I could feel the knee starting to weaken and give slight pain but nothing that would make me stop so I carried on and completed the 2 miles. I don’t know if it is better to run through the aggravation and let the knee repair itself despite activity, or if I should rest it completely. Unless there is signs of real pain I will try to continue to run for 2 miles and see what happens. I have had advice from doctors in the past about sprained joints and had suggestions for and against activity during healing.

I am finding getting back in to an eating routine difficult after the holiday. The garden has now started to slow down and is producing less vegetables as we are approaching Autumn. We are going to have to make a big effort to make some raw meal plans for the next few weeks as we seem to be living day to day on our food at the moment and this is far from ideal. Once we establish a routine we will know what we will have to buy from the supermarket. We have been spoiled picking fresh vegetables from the garden for almost all of our meals during the Summer.

I fancy an earlier night tonight. After reading a few posts from earlier in Phase 1 I have noticed I haven’t had a daytime sleep for quite a while. Something positive must have happened.

I awoke this morning with Wii Sports DOMS in the back and arms. I was watching my daughter play Wii Sports yesterday and she challenged me to take the fitness test. I was delighted when it gave me a score of 29 years old.

I can tell that I am getting back to my old self, the one from over 8 years ago. My mind and mind-body coordination were greatly enhanced and I went through all of the sports practices and didn’t only beat my old records but smashed them. I had found it tough to attain my previous records but yesterday I was on form and broke through those barriers with ease.

Although I feel pleased that I am getting my clear, high performance mind back I am sad that it had been declining over the last 8 years to bring me to the low I was in June. I feel that I have wasted a huge chunk of my life, I have lived time that I didn’t make the most of. At many times I wanted to do what I have done over the last 10 weeks but failed. I am not sure what the difference is this time but this blog and making myself publically accountable has helped.

I went for a run this evening. I spent 5 minutes on the cross trainer at level 2 warming up to see if this would help me transition in to the run. I walked for 5 minutes to take me to the start of my run and then I ran down the railway track. For the first 1/3 mile I felt great and thought this may be one of my best runs yet, but then I started to get the discomfort on the outside of my right knee again.  Rather than over do it and risk injury I pulled up early, turned around and took it easy back again for a total of 1.4 miles. This is the first day of Lilla’s 100 mile challenge and I wanted to start out well. I thought this may be the month where I take my running to the next level but if this injury persists then things may work out different.

I don’t know if my discomfort is related to my adductor on the inner thigh of the same leg. I have noticed a tightness and pain in my adductor when doing a groin stretch. Perhaps my discomfort is the opposing muscle to the adductor. I am not sure yet how to proceed with this injury – should I run through it but over reduced distances or should I rest?

I have spent a lot of today preparing to go back to work a week today and I imagine most of this week will be spent doing similar work. As a head of department I have a lot to do to ensure the start of term goes smoothly.

I made a lot of raw chocolate last night and have eaten some if it today. It is good to be able to eat chocolate and get nutritional benefits from it.

Having been on a family holiday, and not having a weigh-in last week, I have been looking towards a static physique or a slight improvement. As always the last thing that I want is weight loss that isn’t fat.

I am pleased to say that I have made slight progress in the last two weeks. I have lost 1.5 pounds of weight and my calculations tell me that I have lowered my body fat percentage slightly and increased my lean body weight slightly. All very positive. Having been the least progress I have made on Phase 1 I really need to ramp things up a bit to see what I can achieve in the last two weeks.

There is nothing really noteworthy to mention this time round but there is a slight reduction in my waist size again and the body fat pinch has reduced by a couple of mm on both my waist and my thigh. I guess that all of the walking around at the theme parks must have done me some good!

In the afternoon I went for a 22 mile cycle along the Ramsey, Bride, Jurby and Ballaugh route. I wanted to cycle up the mountain but there was a lot of low lying cloud and it would have been dangerous to cycle on the road with poor visability. So I had an ‘easy’ cycle today where I held back a little and probably travelled on average just 1-2 mph slower than usual. I wanted to burn fat but also save my legs for a bigger cycle during the week. The 22 miles normally takes me between 75 and 80 minutes but today it took me 88 minutes at my reduced pace. I still had DOMS in my legs from the run on Friday but the good news is that the injury on the knee didn’t appear to show itself today.

I am making progress and it will be good to see just how much more progress I can make in the last 2 weeks of phase 1.

I am pleased with my waist reduction but I still have about another 7 inches to lose around the waist. I can’t wait to see the comparison photos when I reach that goal.

I need to keep working those abdominals so that they show through when the body fat gets low enough. I am still over 20% body fat at the moment.

My back progress is looking pleasing again and those fat folds are starting to look a lot less than they were. It would be great to see the back of them by the end of Phase 1, but if not then hopefully they will be when I attempt to eradicate those fat deposits around my waist in Phase 2.

I need to start a new resistance training programme on the Bowflex this week. Details to follow.

I awoke today to some serious DOMS in my thighs. I guess I had forgotten that the few times I did manage to go running were two weeks ago and any progress made on running fitness was probably undone while on holiday. Another lesson learned – make sure I do at least a couple of runs on holiday. I know I managed to get a cycle in but I should have done more. It is a lot easier saying that now I am back home but I really did find it difficult after spending long days out with my family. We always have active holidays and try to fit in as much as we can while we are off-island.

The nagging pain I got in my knee yesterday is still with me and I have been hobbling about for most of the day. I have decided to give it complete rest today and try out a cycle tomorrow.

Tomorrow is my 10 week weigh in and I am curious as to what progress I may have made over the last fortnight. If my stats are similar I will be happy but if I have made further progress then I will be delighted.