Project Ripped

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.

Upon waking this morning I was thinking about my routine when I start back at work in just over a week’s time. I haven’t really done any early morning exercise over the summer break but will need to do so when I get back in to the routine of work. I haven’t really used the rowing machine or cross trainer much at all during the summer and have instead preferred to go out on the bicycles and try some runs.

This afternoon I went for a  2 mile run down the disused railway line, this time heading East instead of my usual West route. The first mile went fine but when I turned around to come back I could feel a pain on the outside of my right knee. It wasn’t a sharp pain but it was enough to make me both run and walk on the way back. There is still some mild pain there this evening so I hope I haven’t done too much damage but it feels like I may have strained a tendon attaching to the outside of my knee. I should probably give running a few days rest until it feels better.

In a couple of days Lilla’s 100 mile invitational running challenge begins. The idea is to see who can rack up 100 miles first. Unless a miracle happens I don’t think I will see 100 miles in September but what a great way to motivate ourselves to get out there and run, especially when we are tired, or it is getting cold and we may not feel like it. It is great to have some other ‘shredders’ as competition.

I still feel a bit disappointed missing out on the ‘End to End’ mountain bike challenge so I may do my own challenge that weekend and see if I can stretch myself. I was listening to an audio clip by Bob Proctor today and he was saying that he knows lots of marathon runners. He said that every one of them tells him that there is a point in every race where they feel they can not go on. Having that knowledge lets them prepare for it and then go through it knowing that it was inevitable.  I wonder if I can use this principle to take me from a 3 hour cycle to a 5 hour one for my own ‘challenge’. From my previous cycles I feel like I couldn’t have gone much past my 3 hour cycles but if I know that this feeling is inevitable and I am ready for it and I can cycle through it then I may surprise myself.

This evening I performed my abdominal exercised for the first time in nearly two weeks. I managed to do 20 reps for the six exercises I had been following previously. Starting next week I will have a new abdominal routine.

It was really nice to wake up in my own bed this morning. Thankfully a good sleep last night helped to see the back of the bug that had affected me yesterday. I didn’t feel hot, weak or in pain so I assume my now strengthened immune system is working well.

I still felt a bit delicate so I have eaten a lot of smoothies today to try and get my digestive system working again.

One of my first jobs today was to check the garden. Since being away my net covered brassicas have been invaded by butterflies and they have laid literally hundreds of eggs that have turned to caterpillers. My plants have been destroyed so it looks like I will be eating shop bought cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli from now on. Trying to be friendly to wildlife I will let them eat on, there is little left to salvage. Whatever is left can go on the compost heap. Lesson learned: next year buy a higher quality finer meshed net!

It is good to get back to some normality. After being on this project for so many weeks prior to going on a family break it has felt awkward not being able to continue it effectively for the last 10 days.

This evening I went for a 22.5 mile cycle ride on my road bike that took 1:23 hours. My rear felt a little tender as I haven’t been on any regular cycles for a while. I am sure that it will soon get used to it again.

It is reassuring to be able to take some regular progress photographs again. I never thought it would be so difficult away from home. It is so convenient to do it at home with space, a tripod, lighting and a fast Apple MacPro computer to process the images afterwards. It is difficult to find space in other people’s homes when you have already overcrowded their house with your presence.

I have just gone to signup for the ‘End to End’ mountain bike challenge and entries are closed. When I looked last the closing date was the 1st September but the website says that due to overwhelming demand they have had to close entries at 600 which is 50% up on last year. I am really disappointed at this but I guess there is always next year, and next year I will be a whole lot lighter and fitter.

This was the last day of our holiday and the day we travel home.

The day started really bad for me. For an unknown reason I awoke with severe diarrhoea this morning. This is a bad day to get this so I took some imodium tablets to stop it. Normally I would allow the cause to flush through but we were checking out of the hotel by 11:00 am. and wouldn’t be catching the boat until 7:00 pm. seeing us home by about 10:30 pm. That is a long time to be without a toilet or a familiar base!

We had planned a day out at the Pleasure Beach which is a fun fair/theme park. We continued with the plan but I felt progressively worse through the day. I started to get a temperature and felt pain on the skin on my back and in my joints. The high temperature led me to think that the diarrhoea was bacterial. All I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. We had nowhere to lie down and I knew I was many hours away from getting home.

I persevered pushing myself through the day and was a bit relieved when we started the drive to the boat as I could let me body rest. I haven’t felt this bad for a long time and at times just wanted to rollover and let it all stop.

After the boat journey we got back to the Isle of Man and reached the house at 10:30 pm. 

I unpacked the car and went straight to bed where I fell asleep almost immediately. I didn’t have time or energy to eat, see to the kids (thanks Nicola) or anything else.

I wonder where our Summer had gone to. The weather today feels like late Autumn/Winter. The sky is grey, the wind is cold and blowing hard and it just isn’t pleasant weather to be in.

We went to Blackpool Tower this morning and went up to the top. There is a portion of glass floor at the top of the tower for the brave to walk across. It is a strange feeling walking over glass knowing there is nothing below you for over 300 ft. At the end of the tower visit was the circus. The circus was fantastic and full of athletes showing off their skills. Unfortunately we had to leave after the first half as we had planned to visit the swimming pool that shuts at 5:30 pm.

We took the tram to the ‘Sandcastle Water Park’ which is a pool full of slides, wave pools and other fun water based activities. The kids loved splashing around in the water and our youngest daughter Katie managed to swim with her arm bands for the first time.

We ate after swimming and after a bit of a walk had an early night as we are leaving tomorrow.

Although my eating hasn’t been as clean as I had planned for it to be over the last week I have to be pleased that it isn’t bad. I haven’t eaten any sweets, crisps, pastries or fried food. I have eaten plenty of fruit but I have eaten more cooked food then I have been of late. I like eating raw food but it is just so difficult to do away from a kitchen. I guess we all have to learn how to adapt the first time we encounter difficulties like these. I will be better prepared for our next holiday.