Day 63 - Raising The Bar

Another Typical Monday

Just another typical monday morning, back at Cerberus. Frosty, well chilly mist, but still at 0545h before sunrise, its not the most appetising wake up. Sluggishly I crawled out of bed, rubbed my eyes and with a yawn started to walk around / drift around the room trying to locate my gym clothes in the dark - the thought of bright fluorescent lights furiously beaming at me was not very appealing. I threw on my clothes, downed a pre-workout and headed out into the dark.... As I walked I continued to review my plan for my morning's workout...desperately hoping to get my gears shifted into high....slowly I started to warm up and get into my normal head state - perhaps the chilly mist was waking me up?

On arrival at the gym I was still not in high gear, but I was warming up to it...I worked through my new back and abdominal endurance workout, with lower weights than last week but higher intensity. I felt really good about the work I had done after 90 minutes... and my muscles were feeling that good burn I love so much! Abdominals were feeling tight, and as my walk back to my room progressed I felt like today, I'd see if I could push myself a little further.

After lunch I decided to go for a swim. I knocked over a pretty pleasing 1.5km swim in 40 minutes, and pushed through the shoulder and abdominal burn I was experiencing. After a good stretch, and about an hour to relax after my swim I intended to relax for the rest of the day...but that didn't last long. I ended up training on the squash court, solo for about 15 minutes of techniques I was taught in days gone by (when I was back in the UK) by an old collection of friends Mr Lewis, The Meredith's, The McQ's and regular on court tantrums playing against Mr Mouldie and co.... So after 15 minutes of nostalgic forehand and backhand training (in the box for 20), behind the line for 20, 20 lobs, 20 drops...etc... I was asked if I wanted to play squash (in a match) with a sailor. I courteously agreed - who wouldn't want to actually play squash on a squash court!! It was a good game, I emerged victorious after 3 games, each played well by both players. I started remembering the old days where the golden ladies of squash would play lots of airy balls,  lobbing opponents and taking the power right out. I started to play with a few mixed shots and I held my own on the 'T' for most of the match. Feeling pleased with my efforts, post game, I rewarded myself in true squash style... a cool cider, a glass of red wine and cognac enjoyed fireside in the wardroom.

Raising My Bar

So, as you may have read yesterday, I'm thinking of entering a few events to test my preparation, keep my focused on my training goals and prepare me for next summer's triathlon events (if I'm not posted to sea). Well, further to that, my awesome wifey-dearest, Winnie, registered me for the City2Surf in August, and my original 2014 goal of running the Sydney Marathon. I've never done 42km straight, but I know in my heart that I can pull it off - besides I remember saying that if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. Well, this will be my biggest challenge of 2014. I will achieve it. I will finish. Thats what's important about goal setting; set the goal, and ensure you get there... I'm gonna need help, and I'm gonna need a lot of support to pull this off. So, if you can, your support would be appreciated.

Just to raise the bar a little higher, I'm going to make sure I do it and I'm going to raise money for a charity that's close to my heart, and I'll keep you posted, just waiting on some information first.

Well, there we have it. Monday, done and dusted, with a hint of nostalgia, hope and promise thrown into the mix!

Days 60-62: A Well Earned Rest...

Home. Where My Heart Is....

This weekend, seemed to take forever to arrive but I guess that's the way it goes when you're waiting for something awesome to happen. For me, this weekend was about going home to see my wife, and spending quality time with her. Being a serving ADF member means that home time really needs to be all about the quality, since the duration is never all that long....Devoted to my wife, and making every moment count, I planned to spend every second having fun, and that's why I've been quiet all weekend!

We did the usual, visited various yummy restaurants and ate (carefully in my case) delicious meals. A regular haunt of our is Ayam 99, which is the best Indonesian food in Sydney...in my humble opinion! We also, got to try some new places too. Winnie is bound to blog about them on our other blog Eat.Travel.Dive, so I'll not steal her thunder!

The best part, not including the amazing time spent with my wifey, and also with family too. We hung out with IronRay, Queen Filsie, and Winnie's parents. More amazing than that, however was the various amazing, yummy raw/vegan/suger free/dairy free treats that the Winster prepared for me.... now that is awesome! For recipes check out our other blog... 

There were Chocolate Fudge Bites, Healthy Snickers and Blueberry and Orange Zest Cheesecake.... Did I say these are all healthy! OMG I know, right? AMAZING!

Who could resist this?

Time to Train Together

Winnie and I actually like to train together. We bounce off of each other, we keep it fun and we always share the "pain". Saturday afternoon was no different, since quality time also means that we train, or go to yoga...We chose the gym before dinner.

Shoulders and Abdominal Smash - so I run my darling wifey through an endurance workout, and after 90 minutes of hard work, she rated it an 8/10 overall. I'm happy with that. The workout however, did get a bonus mark too. You see, Winnie has decided she wants to build her upper body strength and core strength to enable her to do hand stands. We ended our workout with 3 sets of against the wall type. Winnie was very anxious about doing this, so I assisted her in getting up then guided her through it. We're a pretty awesome team, I know this because she reciprocated in ensuring I didn't knock the wall down on my turn. I can get into the position, just have to throw myself in!!! My third set was what Winnie called "hollow back" which is apparently an achievement...

Shoulder press up (mid push up)

Hollowback?

Anyways, time for bed. I have a big week ahead - hopefully culminating in graduation from this course I've been on since January..Plus, another week of endurance training.

Oh, and I'm thinking of signing up for the following fitness events, if you wanna join in let me know...I'm sure training and doing will be fun.

1. Sydney City 2 Surf (14km Run) - 10Aug14
2. Sydney Marathon (42km Run - but there are other distances) - 21Sep14
3. Husky Olympic Tri (Swim 1.5km, Bike 40km, Run 10km, Sea Posting Permitting) - 02Nov14
4. The Cole Classic (2km Ocean Swim, Sea Posting Permitting) - 01Feb15
5. Husky Half Iron Man (Swim 2km, Bike 83km, Run 20km, Sea Posting Permitting) - 22Feb15
6. Port Mac Iron Man.... or Melbourne.... ??

Well, thats the plan....am I crazy?

Days 58 & 59 - Blur

Blurring the Lines....

Talk about crazy busy. Yesterday I woke up late (first time in 9 weeks), missed my early morning workout and got annoyed with myself. Thankfully, we were cut-away early so I punished myself for 90 minutes doing an extended version of my missed workout. Endurance training for 90 minutes was hard work, but it got my head back in place and made me feel stronger. Sometimes we trip, we fall flat on our faces, but when we rise up, we stand up stronger and with greater purpose to not do it again.

I think being human about this stuff, whilst trying desperately hard to stick to a routine is why I am seeing results (both physical and emotional). I feel more together than I have before. I'm more zen and less hectic. Tuesday's yoga allowed me to reflect on that too. I still believe the goals we set ourselves can drive us crazy, can lead to tunnel vision of the rest of the stuff going on around us. That kind of perceptual narrowing, is totally going to mean that destination ends up overshadowing the journey. To me, the journey is still the most important element. We have our bumps, and our triumphs, but most of all we create an emotional attachment to the new way of being - it makes us feel good to step off the plane onto the tarmac at the start of an adventure, it lifts our spirits to see the sun rise or fall over a new back drop..this is why I travel, the destinations are not as important as how I get there....

Using this, helps. I've found of late, that the journey has been blurring somewhat, and this is causing me to get upset for the minor setbacks. Shit happens, to all of us, most of the time.. Remember, falling off your bike (as I've done a lot lately, dang cleats) just means you can get back on it and re-adjust. I suggest having a good laugh too. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all need to slow it down, enjoy the bumps and sensations of the ride. We should all take a few minutes to ground ourselves,  take the time to align ourselves and carry on.

Chest, Abdominals, Arms & Abdominals

2 Days of tough training, like the rest of this week. Its pretty intense working for 60-90 minutes without a rest set. The endurance really shows when you're burning through fatigue. Obviously, as this is a new experience in the gym for me, I've dropped the weights (not by much) to maintain the work, keep the reps at 8 per set, and all exercises are 4 sets. Moving directly from a set of Chest or Arms to a set of Abdominals, then back to the original chest/arms set is not easy. My body is a little sore, but good sore, and I'm enjoying challenging my resistance workouts with a cardio-intensive rhythm. It's like I'm doing my own version of cross fit or something! I work really hard, usually I'm sweating before I get throughout the first "pair" of exercises. You see, I pair the exercises based on the logistics of what I need to do each. So for example, doing bent over rows (on back day) using the land mine set up is perfect for land mine 180s for abs. Or going from palm up forearm burners, leaning over a bench leads itself nicely for body based abs like plank or retractors.

Here's a sample of the last two Workouts: Remember I alternate between each set of each exercise....

Thursday:

1. Palm Up Forearm Burners & Plank (20 sec hold)
2. Palm Down Forearm Burners & Retractors
3. Standing Zuttman Curls & Plate Twists (10kg plate)
4. E-Z Bar Spiderman Curls & Side Plate Bends (20kg plate)
5. Inclined Bench Barbell Curls & Barbell Ab Rollouts
6. Standing Barbell Drag Curls & Heel Tap Twists
7. E-Z Bar Skull Crushers & Bicycle Twist Abs
8. Low Cable Overhead Extenders & V-Sits
9. Cable Reverse Grip Tricep Pulldowns & Cable Ab Crunches
10. Cable Tricep Pushdowns & Hanging Knee Up Crunches
11. 90 minute Bikram Yoga Workout in the evening

As you can see, its pretty full-on, and doing 4 sets of each is a real killer! This little lot took me an hour to pull off, so I was not hanging around! Yesterday's 90 minute punishment was tough, but worthwhile!

Wednesday:

1. Bench Press & Bottoms Up Raises
2. Incline Bench Press & Retractors
3. Decline Bench Press & Plate Twists (10kg plate)
4. Push Ups & Farmers Cage Walks (110kg max) - 6 sets just for fun
5. Incline Dumbbell Chest Press & Bicycle Twist Abs
6. Incline  Dumbbell Pectoral Fly & Side Plate Bends (20kg plate)
7. High Cable Fly & Land mine 180s (15kg plate)
8. Low Cable Fly & Pallof Press Core Holds
9. Pec-Deck & Single-arm Land mine 180 wiper catch & throws (10kg plate)
10. 90 minute Bikram Yoga workout in the evening

Bikram

It is the first time in absolutely months, that I have practiced Bikram so frequently. I've really missed the class and how it leaves me feeling. I've noticed that I'm calmer, less erratic, more balanced than usual.

When I'm in the class, of course I'm thinking "my gosh, this is hot", or "why can't I breathe properly", or "I wish I could stretch and bend like the person in front of me"... but after acknowledging my thoughts, I return to my breath and silently meditate on my mantra "Om mani padme hum" which really quietens my mind. I sometime just solely focus on my breathing, how I breathe determines how calm I feel. The other thing I've noticed is that as I can hear/feel my heart rate elevating, my meditation and thought process often leads to my thinking about calming my heart down. I can often feel the slowing heart rate as a result of my thoughts.

What I think I'm saying here is that I'm developing an internal self-regulation of my core functioning. My heart rate, breathing and thought processes are all being controlled when I take the time to slow things down, return to basics and calm down. I call it getting my "Zen On"...

Day 57 - What Makes Us Stronger....

Tuesdays 

An interesting day. I like to train shoulders and abdominals, and that motivates me to bound outta bed and get my groove on. Mr Ped's generous loan of his car for the week is really enabling me to get to the gym and back (just) in time for classes starting at 0730h.

So, as I've previously explained, I'm working to intensify my workouts this week and today I worked ridiculously hard with shoulders and abdominals. I worked like a crazy person, each set of reps of shoulders was followed by an abdominals set - no rest breaks. This made for a very hard, workout. Since I was doubling up on each exercise combo, I actually added more overall exercises. 

The way I see it, there are a few things that make us stronger. The first is discipline, determination and miles and miles of heart - all summed up as EFFORT.

The more effort you put into anything, the greater the feeling of achievement when you complete the task. The only problem with effort, is that its not a given. You need to put in to get out. It's your responsibility to do this.

Effort? It is as simple as the definition: A vigorous or determined attempt. So, in terms of health and well being, you just gotta get up, get your butt in the gym, pool, on your bike or whatever you plan to do, and put in as hard work as you can to achieve what you want. It takes more than one go. You have to understand that it takes time, practice, evaluation, reflection and a whole lot of work...not to mention commitment, and sacrifice. To achieve results you need to be a disciple and a student to it. You have to live, breathe and think it. Become it.

Sacrifice. Well there's something I've not talked about at all.... I'm not going to offer up any virgins to a deity, or perform some weird and wonderful ritual.... I'm talking about Personal Sacrifice. I like cakes, I like ice cream, I love ice cream. I love to drink socially...but and here it is - I love the idea of being a fit, healthy husband (and father?). I love the idea of completing an Ironman and a marathon, and the idea of losing my belly....I love these things much, much more. It's not easy giving up what you love, I miss bread and gluten and weetabix....small sacrifices in the long term.... What are you giving up to get what you want?

After such a great start to today, I was really looking forward to finding a nice way to end the day. Well, Bikram Yoga, with my yogi-buddy Holmie, was the perfect wind-down. I even got complimented on my Triangle and Head to Knee postures! It was pretty hot tonight, and this causes a range of emotional releases, as well as the obvious physical ones... I know Holmie and I both felt that too. Yoga really helps me find clarity when my head's all over the place....

This is me most classes...

Practicing Triangle with Winnie, in Bali 2013....

Family (Near & Far)

I ended the day sharing the love, and again now. I saw my wife on FaceTime which always makes me happier, then a rare treat was spend a good hour with my sister in England, helping her prepare dinner for my two godsons. I even got to see my newest godson... Master G after he woke up from his afternoon nap...such a happy time for me. I sacrifice everyday to just be. It's worth remembering that - look back and see the things we each take for granted, or forget we've given up. I miss my family in the UK, even though I'm building roots of my own here, in Australia. I wouldn't change my situation, except having all of them (and Mr Mouldie & Miss Kimbo) here with us. I miss them so much. I love my life, and I love my family all of it (the Aussie, Chinese, Indonesian, American, and of course the British) and the positive influences expressed on me to create the changes necessary. I thank my family (near, far and extended) for their continued support.

It took me to travel to the other side of the world and a lot of soul searching to realise the damage I was doing to my body, well actually it took meeting Winnie to see what I was doing, but it's taken nearly 6 years for me to even make a proper effort to change things. Until this process begun, I was never prepared to sacrifice, or commit to it. Now, I can't imagine my life without it......

Day 56 - The Week 9 Intensification Process!

Not Long Now...

Yo! How ya going? What an amazing Monday. I thought it would be a great idea to give week 9 an injection of energy, focus and well, something a little more intensive. Plus, I'm highly motivated by the simple fact that I am going home to my wonderful wifey this weekend... 4 More Sleeps :)

How exciting....

Intensification

So, in an effort to up the stakes on this my 56th day, after such a big weekend of achievements I decided to do a morning workout that meant very little breaks and a whole other level of work.

Last week's back workout, although tough, seemed a little like it needed more. So, I decided to couple it with abdominals. How's that any different? Well, instead of back, back, back then abs...I decided to go back, abs, back, abs...no breaks. So after each set of back, I threw in a set of abs. Just because.....

I did a little research on back exercise routines last night, and decided to revamp the whole routine. I started with four sets of axle dead lifts to warm up, I managed to get to 55kg on the bar (75kg total)... After I got stuck into the new plan, with reverse grip bent over rows (with the barbell), with roller abs using the same barbell between sets. I did 4 sets of 8 reps of each, increasing the weight each time to a maximum of 30kg (until I get my technique perfect) - this is actually much harder than it reads....

I set the barbell up using the floor plate (landmine), then conducted sets of T-bar rows, with Landmine 180's between sets. I needed to drop the weight each time for the land mines, but got to 45kg with the rows, and was working up a sweat on the land mines on 30kg! 4 Sets of each later...I was feeling the burn!

I continued with Lat Pull downs - wide grip and narrow, before moving onto the cage farmers walks - today my farmer's walks reached 110kg (new PB). To finish my workout, and since time was getting sparse, I knocked out back hyperextensions, coupled with leg raises and knee crunches. I then punched out 4 chin ups, before moving into the hanging knee crunches and retractors to finish... all 4 sets of 8 reps each... Boom, another 75minute burnout! 

Not to be out done by this morning's effort, I wanted this evening's workout (predominantly cardio based) to challenge me. Subsequently I opted to do a 30 minute leg workout. I incorporated Smith Squats, Leg Press, Hack Squats, and Calf Raises.. I felt a little twinge in my calf so moved to the cardio part.... Incidentally, I PB'd on leg press tonight (180kg), which is another indication that my endurance and strength are really improving....yay for me!

Bricks

So, as you know, one of the new training tools to help me train for triathlons, is the brick session. So, I decided to do an out of sequence Bike then Swim. Since my pride and joy is packed for her trip home, I opted for a 30 minute spin, followed by an attempt at a speedy swim...

So, after a little leg stretching I jumped on the spin bike. 30 minutes later, feeling very comfortable I pulled up having travelled 15km. Nice. I quickly got changed and jumped in the pool. Now, I wanted to work my speed so I thought, hmm a snappy 500m to finish? I was aiming to finish in 15 minutes or less.... However, with my arms burning, and perhaps a little additional blood flowing in my legs I worked particularly hard to complete the swim. When I touched the poolside and stopped the clock, it read 09:52, my fastest lap was 01:06, and 01:58 per lap average. How funny, my best ever!

Day 54 & 55 - There and back, and back.

Challenge Set

Ride to Melbourne from Frankston, then if we have enough left in the 'tank', ride back. Approximated total distance 100km... Mr Peds was keen, and so was I.

Saturday 0500h...beep, beep, beepety-beep! Snooze? Hell No! After a quick breakie, I was dressed and ready to meet me bike buddy, Mr Peds, to head into Franko. It was dark, but not so cold outside. I tested my lights, checked my water bottles were full up (with water and electrolytes), stuffed my pre-packed ziplock of dates, and a four spare fizz-bomb electrolyte tabs into my back pockets of my jersey. I tested the Garmin, and as I finished my pre-start tests...My ride arrived!

The wind was already starting to blow when we started our ride from Oliver's beach, at 0645, but the sun was not rising. The tale tale white peaks on the water told me the wind was going to be consistent, I was expecting a little wind....the forecast said it was going to be blowing from the north.... Eeep!

Challenge Met

With the wind in our faces, this trip was going to be as psychological as it was physical. Keeping positive, and almost enjoying the wind burning my cheeks to a new shade of rosie, was in order. Mr Peds and I kept up the motivation in the early stages of the ride with the excitement factor of getting going with this challenge. Later on in the ride we talked about a manner of interesting things to kill the time. I found myself really buzzing throughout this experience. I really enjoyed the sunrise, watching the world around you light up so slowly, but with intensity is really special. Plus, when you start to see things ahead of you it really amps you up. In no time at all we had reached Mordialloc, and the Tour de Cafe. We stopped for a quick comfort break, and headed on. I got an electrolyte get for later, and stuffed in my back pocket.

Cycling from Mordialloc toward Melbourne was very quick in places, thanks to the big riding groups we encountered. Less nervous about riding in a pack, I was really getting into the whole process. Before I knew it we were smashing hills, and moving at a speed of around 35-45kph! This was fairly easy to achieve, since the slip-stream really helped everyone keep pace. I even ended up at the front of the pack for a few minutes - which was quite the opposite, I felt the drag from the whole group and the wind was back in my face! I managed to get my heart rate up to 173bpm! When I eventually dropped back in the group I could barely talk - SHOCK HORROR! What an awesome experience it was; all the fellow rider gee-ing you along, and giving their hand signals for things in the road, movement and such. I find yourself checking and thinking about the pack more than you think about the pain/agony of riding so fast!

At around Black Rock, the pack was all but gone. We were back to riding at around 22kph, and the wind was getting stronger. We joined lots of smaller packs as we went, and before we knew it were in St Kilda.

As we reached this area, Mr Peds pointed out that over in Williamstown you could see both of the new Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) vessels - what an awesome sight to see, Nuship Canberra and Nuship Adeliade parked top to tail, side by side... a rare sight, and it made us both feel quite "charry" - lol, Love Navy!

After this we turned in toward the city and our half way marker...

During the ride my front wheel had developed a lovely jingle-jangle sound, which was coming from the hub. We decided to head to Cycles Galleria to get it checked...one problem, it was only 0800h! So, we headed over to Flinders Station for our celebratory photo (and proof we made it).

After this 'photo shoot' we headed for another comfort break, and returned to the saddle. Knowing (and hoping) that wind would still be blowing from the north, we were confident we'd make the return.

Mr Peds took us out of the city a different way, but it was really busy traffic wise, and we decided to take a detour to make it fun. Just prior to this we spotted a bike shop, with a coffee shop attached (in fact they even had a spin studio for the fit-freaks who can't get enough). I asked for their opinion on my hub. As it happens, some good advice - your hub is a warranty! The bearing cover was meant to be pressed on, by machine, but mine had sheared off - well now the roller bearing were exposed - engineers, we know what that means....bad juju for the bearings! Not much I could do about it on this trip, and safe in the knowledge my wheel wasn't going to shit itself on the way home, I decided to carry on. My bike was gaining some new "memories" from the ride now too....

Whist in the coffee shop we had a lovely cappuccino, and some free protein balls. Yummy. The girl behind the counter was from my hemisphere, Clapham (London) and so we got to talking which was nice to help us relax for a few minutes.

 

 My Protein Balls never come out this tasty. I need more practice, clearly...

Hills...

I'm finding hills to be a great experience. I've learnt to prepare my gear shifts in advance, to make transitioning into the hill climb easier. I've learnt that there's a whole lot of technique in climbing and descending hills. Most of all, I think you need a strong core and endurance in your muscles. Since working on my core more frequently in the gym and training specifically for endurance, I've noticed a new gear in my riding. I've got my power in my legs because I'm holding my core better, my shoulders and chest are better positioned (not perfect, still developing) so that they support me as I ride, and climb. I even got to the point, on the return leg, where I was powering up hills with Mr Garmin (a rider dressed in a Garmin suit) who had monster calves, and I feel suitably bed for leaving Mr Peds standing on those occasions. I did however slow down and he caught me up - I did not want my ride buddy and I to be separated for long! Mr Peds commented on how he thought I'd improved, even since we'd last ridden together. Thanks Mate! As I passed my Personal Best to date of 83.97km, I gave out a good cheer "Boo-Ya" and felt very happy that whatever happened, I was in the realms of a new PB! Smiles all around.

The Route

Breaking 100...

So as we got close to the end, we realised we were going to be around 4-5km short of the target of 100km. So, we decided to turn around at Oliver's beach and do a short loop of 2.5km out and back to make it up.... As we approached those last few kilometres we were both feeling pretty happy, in my case almost euphoric to have accomplished something, that only a few months ago seemed like a dream. I remember, laughing and almost being shocked when IronRay, or Mr Keish would talk about 60km rides. Mr Keish would regularly ride home from the central NSW coast to Sydney, and IronRay is a machine from cycle-hell sent to make us all ride harder. I never thought, and said very frequently that I would never be "caught doing that kind of crazy".... How times change.

3 hours 52 Minutes and 49 Seconds of riding, and I loved every second.

So, as we finished, I played a mental fanfare in my head (well out loud actually), and took a pic of my Garmin screen. I took off my cycle shoes, stretched and prepared for our post ride 2km walk to realign blood flow... Oh My Gosh...We did it Mr Peds...plus we burned 2951 calories on that ride!

 

Achieving Your Impossible

So, as a reflection...and I know this has been said a million times before, so you get my swing on this. IMPOSSIBLE is something we all read wrong. It actually says IM POSSIBLE. Therefore, ergo, there should be nothing that you cannot achieve. For example, my spiritual guide and good friend Peaceful Warrior (PW) took some time off work recently. Without any significant training, she just climbed to base camp of Mt Everest - She completed it Thursday, I believe....but with slow internet on Everest, posted yesterday...you know, time delays, comms lag...blame it on the ISP! She always tells me that impossible is just an excuse. Well, I think, for my slowly ticking off my milestones, and achieving my impossibles, that she might be onto something.

Please, set goals, take baby steps if you need to, but work (like Michelle Bridges says) with Consistency, Consistency and Consistency. Never give up, never back down. I'm on a roll and I'm not planning on going back now. My life is infinitely better since committing to being healthy. It's actually changing my outlook on my whole life plans, and together with my amazing Winnie, and my amazing like-minded friends, I'm doing it.

And Back Again...

Well, thanks to my good mate Mr Peds, and the generous loan of his car, I was able to head straight back into the city to see the peeps at Cycles Galleria. After a quick call had organised a wheel for me. On arrival they told me the it was a "loaner" wheel, since its an upgrade, and that I should contact my local Sydney based shop, to organise the appropriate Cannondale warranty replacement. So, what is meant by "loaner" I asked, they responded with, this is a "free-loaner" as in you can keep it! So, I bagged a freebie Shimano RS21 Rim. As they replaced my tyre and tube onto said rim, my old tube exposed, so they replaced that for free too. I ended feeling a little guilty at the excellent customer service, so purchased some Endura Electrolye gels (which they subsequently reduced for me)...Great afternoon!

When in Rome...

Whilst in Melbourne, and well the parking fee was already paid for, I headed to get some lunch / dinner....it was 1600h by now. I ended up eating a delicious gluten free Thai Pork Vermicelli salad in a cute place on Russell. After, I walked past The Lab nitrogen gelato place...I noticed they had a special on this week only. Sorry Winnie, but I just had to try it (her favourite flavour) Ferrero Rocher, made their way. It was a gelato/sundae to be amazed by....people were queuing for this thing, and I just rocked up, they recognised me (how funny) and I ordered! Boom! It was delicious. The wafers on it were not gluten free, but were made with some type of flour that has yet to even effect me. OMG what a great celebration!

 

On my way home I collected the bike travel bag from a dude in St Kilda, and we removed the pedals and wheels. We locked it in the bag and I need to complete the packing of that bag later today. A fun exercise I'm sure. I was quite sad to see my trusty pedal machine being striped for travel :( I didn't take pictures because it was just too sad. 

Kicking Back...

Today I'm taking a full day of rest, not so much to recover, but to give myself a chance to readjust and relax so I can go hard next week. I've had a long morning, spent snoozing and just ate lunch. Now I plan to work on packing the bike and relaxing some more.

I think thats reward enough for my biggest challenge this year!

Have a great Sunday.

Day 53 - Milestones

Rest Day

So, as you're aware, it's Friday and therefore it's rest day! This means working, eating, then resting...usually in the form of slumber.

Today, after a restful day, a couple hours of work and a little food....I true to my word hit the hay, sleep town was calling! At around 1800h I woke to a familiar sound: 

"Knock, Knock, Knock, Garry....Knock, Knock, Knock, Garry..."

My cabin neighbour, Keith, wanted to ask if I was keen to go and see the new Godzilla movie. I accepted, and swerved to and fro, in my sleepy-state, and got dressed. 

When we arrived in Frankston, we opted to get a bite to eat before the film, and ended up eating a monster portion of gnocchi...which is glutard friendly (since its made with potato flour)...and finally got some carbs in me....getting ready for this weekend's milestone. I also, grabbed a regular sized cold rock ice cream to enjoy with my movie...

Godzilla was actually pretty good. A nice way to relax, and hang with the boys!

Milestones

I set a series of personal challenge milestones when I arrived here in Cerberus, which at the time of my arrival was designed to motivate me to get fit. After the first 6 weeks, I realised I was not getting very close to any of my milestones. This, plus bad eating and over-drinking and irregular training led me to a desire to get fit. Born of this desire, and my strugglings to get ahead with it, I decided to start this blog. Now, thanks to sharing, and the level of accountability I have inherited from it, I have started achieving.

So, as you know, my first cycling milestone was to ride to Frankston. I achieved this last week, and as a consequence I also realised that cycling from Crib to Franko was not a sensible idea (by myself). The cars, utes and trucks don't understand road cyclists and as such the ride can be fairly dangerous. They don't give you a metre of clearance, they speed past and often hurl abuse. With that in mind, plus my risk aversion mode switched on, I decided that my next challenge would still be a ride to Melbourne. I will start in Franko, but will take a longer route to make it interesting. 

On mentioning my objective to Mr Peds, he actually agreed to ride with me. So, tomorrow 0600h he will meet me and we are going to have a stab at this. Tomorrow is my last chance to do this....next weekend I'm transporting my road bike back to Sydney.

Goals, Plans....

I really think it is important to set goals, and throughout the last 53 days it has been my goals that have been driving me. In my humble opinion, I'd suggest setting a major goal - in my case Fat to Fit, then in order to start creating a plan, detail the goal to take it from an idea to a concept. You need to try and breathe life into it, make it real, make it understandable, make it public. Tell your friends, tell your family. Next, I'd take the big detailed goal and break it up into smaller challenges and milestones. Use the milestones, build from milestone to milestone each being more challenging than the last. Give your milestones a timeline, so if you want to run a mile, say you want to run it within a given timeframe. Work hard to attain your goals. Be strict, disciplined and never back down. If you don't reach the goal or milestone at the first attempt, don't be disheartened, just work out what you need to improve on to get closer or to achieve it next time. Seriously, preparation really counts. Put in the hard yards, blood, sweat and tears...You gotta put in to get out. 

I'm starting to break down the whole process, and this is how I see it...and yes it comes from an engineer's point of view... So here's a little flow of how I'm doing things....

The nerdy part...

Set Point

Set yourself a goal, what you want. End game stuff.

Controller

This is where you determine the parameters you need to use to begin achieving your goal, this initially should be where you create the milestones, and methods to keep you consistent and your foundation rock-solid.

Final Control Element

You next want to determine how you are  going to achieve the goals and milestones - eat clean, train 5 times a week, 2 days rest etc. Set limitations, boundaries and means to keep yourself honest, decided on tools that you'll use (in my case, my fitness pal, map my run/ride, sleep timer).

Process

JFDI - Just Freaking Do It! Seriously, you gotta get your shoes on go for that planned run, saddle up or dive right into the pool.... Take steps, get going. A perfect, awesome, colour coded, laminated plan that looks fantastic is just a wish list until you start working on, get your plan wet, sweaty, muddy. Living your plan means it's gonna get messy sometimes, and things might not go to plan, that ok...I got you covered.... A quick point, Disturbance is a negative thats the neigh sayers, the lazy thoughts, the accidental (or planned) indulgences...they are going to try and create a bigger margin of error between you and your goals..It's your focus, your determination, your willpower and your ability to recognise, acknowledge and move forward that make YOU successful.

Measurement & Error

As you move through the process, hopefully you're gonna see changes, but fear not they're not all obvious. Check your weight (if thats one of your tools), take measurements, photos, videos. Share them. You can't see how well you're doing until you step away from yourself / remove yourself from the picture...a photo or a video is awesome for that....Plus, feedback from friends, family and randoms boosts confidence and really helps you to focus on the next goal. 

As you take these checks and measurements, remember, this process is about reducing the difference between what you measure and what you want (the error)...so, keep working through the process loop, listen and review the feedback and measurements - use them to push forwards. 

Output

You did it! You achieved your goal...or did you? Perhaps, as you reach one major goal you start planning the next on the back of one success you should start a new challenge...keep working in the loop, change the parameters....Boom...Everlasting Consistency!

If I could give any advice it would be this:

This is advice to myself for tomorrow....

Day 52 - Gym-Happy

I saw this today and it really made sense, plus it's what I've been doing all week....

Happiness

Today, I've been really quite chirpy. A happy soul. I've been smiling and enjoying the sunshine, I've trained really hard and I'm going to go out in Mornington tonight, for a birthday celebration....Major thing here, thanks to Mish Bridges, is that 8 weeks into my regime, I'm not going to feel guilty about going out. I'm going to control what I eat (a glutard's lot) and drink, but I'm not gonna stress...this way of being makes me very happy.

I've started seeing changes, mostly in functional strength, some size changes in my body and there's a twinkling of minor definition coming in mu physique. All major contributors to my happy state. I feel good, therefore I am good.

Another quite interesting thing is going on for me, I've only just realised that people actually read this blog. So, thanks for your feedback - I love it. Like I said, 52 days ago, this blog is to hold myself accountable, and to document the transformation that I'm intending to occur. So far, so good. Like I said yesterday, it's not easy but I'm not a quitter....

As my training is becoming more functional, and more aggressive in its nature, I'm becoming very keen to see how far I can push my body. It's all about limits; understand them to surpass them. I'm improving so much at the moment because I work to this, and I also know were the 'line' is, when to stop myself, apply controls to prevent injury....well, so far, so good.

Training Arms

Today is arms day! I had a massive session. At the start of this week I applied a little of my research into functional training, and endurance training. I also found that there are heaps of training videos and tutorials online to help further develop this knowledge. To that end, I've totally changed up my arm workout to suit. Still working on sets of higher reps, and more sets to accompany each exercise; I decided to focus my attention (whilst working mostly compound exercises) toward developing forearms, biceps and triceps. I decided that I'd give my favourite session a little workout, to boost it and shock it.

I started with forearms. Using the barbel cage I conducted farmer walks - not only are they goof for core, but also in the development of strong forearm and grip strength. I worked hard, walking around the gym floor with this thing. I ended up with 90kg (plus the bar weight - I think 10kg extra) on the frame, so good feel it very early on. I ended up doing about 8 sets, which was really good fun!

 

Start position for cage bar farmer walks... 

After I continued with forearms - and possibly the hardest exercise I've encountered: Palms Down Barbell Wrist Curls, over the edge of a bench. I ambitiously started with a 15kg bar, but ended up realising very quickly that I had to drop to 10kg to get used to the exercise, then after 3 sets of 8 reps I bumped up to 12.5kg for another 3 sets. Very hard, my forearms were getting the workout they've never had! I completed a similar set doing the Palms Up version of the exercise, which are way easier - so I returned to 15kg bar and completed 5 sets relatively comfortably. My last exercise was a set of standing olymipc plate squeezes. This is really a grip and forearm burnout - so, naturally 3 sets of 10 reps sealed that up nicely!

With my forearms still throbbing I moved into biceps. I grabbed a couple of 10kg dumbbells to allow me to do standing Zuttman curls. 5 sets later I could feel this was going to be an AWESOME arm burn! I moved to the E-Z Bar to do Spider curls - you lean against the angled part of the biceps bench, so that your arms drop down fully to work the flu range of the muscle. Hard. I managed to get, after 5 sets, to 30kg plus bar (approx 5kg extra) on the 4th and 5th set, which was a good place to be!

Next, I continued by working through 5 sets of inclined (leaning on incline bench belly down) bicep curls, using the 17.5kg bar. I finished biceps off with some good and heavy barbell bicep drags, using 30kg as a maximum was pretty good!

My E-Z Spider Curl Set Up

Now, Forearms really singing, Biceps swollen I moved into Triceps. Starting with the E-Z Bar to run through 5 sets of skull crushers, followed by cable work to really push them. This included Overhead Tricep Extenders, Reverse Grip Tricep Push downs, and Triceps push downs. ON the push downs I actually stacked the cable machine (45kg) for 8 reps! Boo-Ya!

For my final tricep workout I took the rope connection and moved to the seated row cable machine. I hooked in the cable. I then took a lying position, with my head near to the pulley end. IUsing my whole body, I pulled the rope overhead, then inline (but parallel) to my body, twisting out the tricep at the end. This worked my lats, core abdominal region and triceps....awesome!

Abdominals

Yesterday I was saying I need to improve my ab workout. Well, I did today...like, I really pushed hard. Since I was entering the third hour of my workout, and still going strong, I decided to start with suspended/hanging knee up crunches - I did 8 sets of these, each with 8 reps. Next came a new exercise, Landmine 180s. These are using the barbell and the hinge piece that it slots onto to create a big pivot arm. I started with a warmup of the exercise, no weight, for 10 reps. I then added a 15kg disc and did 2 more sets of 8 reps. This was NOT an easy abdominal exercise, I could feel it working everything on my body all at once! I ended up with 20kg on the bar (plus the bar which is 20kg) so, a good long start to abs!

Me, doing landmine drills..these are awesome hard work!

After the Landmines, I went over to the cables to do Pallof Press Core stabilisers, with weight. These burn your arms, lower back and middle abs. I did three sets on each side, ending up with 30kg load. After I did 3 sets of 8 Cable Lifts, with only 15kg load. These are like enhanced wood choppers. I found the Spell Caster dumbbell twists to be really uncomfortable, but 3 sets of 8 reps, with 6kg dumbbells really tested me!

Whilst doing abs Mr Q had entered the gym, and asked me to 'spot' him whilst doing bench, then assist him on pec deck so he could do a burnout. Good Job Q! You're looking much stronger these days too. In between helping Q, I pushed through 4 sets of Full Rectractors. These are especially hard because your upper body and feet are not in contact with the ground (except before and after each set). I did sets of 10 and by this time by body was cooked, like a chicken! I decided it was time to start to relax!