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....