169lbs and £220

(Sick song for the blog)

So I finally weighed myself yesterday, its been a long time since I did that probably the last time I did it was in first year of university and since then I've put on around 30lbs. I know it doesn't seem a lot but I have a pretty small frame so its a lot visually. Comfort wise it is a huge amount for me also, wearing anything without an elasticated waistband and sitting down for long periods of time is very uncomfortable.

I'm not really sure what happened, I mean I obviously gradually gained weight but there was definitely one point where it just exploded and I think that happened in two places. The first was last summer and the second was after last Christmas definitely.

Looking back at photos from then is hard because of the way I look. I've never considered myself to be self conscious in looks regard (i'm not a particularly handsome person so it's been more of a deal with what you have situation haha) but I think we all are on some level. There are plenty of things I would tweak if I could but I can't so it makes things that I can control (i.e. weight) a lot more important to do so.

So here is the first goal:

Lose 14-20lbs get down to my former weight and then start working from there. At one point I hovered around the 140lb mark which is really low thinking back on it so 150ish seems to be a good goal and a nice starting point for aesthetic muscle development.

My training is going to be pretty cardio heavy at first (actually following a Triathalon training plan) cycle/run/swim with a bit of strength training mixed in just to get me started. I'll be training for a sprint triathlon so distances are 800m/0.5mile swim. 21km/13mile bike and a 5k/3.2mile run.

This brings me to the second goal:

I want to run the 5km in around 25minutes. The last time I did a race I did 30 or so minutes which is slow and I didn't train much. I can and will go faster than 30 minutes and I am aiming for <25minutes. Goals for the swim and bike will come later as I don't really have a benchmark for those at the moment. My swim will take a bit of work and i'll be doing swim drills along with my scheduled sessions during the week.

From my reading typical sprint triathlon splits look like this (across the full age ranges) give or take:

Swim: 10-35 minutes, Bike: 30-55 minutes, Run: 18-45 minutes with a total time of around 55-135 minutes

I'll be doing a 3x program meaning I run, swim and bike 3 times a week with a short, medium and long session each week. Strength training I'm still unsure about but it'll probably be on the swim/bike days (thinking about it its probably better to do splits as especially on the short run days I don't have much to do, I may just up the swimming I don't know yet).

Like I said its all up in the air at the moment I'm definitely certain on the swim/bike/run aspect the strength training i'll figure out.

In other news I enroll in college hopefully this week bad news is I have to start paying for it which is a little dicey at the moment as I can't really afford it but i'm glad the ball is starting to roll on that aspect of the change.

I'll give a more detailed plan of my training soon and more goals as I get into the swing of things, but this is it for me today, need to go and join the gym before I cop out and pretend I never made this blog in the first place.