Saddle sores and Chafing

So sorry about the delay in posting its been a busy day (no gym today but i'll explain this in a bit). So Wednesday was the first run day! It was good fun actually, I forgot how much I used to enjoy running so it was good to get back into it. I did extend it for 30 minutes which worked out pretty well although I was doing 2 minute jog, 1 minute walk, 3 minute run, 2 minute walk alternations with increasing speed especially towards the end.

I'm guessing it happens for a lot of people but when a good song comes on my god does it make me want to run hard. Sometimes its not a song I particularly like but it has the right feeling to it, the crescendo is perfect the bpm is perfect and it makes me want to run until I puke.

I manage 2 miles with about 13 minute warm up and cool down included for a total time of 30-35minutes which is a nice start. Not the distance or time i'm aiming for but its a nice start. I did the cross trainer for 15 minutes too which was a bit too long but i'm going to keep it at that time, my legs were burning a little after the cross trainer but I went and stretched and started the weight portion of the workout so it wasn't too much of an issue.

The weights on the other hand are. I foolishly decided not to have a day break between weight sessions so i'm now in a lot of pain. The exercises I did for the back also innately worked the shoulders too a bit so doing a shoulder day the following day means its hard to lift my arms today, which is mainly why I had the rest day today.

It also turns out I cant bench for shit, the bar is about 20kg and I can barely do that. I also used the smith machine thinking it'd be safer since I don't have someone to spot and because the other bench was occupied and I gotta say, I hate it. It just feels weird, so I'll try to use the other bench next time I do chest.

Part of the issue with the pain today is because I don't really know any effective shoulder stretches, so when I warmed down I didn't really help myself there. The warm down stretches for the legs have been awesome though, so even with me not being used to the bike and run my legs still feel pretty fresh.

I also did my first swim on Wednesday too. My god does it feel good to get in the pool (after a shower of course) after sweating like an absolute pig for an 1hr+. My only issue is my plan said 200m swim and thats it which is a bit useless tbh :/. I did find a advertisement for something called swmfit which must have been a sponsered plan to get people in the pool for the olympics around the nation so I checked out their website and will be following one of their plans.

Other than that I feel good, minus the sore arse from the bike (I don't wan to ride again until I get a pair of shorts) and the rash where my thighs rub together now I got fat. So from now on the strength training will have a day in between and follow this: Legs and Back, Biceps and Triceps, Chest and shoulders. Abs will be thrown in on the days I feel like it (more interested in cardio to lose the belly fat).

My diet is beginning to clean up and i'm thinking of trying the paleo diet but i'm undecided yet. Collegewise shit is good. I enrolled today and it turns out I can start on the HNC straight away, bad news is its gonna cost nearly four grand so I have to deal with fucking student finance again, but we do what we must!

Swim day tomorrow, hopefully my arms are a little less sore!

Into The Belly of the Beast

So today was the first workout and it went well! Good news is the gym is super quiet in the morning (I got there for like 7:45ish) which is awesome. It means I can save on the embarrassment of looking like a weights noob while I make sure my form is correct.

Workout was as follows:

Crosstrainer - 5 minutes for a warm up (I'll increase this to 15 from now on just because it felt a bit short)

Stretching (Mostly streatched my legs, hamstrings, calves etc because of it being leg day with a bit of back stretching for later). Stretching has always been a weak point of mine, yes I realise that sounds stupid but what I mean is I've never really spent enough time in the past doing it. From now on i'm gonna spend 5-10 minutes before any workout just stretching.

Legs (Machine):
 - Leg Extensions 1x12@10kg, 1x12@12.5kg, 1x12@10kg
 - Leg Curls 1x12@14kg, 1x12@15kg, 1x12@20kg

Back/Shoulders
 - Wide Grip Lat Pulldown 1x12@20kg, 1x12@25kg, 1x12@27.5kg
 - Seated Row 1x12@15kg, 1x12@20kg, 1x12@22.5kg

Eventually I'm going to be squatting a lot as well for Leg days and doing pull ups for the back. Pull ups have always been a week point for me, I have a fair bit of lower body strength upper body not so much. Good thing is the gym I go to has an assisted pull-up machine so as I lose weight and build strength I'll be using that.

Cardio Today was:
~37 minutes including warmup and main ride. I did 8km in 25 minutes which is about a third of the distance I need to build up to. I varied the intensity as I went along nothing crazy but enough so it was noticeably harder (and it bloody was at some parts) I could probably go a lot faster than this without the resistance cranked up, but for now this is how i'll be training I will need to do speed training at some point though.

Another thing to not not really related to the workout, I need some padded shorts and soon. Sitting on a bike that long is painful and if i'm going to be doing longer rides I'll need support in the right places if I went to walk afterwards.

I was going to swim today too just to start it but the times are weird with it being school holidays so I missed out by about an hour and would have had to wait another hour before I could do it, so I will now be swimming before the main workout, mainly this will be volume building but I'll probably do one day a week where I do stroke drills too.

I actually stretched when I got home too which makes it a first for me and I am already glad I did. Hopefully I won't be too sore tomorrow now.

Running starts tomorrow and will probably be the hardest part for me. I'm supposed to be doing 15 minutes I think but If I feel I can keep going I might set a distance goal (3 or 5k). Another alternative is to do a couch to 5k thing go for 30 minutes with jogging and walking intervals (2 minute walk, 3 minute jog) until I can run a full 30 minutes again. Either that or the long swim days could be on the run days too.

Weight wise tomorrow is shoulders and chest so I'll be trying my best to get my form correct with free weights. I know the weight work doesn't appear to be a lot but I think that's the idea. It's more aimed at building strength and stability without fatiguing you too badly for all the cardio, If it needs to be changed to meet changing goals then I will do as necessary (Probably do starting strength or WS4SB).

The training says abs everyday too so when I do start that I'll be mixing it up between the P90x Ab workout and the Insanity Ab one. I'll have to see about this though. I'm also going to work in the P90x yoga workout (It's pretty tough I've done it before) a couple of times a week for flexibility and just to stretch more.

Overall I'm pretty stoked to be exercising again and it's only going to get better from here (especially when I start to run more, mmmm Runner's High fuck yeah!). Let's hope I stay injury free and keep the train rolling.

Diet will change from next week but I'll make a separate post on this later. But that's eat for today!

Peace

EDIT: Oh I'm, logging my stuff on Fitocracy too! I love MMOs and this lets me level by exercising! Check it out its pretty cool: http://www.fitocracy.com/profile/CtrlF4/

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.

What This is About...

I've blogged before, several times in fact. Initially it was the ramblings of an angsty teen, the next was about a terrible time in my life which I don't want to talk about now. Blogging was a great release, being able to write what was going on in my head down and look back upon it later was very cathartic.

 It did have its downsides though, a lot of what gets written is in the heat of the moment and so therefore not very well thought out and this has gotten med in a lot of trouble in the past.

 But enough of that! With the tools it provides me I think it is more than apt that I start a new one, but before I get into the reasons why here's a short history lesson.

 I went to university in 2009, Newcastle University in fact and was glad to leave a lot of trouble and bad memories behind. I needed a break to think and get better and moving away couldn't have come sooner. I studied a science subject, I wanted eventually to become a doctor but that quickly changed.

As time went on I began to hate my course more and more. I nearly dropped out a few times, but money troubles and the thought of disappointing people kept me there until I graduated with a 2:2 this year. When I found out my grade I felt devastated, like I'd ruined my life and just wasted 3 years and a LOT of money on something that to me at the time wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

 Now I've had time to think about it its not bad at all. But I have learned a lesson and that is to not do something that I am not 100% sure or close enough I want to do. The first year went grate my grades were good, I was on target for a first and my health was the best it had ever been. My dislike for the course wasn't the only reason for my failure to maintain that great start,

I stopped exercising and I stopped keeping myself occupied which allowed me to slip into a hole of depression about things that had happened before I went to university. Once I was in that hole I just couldn't get out. Don't get me wrong I had an amazing time socially at university which is one of the reasons I can't count it as a massive waste of time, but physically and psychologically (In terms of motivation and being happy) it was terrible.

 So now i'm here, the next step in my life and future. Within a week i'll be enrolled on a course to become a qualified electrical engineer at a local college. Its not something I am dying to do but it provides me with opportunities in the future which I wouldn't have with a lot of other careers. If i'm going to do well I need to get my life in order, I need to improve my physical and mental health and so this is what that is. An exercise blog but with everyday life thrown in as well. If I feel crap i'll let you know if I feel great you'll hear it too.

 So there it is, its officially in writing now. Keep an eye out for future posts, the next one is going to be the plan of action.