Keeping it together in the Year of the Rabbit

Today I hit Day 4 of running training. Still on W6D1 of the program and did it in 32 minutes - yayy! Shaved 3 minutes off my time! :D

Because I could feel myself improving, I realised that I was getting a bit too much rest in the session - walked about 540m instead of 400m. Well, am just gonna run the extra 140m in the next session...surely it can't be that hard? Right?

This week is going to be a test. It's Chinese New Year, and my parents arrive from overseas tonight. CNY is like Christmas all over again - lots of food and family gatherings. We have dinner on Wednesday, yumcha (dim sum) on Sat afternoon AND dinner with the extended family on Sat night. I'll have to work my running around this hectic eating schedule!

Will try not to pig out too much! It's the Year of the Rabbit - trick is trying to eat like one!

So...less of this:

Giant rabbit (!!!)

And more of this!

Sexy, va-va-voom Jessica Rabbit

At least that's the idea.

Reality tv as motivation?

The Biggest Loser's back! First ep of the new season was on tonight. This season features family members - four families of four members each. They don't necessarily have to be mom/dad/son/daughter, there were sisters and cousins, nieces and nephews. Think there was one family of mom/dad/son/son's gf.

While I'm not one to get my kicks from reality tv, this is actually great timing for what I am trying to do about getting fit. As bad as reality tv can get - especially with TBL where you watch these overweight contestants try to do two sit ups with great difficulty, or falling over, or passing out, or throwing up - it can sometimes act as motivation for the viewer. I mean, while watching it tonight I actually got the urge to get off the couch and do push-ups during the ad breaks! (or maybe it's just me and I'm weird that way).

Anyhoo, tonight's ep was a bit different. All four trainers, who probably have never eaten badly in their lives, had to spend a week with their families and eat what they eat. BAD IDEA, but it's so funny to see these four extremely fit, well-toned athletes eat mountains of pasta, potatoes, white bread, cream, ice-cream, chocolate, McDonalds and all the rest of it; and kinda horrifying to see them feel absolutely shit because of it.

And these contestants really know how to eat badly. So badly, in fact, that I wonder if half of it was staged. I mean, who really eats the following for lunch: pasta bake, potato bake, lasagna, ham, roasted pumpkin and gravy - and that's only what I saw on one plate! One contestant put a whole wheel of brie on a slice of bread and ate THAT (a small one, but still, who eats a whole wheel of brie on bread?!). This other woman eats this deadly concoction for breakfast (or lunch, seeing as she got up at 3pm on tonight's ep): pasta covered in carbonara sauce, sour cream, cream and two types of cheese. With a white bread roll. I felt quite sick just watching it on tv.

On Wednesday the families have to do their first weigh-in in front of close family and friends, which surely has to be one of the most confronting things they would ever have to do on the show. I hate weighing myself, and I'm nowhere as big as any of these people. And the trainers themselves have to weigh in to see what a week of bad eating does to their physique.

So far, this season has shaken things up enough to make it look interesting. Let's see how it goes.

Progress

I am filling up my Google Calendar with all the fitness classes near both work and home, so I can just duck into whichever class is most convenient for me at that time of day and week. Pretty nifty, huh? I've also set out three to four running days throughout the week - the whole aim of this exercise is to have some sort of a schedule that is still flexible enough to accommodate for this thing called life.

So far I've got:
Monday - running
Tuesday - Ashtanga yoga
Wednesday - running or Zumba
Thursday - running or something else (looking into dance classes)
Friday - running or Zumba
Saturday - running or bike ride
Sunday - rest!

There are some fitness classes at the local pool/gym that I'm keen to try out to see if they're any good. Things like Aerodance and Body Blast.

Also, I mapped my walk from Melbourne Central station to work and found that it was 1.3km which is awesome 'cuz I've been doing that almost everyday for the last few months now :)

Here are workouts from the last two days (oh, and turns out I was actually doing Week 6, Day 1 (W6D1) of the program instead of Week 5! D'OH):

On Friday I repeated W6D1 of the Couch to 5k program. It was easier than Wednesday but was still quite an effort. Think I'll keep at this until I get the hang of it.

Today I did a distance trial i.e. tried to run for at least 3km without stopping, because the aim of Week 6 in the C25k program (or so it seemed to me) was to be able to run 3.6km with no walking or stops.

I managed 2.4km. Perhaps I was too ambitious to start, albeit unintentionally, in Week 6?

Well whatever it is, I gotta keep moving forward. Think if I keep at Week 6 for a little bit then I could build my endurance and speed up to a decent level. Already today I felt like my pace was better and I felt stronger during my run. And I ran an extra 400m before the gotta-stop-or-die-now feeling hit :)

Think next week I'll do some sprints, and the following week I'll do another distance trial.

Gotta keep moving! Wish me luck, interwebs!

Inspiration. Right now.

Okay so right now these two people - Ben and Elizabeth - whom I've never met, are being a right real inspiration to me. They both have blogs about running and weight loss, which is what I'm trying to get into getting into right now for the new year - and I really want to stick with this for more than two weeks or three months or however long it takes for the novelty to wear off.

Ben of Ben Does Life and Elizabeth of One Twenty Five. Go read their blogs. I've also linked to their blogs from my homepage, under 'Places where I lurk'.

(Because that's what I do. Lurk around other people's blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, without saying much, if anything at all.)

Apart from their valiant efforts at getting fit and losing weight, I also admire how they are brave enough to share all this with the interwebs. With pictures and all. I guess if you're sharing your thoughts/experiences/journey/whatever, then you gotta put yourself out there and share everything, all 100% of it. No holding back. Me, I try not get my face on the internet, which makes it difficult to post personal photos...and we all know that a successful blog is, more often than not, a personal one. Especially all out, here's-a-photo-of-me-i-just-woke-up personal.

Maybe that's why no one reads my blog. And I'll probably never become a successful (i.e. well-known) blogging internet sensation.

Off to a running start...

There's this awesome website called Map My Run, which lets you map out your route, plan workouts, import your workouts from a device, track your progress and heaps of other cool stuff. You can find all sorts of routes, not just for running but also for cycling and walking etc. There's even a community so you can hook up with like-minded people.

In the interest of sharing, I've made my workouts public! Here's today's workout:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/workout/36339866/

As you can see it's not much to shout about, but hey, I'll get there!

For more inspiration, check out Ben Does Life. This dude went from being 358 pounds and depressed, to losing 120 pounds and running marathons. If he can do it...

P.S. Just discovered that there are (obviously) a HEAP of websites dedicated to running of all sorts. The competitive ones look a bit scary! I'm not even going to try and read through all that serious stuff at this stage, as I feel that it will take the fun out of running for me.

Mission: Couch to 5k (aka a New Year's resolution to keep for more than two weeks)

Happy 2011!

Ok, so I'm going to start off 2011 with a goal - to get fit and lose weight. See, I've stacked it on a bit over the last few months, and I'm starting to dislike how I look in photos and how my clothes fit. I'm also sick of sitting on the couch (as nice an activity that may be) so it's time get to stop wishing I was thinner and start doing something.

I used to paddle dragon boats competitively, and that kept me pretty fit and healthy for a few years. I could eat (almost) anything I wanted as I was training about four times a week.

So now my goal is to get back to, or even exceed (!) that level of fitness I had. Since I'm saving up to go live in Canada (that's another blog), I need to do something that is either a) very cheap or b) free. I like Option B.

And what's free? Basically running, walking and cycling. I like running the least. So I'm going to do that. A bit of a challenge, you see. I've always disliked running (hate is maybe too strong a word) and have never been very good or very fast, so the idea of being able to conquer that is a good one, I think. I've always envied people who could do those 5km fun runs, so my goal is to do exactly that: train and get fit enough to do a 5km fun run, even if I do it so slowly that old people and kids could beat me.

I've downloaded the Couch to 5k program - the C25k website has a metric version plus a whole heap of other info and resources. The original one (I think) can be found on the Cool Running website, but is measured in yards and miles as it's an American site. Before doing this though, I had already done three running sessions, mostly trying to run 2km on this little circuit around my home.

With that in mind, I figured I was fit enough to not have to start from the beginning of the program - so I decided to start in Week 5Week 6, Day 1. The program for the day is to start with a five-minute brisk walk warm-up, then run/jog 800m, walk 400m, run/jog 1.2km, walk 400m and run/jog 800m.

Note: just realised today (Sat) that I was actually doing Week 6, not Week 5! Oh well, gotta keep going.

I did and survived it. Was quite a bit harder than usual, but I got some motivation from our next door neighbours who were having an Australia Day bbq on their balcony and cheered me on every time I ran past! Think I'll keep doing this for another two sessions before progressing to Day 2.

Wish me luck! I'll keep posting on my progress and possibly a pic or two if I can.