Done shaking

Now we're bacon!

Yes, with a sigh and a heavy heart, on Saturday morning we pretty much ran out of the protein shake mix, and decided that rather than dashing out to buy a couple of days supply, we'd get a head-start on the 'meat weeks' instead. I was rather excited, as 'meat week' also means coffee is back. And the occasional glass of wine too! I did celebrate this news with a nice hot cup of coffee, my first in a dozen days, and enjoyed it immensely. I'm only allowed 2 a day, but I'm going to enjoy them both, that's for sure.

Exercise wise, we did a freezing cold session on Friday. While it wasn't as wet as the Tuesday or Wednesday sessions (nothing could have been as wet as Wednesday was!) it was very cold and windy. It was just a hard-core couple of us there braving the environment and Tracey kept us moving the whole time, mostly off the ground but focussing on keeping us warm while she barked orders. My hands almost froze off within 5 minutes, but were actually quite warm when we finished. Again, no excuses for not going out. You might regret going out and getting cold or wet for a wee while, but when summer rolls around again and you find that you've spent winter at your desk because you were too scared to go outdoors, you'll regret it. I'll have a head-start on the hibernators!

Back to the food! 'Meat week' is not just meat, but is a focus on protein and fat with low carbs and little dairy. So, we popped out to the Riccarton Markets on Sunday and grabbed a couple of trays of eggs and some fresh veges and planned a few days meals. Easy choices for lunches are cold roast chicken and boiled eggs (yum) which of course can be last nights dinner :)  Breakfasts are going to be egg based as they are quick and light and easy - omelettes, poached, scrambled, fried - and dinners nice and warming on these colder evenings. There's a nice meaty soup I want to make for lunches as well. Plus, still having plenty of veg to balance it all out (we're loving the mushroom & leeks at the moment) and plenty of dark greens sneaking in as well.

One other advantage of 'meat week' is that my energy seems to have improved. I had noticed in the last couple of weeks that I was not performing at 100%. I wasn't tired or lacklustre, just lagging behind what I thought I should be performing at. This was kind of to be expected, but was annoying. However, my energy levels are back now. I went for a jog around the block last night (2.3km) and this morning was riding hard, back to my previous speeds and fitness. I feel energised again, only downside is the sore throat I seem to be developing :( Damn bugs.

As the 20 week challenge has a 'sprint to the finish' challenge tossed in to the mix, I'm keeping a food diary, along with my insulin use and blood glucose readings. This will make for interesting reading by my doc and the diabetes centre next time. The diabetes centre will freak at my lack of carbohydrates, but be amazed at my decrease in insulin and of course, my control will be near-perfect as usual. With the amount of energy I have now, I'm almost convinced I convert fats to energy better than carbs. I even woke with a low score on my meter this morning, something that hasn't happened for a very  long time. Too early to celebrate, but fingers crossed for a fitter and leaner future with low insulin use and stable blood sugars!

Weight? Well, for the past week it has been stable. And by stable I mean I have ranged in weight from 100.0 to 100.6 kilos. Yup, Chris does it again, diets don't make me lose weight, and I'm not concerned about that in the least. Part of the move from shakes to 'meat week' was doing some measurements and that's where the real story is being told. Lots of decreases there and I can see my shape changing. I first noticed it a few days ago while brushing my teeth - shoulders more defined, ribs visible, spare tyre greatly reduced giving more straight lines down my sides, and the hanging over tummy is melting away. It's nice when you see the changes in yourself.

And the madness seems to be increasing. I'm about to head off and go for another jog in the park, about 3.8km. If I can do 3 sessions like this a day (commute + run or PT session + commute) then it's bound to do me some good. I want to build my running distance up substantially, but need to take it easy so as not to damage my shins, so will add a few hundred meters on each time, and stop when the pain starts, not when it reaches critical levels. Must remember to buy some new shoes too...

It's raining, it's pouring

The golden weather has well and truly come to an end this week:

• It's probably rained more in the last few days than it has for the entire year
• Temperatures are holding in the low teens, and sometimes struggling to achieve even that
• Sunrise and sunset seem to coincide with arriving at work and leaving work
• People are adding more layers
• Less people are seen out jogging or riding
• Moods darken

So, with a smile, my shorts, t-shirt and vest, I jumped onto my bike in the gloom and raced to the office. The traffic was busy, as expected, and I was thankful that my commute each day uses very little of the road, and where it does, it has a well defined cycle lane and less busy sections of the streets. I hate riding in the traffic.

In short order I was in the wide open cycle path, devoid of children and dogs. Odd really, as this is the perfect weather for them - puddles, leaves blowing around, worms, ducks, and water everywhere! A dream environment for a child or dog! Sadly, most parents will drive their kids to school, and the poor pooches will be left indoors for the day.

I arrived at the office, wet and happy. Riding in the rain is good fun and I don't understand why people dislike it so much. I got changed into dry clothes and sat at my depressing desk for a few hours, counting the minutes till I was heading out again!

Yup, rain, hail or shine, or snow, lightening, floods, earthquake or any number of disasters, natural or otherwise, there is no reason to postpone the DropAndGiveMe20 session in the park at lunchtime. I re-donned my cold, wet clothes and we trotted to the park feeling cold, and a little stupid. But after some running about, random ball games (ever tried shooting hoops with a medicine ball?) and not too much mud wallowing, the 20 minutes flew by and I was quite warm again.

Back to the office, another quick change to dry clothes and another boring few hours at the keyboard. When the end of the day arrived, I was hesitant, as this would be the second time I had to climb into cold, wet clothes. Urgh. I jumped on the bike and cycled off into the dark. Man, the paths are deserted when it's cold and wet. And it'll get quieter and quieter as the temperature drops. I love the cold, everyone else seems to hate it.

I arrived home, removed the leaves from my hairy legs and arms, dried off, changed into slouchy clothes and prepared for dinner. What a day.

When I look back on it, it was good. Because I went for a ride in the rain. Because I went for a PT session in the rain. Because I didn't just hibernate and grump. Because I did these things, my day was filled with laughter and success. If I didn't, it would be all spent grumpy in the car, grumpy at my desk, and arriving home grumpy. But, I'm in a good mood. Are you?

So, how do you spend a rainy day?

[UPDATE - the very next day]
OK, so while it was wet on Tuesday, Wednesday was a whole new ballgame. The session in the park was so wet, I gained 4KG. I was drenched through my jacket and holding a litre of water in my shoes. But you know what, it was still damn good fun!

The dark blue is torrential rain, the yellow is just heavy rain.

Weight a week and see

7 days of shakes and dinners and have I gone mad yet? Well, maybe... Depends on your definition I guess.

I have been attending the regular 20 minute sessions in the park, doing some weird and wonderful things, and continuing to commute every day (and it's getting colder and colder in the mornings too!) plus I went for another jog with Logan one evening. We picked a larger park with an almost 1km loop and managed to knock off a few laps before my shins gave way, but our technique is good and our pace is pretty even as well, which means we'll be able to build to the 19km required for the Hard Labour weekend in October. We have a couple of runs planned for this week, hopefully my shins don't give way on me and we can get more of those laps done in an evening. I still find it amazing that he can follow me around a field attached by a stretchy cord and know where we are after a lap, and be able to predict when we're going to be cornering again on subsequent laps. Blows my mind.

What I have noticed in the last week is weight loss. My tummy has finally started to shrink. Yup, flabby belly is now just jelly belly! I have lost about 5kg without starving myself, although I have been missing my coffee and red wine. The first week of this low-carb diet is dull as hell. Shakes are fun for a day, maybe two, but now I'm on day 8 they just plain suck. But, in less than a week I'll never have to have another one and I get to start on my fantasy fortnight - meat meat meat!! Oh yea, low carbs and meat flavoured. I'm gonna like those 2 weeks.

With my dropping weight, and increasing strength, my power to weight ratio is going up as well. On Friday we did 'crunchie club' in the 20 minute session, doing crunchies, prone holds and side raises, with (for me) a set of 5 chin-ups in between each loop. I managed 5 loops, which means 25 chin-ups as well. A good sign of improving upper-body strength.

I was back in the park on Sunday morning with Tracey and Jody doing a double-session instead of a walk up the hill. It was cold and wet, but I soon warmed up. A short jog, then Tabata intervals, followed by another short jog and then a random game of 'run up the hill and grab a cone and bring it down and do that exercise while the other person runs up the hill and back' - a game I seemed to suck at because I kept coming back with squat-based activities. I'm sure it was rigged. In hindsight, I should have checked the cones at the top of the hill rather than on the way back down! Squat-hold, twice, hurts.

My blood sugars have been sitting high off and on for the week, mostly because I'm having trouble guessing how much to account for when drinking these shakes. I have been getting better, but so long as it's pretty well controlled, I'll wait till the meat weeks before I start really knuckling down on it. It's not bad for me, but it would be bad for you, however I have had much worse weeks (or months) in the past and once my internals get sorted it'll be back to strict control again.

I'm off to fantasise about dunking biscuits in my coffee now. Enjoy your next cup of coffee, it'll be a week before I get to taste one again!

Liquid food and enforced laziness

I went for a night jog with Logan last week. We only did about 2.5km around a small park, but it was to try out a lead and follow approach, and see if I could run at his pace. While I didn't race away, I did hold a good pace and kept it up for the whole time, only being distracted by the blind bugger behind me potentially going off-course due to his following-by-ear. A new method required, which we will trial on Thursday. We need a safe and non-annoying method as we're going to be using it for hours as we traverse 19km of mountain roads. Thankfully we have a bit of time up our sleeves before it happens. After 2.5km on grass at a steady pace, I was starting to feel my shins, but it was a very manageable pain.

On Friday however, doing a short jog to my lunchtime torture session, my shins flared up real quick. Sadly, this was the day Tracey had decided to do running drills. 50m jaunts doing all manner of hop, skip, frog march, high knees, butt kicks and other weird walks straight from the Department of Silly Walks. About half way through my legs were in agony, but I pushed on. Why? Well, I need to know if they will explode, get even more sore, or just reach a point and hang there. I don;t want to find out half way up a mountain that the answer is explode! So I did the rest of the session, keeping up, but not rocketing along, and the pain held. It was sore, very sore, the worst my legs have been in fact, but it tells me that when I get to that stage of pain, it's not going to get a lot worse, nor is it going to snap my legs in half. It's an awful pain tho, and one I do not like. A combination of more training and some foot-doctor visits should help, hopefully.

The weekend was to be filled with activity, sailing, bike rides, hill walks and more. However, sailing was cancelled (despite the fantastic weather) and I spent most of the day being lazy instead. On Sunday Logan said he'd melt in the rain, and cancelled the ride. The hill walk was cancelled too, except it was replaced with a circuit session in the garage. Amanda, her 2 girls, me and my girl were under the instruction of Tracey for almost an hour. 10 stations, 45 seconds on, 10 seconds off. 2 loops, then a 'rest' session of squats, then another shorter loop. It was great to see how much fitter Amanda is getting and having a crowd of us laughing, crying and swearing in the garage and in the rain would have made for a rather unusual site to passers by I'm sure.

Monday was an off day, but the first day of the ultra-low-carb 2 weeks. Yep, protein shakes for breakfast and lunch, a yummy dinner (no stodge) and another shake before bed. Despite eating pretty much no carbs for the entire day, I didn't crave anything, but my blood sugars remained high. It is almost defiantly due to fat being converted to sugars, so time will tell... Weight has remained static since the challenge started, but this diet may well help, and probably do my blood and organs some good too.

Tuesday I woke with a headache. A detox-like hangover. Not a skull piercer, just an annoying one in my left temple. Another protein shake for breakfast and at lunchtime a session in the park again. As part of an ongoing fit-test, Tracey had us run a mile (literally, 1.6km) and then do push-ups, crunchies, squats, side-to-side jumping and chin-ups. None of it was fun, starting from 100m into the run when my headache doubled in size, and with about 400m to go, my shins started to groan. I still managed under 9 minutes which is an average of about 10.5kph, a speed I'm happy to maintain for a while. If I can hold a speed of 10kph for a distance of 20km, I'll be a very happy man! My crunchies and push-ups were on-par with the last test, but I managed 9 chin-ups when I wouldn't have been able to do 1 a matter of weeks ago! More time to work on that tho, more improvements to be made, here's hoping the diet, running, cycling and workouts combine to produce immediate results!

Steady as she goes

In the early weeks of this 20 week challenge I was being hit left, right and centre by new ideas, new food options, new schedules and new ways to do what I have already been doing. We're well past half way now, on the ragged downward slope to the finish line, and it seems that routine has started to set in. This is both a good and bad thing.

It's been over a week since I last updated, and I have done 5 more sessions in the park since then. Some have been pretty hard, involving repetition of an exercise to enable pain in targeting of a single area of your body, to running about and exercising to Hairy McLeary, to resistance exercises that have made my butt muscles ache, not to mention buckets of toys and trading exercises. So far there has not been a single session repeated, Tracey is doing damn well there, and none of the participants have been trying to find excuses to skip the sessions (so far).

I'm still enjoying these short bursts of activity, and while I don't notice it all the time, there have been a few occasions where I have seen some muscle popping out to say hi, or looking a little more defined than when I saw it last.  While I don't feel stronger yet, I know I am. I can do chin-ups now! I can do way more pushups in a minute than I have ever been able to do.

My cardio is still pretty bad and needs a lot more work. I find that I tend to slacken off once I start puffing and blowing. I need more mental training in this area, as I know my body will work harder than my mind is saying it will. For example, when riding up a hill, as I start to blow, my mind starts trying to convince me that I should slow, or stop, and soon! Sometimes I can get around this by asking questions of myself - "am I gasping for breath?" or "are my legs screaming with white-hot pain?" - if neither of these (usual causes) is a definite 'yes' then it's my brain not my body that wants to stop, and far too often it demands a reassessment and rest over and over again.

Tonight, I go for a jog. Yes, it's gonna hurt my shins, and when the pain is bad I will stop, but it's going to be a little different as I will be jogging with a companion. Tonight Logan and I go for a run to size each other up. He might be too fast, or get his second wind before I do, or want to do a lot more distance than I can, but either way, we'll both be jogging in the dark tonight. This is part of the training for the Twizel Hard Labour weekend in 5 months time. By then I'll have to be able to run 19km, in the hills, and follow it up with a 90km road ride, and follow that up with a 44km mountain bike ride. Gawd I hope I can learn to run.

So, what about the bad thing about being in a routine? Exercise wise it's fine. More fitness for not much extra time commitment, however my diet is shabby again. I blame Tracey (as you would) but my incidental junk-food consumption has built up to pre-20-weeks levels. Cupcakes, banana bread (with choc chips) and Belgium slice have all featured in my daily food diary over the past few weeks, more than once. My weight is still over 100kg and my tummy is still there, and diet is the only real fix for that. Alcohol consumption is way down, carb consumption is down below previous levels (despite the cakes) but both of these are still too high. I might have to do a very restrictive diet for a few weeks to knock a few kilos off and trim the gut, avoid all of my favourite ingestibles and see if there's improvement. If there's none, then it's back to cakes and pies as diet is obviously not the cause of my wobbly tummy :)

If you have 20 minutes, why not join me in the park one lunchtime?

More work required

Last week was a bit of a blur. The days keep coming and going so fast it's hard to keep track of them. I'm up to my eyeballs in work and the piles never seem to diminish. My knees got real sore, so I attempted to rest them as much as possible for a week, and thankfully by the weekend they had mostly recovered.

The sessions in the park last week were the usual hard stuff, with a squat & pushup day having us do 165 of each of them. Seriously tough, but we did it! Friday saw us playing cards (thankfully I only drew the joker once, poor Len got it 3 times!) and earlier in the week we were made to run for the next exercise, collecting random (or were they?) tasks from a collection about 100m away. 

One of the reasons I was resting my knees is because I had a couple of races lined up on Saturday. The Christchurch Singletrack Club Fiesta! I had entered in 2 races - the Tranquilo and the Velovidad Solo. The night before I attempted to get both my bikes into the little convertible, and failed, so borrowed a friends cars to transport us to the Living Springs track.

I had of course forgotten to take my insulin and meter with me, so was possibly running a little high in sugars on arrival, but was feeling OK. I registered, prepared and got dressed in my '404 Mexican costume not found' set of plastic overalls. Man, it seemed like such a good idea the night before. We watched the Rapido race for a wee while and then Tracey headed off to marshal at the bottom of the very long downhill. I took the track down to the start line (bottom of the hill) and remembered very little of the track from my one and only lap of it about 6 months ago.

We started up the 4x4 farm track, a steep little climb that sucks the wind and energy out of you, especially when you hate uphills anyhow. Then it's a gradual but pretty constant grind up through 'the pines' to get to the top of the course for about 1.5km. By the time I got to the top, and began my descent, over 15mins had passed, not a good sign when the lap times are under that for the speedy buggers. The downhill was fun, lots and lots of fun, but I was hot and sweating like a piggy in my plastic bag and temperatures were ranging from roasting hot to briskly cold as I navigated the descent.

As I passed Tracey at the marshal point I stopped and stripped off my top, leaving just skin and plastic overalls. Yuk, man it was horrible in there. I realised I was losing a lot of water, more than usual and was getting very thirsty but more importantly, was getting very tired. I knew in about 200m I'd be climbing the 4x4 track and 'the pines' again. I was not mentally prepared to do it again. At this stage I had been overtaken by most of the field and could see Mel about 100m behind me. I rode half of the 4x4 track, pushed the rest, and continued uphill, stopping on occasion to have a rest. I wasn't panting massively, nor were my legs screaming, I was just exhausted, and the ride up that hill the second time had me thinking that I may have to retire before the finish - a DNF I never want to see beside my name. But after what seemed like an eternity I made it to the top with mad buggers with megaphones and soft toys and encouraging words had me revived and descending the hill for the 3rd time that day. 

I passed Tracey again, mentioned my exhaustion but carried on, dreading the uphill again. It's sad that my memory of this event will be the uphill section, because I'm pretty sure I loved the downhill bits! But as I turned onto the 4x4 road again, I immediately dismounted and pushed the entire road. I remounted and started riding 'the pines' knowing it was going to be long, hard and mentally challenging. This was however the last climb, and that thought alone kept me trudging up. Corners I had managed to ride in previous laps were now pushed around, steep pinches were pushed up, and when I knew I was almost at the camp again I was ready to collapse. Still, no major cardio blowout, nor were the legs in pain, just knackered. 

As I passed by the camp with about 500m to go (only half uphill) I was encouraged along again (cheers for the push Scatter!) and made it to the finish line in position 17 of 21 starters. A pretty poor show and very disappointing. I must have thought about giving up on that race 100 times. But once I was descending instead of ascending, I was OK. My last downhill had been sketchy but apart from one overly close encounter with a tree, it wasn't any slower than my previous one.

I met Tracey at the finish line (she must have run up that hill pretty fast!) and put my top back on (urgh! wet? Dripping!!) and sunk a couple of bottles of water pretty quick, and a couple of pies too. I decided there was no way I was going to cope in the singlespeed race, which was disappointing, but I could do that another day! Spectating that race was damn good fun as many singlespeed races are. 

Sunday was spent inside. No hill walks, no weight sessions, just relaxing in front of the computer again. Sadly, was up till after midnight working, so something has to give there. I need more time to do more fun things or I'm going to burn out mentally rather than physically.

This week will be back to usual, hopefully we'll have more participants in the park at lunchtime too. My next big event is no longer Tekapo, it now the Twizel hard Labour weekend - all 3 events, on tandem, with Logan. Gulp.