You could probably take the regularity of my blog posts as an indicator of how good my own self-discipline is. I SHOULD post after every class and event... the memory is fresh, it gives a nice flow when you read it (generally), etc. Similarly, I SHOULD be writing down what I'm eating and staying on track. But I don't and I'm not and there you go.
I'll start with the final Friday Funday...
I went to 9:30 and it was pretty busy. I've seen it more crowded before... the 9:30 on black friday, for example... and the 8AM Saturday FIT that I went to. But it was pretty crowded. We warmed up with laps back and forth... I was just hoping we wouldn't do the crap-walks across the studio. I can't do those things. Like... I'm afraid that I'm going to hyper-extend my elbow and seriously hurt myself. It's related to why I hate dips and can't hardly do them. But we didn't have that for warm-ups... jabs across, jab-cross across, squats, lunges, front-kicks... good times. We did the usual 'wheel of death' stuff with the outside of the wheel rotating, which I was in. I felt great, like better than I think I ever have at a class. When we were warming up, I kicked my knees up to get loosened up and I felt like I almost kicked my shoulder with my knee. Obviously, that's not what actually happened, but being able to lift my knee that high... and hold it there... says so much for how far I've come in strength and flexibility in the past ten weeks.
Some fun stuff in the wheel of death:
Randy and Jill were working out on the inside of the wheel (Justin ran the class) so I got to partner with each of them. Randy and I traded right roundhouses for power which was fun... because Randy is ridiculous. When I rotated over to Jill, the second or third thing we did was trading off left jabs and she didn't jump right into it... so I gave her a look like 'c'mon, what're you doing???' I don't know if I said 'let's go!' to her or not, but I thought it was funny. Karma's a bitch, though... at my next station, I was holding a six-inch (lie on your back, legs straight, hold your feet six inches off of the ground... just hold that...) and had my eyes shut, arms crossed... trying to focus on keeping my core and back tight... and I was thinking that it was a nice break. Justin was walking around and threatening to get out a tape measure if he thinks people aren't holding at six inches. Shortly after that, I felt someone futzing with my feet... and figured it was Justin... well, it wasn't, it was Jill. She had a medicine ball and an evil smile. She put the ball on my feet... so I had to hold up the medicine ball along with my legs. To be fair, it WAS too easy for me and I was not pushing anything. So I held it the rest of the time with the medicine ball. When done, I kicked it into the air, caught it and tossed it back to the middle of the studio.
Right around that station, Randy said we were going to do a 'mini-pyramid'... of pushups and jump-squats, just up to four. Well, we started doing them and it felt... a little too familiar. Then I realized... it was like doing burpees. Almost exactly. Justin can call what he wants, it was nearly a burpee pyramid. Which... actually, now that I think about it, the thought of doing a pyramid of roundhouses and burpees sounds like a particularly nasty torture. I don't want to give anyone ideas, so Randy, Justin and Jill, if you are reading this, please don't take that as a request from me to add that. ;-)
After class one of the women I partnered with told me that I almost hit her in the face with the bag with my cross at one point. I apologized and told her that I wanted to make sure that she knew that I had done my combo.
So... that was the last session of my 10-wk challenge.
Testing yesterday was okay. Inches-wise, I did okay, I think. Pushups and situps I progressed, same with stretching... but my weight and body fat were disappointing. I mean, I knew my weight wasn't great, but the body fat deal said I only decreased my body fat by 0.7%... which translates to me losing 4 pounds of MUSCLE along with like 4.8 pounds of fat. I don't understand how that is possible when I've lost the inches that I lost. <shrug>
So here's my final numbers:
Starting weight: 326.6 lbs
Final weight: 318.0
Starting fat percentage: 27.5%
Final fat percentage: 26.8%
Measurements (starting/final - inches)
Chest: 54.25 - 51.0
Waist: 54.0 - 50.0
Arm: 16.5 - 15.0
Thigh: 28.5 - 26.0
Hips: 51.0 - 49.0
Pushups in one minute!
Start: 27
5wk: 33
Final: 42
Situps in one minute!
Start: 29
5wk: 42
Final: 51
And finally, the sit and stretch/reach was okay. At initial testing I did 7.25 inches and at my final testing I did 10.25.
I did the mile run in 9:27 at the start... we didn't test it yesterday... snow and cold... not safe. You don't get a very good time running across a tundra, either.
So anyway... obviously I made progress with the numbers, but nothing spectacular. I blame my diet and hunger. I don't really have much more to day that that. I wasn't eating a pizza and a quart of ice cream every night or anything, but I did have some of Emma's cake, I did have pie on Thanksgiving, etc. I have a real hard time not being really hard on myself given how I've lost weight in the past by NOT indulging in that kind of food... and here I feel like I kind of screwed this up bad.
But... on the plus side, I did lose weight... I'm in MUCH better physical shape... and I'm not starving myself. I'm really looking forward to the FIT stuff starting up tomorrow. It's going to be hard, of course, but I kind of feel like there isn't a judgement hanging over me anymore. Needless to say, I didn't win the $1000 prize at the awards deal last night... I wasn't even in the top five. Guys up there tripled their number of pushups or lost 20% of their body fat. They deserved it, I didn't. But like I told John the other day, we're all winners. Which I know sounds trite and everything, but it's true. It didn't FEEL true yesterday, but... well, a decent night sleep and some quality time with your kids can shift some perspective.
I'm still planning on doing the 10K challenge. John's doing it so we can push each other. He was trying to break 100 pushups yesterday... crazy. He didn't make it... and he wanted to break 50 situps... so we're on par there. It's funny how we're all doing the same things but we're all at different competency levels... but the point is to push YOUR limits, not to compare yourself with someone else's. But it's human nature to do that, so of course we do. (at least, those of us unenlightened neanderthals do...)
So... I have my goals. Long-term is the Twin Cities marathon next year (Sunday, October 5th, 2014... exactly one year after my initial testing for my 10wk challenge... is that kismet? Serendipity? Irony? I dunno... but it works out well.) I want to finish in under 4 hours. Properly training for that will include some increasingly long runs... primarily on Wednesdays, working up to a 20 mile run a month before the marathon. That will be interesting... kickboxing in the morning, run 10, 15 miles in the evening... then do bands workout the next morning. ;-)
Short term my goal is to get under 300 pounds again... and well under, like to 290... so I don't relax and go back over. If I keep my diet reasonably correct and keep with the workouts, I should be able to lose 1-2 pounds a week regularly... which is actually a pretty good pace of healthy weight loss, I think. If I keep that up and work down to around 280 by the time I do the marathon, that'll help a lot to be running without that extra weight. I don't really even want to talk body fat percentages because I still think something's screwed up there... but if I lose 35 pounds of fat in the next 40 weeks, I would theoretically be at about 21% body fat... right about where I was in college when I was at my 'most' fit. Of course I weighed 215 pounds then...
My Farrell's story continues in FIT starting tomorrow. :-) I enjoy the workouts, I think the people are great. Very supportive and just HAPPY. I've never seen so many smiling faces in a workout facility, it's pretty awesome to be one of them.
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