Time for an update

Ok, so I've been pretty slack at both my fitness activities and posting on this blog.

For one reason or another I haven't been going to the gym that much lately over the past few months so now I've finally got back into it a bit.  Since restarting I've found that I have put on a little weight and have definitely lost some fitness and strength.

The first few times I went to the gym I didn't get through everything I wanted to, was knackered and then sore for days.  On Monday I made a few changes and feel a bit better for it.

My warm-up on the stationary bike is a piece of cake - 15 minutes fairly hard out on the cardio setting.  Then when I hit the weights I dropped the weights I was working with quite a bit.  This let me do full sets of all the exercises I wanted to do plus one extra.  I was still working pretty hard and keeping my heart rate up but didn't take as long to recover between sets.  When I had finished I felt great and was pretty pleased with myself.  I plan to follow this routine from now on and only increase the weights once I feel I've made some gains.

I was fairly fairly good on Tuesday night but didn't want to push my luck at the gym two nights in a row so I rang Mark and we went for a bike ride instead.  It was fairly windy so hard work at times but I still enjoyed the approximately 15km ride.

I decided to have a rest night tonight and intend to hit the gym again tomorrow night.  Friday will probably be another day off as we are planning a decent mountain bike ride on Saturday - this will be a good test of my fitness...

Good to be doing something again and enjoying it!

That's it

Yep, our walking challenge has finished so I can put my feet up eh?

I ended up with 441,994 steps in 6 weeks for an average of 10,524 per day - so I just scraped in to meet the 10,000 per day.

Because I'm a geek I also converted the steps to kilometres using the same multiplication factor as I used on my pedometer - 80cm strides - which I think is about right according to some GPS tracks I also took.  Anyway, the magic total number ended up as 353km.  That's a fairly decent walk eh?

So now I have to decide whether to carry on including increased walking (more than a simple dog walk) or put more work in at the gym.  Currently I'm thinking of a mix of both but am really keen to get back into the gym more often and to push myself.  Time will tell...

Good to know

Still walking

So far so good.  No sore legs either...

Walking challenge

At work we are doing a walking challenge as a "well-being" activity.  The aim is to walk 10,000 steps a day.  I've done these before and they are harder than you might think - time is really the issue.  But this time around I'm going to try as hard as I can to hit the magic number.  We also get credit for other exercise although you don't really get much in the way of credit for going to the gym and throwing weights around...

One of the things I have to think about is my poor old dog.  I don't want him to miss out on his walk but I also don't want to push him too hard - our walks are normally limited to 30 minutes per day in the cool of the day.

Anyway, yesterday was day one and for some reason we had to reset our pedometers at lunchtime and start recording from them - goodbye 2-3,000 steps for me...Never mind, I went pretty hard and when I got home grabbed Barty McFarty and we hit the road doing approx 45 minutes.  He seemed fine although took it easy for the rest of the night.  I ended up on about 7,600 steps for the day.

Today, I set the alarm for o-dark thirty and after a quick brekkie the two of us hit the road again knocking out another 30 minute walk before work.  At work I got around a fair bit and by the time I got home had less than 2,000 steps to go to hit the magical 10k.  Sticking to my plan for the day I got the mower out and mowed my back lawns which got me up to the target.  A bit more wandering around now has me on 11,800 with not long before its time to hit the hay - not a bad effort.

The plan for tomorrow is to do the pre-work walk again.  I'm not sure what I'll do after work - I should go to the gym but whether I'll need a wee walk prior to get my 10k we'll have to see.

So not a bad start but I can see a couple of days coming up soon (motorcycle riding) where it may be hard work.  I'll just have to make a decent effort to get a walk or trip to the gym in...

Just for something to do (other than walking) I might update the blog as the challenge continues (8 weeks of it planned).

Getting back into it

Last night was my first time back at the gym after my holiday (two weeks).  During my holiday I did get some exercise in the form of walking and a few bike rides (only one ride was hard work).

Feeling that my aerobic fitness is not up to scratch and that this probably holds me back a bit when doing weights (getting knackered too easily) I've decided to take things a bit slowly but to try and increase the amount of cardio that I do.

So, last night when I jumped on the exercycle I dropped the resistance slightly (by 1 point) and didn't peddle hard out.  I keep the rpm on the bike in the mid nineties and this got my heart rate up to the mid 130's.  While I normally push a bit harder and only bike for 10 minutes, last night I did 15 minutes.

After the biking I felt pretty good and had covered just under 7.2km.  If I had done it at my normal rate I would have probably got somewhere over 8km.

I then hit the cross-trainer and did my normal cardio routine of 10 minutes on the "cardio" setting.  Here I went a bit harder (more like my normal routine) and cranked out 2km in 10 minutes with my heart rate peaking over the target of 141bpm.  By now I was a sweaty mess and knew I'd done something...

I then hit the weights but didn't manage to get through my whole routine, only lasting about 35 minutes.  Overall, I enjoyed the workout and will back tomorrow night for another go but still with the emphasis on cardio.

Today I concentrated on walking (later in the month we are having a walking challenge at work) and managed to knock out 9,500 steps with the help of mowing the lawns, walking the dog and whatever I managed at work.  It takes a bit of work to hit the target 10,000 per day...