The Cycle

I don’t know what causes me to go thought these cycles, but alas, last week I was at 200lb.  The alarms go off at this weight.  Again, the goal is almost 30lb away. 

I blame part of this on the bachelor life style.  MY room mate moved out and my work out partner became busy with his work.  Between the two, I lost all incentive to work out and eat healthy.  I find it much easier to stay with a work out plan when there is a support group behind you. 

Well.  Tomorrow my new room mate moves in.  Over the past couple of month he has been on track to getting into better shape by eating healthy and working out.  Hopefully this will be the turn around I need.

So the plan:

• Paleo: Grains and sugars have to go. 2 month of 80/20 rule help slim the waist line by 20 pounds last winter.  It’s a pity that red-bull and chips are so tempting while at work.  But no more, come Monday, 80/20 or even better 90/10.  My new room mate is looking to eat healthier as well so it will be pretty great.
• Crossfit: Never in my life have any workouts done so much for me in such little time.  Even though I am at 200lb again, I am actually thinner then I was starting last year, I attribute this to muscle.  I will be switching between different crossfit gyms for different workouts.  5 time a week should be the norm and hopefully push out 6 or 7 once I get into the swing of things.
• Swimming/Running/Yoga: On top of the evening time crossfit workouts I plan on doing some morning exercise.  Going for ECE high intensity training runs, and alternating it with swimming.  As well as evening yoga 3 or 4 times a week to get the flexibility back and prevent injury.

This weekend, is the move the the LAN party so the diet and exercise is waiting till Monday.  I know this is a ambitious outline, but it needs to be done.  The 200lb alarm bell sounds pretty loud in my head.

A nightly update with the log of all the work will be posted here.

Early Morning WOW

I am not a fitness expert, and i don’t plan my own workouts.  So i my fitness plan revolves around finding workouts on the internet.  It is just my luck that plenty of people who know more about exercise freely give out their advice on the internet.  I do usually plan out my own swim practices and my own distance runs, but that doesn’t require much planning really.  Even HIIT workouts i pull from ElmCity Crossfit’s site.

Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple is one of the many people who gactious enough to share his expirance with the world though Work Outs of the Week (WOWs). This morning I finally dragged my lazy, sleepy and tired ass out bed to get a quick morning pick me up work out.   50 meter sprints, some grok crawls or as ZombieFit calls them quadropidals, and walking lunges and squat throw at the end. 8 times over: Only 8 time over, can’t be to bad.  Well i was wrong, by the 3 round i was pretty winded, and by the last set i was feeling pretty beat up.  The WOWs get updated every Monday, and in my a great way to start the day.

Weight update: 188 lb (5 pounds is a lot to drop, but getting back into the swing of Paleo usually leads to a lot of inflammation water weight loss)

Diet

Initially I started this blog for simple reason, the telltale of my switching over from running shoes running barefoot. The journey taught me plenty about myself about the way my body functions, at least in the evolutionary sense. So when my cross the gym told me about the Paleolithic diet a.k.a. Paleo diet, it intrigues me that try.

Initial experience of Vidalia died was a two-month cross fit challenge; and involved four days of exercising and about 80% Paleolithic food, while the other 20 were allowed cheat meals.  Here are my results from that challenge:

After the challenge i let myself slack, as clearly visible in the picture I posted my previous post.  But it's time to as they say “Grab the bull by the horns”  as of tomorrow, I'm back on.

First workout

I don't have exact statistics on today's workout as I did on a whim. Sunday is usually an ultimate Frisbee day, but since no one showed up I decided it was time to hit the trails in Seymour.

My GPS watch was not charged and for that reason I was not able to track my running distance today. However as my best guess I read about 2 miles. This is relatively short, but better than nothing and next time I'll try to longer. My GPS watch is charging, and for Tuesday when I go for my next run a legal track my distance.

What is fitness?

For years I have been working out; at least on and off. I have rowed, ran, swam, biked, lifted, and what ever else has struck my fancy. Through out the workouts i have never been skinny and cut, but I have also never let myself blimp. 220 was my heaviest and i will never let myself get over or even close to that again.

So what is the goal of working out? For a long time i thought it was performance in races. As a triathlete and a runner, that was the way to gauge my progress. Run a race 5 minutes faster is improvement, running a race slower and that means i need to train harder. But that isn’t fitness. Yeah i could run and bike and swim, but what about push ups? If you are fit, you should be able to do plenty, but 10 would be a stretch at that point. Pull-ups? even with rock climbing as one of my activities pull ups were out of my range. maybe 3 in a row tops.

While last year I finally got the experience I was looking for. I joined Crossfit gym. Then I discover what fitness really is all about; it is the ability to perform any movement required of your body. Doing pull-ups, doing squats, situps, push-ups, Olympic weightlifting moves, running, swimming, biking and in my case rockclimbing. But alas Crossfit very expensive endeavor, and after buying a house in order for it. Cross fit had done amazing things my body, I lost 20 pounds, and I was able to move more weight than I have ever in my life. My clean went from 90 pounds to be able to clean 160. And the payload that which is offered to me maybe feel better than I have in my life.

Two this is where I'm at now. I have stopped going cost about four months ago and started gaining my weight. I know what strength will also gone down since then even though I've tried to keep up with basic body weight exercises home, but like usual I'm not 100% strict with myself and let myself slip away for weeks at a time. This has to stop.

From now on this blog is not only about barefoot running it's about my quest to become a better stronger athlete. To become fit.

So where am I at now: 192 lb (15 lb up from lowest after crossfit)

Unexpected injury

So, it's not really as bad as the title makes it sound.  But the weirdest thing happened as I was running trails this morning.  On trails, there are areas which are much muddier than others and some of these “swamps” have wood bridges that run the length of the the wood plank, sometimes 2 or 3 planks wide.  Those planks tend to move independently of each other as you step on them. So as I am running across one of these bridges, the board give enough to allow toe to slip underneath the board next to it. The literally my thoughts went something like this, “What the hell, oh pain”, as I lifted my foot to take my next step.

I will say the one nice thing about toes, they don't really hurts for long. You can just keep running.  First few seconds below but after that, it gets better.

Back from a long break

So it’s been almost a year since i had written in this blog.   To recap, i am still running barefoot, thou i have not made the progress i had once hoped to have. 

Some time in the spring, while running on a nice part of the trails, i took the Vibrams off.  I only ran some half mile before the sharp rocks and roots kicked my ass and put the shoes back on.  My feet were totally raw for the next couple of days, and for a week or so i didn’t try that again.  However the brief time running barefoot was full of sensation.  Never before had I felt this close to the earth.  I needed more.

So from then on I took of my Vibrams every now and then until I didn’t care to put them on.  It’s been about 6 month… 

In the next post i will get a but more into what i have learned over the last 6 month.