Results - Post Self Challenge and Yourself! Fitness

Well, this is a bit out of date, but since I just got these photos, I thought I'd show you a bit of before and after. The first photo is from last February's Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon, before I began my first 90 day challenge. The second is from the SF half marathon in July, after I'd done the Self challenge, the Women's Health cycle and a whole bunch of Maya/Yourself! Fitness workouts. It helps that I'm wearing pretty much the same outfit.


Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon - Feb '07

SF Marathon - July '07

Getting Back On Track

I've been gone for so long and completely lost my second 90 day set finale...
What can I say, despite my unwillingness to believe it, weddings really do swallow up your life. From the Sunday before our wedding (when the family members showed up) till two and a half weeks later when I got back from the wedding continuation trip (no honeymoon for us), all I did was two runs: one hard angry 30-min run on rehearsal day (can I just say I run harder and quieter when dealing with family wedding-related crazies?*) and one lovely sunny hour long run on the day of the wedding.

That's it. No strength and no cardio even once the initial wedding dust settled. OK, there was one night of regular dancing, one night of belly dancing lessons and a full night of obligatory belly dancing as part of my second wedding celebration. There was also some frisbee throwing in the sea and some recreational swimming. But that's it!

So now I'm back in town, ready to get back on track, feeling a bit heavier after 2 weeks of feasting and the lighter workout load. My main question is what do I do? For the rest of this week, I'll just ease my way back into working out with a run here and there and some visits with Maya (hopefully she'll be understanding). But then what? I dropped the ball on the Women's Health Magazine plan, but aside from the one week kick off, that workout plan didn't do much for me.

People who've noticed that I lost weight this past year keep attributing it to the fact that I was getting married, either as in "When I was a bride, I was so stressed I hardly ever ate!" or "Trying to get in shape for the wedding, eh?" Which is totally fine, if that's what my motivator was. But it wasn't. My motivation stemmed from a number of things, but primarily developing a good research foundation for the athletic cookbook I've been working on.

My goal for 2008 is to run 8 races (half marathon and up). And for that, I'd like to be in as good shape as I can be. So I will continue to ponder what my next workout plan will be...

Booty Boot Camp - Month One

I've transitioned into month two of the Women's Health Deadline Diet (aka the booty bootcamp) and have found it only somewhat satisfying thus far. For starters, after the week 1 intensive, the next three weeks are a bit too easy for my taste: They only include two 30-45 min cardio
workouts per week, two upper body workouts, two lower body and only one core workout.
That just doesn't feel like it's enough.

So of course, I've been ignoring that and doing more than the bare minimum. I've been doing 3-4 cardio workouts a week - usually one long training run, two 30-45 minute runs and one cardio session with Maya.

The Strength workouts have been varied: whenever possible, I've done the WH ones. Sometimes, however, that hasn't been possible due to a lack of equipment. Often, I've felt that the workout wasn't challenging enough and ended up doing an additional Maya workout. I have found some of the WH workouts interesting though, and have occasionally tossed one in the middle of a longer Maya workout. This Core #5 one, for example, is great: I really enjoy having the change of pace from all floor core moves. I don't know that it is quite enough on its own though and felt the need to supplement the workout.

By the time I finished the fourth week, I found that I was beginning to slack a bit. The fourth week found me barely completing 3 cardio workouts and hardly finishing the second sets of upper body and lower body strength workouts. But that's where the structure of this series comes in handy. By the end of week 4, I found myself feeling guilty for having slacked off and highly motivated to get back on track... just in time for a new Booty Boot camp intensive week.

Week one of the second month, while not quite as intense as the first time around, is once again challenging with two strength workouts a day for the first three days. Sets you right back on track.

The Booty Boot Camp - The Rest of Week 1

I have to admit, this first week did nothing but get harder. After the first two days, Day 3 showed another cardio workout (30 minutes this time) and Lower Body Strength workout #1. For cardio, I did a 30 minute run at a pretty good clip and then did the Lower Body workout.

This was actually a bit more challenging for me than the previous two strength workouts: It consisted of two sets of ten 1 & 1/4 squat. Challenging enough. Next, a band crossover. I ditched this move because I didn't have the proper equipment. Then I did the Half Frog - two sets of 12 reps. And lastly, the wobble board balance and sit. I happened to have a wobble board because Big E had bought one for some ankle rehab, and this move was VERY challenging. Since I dropped one of the moves, I did some of the Maya lower body squats and lunges to make up for the missing move, however, since yet again they didn't tell me what my target muscle groups were, I didn't really know what I could do instead.

The next day, Thursday, brought another 30 minute cardio workout and Core Workout #2. For the cardio, I was back with a cardio session with Maya. The Core workout only featured 3 moves and two of them, I could not do because of a lack of equipment (the Ball and the Bosu) so after doing two sets of 12 reps of the 60º sit ups, I added a couple of other good core moves: some V-Ups and some other pilates favourites.

Friday came with a 35 minute cardio workout (a lovely run with Tamsen) and Upper Body #2 workout. This was a good and straight forward one... well, mostly. I did three sets of 12 bench presses (could not do these at an incline since I did not have a bench that can incline), could not do the lat pulldowns due to a lack of equipment, did three sets of 10 lateral raises with 8lb weights (that was really tough for me!), three sets of ten hammer bicep curls and three sets of 12 tricep dips.

By the time Saturday rolled around, I was exhausted and it took everything I had to make myself do a workout. I really just wanted a day off at this point (being somewhat hungover probably didn't help my motivation). But thanks to a huge amount of moral support from Big E, I talked myself into doing my 40 minutes of cardio (a good session with Maya) and my Lower Body #2 workout: two sets of 12 Plié Squats, two sets of 12 Bar Bridges (I don't have a bar, so used 2 8lb weights), two sets of 12 side kicks and two sets of 10 ankle bounces. This workout was not nearly as challenging as the last lower body workout, but I didn't mind at all since I was exhausted and had a long run set for the next day.

I was a bit worried about this long run. I'd set out to do about 8-10 miles (as a bit of a taper before next week's half marathon) but having it come at the tail end of this full week of workouts, I wasn't sure how I'd do. For the Booty Boot camp, I only had to complete 30-45 minutes of cardio today (Sunday). That was not going to be a problem. However, the run was very difficult and I've been exhausted all day since then. I ended up only running 7.5 miles but decided that was fine. The fun part is that Paula Radcliffe then came on and congratulated me on completing my first 500 kilometres since I'd begun running with my Nike+ ipod on January 24th this year. So despite being exhausted and thoroughly worn out, I was proud of myself for not only completing this week of intensive working out and for having run so much this year.

The workout goes on to sketch out the next three weeks of workouts but does allow for 1-2 days of rest. I'll be taking one of those tomorrow. I can't wait!

Tiny 90 - Phase Two: WH's Deadline Diet

For my second round of Tiny 90 challenging, I've decided to stick with the magazine theme and try out a plan in this month's Women's Health. The plan, called the deadline diet, is actually scalable to work for 1 week, 1 month or 60 days.

The Deadline Diet includes a workout plan and, as the name might indicate, a day to day meal plan. If you've paid any attention to my efforts with the Self Challenge you know that I am not so good with the meal plans, but I'll at least give it a shot. I will have to scale it up a bit though, since it is only 1400 calories, and I'll be running far too much to be eating that little.

I tend not to be fond of diets as it is, and don't really like this plan's name, but the first week is called the booty boot camp, so I think from now on, that will be what I call this thing.

So to get started, here are my current statistics:

Height: 5'9"
Weight: 157lbs
Waist circumference:30in
Hip circumference: 44in
Left thigh: 24in
Right thigh: 25.5in
Run/walk a mile in: 9:16 min.
Can max the Self Challenge tests for squats (50 in a row) and for crunches (60 in a row) and can do 20 pushups (bent knee. Hey, when I started, I could only do 10!!!)

Ready to go! My first day is Monday the 28th of May!