Week 1 in the Books

Week 1 of training is in the books and you know what it wasn't as bad as I expected.

Now, I do not have a method of doing pull ups at home yet, so I substituted push ups. I was pleasantly surprised about the running. I'm able to consistently run a mile without stopping and on Friday when I was scheduled to run 3 miles. I ran far more than I walked. My feet and knees held up well. I have minor muscular soreness, no more or less of what I expected given that I haven't previously worked out in a very long time.

Overall I held to my plan of drinking more water, reducing my sodas, managing my food portions and getting my steps in. I'd give myself a B on meeting these goals. Wednesday, I was a eating machine add to that my wife sent me to get Chic-fil-A for the family for dinner since we were both running late getting home. I thought I was being really good and got myself a 6" Turkey sub from Subway next door, but when I got to Chic-fil-A they have the Peach shakes again and those are my weakness. All that said I went well over my calorie allotment for the day including the additional calories My Fitness Pal gives you for your exercise.

Also, on the positive side I'm pretty certain I hit my 10,000 steps each day, other than Wednesday. Sunday my Fitbit died on me but even with that I had over 58,0000 steps and I'm very certain I would have had over 10,000 steps in.

Some goals I want to add going forward, I am running my first mile at just over 13 minutes. I would like to get this to 11:50 or so. Also I want to be able to maintain a constant pace while running and build my endurance up to where I can hit 2 miles without stopping. 

One area of disappointment I had this week is that I went to a local park and I have the distinct recollection that they had one of those fitness trails with balance beams, pull up bars, inclined benches for sit-ups and other similar things. My wife has the same recollection. Well in the time since we last remembered it and going back to that park it no longer exists. So I didn't actually get to do my exercises until much later than I intended.  

Just to recap from my last post; the training plan I downloaded is for 12 weeks and I have 18 weeks to prepare, so I will be doing each of the first 6 weeks twice. I will also be slowly building up my equipment so I don't have to do substitutes. 

	7/3/2016	7/10/16
Weight	228.6	226.6
Waist	43	43
Hips	40.5	40.5
Neck	18.5	18.5
Days Exercised	0	6
Water Consumed	0	665 oz
Soda/ Beer Consumed	Ridiculous	8 sodas/ 0 beers :(
Fitbit Steps	50,115	58,885

My Starting Point

As I've mentioned I've never done anything like this before and I'm not in the best of physical shape. My biggest concern is my upper body strength. I'm not too concerned with my lower body strength; now having explosive strength to jump/leap I'm not so sure about. I recently went to Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas for a nearly 2 week vacation. I did a lot of hiking (at least for me) with significant changes in elevation. Even after the grueling Uncle Tom's Trail in Yellowstone with over 300 stairs I didn't have any muscle soreness the next day.

 

So here's my work out plan...

I've downloaded the Tough Mudder 3 month training plan and will be following this plan as close as possible. I have a few things to consider. First, I have 18 weeks rather than 12, so I am going to do the first 6 weeks twice in a row. Next, I don't have all the necessary equipment, so I am doing some substitutes for the immediate time. For example I will be doing push-ups rather than pull ups, as I don't have a place to do pull-ups currently, but I will be building one. I also don't have any weights so where possible/piratical I'm substituting household items. Besides this training routine I plan on getting 10,000 steps everyday on my Fitbit. I will not go to bed until I hit it each and every day. I will also be modifying exercises as necessary so I will be able to do something. My biggest concern is that I won't be able to do even one pull up in my current condition. So I will do leg assisted ones until I'm there.

Here's my diet plan...

I know every Fatty McGhee out there says this, but I'm not overly concerned about what I eat. Looking at what I eat it's really not too bad, portion control is my problem. So I will address that. But, I am going to make a conscious effort to reduce my sugars as well.

Here's the biggest hurdle... I am addicted to sodas and energy drinks. I am known at work for this refillable 52oz Big Gulp thermos that I get filled at 7-11 every morning. Add to that a can of energy drink and another can or two of soda that's a ton of soda. So to combat that I am going to reduce my non-water liquid intake to just 1 non-water item a day so if that is a soda, that's the only item, if it is a beer, then that's it. I am also tracking my water intake with a goal of a minimum of 64 oz a day.

I will also be tracking my calories using My Fitness Pal.

Here's where I'm at today. I plan on updating this weekly.

	7/3/2016
Weight	228.6
Waist	43
Hips	40.5
Neck	18.5
Days Exercised	0
Water Consumed	0
Soda/ Beer Consumed	Ridiculous
Fitbit Steps	50,115

I Finally Registered for a Tough Mudder

So I finally registered for a Tough Mudder. After years of saying I wanted to I finally got the last bit of courage and encouragement to finally register.

My previous reasons for not registering were many...

• I'm not in shape
• It's in the hottest part of summer
• The location is too far away
• I don't want to do it alone
• And many, many more

Now the perfect scenario has developed and I can't give any more excuses. A co-worker told me about an upcoming Tough Mudder which is not too far away, not in the summer and far enough out I can get as prepared as possible.

I run Saturday, November 5th at 9:00. No turning back now.