A week off

Well, since the triathlon I seem to have been having a wee week off nutritionally. Just when I thought all thoughts of "bad" foods had disappeared, and was strongly in the clean eating mode - wham - something happened and I've been enjoying all my favourite forbiddens!



Of course on Monday, I start a 3 month "biggest loser" type challenge through the gym -so I think part of me is saying, relax, eat now, and then back into it on Monday. And I've actually convinced myself that eating lots of really salty foods this weekend (like Chinese on Friday night, and pizza tonight) will help me in a water loading sense to give me a falsely high weight when I weigh in on Monday (Maybe not so false I'm thinking)



I had done well the week before with Jillian Michaels program, and lost 1.4 kgs, but I shudder to think what the scales would say now! But I will start again tomorrow, and this challenge will keep me honest, as I am a member of a 4 person team - all of whom want to win - so I will have to work very hard to keep up with the weight loss of 3 x 6ft males who have a bit more to lose than I do!



Despite the races on Sunday - I have still managed a reasonable week of exercise, although it ended up having to be light due to an excessive gym session on Tuesday. Monday I spent the day at an adventure park, not real exercise, more like active recovery after my two races - which seemed appropriate. Lots of water slides, paddle boats, running throught the maze, mini golf and archery! Tuesday was a new release session at the gym for the Les Mills classes. These days they do supersessions - so at 5.30 I headed off to the class, without giving it much thought. Although I wasn't sore from the triathlon - I was feeling slightly fatigued. (And it is still 40 degrees here, every day. I think we are up to about 15 days straight). The super session turned out to be 4 tracks of Pump, 4 from Attack, 4 from Combat and then 4 from Balance. I haven't done Pump in about 12 months - and the squat track was a killer (I also haven't been doing squats with weights at home). By the time we got to Attack, my legs were shaking with fatigue. Managed to get through it ok, but the next day DOMS set in. By Wednesday night - I could hardly move if it required quads activity. Nevertheless - I know the best thing for stiffness is active recovery - so I went for a quick walk Wednesday morning, and TRIED to run Wednesday evening at the gym. I was called away unexpectedly after about a 15min warmup and 10 mins run, but couldn't convince myself to go back afterwards and finish up. I was just in too much pain. Thursday morning I had to head to Adelaide, but I got up extra early and walked for an hour. Friday - I had to be in Port Augusta (100 kms in the opposite direction from my home base), but due to the need to car pool with my boss - i had 2 hours to spare - so once again walked off the soreness.



Saturday I felt back to normal, and had a long walk/run scheduled - 18kms in preparation for the half marathon at the end of March. I think my weight loss team are all going to walk it, so this means I really should walk it with them. Thinking about walking 21kms (rather than walk/running it) made me realise that this would be a very long session - much longer than when you run - could be something like 3.5 hours. And I'm not used to such long sessions - even if they are just walking. And don't forget I'm going to be walking with 6 ft long legged males - it wont be a slow pace for me! So I decided that I really should walk all of the 18kms as training, and to build up some strength endurance. So i did. Forecast again for 40 degs, I set off at 7.30am and the first half was quite comfortable. It then started to heat up and I really felt it. I had sweat pouring down my face and I swear my HR wouldnt have been above 50%! The whole walk took me 3.15 and I can't believe how much it took out of me! I collapsed into the recliner when I got home, and poured liquids down my throat for about the next 1 hr. Eventually I managed to return to the land of the living and headed off to do the food shopping.



Back to cardiocoach this morning for a HIIT workout - gotta love that - although the heat does take it out of you. (Oh and I went for a little bit of lap swimming later on)



On my walk with plenty of time to think, I have set myself a few lofty running goals. Last year I ran the City to Bay at a pace of 6.00 (10km/hr), this year, if I give myself plenty of time to train for it, I would like to see if its possible for me to run it at a pace of 5.5 (10.9 km/hr). This might not sound like a big increase if you are not into running, but believe me, increasing your speed by 1 km/hr over a 12 km/hr race is a big jump. So it may not even be possible. But I've looked at the training schedule and speed work I would need to do for this and think I will give it a go. I've I can't manage the speed work outs I will know early on that I need to lower my goals, and that will be ok. But it has also encouraged me to lose some more weight. I read in one of the triathlon books that "losing 2kgs" can translate into a 30 sec improvement in time in the race, and there is no doubt that if I lost 10kgs to put my in the middle of my healthy weight range, this would definitely help. So the weight loss challenge over the next three months could be very instrumental in achieving this goal.



You may have noticed no weight training being mentioned here.... I've been slack. Back to it this week to build all that muscle I need! I'm going to use the next 3 months as base training (fat loss, muscle gain, base running) before starting a formal training programe in June/July for the September race.



Last but not least - A Clean Eating Mag has been published by Tosca Reno's hubby - I just need to convince my hubby to let me subscribe!