This week (with pic)

Well, another week has gone past and without a post from me. Its been a fairly busy week.

The water in the taps is definitely getting warmer as I can stay in the shower for a lot longer without feeling cold at the end of it now. I am persisting with the cold showers.

On the exercise front I have been fairly active this past week. I managed my normal run on Saturday and Sunday as well as Thursday night so almost 15miles under the hoof this week! I also managed to get out to swim 2km at the local pool on Wednesday night. I seem to have reached a consistent swim time of approx 30 minutes per km. My run is also run in a fairly constant time of around 40 minutes for 4.5Miles. My weight is also back down below the 70Kg level - I hope to get this down a little more over the next month so that my body is really lean and my body fat level down below 10% for my summer vacation. I included a webacm pic I took today to give you an indication of what I look like right now (apologies for the bad quality!).

Question: Are these times for running/swimming good or not? What can I do to improve them? Any comments on my body shape/form and what I can do to get the 6-pack showing more? Do you think I should get my nipples pierced? I am thinking of getting a small barbell in each.

Another week

Seems like Fridays is my day for updates. I have been away this week on business. I did manage to get a 5k run in on machine at the hotel gym and 2 days where I managed a 1km swim. I also managed to get a good start to the summer all-over tan as I grabbed a few "my time" sun hours next to the hotel pool in a thong.

I feel like my body fat level is coming down but the weight has gone up a fraction since my last report to 70.3Kg. Is this muscle gain or just that I have been eating more and exercising slightly less? Can anyone give me ideas as to how to bring my body fat level down quicker? Are there any supplements that would help this fat reduction process so that my muscle definition comes out more?

Last night's normal 4.5mile run was in my best time yet - just under 40 minutes. I still have to regulate my run so that I can do it all without walking for a portion of it and so improve my time even further. I am still looking for a running partner - any volunteers?

Weight Milestone - Under 70Kg

For the first time in as long as I can remember I stepped on the scale this morning and did not see a "7" in the first position on the Kg Scale. Although not down to what I believe my ideal weight should be (around 65Kg) I reckon that achieving under 70Kg (69.9Kg this morning) is worth blogging about. Its taken around 3 months to get here so its not been a miracle cure.

It is, however, a milestone on the way to a much healthier lifestyle. I have not done anything special to lose the pounds, or kilograms, I just ate sensibly, exercised a lot more and had a generally positive attitude about things. I think that the cold water showers and bath have played their part in speeding up my metabolism to burn off the excess fat too, so that regime will continue.

All I need now is someone to push me a little harder and faster in my exercise and training schedule to continue the improvements.

Running Shirtless

Now that the weather is warmer I have taken to running in just my running shoes and shorts (I was running in shorts and T-shirt when the air temp was barely above freezing a few weeks ago so the 15C of today was like summer come early). My normal route is around 30% on Public roads and pavements (for those reading this in the USA pleas read sidewalk for pavement!). Total distance of around 4.5 miles which these days I seem to consistently manage to run/jog/fast walk in around 41 minutes.

Increasingly I have become aware that a number of motorists take great pleasure in sounding their hooter (horn) at me as they pass. I have no idea why they do this. Not that it is off-putting or anything, just a little annoying (and flattering to think that they have noticed me). Today I was hooted at twice! On a previous occasion about 5 or 6 motorists did this. And it is not just the women that do this either, a lot of men hoot as they go past. What is this all about? Is it that they are:

• Jealous?
• Think I am crazy?
• Think I am good looking (at 50+ years of age I doubt it) and fancy me?
• Doing it to put me off my stride?
  

Any suggestions as to why people do this please leave a comment/response and let me know. Does this only happen in the UK? Does it happen to anyone else?

Monday Update

A long weekend of exercise and relaxation is probably a good summation of the past 3 days. I managed to get my standard road/woodland of approx 4.5. miles in on Saturday in a personal best time of just over 41 Minutes. I am happy with this time although a little disappointed that I did not run the whole way - so there is room for improvement. I guess my longer run up north during week helped up my fitness just a little more.

Today I managed a 2Km swim in a little over an hour in the local swimming pool. Again a pretty good time for the distance. I think I can improve on that time too as the 2Km was done using breaststroke rather than front crawl. I am still having problems with getting my breathing correct on the crawl. I did a few extra lengths to try and improve my crawl strokes and breathing rhythm so maybe one of these days this time will come down too. At the moment its more about getting more aerobically fit and burning some excess fat off.

I even managed a few hours out in the garden in the sun and have the start of a suntan developing. Here's hoping that the sun keep appearing over the next few months so that I have a tan before my summer vacation this year.

3 Months in: let's drop the day count

Well, here we are at over 3 months of this routine now. It seems to be working for me at the moment. During the summer months I guess posts to this blog will become less frequent and only include highlights. From now on in I think it better to have more meaningful headlines rather than a day count.

At this point in time I am running around 10 -15 miles per week and swimming at least once per week of 1k to 2km each time. My weight is down to approximately 71Kg although this varies slightly from day to day depending on what I have eaten and how much exercise I have done.

As this is the first post for a couple of weeks I can tell you that since report that I have been taking cold showers each day and also swimming again (2km in one session taking around 75 minutes to complete that distance).

I can also report that I met up with a member of the toughness yahoo group (see link on the right) for a run up in Scotland. We did a run (for me more of a jog/walk) around 6 miles (10km) along a mixed tarmac/dirt trail around a local reservoir. The air temp was around 10C with a cooling wind. It was a bit more of an up/down path than my normal run so I did a fair amount of walking, especially up the steeper gradients.

We finished the run with a swim in a different lake of around 10 minutes duration. Water temp approx 9C to 10C. I was pretty cold and starting to shiver by the time I had finished drying myself off at the car afterwards, but did not feel cold at all in the water.

I was definitely not as fit as my running companion - but then he is almost 20 years younger than me and has been running and competing in events for quite a while. He is certainly a lot more acclimatised to the cold weather than I am.

Till next time......