I've been aimless lately. (Who am I kidding, lately? More like the past year and a half.) No goals. No ambition. No ideas. Sure, I would still work out. Run/lift/whatever. But with no end product in sight. Nothing to work towards improvement-wise.
That is all going to change.
I know I already stated that I have a 5k goal of less than 30 minutes by May. I'm pretty certain this is doable.
But I need some strength goals. Yesterday, I benched 95# for 6 reps. (Yes, I'm still living on that high. Leave me alone.) That was without shooting for a heavy lifting goal. I know, I know. I've been saying I want to lift heavy; I want to lift like a man. But I've never really done anything about it. I go to Death Gym, Frank gives me weights and tells me what exercises to do. Most of the time, he gives me the weights with the number sides down, so I have no clue what poundage I'm lifting. (Which is good. When the weights look heavy, I'd rather just concentrate on the motion, instead of psyching myself out. If I see 30# on a dumbbell, and then he tells me to do something with it, I tend to think more about the fact that it is 30#, and that it is going to be hard. If I don't have a number, I just do it.)
But approaching lifting with that attitude isn't working anymore. Because I have no clue about my progression. On Monday Frank is going to set up 5 different lifting moves for me, so we can measure where I am. I'll set goals based on where I currently am. Each month, we'll measure my progress. Yay!
I also spoke to him about heavy lifting goals combined with the shorter distance (5k) running, and he thinks it will be a good combo. I'm going to focus on intervals 2x a week, with a "longer" run on the weekends. I think most of my runs will average 45 minutes between walking/running, and I don't want any of them to last longer than an hour.
After my 5k in May, I'll switch gears. I'm eyeing a friendly olympic tri in September. Nothing competitive, just friends having fun. The swim part freaks me out, but I'm pretty certain, with training, I can handle the bike/run portions. Chris (who is like a pro swimmer, seriously....his nickname isn't Flounder for nothing) is going to show me how to do a flip turn so I can work on building my endurance swimming-wise.
I am also planning on a half marathon in the Fall, but have yet to choose one.
Since I'll be working on more endurance-type events in the Summer/Fall, my training at Death Gym will shift focus as well. We'll work on more high intensity interval training (HIIT). It will keep my heart rate up, but still allow me to retain a lot of the strength I'll have built up during the Spring.
We also talked a bit about nutrition. I'm going to pay more attention to when I eat in relation to my workouts. I'm going to record it all in a notebook, so that way I can include the times I'm eating/working out, what I'm eating, and how I feel. I've noticed that when I stay in my calorie ranges, I tend to feel starving and crave carbs by the end of the week. Frank is going to re-calculate my recommended allowances (he thinks I'm either not eating enough, or I'm not timing my meals correctly) and we'll go from there.
I'm just really excited about all of this. I feel like I have a plan. I feel like I'm focusing on making positive changes. I'll still weigh myself weekly, with the understanding that the scale is simply a tool to help me monitor my progress. I know that if I'm working on strength goals, chances are good that I won't lose tons of weight. But hopefully my muscles will grow, my clothes will fit better, and I'll be healthier.
(I shared this pic on Facebook the other day, and loved it. I wanted to share it with all of you as well.)
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