Time to Get Back on the Train - Destination The New Me

Holy cow, two months since my last blog post, which has been highlighted to me in the last few days by a few readers.  I didn't think me being missing would be noticed or missed, but thank you to those readers and followers.  Well it has been an interesting two months to say the least.  Obviously just prior to my last post I was made redundant from my job of 3 1/2 years.  It came as a shock, but not necessarily a bad thing.  I was not bouncing off the walls each day I went to work and now I have a pay out and time to find something for me that I will really enjoy.  More on this later.  

Two days after this I had to fly to Auckland for my 5th Ride to Conquer Cancer ride for 2013 and whilst I won't go into a lot of detail here, this was my favourite ride of the year.  Knowing that I had packed my bike and flown to a different country to take part in a cycling event felt surreal.  A number of us commented on how amazing it was and how it felt like we were serious athletes.  Who else travels internationally to take part in athletic pursuits?  Add to this, 18 months ago, who would have thought I would be riding 1300kms over 12 days period. The scenery was incredible and whilst we were still riding 200kms in a weekend, we were still tourists and made sure we lapped it up and enjoyed the experience.  This was also the most difficult of the rides we did. Anyone that has been to NZ knows how hilly it is, except ME!!  Well I found out the hard way, but loved it.

After this weekend, I would say I went a bit off the rails. Well okay a lot off the rails, the diet was crap, alcohol found its way back into the routine far too much and exercise went out the window.  Excuses became an all to regular thing and of course there was the inevitable weight gain which wasn't surprising, but it was enough to get me out of this rut or bit of depression I was in.  I was not even worried about finding a job at this point as I decided I wanted to have a break. This would be the long service leave I have never had, plus how many jobs are really out there over the festive period.  One positive thing I did do was sign up to do my certificate IV and become a personal trainer.  This may never be what I do full time, but it will be something I do for myself and I can always do it part time if I want to.  Julie and I also decided to get our own personal trainer a couple of mornings per week, which was the best thing we could have done.  Anyone living in the west of Melbourne looking for a great PT look up Trent Shaw Fitness and/or Gut Check Fitness Australia.  He knows his stuff and has been helping us in more ways than just training. 

Add to the fact that I hadn't been training much, I had the realisation that I was running a marathon in July. I had put it out there and was not backing out now. This was a goal and a dream of mine after 

my second half, I needed to get my arse in gear and get fit again. This was going to become a reality, I just needed to work out how this was going to happen, how I was going to train and what events I was going to in order to prepare correctly. So I have set up the below at present, but more may be added in the interim.

• Geelong River Run 10km - 23rd Feb
• Run for the Kids 15km - 13th April 
• Geelong Half Marathon - 27th April
• Great Ocean Road half 23km - 18th May (not decided upon as yet)
• Gold Coast Marathon - July 6th

So the New Year came in and it was now or never. Off the booze, back to the clean eating and back to training.  I have been trying to get the kms done running but I had not realised how much running fitness I had lost. Add to that the inevitable mind games about not being able to do it anymore, the daunting task ahead of me and then this shitty heat wave we are currently experiencing.  I have been telling myself constantly that I have plenty of time to get this done.  If I can do a 10km fun run in November after only 1 run in 4 months I can certainly get back to where I was with some good sensible training including my PT sessions.  Most of this is in the head after all and being able to push the mental demons to the back of the mind and allow the body to do what it can is the biggest part, in my opinion in beating the battle.

As I mentioned earlier, I have signed up to do my PT course with the Institute of Personal Trainers.  It has been an interesting experience. I have completed 2 of the 5 modules and can't go any further until I do my first aid course, but with the holidays there are not a lot on at present that I can get into, so this will be finished as quickly as I can in Feb/March.  My new PT has been brilliant, with both my training and teaching me a lot in our sessions about how the anatomy works, why he is doing different movements with both Julie and I and the benefits of it now and long term.  I also attended his first ever Gut Check session a couple of weeks back. To say I was out of my comfort zone was a little bit of an understatement, but having approx 10 of my training buddies (Western Warriors) there was an awesome experience.  It involved approx 100 or more burpees, lunges, push ups, squats, 3kms of running, with most of it carrying a 15kg sand bag.  Add to this there was a jump in the ocean between each round where you had to fully submerge yourself before getting out to start the next round. Trent is a mad man, but has completed worse than this in the US and this was only half of what he had prepared when the program was to start proper.  In saying that, everyone had a ball and it has been a popular boot camp in the following weeks.  I have not had a chance to get to any others, but will be looking at it moving forward.

So with all of the things that have happened or not happened over the last few months, I am certainly looking to step things up and get back to the way i was 6 months ago, at my lowest weight in many years.  I have lost 5.6kgs since the start of January and will be working my arse off for that to continue. I know that the key is taking it one day at a time, keeping the dreaded wine out of my diet (and beer as well) and making sure the training is maintained.  I will be in need of a job sometime soon (so my wife keeps reminding me) and I hope that it is one that will mean minimal adjustment to our schedules for training and family life, but at the end of the day we will just have to do it.

I will be getting back into the blogging, as I have found it very beneficial in the past, which mimics my plight over the last few months.  Whilst I was not blogging I was also not doing very well with the training, food and overall way of life.  Seems to be a link there that I need to take care of.

Thank you to my readers for giving me a kick in the pants and thank you for also getting this humble little blog over 30K page views.  Sorry some of them were for no value with no updated content.

So if anyone is interested in a great session, hopefully I will see you at one of the Gut Check sessions.