Introducing My New 'Coach' ....

I am pleased to announce that I now have a coach.


Well, when I say coach, I mean person who bullies me into doing the training I set out to do at the start of the week. A person who, if I miss a session will re-arrange the rest of the week so I don't slack off. A person who can pull strings at home and get me more training time when needed.

That person is Laura.


Don't be fooled by her sweet little innocent exterior. She is a hard task master.

She has set up the fridge door as my training plan and set weekly targets for the swim, bike and run.

She spent hours in the holiday making little magnetic graphics. I love the aero guy on the bike.

You can see how my weekend went from the graphics below

The unhappy faces on Friday represent the fact that I got home from work, had dinner and then fell asleep in front of the TV. I didn't manage to get any exercise in. Laura sorted it out though and she scheduled a 2 hour windtrainer session on the Saturday (along with a family swim in the afternoon) and then a 2:30hr bike ride on Sunday. I managed to get all these sessions done and so it was smilie magnetic faces all round.

The rest of the week well. Rode the Toll Road on Monday (didn't break any records), did a long run on Tuesday (1:26 to Strand) and then a quick 45 minute spin on the windtrainer on Wednesday. Thursday was this year's first real 'training' visit to the pool at work. I wore the wetsuit and timed some 250m. I'm still able to do the same sort of times (sub5 mins) as last year so no real 'swim fitness' has been lost being out of the pool so long. I did 4 x 250m and alternated between T.I. and Conventional. I also did some drills and a few 50's and 100's. I'll get more structured the closer I get to the race. I also did an easy pace 5K run Thursday evening. Went OK but I tried it without a waterbottle and I missed it. I'll go back to using one.

All in all this was one of my better training weeks. Plan is to keep (and develop) this consistancy. I need to get more runs in during the week but I'm sure Laura will be on at me about that. I didn't hit my run training target this week. The graph doesn't lie!

Only Two More Weigh-Ins

Tonight was week 10 at the weight loss challenge. My eating has not been good for the last two weeks. I've been off with the kids and we've eaten out quite a bit. Jo has also perfected the best banana muffins ever known to man and Laura's peanut butter cookies just melt in your mouth so .... I was dreading tonight's weigh-in.

I took along my $5 fine for missing last week (think I was in Nandos in Hamilton at the time stuffing my face with hot spicy chicken) and also some change just in case I put on. It's a dollar for every 500g I think.

I'm not proud of it but I've hardly eaten today. It's not clever and I don't recommend it but I had my porridge for breakfast and then got through the day on an apple and a tiny banana muffin. Strange choice you might think but you haven't tasted them. I also thought (and was right) that if I had it for lunch it would keep me feeling full till after the weigh-in.

Stupid act number two occurred as soon as I got home from work when I worked out on the windtrainer in a long sleeved thermal top with no fan on for 45 mins. Sweating buckets was the outcome. Obviously I didn't want to drink anything to replace the lost fluids and so I had a slight headache but I could replace everything afterwards. Water and salty nuts were on hand for any emergency blackouts.

I also wore my lightest clothes to the weigh-in but still felt that I had to play my final card. Flip-flops! Way lighter than the trainers I usually wear.

So with all my efforts I stepped on the scale and recorded a weight of 85.2kg. Zero point one kg lighter than two weeks ago. Woopy do ... a whole 0.22lbs 'loss'. Big relief. The money stayed in my pocket ... although it's not all about the money ... I'd like to finish this challenge with no weekly weight increase.

So my total weight loss moves up to 12.3kg (27lbs) which is a 12.6% loss.

Second and Third place at the moment are on 8 point something percent so unless I do something really stoopid in the next two weeks (like wear a jumper to weigh-in) I should be OK and the prize money should be mine :)