Tag Archives: training

Starting off 2017

Fitness, Running, , ,

Let’s try to start of 2017 and spend more time here.  Writing on my weblog used to be something I would do often and I actually enjoyed it, but I never made it a priority and it’s languished.  I look back on it with regret, and that’s wrong – it’s just a thing that happened.

I still work at CenturyLink but I got a promotion last year to management and it’s been a fantastic experience.  I spent the last 6 1/2 months on the road most weeks, travelling across 6 states working with a team of fantastic sales engineers, and that caused me to reevaluate my life habits in general.  Like most people, I have good days and bad so in 2017, I’m going to try to handle things by focusing on “streaks”:

  1. Fitness:  It’s a tired trope of blogs, but I’m going to try to streak for fitness.  I live pretty close to a 24 hour gym and that means that I’ve got opportunity and motive to spend each day there, doing something active.  If I can streak it to 7 days straight, then I’ll try for 2 weeks, then 4 weeks and hopefully the habit is built.  I read about someone that spend last year running 2,016 miles and the idea of doing something like that for 2017 makes some sense.  I can’t run that well, but walking/running for 2,017 miles throughout the year gives me a goal with perspective.  I’m hoping that streaking gym time will push me in other directions like weights and general fitness.
  2. Food:  Food and good eating habits are in my brain, but I usually take an easy way out when I’m on the road for work.  I’m going to find a way to avoid the bad stuff while out of the office and again, streak it until I find a new balance point.  My focus is the streak of good decisions, not the meal-to-meal success or failure.
  3. Structure:  I’m planning my time more because with the new job, the “8-5” of the work day can be very random with priorities.  I’m going to log my time spent on things during the month of January and use that as a skeleton of a schedule for future months.

I think 3 things are enough to focus on for now.  I know from experience in previous years that these will deliver benefits on the side, like stress reduction, weight reduction and “happiness”.

Exercise and Food Update

Weblog, , ,

So I’ve been working out with Pavel for about two months.  I’d say that half of that time, not consecutive, I’ve been sick in one way or another.  For the last two weeks, I’ve been eating Prednisone and antibiotics, trying to kill the remnants of a flu virus.  I’d say it’s worked.

An unintended side effect has been my appetite and my stamina.  Stamina has dropped by 50% and I’m hungry all the time.  The most frustrating part has been the last week with Pavel, trying to get some of his “brain share” and work on goals.

I’m going to have to eat like an Olympic athlete for most of the summer.  I’m headed for 10% body fat, a realistic but “stretch” goal.  All I really want to do is 25 pull ups and 50 push ups without stopping.  It’s something I could do when I was in the Navy, but then again, I weighed 175 pounds and looked like I had one step in a grave.  Boot Camp was great for weight loss, but did nothing for muscle growth.