Falling off and getting back on

May 30, 2012 by

Everyone has those days or weeks where your routine just gets thrown out of wack. Dealing with this is part of life and sometimes can’t be avoided. What is important is how you respond to it when these situations arise. Last week was not my best workout week. I missed the gym entirely for weights. That’s the first week this year that I haven’t done any weights at all. Things got busy, stuff came up, blah blah…and I didn’t get to the gym to do any weights. I still ran twice and got some cardio in, though.

Monday this week was Memorial Day. Instead of beating myself up over missing gym time last week, I just decided to get right back on the bandwagon this week. I called up the gym and found out they were open on Memorial Day from 8-8, so I headed over there and did a great upper body workout. Then yesterday I ran 2.6 miles in the 95 degree heat – ouch! Um, yeah, I think it will be either early morning or treadmill for the next few months until things cool back down in…oh…October or November. Yeah, I live in Texas and we have 2 seasons: summer and not-summer.

Since I ended Body For Life, I’ve been doing really well with eating healthy. Even though I missed my weights last week, I still ate healthy. My next weigh-in and pictures was supposed to be at 20 weeks. For some reason I had in my mind that 20 weeks was this Friday (6/1), but I just checked and it was actually supposed to be last Friday. I think I’ll just do it at 21 weeks instead. Stay tuned for an update this Friday!

Filed Under: Running, Workouts

Improved Running Speed

May 11, 2012 by

The kids started swim team last week and have been going to the pool every evening. It’s a great activity for them. Improves their heart, endurance, and muscles. Once school is out they’ll be going every morning for the summer. It will be really good for the kids. They’ve both really taken to it and are enjoying it so far.

This afternoon I decided to run from our house to the pool where their swim practice is. I tried to time it so I arrived there just as they were getting out so I could ride home with Allison and the kids. The distance from our house to the pool was almost 2.6 miles (2.59 to be exact). I started off and paced myself as to not get tired. My first minute was an 8:11 mile and I got faster as I went on. Runkeeper announces to you every 5 minutes your distance, time, and average pace. When I heard I was just over an eight minute mile for the first mile I decided to kick it up with the goal of finishing with an average of under eight minutes per mile. I finished all 2.59 miles in a total of 20:06 — an average of 7:45 per mile. That’s the best time I’ve ever recorded for this distance. I really pushed it the last half mile or so, with mile 3 (.59 miles) averaging the best time. You can check out my stats here. Here are my averages for each mile:

And the overall stats:

Filed Under: Running

Week 16 Weigh-In and Pictures

April 29, 2012 by

Today marks 16 weeks exactly since I started Body-for-LIFE. Even though the Body-for-LIFE challenge is 12 weeks, I’ve continued with the lifestyle the last four weeks. The Body-for-LIFE website says to get the results you want in “as little” as 12 weeks. I was very happy with my results after 12 weeks. Going forward I want to continue to build lean muscle mass. My last weigh-in for Body-for-LIFE was 161. In the last 4 weeks I’ve lost 3 pounds, weighing in at 158.

I’m actually trying to gain weight (muscle weight), but I am not concerned about the weight loss since I am continuing to increase the weights at the gym. The last 4 weeks I’ve continued 3 days of weights and 3 days of cardio each week. Here are the pictures after 16 weeks. First, from the front:

And a flex shot from the front:

Now from the back:

And a flex shot from the back…you can really see the back and shoulder muscles that I’ve built over the past 16 weeks. I just need to work on that farmer tan – heh heh.

Here is a compilation of image I put together with pictures every 4 weeks. It really captures the progress along the way:

I’m getting much closer to the 6-pack that was one of my goals when I started. The last four weeks I’ve made significant progress across the board. You can especially see it in the stomach as the abs are starting to show even more. I’m figuring the 3 pounds I’ve lost has been a little bit more fat around the gut which is helping for the abdominal muscles to show through even more. My next weigh-in and pictures will be at 20 weeks. Until then, I’ll be continuing to blog about my journey as I continue to eat healthy and exercise. Thanks for reading!

Filed Under: Body For Life, Pictures Tagged With:

Updated pics and weigh-ins moving forward

April 23, 2012 by

Now that Body-for-LIFE is complete, you may have noticed I haven’t been doing weekly weigh-ins and pictures. Going forward, I’ll be doing a weigh-in with pictures every 4 weeks. I’ll still be using the week of Jan 9th as the baseline for my transformation (that’s the week I started Body-for-LIFE). Now that the 12 weeks are done, my next weigh-in and pics will be at 16 weeks on April 28th – that’s this Saturday! I’m excited to see how much I’ve developed in the 4 weeks post BFL! After that I’ll check in at 20 weeks, 24 weeks, etc. until I feel my transformation is complete and I switch to maintaining.

Filed Under: Body For Life, Pictures Tagged With:

Gradually showing improvement

April 20, 2012 by

This morning marks the end of two weeks of running with my son before school in the morning. We’ve done it Mon, Wed & Fri and have been running 2 miles each day. He’s showing awesome improvement in just 2 weeks. He started out averaging around an 11 minute mile. I was extremely proud of him today. I pushed him a little harder this morning to see what he could do. We did 2 miles in 19 minutes and 20 seconds, averaging a 9:40 minute mile.

With our plan to do a 5K now, we need to start increasing the distance that we run in preparation for the 3.2 mile race.

Filed Under: Running
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