Since I have started this new website a few weeks ago I have been working very hard to cater to my audience of readers. I went back and studied all the data from my blog in 2013 and examined the 50 top visited posts which I will share in an upcoming post. Since it is a new year and a new site I have been tracking the data on this site much more carefully. First, I have lost a huge part of my audience and readers. Second, one of my most visited pages has been Coffeechug Fitness which is weird to me because I have not shared anything about fitness except one little post.
In many ways this will be good for me. It will allow me to hold myself accountable by sharing my struggles and journey with everyone. Second, this shows another part of me and how I am just a regular person like everyone else.
Perhaps this is something I need to share more about. So I will go ahead and write about my journey and see where it goes. This site is just like many things in my life….an experiment.
So, I have finally decided to get myself back in shape and I talked about creating some sense of balance in my life in a previous post
I decided to lay the foundation and get some data on my body besides just the lovely house scale. I headed to Kaminski Pain and Performance Care Center to get a body composition report done before embarking on healthy eating and exercise.
Body Weight Test
They hooked me up to this machine and in about 5 minutes they had a complete readout on my body. It was quite interesting. What was nice is that they explained it all even the data that they stated was not really realistic nor healthy.One of the things that really stood out to me was the whole area of water retention. She mentioned that men are typically more bloated than women despite the idea that many people think opposite. My results were CRAZY! I am carrying around an extra 5 liters of water in my body that is not needed. They ran a Fluid Compartment Test that looks at water both inside and outside the cells. We talked a lot about eating veggies and proper foods. She mentioned this is why men drop weight so fast compared to women. I am carrying around almost three 2 liters of liquid in my body for no reason. That just blows my mind.
I have some work to do for sure. I have 31.2% body is fat which really needs to go down. I am carrying around 35 – 40 pounds of unnecessary fat in my body. My muscle weight looked good so that was nice.
Seeing these numbers were a wake up call. It is one thing to know only a few pair of pants fit. It is another thing to see how much extra garbage I am carrying around. It is not really about losing weight as much as it is about creating a healthy lifestyle again. The weight will take care of itself.
From there I have enlisted in a training program to get me back in shape for triathlons again. I will share more in a future post when the week is over, but I have completed my two baseline tests and want to share those.
Bike Test
Bike Test: WU: 10′ easy, then 8′ building from 50% estimated FTP to 100% estimated FTP in 2′ increments, 2′ easy. The intent here is to get in a good warmup, so use your best judgement. Test 1 — Vo2 Max Test: ride 5′ at the best (hardest) effort you can sustain for the full 5′. A good target is 120% of your estimated FTP. Recover 1: 10′ easy spin, stretch, recovery.Test 2 — Functional Threshold Power (FTP) Test: time trial for 20′ at the best (hardest) effort you can sustain for the full 20′. Recover 2: Minimum 5′ easy spinning.
HOLY SORE BUTT!
Well, I have some serious work to do. My numbers were super low which is expected when you are overweight and out of shape. I forgot how painful the tri bike seat is when you don’t ride all the time. Will be walking funny for a few days. It does feel good to be back in the saddle.
Watched a bad movie called Spring Breakers. At least it past the time.
Run Test
WU: 15′ including 4 x 30″ at 5k pace. MS: Run a 5k Time Trial. Find a relatively flat course (or track) for your test. Goal is to hold a pace you can sustain for the full duration of the test without blowing up and without having a lot left to kick at the end. The ideal course is one you can test on repeatedly. CD: Walking, jogging as needed, etc.
It was a bit cold this morning. -8 with windchill but I knew that if I used that as an excuse I would never get this done. Being that I have not run in months and only a few times sprinkled in November I knew this would be ugly.
Besides being hard to breathe through a mask when gasping for oxygen it was not terrible. My skin above my ankles are burning right now from having to keep jumping back in the snow when cars drove by on 53rd(never mind them using the other lane to drive!)
My mile splits were 8:41, 9:01, 8:53. I was quite happy as my goal was to beat 30 minutes. I still have a long way to go to be back to the day and age of running sub 20 on a 5K.
Let the aches and pain begin…….
Let me know how things are going for you!
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