my 8 week challenge

It’s hard to believe that it’s already Day 43 of 8 weeks (or 56 days).  That means I’m over 76% complete in my 8 week challenge. The other thing that’s hard to believe is that I haven’t posted anything since Day 29…and there’s no real excuse.

Let me tell you what I’ve been up to over the last two weeks. I have been working out on a new training plan that my personal trainer designed for me. Due to some restrictions within the facility I use, we’ve been unable to physically meet over the last few weeks. This really has made her more of a virtual personal trainer. We’ve chatted on Skype a few times and we’re in contact through email regularly. Honestly, it seems to be working.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also been slacking off here and there – and not just on my blog entries. I’ve been playing street hockey at least once a week; I’ve been hitting the gym at least once a week as well, though often two to three times; the weather has sucked so I haven’t been biking with or without my Princess and her chariot. The list goes on from there about constant excuses as to why I haven’t been doing things. Then I noticed there’s two weeks left until vacation and realized I’m only cheating myself by not doing it.

I seem to have plateaued a bit in any weight loss effort. That’s cool as clothes are fitting that haven’t in years and I know that muscle weighs more than fat. Cutting back on the booze in my diet has also given me a huge advantage. Now if only I would actually start eating correctly, I’d shed even more weight.

There you have it. A quick two week update on what I was up to and a further commitment that I will be posting something daily again until vacation. It will no doubt be a challenge, but after all, this is an eight week challenge! Now what I want to know is why didn’t you publicly shame me when you had the opportunity?

Photo from Top 10 Sweat-Drenched Workouts — of which I haven’t tried any.

Yes it’s Day 29 and not even 7:00 in the morning yet and I’m already sitting down to write. I just grabbed my Starbucks coffee (so much for no caffeine in my diet) and am getting ready to work.

On my bike ride in I was inspired to write this post. That’s right, in the dark and pouring rain this morning I biked in to the office to ensure that I managed to keep up some level of activity. Yesterday I went for a very quick 2 mile run and managed to avoid any of the five hawks I saw. And yes, I saw them all at the same time in different areas of the route. I also managed not to get attacked.

So as I sit here, getting ready to work a sedentary job like many of you and I contemplate my workout this afternoon with my awesome personal trainer, I ask you: it’s 7 am and WTF have you done today to sweat?

You may have noticed today is Day 26 and there have been a few posts missing from the previous days. Let me explain.

First i must apilogize as I’m writing this post from 38,000 feet from the tin keyboard of my iPhone 3G. I’ll do my best to catch spelling mistakes but can’t ensure I’ll catch them all. Day 24 was Friday and that was street hockey day at the office. A quick game, with a win in a shoot out, then I was off to the airport to fly to Winnipeg to see some friends and family. I spent Friday night playing Rock Band and some other random game called “spinning dragons.”

This last game was quite physical as you pulled streamers out of their complete roll making huge circles. Think of swimming butterfly stroke while holding on to streamers and that should give you an idea. My shoulders ate still a little tight.

Saturday morning was an early start and a quick 7 miles around Winnipeg. I was impressed with myself as it really seems as though I haven’t run too much lately and this 7 felt great. After the beach in October my next challenge will be a marathon in under 4 hours. That will be scary to fit into an 8 week challenge.

Saturday morning I also poked up my brother from the Winnipeg airport and drove up to my parents cottage to really do some manual labour. It never made sense why they called it Labour Day weekend, but thi year it did.

Yesterday and today was spent getting physical and dirty doing numerous construction and renovation tasks around the cottage. In fact I was sweating so much that today I took my shirt off to work. It was largely only family around but it still felt great…not to mention the weather was awesome too.

And now I’m sitting on an aircraftr heading back home to what I’ve heard isn’t great weather. Tomorrow is all about family time and I’m looking forward to it, though I’m not sure what we’ll get up to. Any suggestions of great things to do in and around Calgary?

It’s Day 23 and about time I write again. Today it’s about taking the time, not finding the time.

You might think that what I’m talking about is kind of lame. Everyone is always trying to find time to schedule meetings, go for walks, do things together with friends and so on. Let’s be honest here for a moment. No matter where you are in the world there are only 24-hours in a day. That’s it, that’s all.

On average we’ll easily spend 8-10 hours of that day working. Either physically at work, or commuting to work. This doesn’t even consider the amount of time that someone thinks about work outside of work. Heck, I’m nowhere near work and I’m even talking about it right now! Now take 6 hours for sleep — yes I know the “experts” say 8 hours, but who really gets 8. That leaves you with 8 hours of your day for cooking, eating, shopping, exercising, socializing, TV watching, <insert action here>.

Eight hours isn’t really that much. Take half an hour for breakfast. Take another hour (at least) to cook dinner, eat it and clean up. Now you’re down to six. Don’t forget showering, laundry and relaxing before bed. You’ve got three left. Three hours left to do something out of twenty-four.

What are you gonna do?

Myself I managed to take 45 minutes today to go for a 31 minute run over lunch — about 3.6 miles. The rest I used to shower. I saw a chance to get in some physical activity, risk my life by an attack hawk (though not as bad as some) and clear my head. This ultimately made me more productive this afternoon.

After taking this all into consideration I’d have roughly two hours and fifteen minutes left to do something, anything. Tonight that included packing and making some other plans and ultimately writing this rant. The last few nights I’ve found the time to write, but I haven’t taken the time.

Taking the time is what matters most. Take five minutes to call a loved one. Take 10 to enjoy the sun (since the days are getting shorter up here). Take the time, don’t find it. Now tell me, what are YOU gonna do?

It’s hard to believe that it’s already Day 21 — in other words three weeks. It seems like only yesterday that I really started my journey and I’d like to share a few things with you.

Now I’m not really big on my weight, just more so where it’s distributed. Weight is a number, but it’s a number a lot of people pay attention to. Depending on the scale I step on I’ve got a wide range of numbers. I’ve been benchmarking with my scale at home that tells me weight and body fat percentage. For the record, I know it’s not correct; but it serves as a starting point. In the last three weeks, I’ve shed roughly 13 pounds based around exercise. My diet hasn’t been so great, but my physical activity has.

Over the last twenty-one days, all but two of them I’ve been active. If you read my post yesterday about making lemonade, you’d realize that day 19 I wasn’t getting sweaty. The other day was today.

Don’t be worried about a pattern starting to develop. I’m working with my personal trainer and starting to work with a dietitian to help accelerate the transformation.

I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing some video blogging to make this even faster. I recently got an email from a guy I met once who goes by the name DK and was watching some of his videos. It got me thinking that it would be easy to do. In fact I went to his blog and read the most recent article about converting to Mac .MOV files. His opening sentence sums it up:

In case you haven’t noticed, all of the big internet marketers have made the switch to using video. In fact, I can barely type anymore!

And so with that I’ve got my Apple iSight hooked up to my Mac Pro with the expectation that I’ll start video blogging soon. Of course, only if you’re interested?

Today is Day 20 and if you read along at all, you’ll notice that there haven’t been any posts for the last few days. That’s not to say I haven’t been busy. Saturday my daughter and I went for a nice 9.75 mile bike ride; just before the nasty weather and rain came to Calgary.

Yesterday is a different story. Yesterday was Day 19 and ultimately the first day since I started my 8 week challenge that I did nothing physical. Rather than sit and look at what I could or couldn’t physically do yesterday, I’m moving forward today.

The alarm went off early today…5:30 to be exact. I hit the snooze once, but only really to make it stop buzzing. Slowly rolled out from under the covers, got changed and bike the 3+ miles to work. Then it was work out time. I did the workout from the other day that Terri Champagne had setup for me and it went well I think. I’m busy shaking as I write this so my arms definitely got their workout.

All that’s left is a full day of work, then a 3+ mile bike ride home and I’ll have easily made up for my lack of sweat yesterday. Looking at tomorrows schedule, it looks like it might also be a challenge. Out of curiosity, what do you consider worthy of a “sweaty post” here?

Perfect Lemonade Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 cup water (for the simple syrup)
• 1 cup lemon juice
• 3 to 4 cups cold water (to dilute)

Method

1. Make simple syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved completely.
2. While the sugar is dissolving, use a juicer to extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons, enough for one cup of juice.
3. Add the juice and the sugar water to a pitcher. Add 3 to 4 cups of cold water, more or less to the desired strength. Refrigerate 30 to 40 minutes. If the lemonade is a little sweet for your taste, add a little more straight lemon juice to it.

Serve with ice, sliced lemons.

Serves 6.

Yes it’s Day 17 and I know I haven’t posted since day 13 — I’ve noticed and apologize. I really have no true excuse.

I can tell you though that I have still been active each day, for at least a few minutes and have definitely been sweating. Everything from biking to work, running and even using the rowing machine as a unique way to get some physical activity.

Yesterday was a fun one though. It was my first real time with my mobile personal trainer Terri. She developed a great program for me that we managed to work through. Now it’s up to me to continue the work program until next week. My week didn’t turn out physically as it was planned. Tuesday was supposed to be street hockey day but an inadvertent mix up in the scheduling meant it was actually happening on Thursday. Not only was yesterday an hour of sweating in the gym, it was also followed up by an hour of street hockey.

To say the least, I was concerned about what today was going to look like. This morning I woke early to hit the gym for a quick run and a good sweat. It was hard to get moving, yet I still managed to knock out a few miles and I’m happy I did. Today there are only two parts of my body that hurt; my gluts and my right wrist. Overall I’d say yesterday was a great success and I’m looking forward to more.

I need to apologize again to my readers that I haven’t been writing as much as I had intended. I’ll be rectifying that shortly. Please don’t forget to be honest with me for a bit, it will really help everyone.

I’ll be interested to see how I feel tomorrow, since everyone has told me it will be even worse. How do you feel the day (or two) after a good sweaty work out?

It’s Day 13 and I finally decided to have a look at my comments in depth. Apparently I’ve been doing enough on this site to start getting indexed in Google and being noticed by spam bots — 12 to be precise. Of course I won’t be eating spam at any point, but looking at what I eat I’m starting to think I should.

I want to share some quick stats with you about what’s happened in the last couple of weeks since launching My 8 Week Challenge. It’s been exactly two weeks since my first post went up and I finally decided to look at the numbers. To date there have been 99 unique visitors that spend an average of 1:50 on my site. Not only that, over 52% are new visitors. Let me break this down into how I translate these numbers.

I see there are a lot of people reading my site; thank you for continuing to read. Their time on this site means that they actually are reading the content as well. One other stat is that there are almost 2 pageviews per visit (seriously 1.99). Not only are people reading, they’re almost exploring. In addition to that I’ve got a lot of return visitors. To some of you more experienced bloggers these numbers probably don’t seem to be that amazing. To me being a little guy just getting started, I think they’re impressive. Of course the goal will be to continue growing — yet another goal.

Speaking of goals, I’m happy to say that I’ve continued to sweat every day. Today was a quick ride to and from work; 6.5 miles in total and less than 30 minutes on the bike. It’s great that my speed is increasing on a regular basis as well. Of course I made contact today with my attacking hawk again, but the bike helmet and backpack made it seem a little safer.

Tomorrow I’m not sure what I’ll do for physical activity, I just know I’ll come up with something. Have you got any unique suggestions on different ways to sweat?

While Day 12 may only be half over, it definitely has had some excitement already after going on a bike ride after lunch today.

Imagine two of these coming straight at you!

Today I decided that since I wasn’t pulling my little princess behind me I could take a faster pace and a more aggressive route. They’ve been doing a lot of construction in the areas around where I live and work and I decided today was the perfect day to explore alternate routes and gauge approximate commute times for this upcoming week. The majority of the ride was uneventful until I got over near the office.

When I wrote about Running without music the other day, I also mentioned how I was attacked by two hawks. When I came to an area close by today I was on the look out for them. At first I didn’t see them and thought I was far enough from the zone they were protecting. That was until I heard a couple of high pitched screeches, looked up and saw them both coming at me from the grass.

Hawk attack zone near the Calgary Airport

I know this increased my heart rate again, but can’t tell because my Garmin battery was dead. I stood up on the bike and peddled to gain maximum speed and allow myself some room to duck if they came at my head again. Again they came at my head and I managed to duck in time, though I still felt the breeze from their wings as they flew overhead. Luckily there wasn’t much traffic so my erratic driving in my lane didn’t put me in any further danger. They kept pace with me for a short distance then gave up and flew back to the field they came from.

I’ve got an email out to a guy I know that volunteers with Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society and also the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary to see if there’s anything they can do. Any other suggestions?

Today being Day 11 was a fun one. It’s the first double-digit pair. I’ll have to do something fun on each of them (like 22, 33, 44, 55, etc). Today was a little more relaxing than I had initially planned.

The plan was to get up early, drop my two favourite girls at the airport then go out golfing with a few work buddies. The only problem was the guys all cancelled. Oh well, home to mow three front lawns with a gas push mower. Don’t get me wrong, my lawn isn’t that big but I am that nice kind of a neighbour, plus my lawn desperately needed it. Mowing got a bit of a sweat going but like yesterday I wasn’t ready to classify it as my physical activity.

Instead having all the freedom to do as I pleased, I headed to the driving range to swing my new clubs that I got for my birthday/father’s day this year. They’re great, yet still haven’t seen the course for real yet. Now I’m no professional golfer but I am consistent—at slicing the ball. I tried a few different clubs and techniques out before hand and realized that I needed more help, so I turned to my friends at Facebook and started a golf group — Improve your golf game. I know that there are lots of people out there that have similar frustrations to me with golfing and that we have all invested a lot of time, effort and money into learning and trying different things out. I figure that it makes sense to pool them all in the same spot so that we can learn from one another. So please, feel free to join my group. Think of it as a support group for us non-tour pro’s.

In reading the above and a few previous posts you might notice a theme beginning to develop. The idea of putting things off and trying to make excuses. I’m completely aware of myself doing these things and am wondering as well how many other people get to almost the two week point in a project or plan and begin to lose interest? I’m not struggling with it (yet) but I’m definitely aware that it’s in my mind. Heck, that’s why this post is even being written so late. This is where I need your support that I asked for so long ago. The part about publicly shaming me. Anybody want to be the first?