Dom Pannell's Blog

Fitness update

I can hear you all baiting your breath in eager anticipation of the latest installment of my fitness regime... OK, OK, here it is:

The first week went really well. I wasn't aching too much after the weight training sessions and yet I generally felt that I was pushing myself. It was two sessions on the lower body (legs and tum) and one on the upper body last week. I wouldn't say there's any visible difference, but even after just one week I'm feeling stronger.

Unsurprisingly the cardiovascular (CV) side of things is much tougher - I was a sprinter at school and have never been any good at running long distances, so this was always going to be a challenge. Notwithstanding that though, I found that I actually can run for 20 minutes and have energy to spare. My average speeds on the treadmill over the three sessions improved from 9.1 to 9.4kmh and then to 9.7 on Saturday. I so impressed myself that I decided to increase the gradient to make things a little tougher.

So everything was going swimmingly until today. I was at a business school alumni shindig last night and as a result didn't make it to the gym until late in the day... boy what a difference that made. It was another CV session today and looking at last week's progress I should have cruised it. In fact it was really tough and I only managed to run for 11 minutes (I did say that I've always found distance running difficult, didn't I?). Admittedly I had increased the gradient AND I was running at a faster average speed than last week, but I was pretty disappointed that I didn't manage the full 20 minutes. Of course I could have done it, but for some reason I decided after 10 mins that I didn't have the stamina and once that decision was taken, I didn't have the desire to carry on.

I did go and push a few weights as compensation, but it didn't help. I felt bad for the rest of the day because I'd let myself down. I don't know why I found it so hard - perhapd the gradient or the speed, but really I think it was the fact that it was late in the day whereas I had intended to go first thing in the morning. I had already let myself down by not making it to the gym earlier and as a result I was less committed.

I'm beating myself up a bit over this because the CV sessions are important to me - I know that I can build muscle and strength, but I really want to tone up and lose a bit of weight. The only way to do that is through CV exercise and watching what I eat, which brings me to the food thing...

The food part is definitely the hardest part for me.

I love good food and drink; always have done.

Eating lots of protein isn't a problem, but cutting out carbohydrates is. Apart from the requirement to reduce intake of beer and wine (I think I mentioned I was at an alumni gig last night... well I was at a book signing for the launch of the Beermat Entrepreneur II tonight and it was sponsored by Cobra beer - incidentally, if you haven't seen Mike and Chris perform you're missing out... and as for Mike's alter-ego, well, it's a mind-blowing experience - so it would have been rude not to avail myself of all that free booze...

The trouble is that if I successfully build some muscle but don't manage the CV side or cut right back on the carbs, I'll have the opposite effect to what I'm after.

Still, I'm bound to have minor setbacks and I am just going to have to learn to be a good boy, or... pass the beer nuts!

Posted by dompannell at October 4, 2005 11:45 PM