Well it has been a month since I embarked on my Olympic challenge & I’ve been experimenting with various routines and activities to build a bank of fitness and help me achieve my goals.
The first thing that I signed up for is a scheme called British Military Fitness. This is circuit training in the park with ex-army PT instructors. It is rather well attended and split up into groups of beginners, medium & advanced. We exercise for around an hour and the instructors devise various aerobic & anaerobic routines to work all of the muscle groups to exhaustion. Although it is hard work it is really good fun, at the moment the evening classes are carried out in the darkness (which really helps sharpen up your senses) and sometimes we end up doing press ups, planks & squat thrusts on muddy or frozen ground! After a session you do feel exhausted but it really does get the endorphins kicking in.
As well as the BMF I have also been running and swimming and for a brief period this month I also dusted off my 5 a side boots and found myself a bit like Paul Scholes coming out of retirement, i.e. my first touch and passing was all over the place! The parallels stop there! Unlike the Great Ginger Jedi After two weeks back in the game my legendary skills hadn’t returned and I wasn’t dictating play! My shovel foot was now well in use and I was blasting the ball well over the net and knocking corners over everyone’s head. My saving grace was that I did manage to do a bit of sprinting around the pitch and cut out a few defence splitting passes in a defensive midfielder role. I also managed to make myself an environmental health footy legend but for all of the wrong reason’s and I am sure that I will go down in history for all of the wrong reasons. For those that now Royton & Compton
Going back to the Olympic theme, I went sledging today and thought that if I felt very brave I could give tobogganing or ski jumping a go! I did think that ever since Eddie The Eagle Edwards had retired that there had a been a gap in the GB winter Olympic Ski-Jumping team, I thought that if I could re-name myself "Jumping John", find a ski jumping venue within close proximity to Manchester & survive a ski jump then I would be certain to get selected for the winter Olympics team! As no-one in England is a ski jumper it wouldn’t even matter how far I jumped, I would just have to do it & survive and like Eddie the Eagle Edwards in the late 80’s I would be certain to become a national hero! Anyway I digress, now time to go back to reality!
This month I have generally found that if I carried out two activities in close succession i.e. circuit training on a Monday & football on a Tuesday followed by swimming to stretch and loosen up my aching muscles, I generally would have a complete midweek energy crash! I found myself wondering around work feeling completely dead on my feet!
This made me ask the question that if you feel like crap in work after a few evenings work out would it just be best to revert to the beer and kebab diet, which also makes you feel like crap in work but at least you've had a bit of fun getting smashed & having a mid week drinko with your mates!
The obvious answer as I sit here with a glass of wine writing this blog is that I should really break up the frequency of my exercise & try not to train two days in succession & perhaps not training to my maximum intensity would be a good way forward. (and also stop drinking the wine!) I also wonder what the key to re-energising oneself is. How do we get our self into a state where we are totally energised? How do we find a way to carry ourselves so that we have a certain mental edge and sharpness so that we can deal with the challenges that are thrown at us in our life with total calmness and ease! Is it down to how we exercise, what we eat, what we read, who we hang around with, what we say or do or the challenges that we take on!
I guess that towards the end of January and the beginning of February that I began to feel tired & the good will & best laid plans of the New Year began to fall by the wayside! This weekend I have realised that without focus my Olympic challenge will fall by the wayside! The good news is that I went on my first bike ride last week end (With a rather angry 10 year old daughter who was complaining that she has a mountain bike & not a BMX!) & I got my forms through for the Manchester- Blackpool bike ride.
So I guess that February will be a really important month in terms of building up to my Olympic challenges & that I need to devise and establish a more sustainable routine. So my next step will be to have a good think and see what I can do to put together a plan whereby I can achieve my first goal and perhaps complete a 5K run by the end of February. Lets see what this month brings!
