Week 10 Report

I know my blogging has been very slim lately. It’s interesting that maybe a bunch of us have reached that point in the year when many people abandon the promises they made at the new year. I don’t want to be one of those people… so I will redouble my efforts to continue to blog. The good news is that I haven’t slowed in my training, in fact I’m on pace. But I’ve increased the amount of work I’ve been doing, and so blogging has taken a back seat. Anyway… on to my weekly report (for last Mon-Sun).

Last week was week 1 of my Base-2 block. The plan was to complete 12.5 hours of training, at moderate intensity level. I planned to divide my effort at roughly 40/20/20/20-Bike/swim/run/other. But I am not that structured in my weekly routines so I end up with whatever I end up with. Also, as I mentioned the weather and an unexpected shopping trip on Saturday changed my plans around a bit. I try to keep a pretty open mind about what training I do, so that I’m not frustrated or disappointed when unexpected things prevent me from getting in specific workouts. This week, that flexibility paid off, since although I got in the time, I didn’t have the original distribution I expected.

Details follow…

(Read the rest of this article on ZappoMan.com…)

Week 9 Report

Week 9 was all about recovery. Like most of my training, I took this pretty seriously, and kept myself busy with other things so that I would be less tempted to go out and ride a long ride. Even with that, I still ended up doing almost 10hours of exercise this week (8.5 was the goal)… but most of this extra work was in the form of “strength training” with my friend Tyler… which means the times are a little inflated because I have more sitting around with him chatting.

I also had a pretty busy week with work, which was good, because I needed to get a lot done. The next couple weeks are going to be hard with 12.5, 15, and 17 hours scheduled, particularly when I consider how much work I need to get done on my new business I am starting. The good news is that being my own boss means I get to set my own schedule, the bad news is that I can’t sit around and collect a paycheck… I need to get out there and get this business off the ground. But, the silver lining is I am having a great time with the work, and I enjoy my freedom.

Here are the details for this week…

(Read the rest of this article on ZappoMan.com)

Resistance Training and Weightloss

I got an email today from someone who heard about my fitness journey, and had some questions about how I got more fit while avoiding the weight room.

HI. First of all, congratulations on your achievements!

You said you started off with a 36% BF and now are below 20%, how did you do that without any weighlifting? I assume based on what your goals are that you do not try to stay within the BF burning HR zone while training. Did you just build a lot of musle in your legs to lower your BF %? I have lost 70 lbs and my BF % lowered only about 1 or 2% and I am still around 34%.

Let me first say congratulations to this reader. It’s really great that he has lost 70lbs, and has obviously made a commitment to changing to a healthier lifestyle. But he asks a good question and touches on a couple concepts I’ve heard a lot about… “fat burning zone”… can you get healthy without weight training… etc.

Here is my reply to this email…
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Training while traveling… you have to work for it!

I used to travel a lot more. Last year I traveled on business from Seattle to New York at least once a month. From June to November I spent at least 1 week a month on the road, and many months I spent more than 2 weeks on business travel. Needless to say, this wasn’t easy in general, and it was really hard considering I was preparing for my first Ironman distance triathlon.

Fortunately I had a great Executive Assistant who knew my need for a good fitness center, and I had several friends and co-workers who were also into fitness, so I could often find a running partner or someone who’d lend me a gym pass. But the fact of the matter is, that if you want to exercise while you are a heavy travel (for business or pleasure) you have to put at least another 50% effort into your travel planning and your fitness planning to find a way to make everything workout.

(Read the rest of this article on ZappoMan.com…)