Life changing

Talking to my pal  over a super yummy brunch at Milestones a few weeks back and I found myself saying the following a lot.. “ blah blah blah changed my life” and while 2009 has mostly sucked a lot of ass there were several things that changed my life.

If we step back a few years “PVR changed my life” and continues to be life changing. I never watch real time TV, I have not watched a commercial in years and I rarely miss a show. It has also allowed me to watch shows in much less time, I can watch an American Idol performance show in about 20 minutes cause I fast forward through all the crap and there is A LOT of crap. So PVR still makes the list even though it’s not new.

If we step back in even MORE years “getting my license changed my life” and it continues. Yes I got my full "G" license at 39 years old, stop laughing.   I love the freedom and independence I have PLUS I still am in awe that I actually did it.  It was the single scariest thing I have ever done, I think it was even scarier than bungee jumping.  I remember the stress from the road tests and then just driving. If I had to drive somewhere I’d stress all day about it, now I jump in the car and GO. There are still a few places I won’t drive, Toronto or the DVP being two key ones but I’m pretty good for everywhere else. And I still LOVE my car more than anything.

Keyless lock for my front door changed my life. I got that at the end of last year but holy cow I still love that thing every time I use it!

“My iPhone changed my life” and there really IS an app for everything… I’m not even kidding. Now I text like crazy, have used it many times to save my ass with directions, I twitter like nobody’s business, I’m in touch and online ALL THE TIME.. hahahahahah oh and Rogers my5 totally rocks!

My cleaning service changed my life! I no longer come home exhausted after work and/or working out to sit and feel guilty about all the cleaning that needs to be done. I pick up after myself more as well PLUS this ensures that at least once a month before the cleaning ladies come that I have decluttered everywhere.  When I was a kid I never understood when my mom would say ‘the cleaning lady is coming, pick up your room’, now I totally get it. Also watching Hoarders sure helps make me want to de-clutter although I should remember to watch it on Saturday mornings because every time I watch it I want to throw crap out.

My garage door opener changed my life! No really it did. I used to have to walk through the house to open the bloody door and it was hardly worth it half the time, not to mention the taking off the boots at the front door, carrying them to the door to the garage, you get the drift. Now I can open it from my car, from inside the house, from the outside, from down the street. PLUS it made me clean out the garage which is nice except I still haven’t taken back all my bloody empties from about 6 months so I have a chore ahead of me. I need to do this over the weekend. Please someone make me!!! Oh and my car is probably in better shape for not sitting outside.

My back door screen door changed my life! It’s the little things that matter right? I loved being able to sit with the back door open and a breeze coming in and no bugs, shiver, I hate bugs!  love love love it!

Cleaning out my closet changed my life! Not the ‘Eminem’ clean out, but literally cleaning out all the clothes I thought I might wear one day but never did and the stuff that didn’t fit and never was going to fit. I still feel epic relief when I walk into my closet and I can see all the clothes I have to choose from and they fit and they look nice. Matter of fact finding Ricki’s changed my life as well,  The sale racks there are amazing!

Things to accomplish in 2010

Try a tri in June and Sprint Triathlon in July this one is most important to me...
Monthly purge of closets and cupboards
Unpack and organize 2 boxes per month (yes, I still haven’t finished unpacking), finish by spring so I can get ‘just junk’ in to remove the crap. I LOVE just junk.
Sort out my basement, buy some cupboards and make it look much nicer and more organized

Purchases etc for 2010
Bike
Cupboards for the basement
Shed for backyard
Back deck materials and install
Keyless entry lock on the door from garage to house
Shelving unit for the closet in the office
If there is any money left (probably not), new washer/drier, dishwasher and stove but that will probably have to wait for 2011.
Oh AND an invisible screen door for the front door.


Your turn, what has changed your life?

Spin bikes = ouch!

After a long yet quiet day at work I headed home to find my trainer in my kitchen cooking up some food for the week.  She spends some off time here because my house is closer to her work plus she cleans up too!!   Downside, she likes to text me when she finds bad things in my fridge.  Example "Why is there pizza in your fridge?"  Makes cheating impossible but that is not a bad thing.  She has already started her training for her competition in April and I can't wait to go, she's going to do amazing!  We chatted and I showed her my training plan and she laughed at my spreadsheet.  Everyone laughs at my spreadsheets but s'ok, I can live with that.  Also she is a marathon runner so I'll be getting loads of running advice from her.

We headed off to the gym for my training appt, circuits, ouch!  We did "pull day" which I prefer to "push" because push days have t-pushups and there is nothing in life worse than a t-pushup.  I barely complained at all, no really, you can even ask her.  I have decided that I'm going to try not to complain this year, I did say 'try' though, doesn't mean it's gonna happen all the time.

After circuits and weights (rows, with a 30lb weight, I totally rock) she still had second cardio to do so I got on a spin bike to keep her company.  I have never been on a spin bike before.  We did 30  minutes, I didn't push it too much, was getting used to it really and um... I hurt in places I didn't know I have. I hope that eventually the pain goes away.  She assures me that it does.

I'm mostly all set for tomorrow night festivities, evening out at a friends place for drinks and a ton of laughs!  Can't wait.  I also can't wait to ring OUT 2009, I am really looking forward to 2010, I feel positive, good things are going to come!

She's at it again!

Today at work was a quiet day, no one is in, most of our clients are off so I spent a great portion of the day filing emails and loading up my OneNote with to-dos.  Don't even get me started on OneNote!  BEST purchase I ever made and now the entire management team are onto it and oh wait there I go again.. that's not what I wanted to post about.

SOOOOO as I mentioned yesterday I put my weekly training in a user friendly spreadsheet, I can print out the week, post it on my fridge, take it with me and track progress, then bring it home and enter in all the data.. come on I'm a former Business Analyst, it's ALL about the data..

Then today for kicks I added in my calories in/calories out sheet to this one and added 'calories burned' columns to the training logs and now when I enter in the calories burned in a session it updates my summary sheet.  The summary also has calories in (manually entered), my BMR to give me total deficit (I hope it's always a deficit) and predicts weight loss monthly.  It's kinda cool to watch what happens to my overall weight when I enter in calories burned.  I have a great HR monitor but I won't be able to track calories for swimming so I'll have to get some generic stats on that for now.  **Ok, I looked up a few calorie burn calculators and it say I can burn like 600-700 calories in 30 minutes of front crawl at a moderate effort.  I don't believe it!!!

NYE brings the last of the drinking for some time because I really really need to de-pickle my liver.

I'll be back for another riveting post I'm sure.. you can't wait can you.. no wait, don't leave..  come back!!  It'll get funnier as soon as I start training..

Christmas past

Wow, where does the time go?  Seems like just yesterday I was recovering from the birthday celebrations and now we're already past Christmas.  The time just flew by!  I had no big plans other than one dinner until Dec 22nd, it was that day that I found out that my nieces and nephews were going to be at my brother's for dinner on Boxing Day which meant I had to race out and get presents for them.  Then talking to my stepmother on MSN she invited me for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day with them so more shopping plus packing and a drive to London.  I had a great holiday overall, I ate WAY too much but did not drink too much which was a win. 

I have not left the house in 2 days despite some plans that eventually fell through but I did laundry, cleaned up and relaxed alot.  After brutal working hours and all the hub bub I needed it.

Today I looked at some sprint Tri training programs and picked one AND created a tracking spreadsheet AND put the activities on a calendar for my fridge so I did accomplish something right?  So I start on January 3 in earnest.  Some of the training seems a bit light so I might do longer runs or bike rides based on how I'm feeling.  Let's face it I had LOADS of time to train for this.

This week I'm going to go by the "Y" to check out membership.  I'm currently with Goodlilfe and pretty unhappy with them especially for the price but I'm unclear from the Y website if membership is cheaper.  Regardless, the "Y" has a pool and I need to swim.. which also reminds me, I need a bathing suit!  I will have to get one on Saturday.

Back to work tomorrow but only for 2.5 days thank goodness.

all quiet

Well the birthday celebration was epic, there was much wine involved, several of my favourite ladies in the universe came over and one of my favourite guys via phone and text message from California but no animals were harmed and there was only a midline hangover, thankfully.  I did eat everything in the universe this weekend and desperately need to get to a gym because I'm feeling antsy.  I remember in years past where the celebrations were much more frequent but now I've gone from drinking for sport to 'event drinking' and spending alot more time in the gym my body doesn't seem to like the couch quite as much as it used to.  Hard to believe a person can make a shift in the golden years, starting out in earnest at 42 and here I am 44, down some weight, with 25lbs to go and much much much more fit than I have ever been in my life.

The thought of this race is scary but mostly because I'm not a great finisher.  I'm an awesome joiner, I'll join anything but quickly get bored and distracted.   I am really hoping this tri can address some of that and get me back to the focus I had last year where I would go to the gym and come hell or high water I wasn't leaving until I had burned 1000 calories.  I loved the feeling those days, walking out spent, exhausted, full of sweat and feeling like I had accomplished something.  We won't talk about the state of my hair though, cause wow!

I need to find a counter that works for this blog, I want to countdown the days to the Try-a-tri and then the days to the sprint and I also want to keep a log of calories burned, that will be fun.. well in that oh my god that hurts kinda fun way.

So with the birthday celebrations behind me and only 3 events to New Years I think I will be in good shape mentally come Jan 2.

I am still having trouble finding nutrition advice for this type of training so I think for now I'll stick to my usual diet and tweak it based on how I feel.  The diet I normally do is higher in protein and lower in carbs and focused on nutrient timing but I think the cardio may kick my ass.  Time will tell.  I have to be honest, the thought of doing 60% carbs kinda freaks me out after a year of restricting them.  I haven't totally restricted them mind you, let's not even mention how many carbs are in wine and beer, K.  I haven't started yet!!

Maybe first I need to countdown to the start..  baby steps my friend, baby steps.

20 days til D day!

Keep on, keep on, keep on

Isn't that a Partridge Family song?  No I know, the Brady Bunch!

So, talked to a lady from TCOB who was SUPER helpful with some questions etc and even offered to meet me at one of the TCOB winter classes either CrossFit or spinning to meet in person, have a chat, take the class and introduce me to a few folks which I think would be really great except I have a brunch to go to on Sunday and a company dinner on Monday night so that won't work but I will arrange something else.  (holy long sentence)  She told me that she started training for a Sprint and ended up doing a half Ironman at the end of the summer a few years back and she's doing the Ironman somewhere, can't remember where it is, in July.  I'm not sure I'm fit enough to be speaking with this woman.

On the upside she explained about the training that 'triathletes' do to prepare for races and it sounds like things I am mostly familiar with.  The cross fit sounds much like the bootcamp my current trainer runs, plus my current trainer I hope will be running some spinning classes out of the gym I currently go to, plus Goodlife also has spinning classes and treadmills and then there's the private one on one sessions for circuits that I do with my trainer as well.  The thing about the TCOB events is that it costs like $15 per session and well, don't tell anyone, but I'm not rich.  In the past my trainer has totally accommodated any program I wanted to try so I'm sure she'd be willing to work with me to get me to where I need to be.  I will probably take a few of the TCOB classes just to get to know people and get free advice though.

Speaking of my trainer, she doesn't even follow me on here, what's up with that?

So, over the next few weeks I'm going to hit the gym to check my time/distance on the bike and the treadmill just to see where I am at right now.  The last program I was on focused heavily on weights and less cardio so I need to get back up to speed on these things.  Not to mention the cardio I have done in the last 6 months has mostly been the stepmill.

Is it wrong that I'm excited that you triathlon people seem so obsessed with your heart rate?  When I had my best success between January 2009 and May 2009 I was completely engrossed with my calories in/calories out/calories burned, heart rate, tracking speed and distance, I even made a spreadsheet!  This might just be my 'thang'.  Now if I could just find out where you stand on fibre powder I'd be all in (inside joke).  (why am I posting inside jokes?  noone reads this anyway).

That's all I got!

Lookee what I found

Triathlon club of Burlington http://www.triburlington.ca/contacts.html

I bet they would be able to answer some of my bazillions of questions.  Membership is $80 but sounds like it has value.  

I should probably be working but work is not holding my interest at the moment.  I'd much rather be home in BED.

Triathlon Training for Dummies

Why does the spelling of the word triathlon always appear wrong to me.. or maybe the way I spelled it there is wrong.. I'm not sure anymore.

So after much surfing and blog reading and more surfing I found yet another training program on some trinewbies site.  It looks like a comprehensive training program and more importantly I don't think it will kill me.  I'll continue to look at programs in the meantime until I start on Jan 1.. oh wait, let's be honest there won't be any kind of working out on Jan 1, there will more likely be much couch surfing.

My trainer has done a Try a Tri and I'm gonna get her to look over the program as well.  And because I am OCD like that I also bought a book called Triathlon Training for Dummies, I figure it's as basic as you can get to start.  Also found a book called Slow Fat Triathlete by Jayne Williams which looks to be about my speed for starting out but I need to order that online.

So as soon as I can stop listening to the Trews new CD (which may be all night) I'm gonna get into bed with the book and scare the crap outta myself.

Cheers!

She said I needed a goal

I have been training with my trainer for almost 2 years now. It's been a long road, probably harder on her than it has been on me with my on again/off again diet and exercise program. I won't start at the beginning but will start with January 2009. At that time she started training for a figure competition and I decided to follow along with a very clean diet and loads of exercise. I created a spreadsheet to track calories in/calories out and lost about 25lbs. She WON her class. After the show was over I relaxed my program but haven't been able to get back on track fully because to be honest, I hate everything about diet and exercise and there's always a reason, none of them good, to go off program.

We had a long discussion this past Friday and she said I needed a goal and as usual she's right. So what goal? Fitness competitor? NOT a chance.. run a 5k? I ran one in June 2007 and while I enjoyed it, running 3 times a week killed my shins, besides, running is so boring. Biking? Well that seems about as exciting as putting hot pokers in my eyes.. somehow I ended up pondering a triatholon. Now I'm not totally crazy, there is no way I could do a triatholon but I could do a 'Try a Tri' which is 350m swim, 10km bike and 2.5km run. Hmmm not completely boring and it would give me a reason to workout. There is also a sprint triatholon in July which is a longer race, 750km swim, 20km bike and 5km run. It is likely too much to aim for but if I train hard it's definitely on my radar.

So I started researching a bit. I found a race on June 6, through trisport.com which gives me loads of time to prep. I found a 16 week training program online which means I don't have to start training until beginning of February. This would give me the holidays to relax, have some fun, a good start in January before I start full on.

So, in an effort to be accountable I started this blog. I will post 'starting' stats on January 1 and in the meantime I will keep up on my workouts from now til then with the goal to be maintain my weight.

I have a list of things to do:
Find a training program - validate the one I have found, find a new one, get help
Figure out nutrition requirements
Make a list of things I will need to buy such as swimming attire, a place to swim, buy a bike, find a place to ride outdoors.



For those interested, you can read my trainer's blog here:
http://tawnyag.blogspot.com/


and HER trainer's blog is here:
http://mindiobrien.blogspot.com/