Training 2011 - Feb Review

Do you know what yesterday was? 6 months until the Give-It-A-Tri! I'm so excited. It didn't really click in yesterday but today it did for sure when I looked at my little ticker and it said 5 months and some random days... WOW!

This past month in my training I have:

Cycled 149km's for a total of 5 hours,
Swam 5km's which took me 1 hour and 44 minutes, and
Walked two times, for a total of 8kms and that took about 1 hour and 40 minutes.

My "Core Fitness" I have been talking about was also done this month. I did a grand total of 900 sit ups. As well as my planks. 40 planks for about 10 seconds each. I did a few around 15 seconds but I'm back down to 10 seconds each... I'll explain. I started doing 15 seconds each at the beginning of the month but went back to 10 seconds each at the end because I was doing more sit ups and my stomach muscles hurt too much to hold for 15 seconds. I'm going to make it a goal for March.

With my goal for sit ups this year being 10,000 It means my 900 for the month have helped. I am now at 1,700 of my 10,000 goal!

No real personal bests this month as I've been working with Ben. He is a lifeguard at the pool I go to and has been wonderful! He has helped me with my stroke and gave me some workouts to try. I'll be honest I still haven't completed a full workout of his suggestions but I"m going to get there. I'm just so tired!

I am still working with making my Thursdays my new training days. My workout looks something like this:
Warm up - 100m breast stroke and 200m front crawl
10 x 25ms - there front crawl focusing on what I'm working on that day, back breast stroke (so 500ms)
200m focus on what I"m doing - slowly
10 x 50ms time swims (1 minute 15 seconds) - front crawl (500m)
Cool Down - 200m front crawl 100 m breast stroke
Total distance workout of 1,800m's which would be a PB if I ever complete it!

Fridays, if possible, are swimming days, I just warm up (about 200) then do a 400m swim, then take 5 minutes to 'swim' breaststroke then another 400m swim and again. Then a 200m cool down.

I ran into a "snag" this month with biking. I got my first flat tire and it set me back a few days and made me more upset... which triggered eating like crap. Not cool. By the time we got it fixed I had to get my butt back out there. I've been working out on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. Last month (Jan) I was able to get at least 20 minutes 2 times a week. This is about 10kms. I set myself a goal with my last post of having my Feb ending around doing 26ish minutes 2 times a week. Guess what?

I DID IT!!

In fact last week ALL my workouts were 28 minutes long, and today... 30 minutes! My workouts, for Feb, have looked something like this:

Monday - XX time reading!
Wednesdays - 3 minutes warm up then 1 minute hard 2 minutes recovery until X minutes then 2 minutes cool down
Fridays - XX time reading!

By the end of the month I was able to get my Wednesday (hard/recovery day) to 1.5 minutes hard 1.5 minutes recovery.

My new goal for March is to get to 36 minutes for my exercise. That is bumping it up by 2 minutes almost every week!

I can say this month the only thing that has been super sore have been my calves from walking (need to do this more!) and my bum from the bike. It's time to pull out those trusty bike shorts I haven't worn for a while! I'm going to need them for March's goal!

I'm losing weight! Last month I lost 3.6lbs. This month, with having a few days in there of being stupid, I only lost 2lbs. But I"m getting there. For 2011 total now at 5.6lbs! I'm hoping this next month I can get a few more pounds down but who knows. To show you that working out works! I have been taking my photos at the beginning of every month and having Arnold measure me. Poor guy knows if it's a bad measurement it's going to be a rough few days. So from Jan 1st to Feb 5th (when I measured in) I lost 11.5inches! I'm not sure I will lose so much this time around but who knows!

My training is getting harder and yet, I'm enjoying it more. I'm *really* looking forward to summer. Feb's total Km's are 162kms. Last month was 122kms. I hope I can beat both for March

6 more months to go!!