Goals

One of the problems most people (myself included) experience with weight loss is that they don't have infinite time and infinite money to throw at the problem, both of which allow for greater success. If you have all time in the world to workout, you'll lose weight faster, and you can better account for the days you don't eat well. If you have infinite money, you can hire a trainer and a chef, one to keep you on track losing weight, the other to make sure the foods you eat are beneficial to your goals.

This past weekend I didn't eat like I should. Friday, I used my extra points for the week, but I didn't count them, and just kinda ate whatever I want. Saturday I was pretty good, and Sunday...well, at least I worked out a lot.

I got to yesterday morning weighing 319. I knew a lot of it was salt, the extra fluids I was drinking due to the heat and humidity but man, to jump from 314 to 319 in just two days made it really easy to get down on myself. So, I took some time yesterday to remind myself how far I've come, how far i still have to go and to set goals that will help me to get there.

The daily goal of course is just to stay within my daily points. I've gotten REALLY soft about watching the points on a day to day basis, basically guessing at the points in my food thinking that I know what it'll cost me to eat things. I'm going to track every point and purchase a kitchen scale to make sure what i think is 2 ounces is really 2 ounces. I've found several apps for tracking Weight Watchers points, and I'm going to use that to stay on course.

The exercise goal is simply to stay within the parameters of the exercise plan Rach has laid out for us through Timberman. I'll be uploading that this week so that our plan is out there for everyone to see. If we deviate, it will be just to rearrange days within a week, unless injured (fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc).

The fun part of course is to figure out some race goals.

For the first race of the season, it's always hard to guess how you're going to do. All the training, all the hard work that goes into it is done without the adrenaline fix you get on race day. But we also don't usually get up at 5 AM to drive an hour to set up for training either. We're supposed to have some unseasonably warm weather the rest of the week leading up to the race which should warm the water some more as well which should make swimming easier.

Based on my previous races and where we are now in our workouts, here's what I'm setting for goals for the season opener:

Swim: 12:00. Thats about 3:00/100 yards. I should be faster than that, but any time better than 12:00 I'll be happy with.
Bike: 39:00. My best previous 10 mile race ride was 40:08, so surpassing that would be ideal. I'd be averaging greater than 16 MPH, which I know I can do under average conditions.
Run: Here's the challenge. My best triathlon 5k was 46:48 and my best ever was 42:04. For this first race, my goal is going to be to do a sub 42:00 5k. Anything that starts with 41:XX is good. I'll still be happy with a 42:XX but anything beyond that means I didn't leave it all out there.

I also have started formulating goals for Timberman beyond just finishing. I still have a lot of training to do, but I honestly believe at this point I could finish Timberman under the time limit based on my current level of fitness.

Notes:

- I'm going to take time this week to clean up the 2010 schedule (we're doing less due to money constraints), adding my race results page including all of my previous work, and formalizing the readers who write section

- Congrats to Fat Cyclist for finishing IM Utah!! He did great and serves as an inspiration to many, but especially me, seeing how fast he was able to go. I'm using his 1/2 distance splits to help set my goals for Timberman.

- I ran a 12:11 GPS tracked mile last night. I ran 5 minutes, walked 3, and ran the last 4:11. Normally this would be deserving of it's own post, decorated with unicorn stickers gold stars because it's super fast for me. But my goals make this something I need to start accepting as something I can just do, and therefore I'm trying to treat it that way.

- I walked a 15:42 mile last night. I tracked the mile I walked right after I ran to see how fast I could walk it. I have no doubts that I'll be doing some walking during the 5k in this weekends race. I wanted to see what I could reasonably expect to walk after the swim and bike, so I started this mile at a slow pace and built up as my legs recovered. I felt good, and could have gone faster. In fact, what was really exciting is that I honestly wanted to run more, to push myself. But it's the week before the race, and that isn't smart.

- I haven't completed a 5k distance in several months walking or running. I know I can do it based on the sheer number of times I've done it, but following this race I'm going to continue to expand my run distance. I completed a total of 3.5 miles on sunday, but that was done half in the morning half at night. I'm hoping this gives me that feeling of accomplishment at the halfway point to keep pushing myself as hard as I can through the rest of the race.