A picture is worth a thousand words

My 2011 Season goals

I've been trying to get my mind right following a fairly disastrous January during which I only trained about 1/3rd as much as I wanted, and ate pretty much all the time. With stress at work, a health problem that has gotten into my head (literally), and more snow than you can shake a snowplow at; I've had lots of excuses to be at less than my best. 

I've been working on my plans for how to make this right and really begin training for the season. We have just 3 months until our first race, and 4 months until Patriot half. When you compare that to last season when Timberman was in late August, it's only half the training time, so that'll be a new challenge. This time I have the experience of being through this kind of training before, and though I've been less than fully motivated, I know I can be prepared, and do it in the time we have.

You'll notice that Rev3 Cedar Point isn't the central goal for the season. Sure, it's important to me to finish and finish strong at Cedar Point. But it's more important, and not just for this season, for me to really focus on losing weight this year. Last year, I cam up with every excuse under the sun as to why I wasn't dropping weight while training like I did. When you train like I did last season, and you weigh what I weigh; you should lose a serious amount of weight. 

Sure, I probably won't lose 100 pounds by end of the triathlon season, but the goal is to consistently lose weight. It's a day by day challenge, one that will have it's share of ups and downs, and that some periods of training will slow down due to the nature of working out that hard, and the fueling you need to do to support it. But even in those cases, I should still see a slow, steady progression downward.

I've also got Weight Watchers as a way of being accountable, and I'm really going to use it this time. I'm even blocking that time on my calendar, so work can't schedule over that meeting. And that graphic above will go on the fridge, the freezer, in my car, and up in my cube to make sure basically any place I eat regularly (not that I eat in the freezer, but you know) so that I'm forced to think about what I eat and when I eat.

Notes:

- Last night, 2 miles on the rollers. I did it after the Blue Jackets game, and I definitely felt like I had the energy for more, but my legs were definitely quick to tire so I decided to take this restart slow and smart.

- This morning I stopped for breakfast at McDonalds. Before you start thinking "Shame on you! You're sabotaging again!", let me tell you what I got first. Geesh, mom! I ordered the oatmeal, sans fruit, and a small orange juice. Total points: 7. That's actually fewer than I have for breakfast at home, and with oatmeal being pretty filling I'm not having any problems getting to lunchtime on just that.