jstanlick shifts to the next gear

[jstanlick]

I'm currently riding a high that can only come from an awesome, rejuvenating vacation. We're gonna ride that high right on to bigger and better things. The last challenge I did (I skipped the July/August challenge due to birthdays and vacation), I ran 2 5K races and managed to finish in under 25 minutes. I want to go faster. To do that, I need to have my head in the right space, have my weight in the right place, and have the power to speed up.

 

Goal #1: Meditate each day of the challenge.

This should be easy to grade  Seriously though, the more time I spend trying to relax my mind and let go of things, the happier I am and the more engaged with people I am. Usually, this would be Goal #4, or Extra Goal or something like that. But, I'm going to make this my top priority this challenge to emphasize to myself the importance of it. Especially with the chaos that will be the start of the school year for the kids.

 

Goal #2: Sprint twice a week.

I can't run faster without being able to generate more power. To do that, I will do various different sprint intervals twice a week throughout this challenge.

 

Goal #3: Get serious about my IF.

This gut has to get smaller if I really want to run faster. It takes less effort to get something lighter to to go faster. That's just simple physics. As of Sautrday, I weighed 210 pounds. My goal is to get to 205 by the end of the challenge. This is a lot for me, especially given that it has taken me seven months to drop 10 pounds. But, I'm going to aim high to help motivate myself on those days that bowl of ice cream beckons at 10 PM. So, I'm going to stick to my intermittent fasting every day of the challenge.

 

Goal #4: Lift twice a week.

My daughter has been doing kettle bell workouts with me the last 6 weeks or so. She's enjoyed it and I'm having a blast not exercising alone. Last week she didn't want to on vacation, but my wife did. So, I'm going to lift twice a week through out the challenge. Hopefully, I won't be lifting alone, but if I have to, so be it.

 

So, that's the plan for the upcoming challenge. I'm hoping to see my 5K time and my overall weight trend downward as a result.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following, those look like good goals.

[Xena]

Glad to see you back, and I really like your challenge. It seems simple, upbeat and effective.

[Elastigirl]

IAwesome that your daughter is doing KB workouts with you!

[Raxie]

Welcome back and glad you're feeling so refreshed! Following :]

[Rurik Harrgath]

Glad to hear you're feeling healed up after vacation, and that you're back to the grind so quickly after!

[jstanlick]

On 8/15/2016 at 5:13 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following, those look like good goals.

I sure hope they're good, or more appropriately, they are the right goals to help me get to where I want to go.

 

On 8/15/2016 at 9:44 PM, Xena said:

Glad to see you back, and I really like your challenge. It seems simple, upbeat and effective.

It's amazing what time off can do for your ability to cut through the crap and be more upbeat!

 

On 8/16/2016 at 0:10 AM, Elastigirl said:

IAwesome that your daughter is doing KB workouts with you!

Ya know, it can change my whole outlook on my day when she comes to me or texts me and asks, "Dad, you wanna work out tonight?" Day = made.

 

7 hours ago, Raxie said:

Welcome back and glad you're feeling so refreshed! Following :]

Thanks! Its good to throw off a little of the burnout from being an adult.

 

1 hour ago, Rurik Harrgath said:

Glad to hear you're feeling healed up after vacation, and that you're back to the grind so quickly after!

Vacations with the family are always energizing for me. Just good to change up the routine every now and again I think.

[jstanlick]

So how are things going? In the lead up to this challenge, I'm working on getting my schedule planned out and getting used to it.

 

Meditating has been easy to add in so far because I took some activities out that were not adding a whole lot to my life experience. I've replaced a bunch of the time I spend on social apps each day with a more structured/dedicated time from my day.

 

I've stuck to the Intermittent Fasting pretty well, but man do I feel hungry most days. I didn't have this issue with IF in the past. I keep telling myself hungry is not a bad thing, but its probably not a great thing for developing more muscle/power. But, we'll see. I kind of fell off on the IF for a month or so and perhaps this is just the body adjusting to getting back to it.

 

As far as the lifting and sprinting goes, I've only gotten in one sprinting session so far this week. So, I need to get more focused on that a little bit before the challenge officially kicks in on Sunday.

 

Now I'm off to look at other people's challenges.

[Xena]

Don't know what to say about IF, but I started counting calories about 6 weeks ago. I was pretty hungry the first couple weeks, but I've gotten pretty used to it.

 

Maybe try it for a fixed period of time...see how it feels after another week? And adjust if needed.

[jstanlick]

On 8/17/2016 at 7:39 PM, Xena said:

Maybe try it for a fixed period of time...see how it feels after another week? And adjust if needed.

 

That's the plan. It's been better the last two days. Not sure what it was at the start of the week. Of course, I haven't gotten in any more sprints yet this week either, so maybe that has/had something to do with it.

 

My daughter and I did some kettlebell work last night before watching our recording of the American women losing to the Serbians in volleyball and the Brazilians win the gold in beach volleyball. I love the Olympics! These people have spent so much time perfecting their craft and they're so focused that when its over, you get this pure, uncovered emotion afterwards. I find it incredibly inspirational. Too bad they come to an end this weekend instead of, say, the end of this challenge

 

Skipped my meditation yesterday morning and planned on doing it at night. Oddly, my day was going incredibly crappy in the morning and I found myself with difficulty concentrating that I didn't have earlier in the week. So, I did some meditation at night, calmed down and had a great workout. I did my meditating in the morning before work today and was much more focused. Guess I know when I'm doing this during the day for this challenge come week 1.

[Xena]

I'm mad about Ryan Lotke...I guess it's not fair to expect Olympian's to be perfect, but that's pretty lame behavior.

 

Sounds like you have a good plan for the week!

[jstanlick]

The whole Lochte thing does piss me off. Those 4 guys are making the rest of the American delegation -- and by extension the US -- look pretty bad. Although Hope Solo's comments didn't help after the US lost to Sweden either. But, the Simone Manuel, Alyson Felix, Ashton Eaton stories (how do you win back to back decathalons?!?), the emotion on the volleyball courts, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt once again proving how freakish their ability is, Fiji and Tajikistan getting their first gold medals, and tons more are all what the Olympics are about.

 

[jstanlick]

Holy crap! How did it get to be Wednesday already?!?

 

Okay, so let's quickly recap the week thus far:

 

Sunday: Ran my longest run of 2016 and it felt really, really good. And it was fairly fast (for me anyway) on top of it all: 5 miles in 40:37. Intermittent fasting? Check. Also, took some measurements to start off this challenge and the scale claims 209 pounds. In January, it was 220. Since July it has bounced between 208 and 210. I would love to be at 205 by the end of this challenge.

 

Monday: Meditating? Check. IF? Check? Exercise? No check.

 

Tuesday: Meditating? Check. IF? Check - But was SUPER hungry last night. Why? Sprints. 4 minute warm up jog, 12 minute sprint intervals (30 seconds sprint, 30 seconds walk), 4 minute cool down jog. You could argue that my sprints towards the end of those twelve minutes weren't much faster than the cool down jog pace and your argument might have merit. But, it was as fast as I could go by then. It's amazing how hungry I get on sprint days, but decided to hold off on stuffing my face with crap right before bed. Soooo, tempting though.

 

Wednesday: Thus far I've completed my meditation for the day -- it was kind of cool and peaceful while the the rain came down -- and I'm still on track for IF despite waking up hungry this morning. Sprints must be burning something. The plan for tonight is some quality time with me ol' kettle bell.

 

Current Challenge progress:

Meditation: 4/28

IF Compliance: 3/28

Sprinting: 1/8

Lifting: 0/8

[Raxie]

Awesome progress so far!

[Xena]

Great start to the week. Sorry you're still hungry :-(   But great work on the long run and sprints.

[jstanlick]

On 8/24/2016 at 10:25 AM, Raxie said:

Awesome progress so far!

Thanks!

 

20 hours ago, Xena said:

Great start to the week. Sorry you're still hungry :-(   But great work on the long run and sprints.

Meh. It seems to be only on sprint days that I get super hungry. I guess that says something about sprints, eh?

 

So, I missed my quality time with the kettlebell Wednesday night. My daughter got a last second babysitting gig and my wife had a meeting pop up that she had to go to. But, no matter, the boys and I had a fun time anyway. Thursday was supposed to be a sprint day, but a group of people at work wanted to go running for lunch. So, we did a 4.25 mile trail loop near the office. My legs were too exhausted after that to do any sprints. But, it was a fun run across trails I've never run before. I'm not feeling bad about either choices.

 

Meditating? Yep, yep. IF? Yep. Current tally?

 

Meditation: 6/28

IF: 5/28

Sprints: 1/8

Lifting: 0/8

 

So, I've got some catching up to do this weekend I guess.

[Xena]

Actually looks like you are doing great. Spend a little KB time with your daughter this weekend, and you'll be in good shape. The trail run sounded fun!

[jstanlick]

What a terrible job of updating in doing. Hell, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up with other people's threads too. I'd like to blame it on the fact that I had a team member resign this week and I've been scrambling at work as a result, but that's just this week.

I have, however, gotten better on the excercise front as a way of dealing with the stress of it. Lifted twice and ran sprints twice already this week. So I've met my goal for the week and can start working on catching up from my misses of last week.

Meditating has gone well. I missed on day over the weekend, but that's been it for the challenge. Unfortuantely, that same day I screwed up my IF by eating late at night.

The weekly weigh-in on the scale was at 209. Didn't go down, but it didn't go up either. My long run -- well, my non-Sprint interval run -- on Sunday was hard to time. Dense fog messed with reception on my phone -- at least that's what I'm blaming for now -- and didn't record the distance. I know how long it took, but as I was just running where I felt like that day, I'm not sure the exact distance. Somewhere around 3.5 miles or so I think. But not knowing the distance makes it hard to know if my pace improved. So, the only measurement I have is the weight scale. I'm going with, I didn't get worse [emoji14]

Stats:

Meditation: 11/28

IF: 10/28

Sprints: 3/8

Lifting: 3/8

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[jstanlick]

Why does Tapatalk skip carriage returns and any kind of formatting? Sorry for the previous hard to read post.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[Xena]

I am somewhat addicted to stats and really like to know my pace/distance/time. But I also think sometimes it's good for us to let go of it and run more intuitively. Sometimes technology failure force that on us :-)

 

Great job with consistency this week. And thanks for visiting my thread...I really appreciated the support.

[jstanlick]

On 9/4/2016 at 3:37 PM, Xena said:

Great job with consistency this week. And thanks for visiting my thread...I really appreciated the support

So, sorry I missed this post. I got unsubbed from your thread and mine over the weekend. How does one get unsubbed from their own thread?!?! I like Tapatalk since I can easily add a comment or like someone else's threads, but it does seem like whatever thread I use it on, I get unsubbed. Including mine!!

 

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to help in some small way.

[jstanlick]

So, now that I think I've got all my follows working again, I guess it's time to update this thread, eh?

 

The holiday weekend was a good one. Lots of yard work was accomplished, sprints were accomplished, a road trip with the fam to Madison was accomplished, meditating and lifting was accomplished. Fasting...was not. There were lots of...er, um...exceptions made this weekend. I'm still calling it a win of a weekend. In fact, this kind of how I feel about the fasting off-roading this weekend: 

 

 

Why? Well, because of all the other goodness that happened this weekend. I ran sprint intervals (walk 1 minute, jog 3 minutes, sprint 1 minute) that covered more than 3.5 miles with an overall pace of 8:30, I walked around a botanical garden and Lake Monona with the family, I spread a few yards of mulch, lifted twice, meditated every day, took the dog for a walk (well, she ran and bounded) through empty fields, took the boys on a walk to the park and a bike ride and rearranged the furniture in my daughter's room. So, yeah, drinks and snacks were had late around a fire 2 nights and it was glorious!!! Oh, did I mention the weekly weigh-in said 207.5 on the scale? And that the scale has not been that low since I started recording it in the FitBit app 21 months ago? I didn't? Weird, that was kind of the highlight for me. I guess I should've led with that, eh?

 

Okay, so maybe I'm splitting hairs. I've gotten the scale down to 208 in the past, but 207.5 < 208 so it was a few ounces of water weight less than before and I'm takin' it! So, in a little over 8 months, I've managed to drop 12 1/2 pounds. This losing weight thing used to be a lot easier in my 20's, but that's okay. I've got almost 4 more months left in 2016 and we'll see how much better I can get fitness wise.

 

Stats time!

 

Meditation: 16/28

Fasting: 13/28

Sprinting: 4/8

Lifting: 5/8

[Xena]

A new low is a new low. You can attribute day-to-day variation to water weight, but 12.5 pounds is legit!

[jstanlick]

Alright, so I've pretty much sucked at any kind of regular updates here. It is what it is I guess. Life happens. Volleyball season has started for my daughter and keeping my son organized with school and getting his work done is once again a thing. Plus, the youngest is now in school all day and occasionally has homework to do, but mostly wants to share with me everything he did at school that day. Time, the scarcest and most valuable resource.

 

Anyway, let's see, where did I leave off. Almost a week ago, huh? Short version, I ran twice more and only lifted once last week. Meditation went well, and eating did not. This week, I ran sprints on Sunday, did a KB workout with my daughter on Monday and ran sprints today. Meditation continues to go well and eating is better. Not great, but better. The batteries died on my scale so I didn't get a weigh-in over the weekend, but I did get more batteries today. So, I'll be set for the challenge ending weigh-in at week's end.

 

Stats:

Meditation: 22/28

IF : 17/28

Sprints: 8/8

Lifting: 7/8

[Xena]

21 hours ago, jstanlick said:

Plus, the youngest is now in school all day and occasionally has homework to do, but mostly wants to share with me everything he did at school that day.

 

That's super cute!

 

and oh yeah...the old "batteries died on the scale" excuse. Sure....

 

(just kidding)