The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

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The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Two-Stroke Tart » 30 Sep 2011 14:01

Time to get the training show on the road properly. I really want to make some good progress over the next year - not that I didn't make progress this year, it's just that now I want to get better at it and get faster :)

My aims for the next year are:

Lose the lard
Starting weight is 11st 2lb, which was done on 27 September. Weigh ins will be on a fortnightly basis and under the supervision of Mr TST at the leisure centre when we go swimming on a Sunday morning. Current measurements - boobs: 40", belly: 37.25", bum: 40.75" Measurements to be taken fortnightly by Mr TST on a Sunday morning. There are several reasons for loosing the lard; it's all round my belly so is bit health risk, I'm lugging around more weight than I need to so in theory I could be faster if I was lighter and it makes doing a lot of my gymnastics moves harder as the belly gets in the way.

Complete the VLM in under 5 hours
Obviously the more under 5 hours the better, but given my current timings I think this is a realistic objective. I do want to enjoy the event as well rather than just hammering myself around the course so I can be a few minutes faster.

Get faster at all the triathlon disciplines and improve on my Olly time from this year
Kind of speaks for itself really, and swimming and cycling will take a bit of a back seat whilst I work on my running for the VLM, but I really need to get faster! I shall try and enter two sprints and two Olys next year to guage my progress, providing the pennies are available.

Get a gold medal at the British Gymnastics Veterans Championships.
OK, so this one doesn't sound that realistic, but given there are no entrants in the 40-50 age group this year it's quite a distinct possibility that there will only be me and one of the other ladies from my squad in that group next year so I could win! :D

So this week has been my first week back at it and it's nearly killed me. I did take last night off and have a couple of drinks to celebrate getting my VLM place and it's a good job it's my rest day today as I feel like crap and am struggling to stay away from the junk! Drinking is back off the agenda again!
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby md6 » 30 Sep 2011 14:52

These all sound like good goals! Looking forward to seeing how your progress and how much you beat that 5 hour time by!
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Kevy427 » 30 Sep 2011 15:16

My eyes lit up at this thread as I thought it was about a recipe for 'Rocky Road' cake...imagine the disappointment as I read on ;)

A good honest start TST (GBWFE) and some realistic goals which I'm sure, with the help of the BCTTT massive, you'll achieve :D
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby KidStardust » 30 Sep 2011 15:31

Good luck. Setting targets is a great first step.
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Two-Stroke Tart » 03 Oct 2011 11:15

Well a bit of a so-so start really this weekend :oops: Mind you it was bound to go a bit pear-shaped for a day or so after finding out I'd got a VLM place! Saturday was spent looking at VLM costumes, attempting to insure the house and Mr TST's baby (his CBR600) and trying to shop in Tescos in a different town from normal :roll: Why can't they just lay them all out the same, like Lidl & Aldi do, and then I wouldn't have to walk up and down the shop 50 times looking for what I want and then hunting down Mr TST who's snuck off to look at the PS3 games or something?! :?

Managed a swim and run yesterday though. Went early to the pool and tried to work on s t r e t c h i n g my stroke out so I reach further forward and, presumably, get a better pull that way. I'm struggling a bit with the swimming as I don't really know what to do from now on; the swimming class I went to for one term was good but they quite happily admitted that they're not tri swimming coaches and didn't really feel they could help me further. The only other classes that I can find are run by Tri-Anglia and these are on a Monday so clash with running club. They also couldn't have been more unhelpful when I finally managed to contact someone about going to the lessons, so I wouldn't be confident about going even if they where on a different night. :(

I ran home from swimming with my friend Danielle and it was a lovely pretty route, but hot. It was a bit faster than normal for me to start with, but I'm used to running a bit further than her so it slowed down to my pace after a while. Danielle had a bit of an issue with her shorts after a while too, so we ended up doing a bit of run/walking but I wasn't bothered about that as we had set out for a long steady plod anyway as we have running club tonight and I don't want to end up doing myself a damage. I did a little under 7 miles by the time I got home and had really enjoyed it. It was lovely to run with someone else for a change as I only really get to do that if Sandie comes over from Newmarket or Sar comes and stays for a weekend. Danielle and I have decided that we are going to try and do our long run together up until the Norwich half; we both have different quailities (her with speed, me with endurance) and are hoping that by running together we will be able to help the other with the bit they aren't so good at.

*whispers* md6, what does GBWFE mean?
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Kevy427 » 03 Oct 2011 19:07

A Gym Bunny with pink fluffy ears wrote:Danielle had a bit of an issue with her shorts
Is it wrong that this bit caught my eye? :oops:

Are you recording your training in a spreadsheet (that'll keep the resident statistician occupied over the Winter months) so that you can see your progress as you progress?

I wrote GBWFE - Gym Bunny with Fluffy Ears
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Two-Stroke Tart » 04 Oct 2011 11:45

Club run last night. Thought it was a lamppost session at the local park, but it turned out to be a hills session nearly two miles away :( Steve, 'my' coach said me and Danielle should run ahead with Dave (one of the other coaches) as we're a bit slower and the group was large with three coaches so he could spare one for us! I don't mind doing this, occassionally me and Danielle (and sometimes a couple of others) will start off ahead so we all arrive where the session will be around the same time, or we will set off a little earlier at the end of the session and race the rest of the group back to the club. On the run back I find this pushes me a bit as I want to get back before they do! In the end Steve split the big group into two so there were more people running with us and we got left behind them. Normally this isn't a problem as whoever is the 'rear' coach will stay with us, or a little ahead but keep checking that we are ok. But, for the second time, Dave just ran ahead at the front of the group and left me and Danielle on our own. We didn't know where we were supposed to be going for the hills session and by the time we got to the end of the road through the industrial estate we had no idea where the rest of the group was as they'd disappeared off because Dave hadn't been watching for us even though he'd been told we were the reason for having the 'starting off earlier' group :( Fortunately Steve's faster group had started to catch us up, so he was pointing from up the road which way we needed to go; he wasnt very impressed that Dave had left us behind. The actual hill session was quite hard, and we did most of it although because we'd run on Sunday we did head back a little earlier with one of the ladies who had done a sportif yesterday and wanted an easier pace back. It was a nice run back although there is a long drag up hill through the industrial estate!

Although most of the session was good I was pretty pissed off with Dave's attitude, but fortunately in the 10 months we've been going to the club this is only the fourth time he's bothered to turn up and 'coach'. He's coaching the improvers group when he does turn up, which is the lowest group the club has, and it annoys me that he only speaks to the people in the group that are at the faster end of it. He is also blatently disregarding the clubs rules about runners not being left on their own for safety reasons, like me and Danielle were last night. The rest of the club coaches are fantastic and the support I get from them is brilliant so at least they're not all like him and he only comes occassionally. I'll probably avoid being in the improvers group though if he comes again during the darker months as I'll be able to do the interval session with the advanced group doing the 800m 'running around the police station' session. Next week is the first of the winter handicap series, so am looking forward to that :)


Swimming and gymnastics tonight Image
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Two-Stroke Tart » 04 Oct 2011 11:45

Kevy427 wrote:
A Gym Bunny with pink fluffy ears wrote:Danielle had a bit of an issue with her shorts
Is it wrong that this bit caught my eye? :oops:

Yes!!! Image She had some shorts on she'd only worn for a night race in the States and they were riding up and chaffing her thighs. We had to call her OH to come out to us with some vaseline to stop her thighs getting sore :roll:

Kevy427 wrote:Are you recording your training in a spreadsheet (that'll keep the resident statistician occupied over the Winter months) so that you can see your progress as you progress?

Am I supposed to do that too?! :shock: Hadn't thought about that, I just stick it on Endo and now on here. Guess it never occured to me as I don't really make any progress as far as speed is concerned, I can just go a bit further and that's easy enough to keep track of. Do I need to set it up with little calculations showing how much faster I was than the last time and stuff? :?

Kevy427 wrote:I wrote GBWFE - Gym Bunny with Fluffy Ears
Image Don't know why I thought it was md6 that wrote it.
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby ris » 04 Oct 2011 12:32

keep the training on endo, then jack can summarise your progress for you in january. like he's going to do for all of us at the end of the year. you can look at the graphs and charts to see improvements in speed/distance etc.
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Re: The Gym Bunny's Rocky Road to Awesomeness

Postby Two-Stroke Tart » 05 Oct 2011 12:19

I've never really looked at the graphs and stuff to be honest, not really sure I understand what they say apart from the one that says how many hours I've trained in each thing. I've just kind of always thought that the only thing I've ever improved on is that I can go further!

Swimming last night was great :D The pool was packed, as it usually is if we have to go in the evening, so I obviously wasn't going to get any good distance in. Did some lengths warming up, working on putting my hand into the water further away from my head and then me and Mr TST did some racing up and down the pool; he does breaststroke (better for his arthritis) but is good at it and faster than me! :oops: So we ended up seeing who could swim a length the fastest and it was seriously close. We ended up doing it as a race over two lengths and he beat me by about 1 second over the first length and extended his lead to about 3-4 seconds over the second length. That was main because I was getting tired by about halfway down the length coming back and struggled to finish it. We timed me over one length though and it came out at 29 seconds, which is about 15 seconds faster than I do a normal length. OK, so I couldn't keep that up for more than 2 lengths, but I was really pleased as I've never been that fast before and it gives me something to build on - bit like doing intervals at running I guess. Mr TST said he would be happy to try and do a session like that once a week, trying to work on the distance I can hold the speed for. Came away feeling really pleased with myself.

Then it was straight onto gymnastics. I won't go into it too much as it's probably not that interesting, but it's part of my training so I feel it has it's place here. We did all floor work last night, working individually on whatever we liked rather than working as group on certain things, which is what we usually do. I worked on forward rolls, handstand to forward roll and handsprings (well, handstands into a mat in the foam pit with an attempt to 'spring' off the handstand!) and made a bit of progress those. After doing some work on my wonky cartwheels I spent the last bit doing sommersaults into the pit and was really chuffed to land a couple of them on my feet; now I just need to make the actual somersault faster and tighter and I'll land more of them. We finished off with some core work, which nearly killed me!

All in all yesterday was a good day training wise and I was pleased with my progress both in swimming and at gymnastics. Another bonus was that I managed to get through Day 1 of sugar withdrawal without caving in :D
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