What I do now...

In order to give my dear reader(s?) a better picture of where I am now, pre-triathlon, in terms of athleticism and training schedule I thought I'd detail what I do now, as well as how far I've come in the last year in terms of fitness.

For full disclosure, after being of average weight or even on the skinny side my entire childhood, I gained 40lbs my freshman year of college. Since that time, I've gone to the gym on and off and lost and kept off about 20lbs. My workouts mostly consisted of 30-40 minutes on the elliptical machine or the arc trainer (oh how I miss the arc trainer, they just don't exist down here!). When I remembered or when I didn't put it off, I'd also do a short weight training routine a couple times a week. I'd never taken a class at my gym and I'd never taken a yoga class. There was a period my sophomore year of college where I did pilates but that didn't really do much either in terms of fitness and/or weight loss.

In the last few years, I have completely changed my eating habits to a primarily vegetarian diet consisting mostly of fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grains but little meat, little dairy and little wheat. I still eat between 10-15 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I am anticipating that I might have to change this to include more protein as I get more entrenched in my training.

I moved to Charlotte in June of 2007. It took me two weeks of boredom before I joined a gym, mostly because for the first three months I lived in Charlotte, I was unemployed. I also worked with a personal trainer for a couple weeks before he left and went to another gym. I contined working out 3-4 afternoons a week through the fall, after I had gotten a job. Last January, I ramped it up, switching to mornings instead of afternoons, where I could actually get myself to go 5 mornings a week. Around this same time, I was reading an article about fitness type boot camps that were popping up all over the place. The idea sounded wonderful to me so I immediately did a Google search for boot camps in the area and pounced on the first link I saw which was www.charlotteadventurebootcamp.com. I signed up to start in March of that year.

Prior to Boot Camp, I didn't run. I ran track in Middle School, but that's about it. I had tried to run longer distances, but asthma or lack of endurance stopped me in my tracks. On that first day of boot camp I found out I could run, and it felt damn good. That next week, I signed up with a "Running Club" run by a friend of Jenny Crow, my boot camp instructor. That first Saturday, we did a run/walk for 4 miles. The endurance was no problem but I came away with tendinitis in the outside arch of my right foot. Despite that inconvenience, I started following the Couch-to-5k program and signed up for my first 5k in June of 2008. I completed it, shaving 8 minutes off my trial times. Less than a month later, I broke my toe, rendering me unable to run for a good 6-8 weeks. I still managed to go to the gym 5 mornings a week though, focusing on rowing and doing intervals on the eliptical trainer.

Pretty much since September, this has been my schedule is as follows:

Monday
10 minutes on the stationary bike
20 minutes on the eliptical - intervals
60 minutes at boot camp

Tuesday
10 minutes rowing
20 minutes running on the indoor track alternating run/walk

Wednesday
10 minutes on the stationary bike
20 minutes on the eliptical - intervals
60 minutes at boot camp

Thursday
10 minutes rowing
20 minutes running on the indoor track alternating run/walk

Friday
10 minutes on the stationary bike
20 minutes on the eliptical - intervals
85 minutes of power yoga