Lack of a goal = Lack of focus

In August I ran 80 miles while fasting to raise money for orphans in India.  In September I ran a half marathon for Team Red White and Blue.  These goals kept me focused.

Since the 9/11 Chicago Half Marathon my workouts have been decent but my diet is disgusting.  I'm eating pizza, burgers, fries, candy, white bread and cookies.  The reason is simple - I don't have any really big challenges on the horizon.

Today is the start of a new set of challenges.  On November 5 I'm going to run in the Hot Chocolate 15K in Chicago.  Later this week I'm going to set a date to have my body-fat percentage measured (as part of my competition with my colleague at work) and to hold the bench-press completion (against the same work colleague).  The bench-press competition will be based on body-weight plus 10 percent for the weight to be used.  My goal is to be at 190 pounds and then use 220 as the amount of weight to be lifted.  I'd like to get 20 repetitions with that weight.

These goals keep me very focused and on plan.

I've made this same mistake of not having any short term goals and I experienced the same decline in my healthy lifestyle at that time as well.  I should know better by now.

Race or no race, I've must set goals in order to remain successful.

Oh how quickly I forget! Goals, damn it! I need to have goals!

My workouts and my diet have been suffering since my half marathon on November 27, 2010.  Since the race I've been slacking in my workouts and very bad about my diet.

I've tried to get myself motivated since then.  It's not like I haven't worked out - I have.  However, the workouts haven't been focused and I've struggled on multiple occasions to get myself started.  A similar story can be told about my eating habits.  It's not that I've eaten a steady diet of fat and sugar since 11/27, but sugar and fat seem to show up a lot more frequently while fruits and vegetables have all but disappeared from my meals.

I know the culprit that's behind my fitness woes.  I don't have any immediate short or intermediate goals.  Sure, my long term goal is still to get more healthy.  That alone, however, isn't enough to keep me working out hard and eating really well on a regular basis.

It's funny and neat how powerful the mind can be.  Setting a goal as simple as "I want to run 15 miles in the next 5 days" is enough to get me focused and I feel so much more fired up to do it.  Alternatively, if I were to just say "I'm going to run 3 miles a day" without an end date I'm quite likely to skip a day or two over the next 5 days.  In other words, its all in my head!

So, going forward I'm going to set small goals.  For example, as I head into the weekend I want to do a lot of cardio so I'm setting a goal: I will run 10 miles total between Saturday and Sunday!

I need to jumpstart my fitness routine

This is the strength training area at my gym

I’ve lost a lot of weight (about 40 pounds) since I started working out again in February 2010. I’ve been at it now for over 5 months. I can run up to 6 miles on a good day under the right conditions and my latest bench press was 205 pounds for 9 reps. That’s all pretty amazing.

I’m not where I want to be, however. I want to get down to 185 pounds. I still have about 25 pounds to lose (sometimes the scale says 30 pounds!) in order to get there. I want to be able to run a 1/2 marathon. I still have 7 miles to go (I’m not even at the half way point in mileage). I want to be able to bench press over 300 pounds. My hunch is that I can probably do 260 pounds for a single rep. I have other fitness goals that I have yet to reach as well.

I need something to kick-start my engine though. I’m starting to feel complacent. No, not so complacent that I’m going to backslide into morbid obesity. But yes, complacent to the point that I may just make where I am now a permanent fitness plateau.

I’m going to start lifting weights more frequently and adding treadmill runs at the end of the weight training sessions. I’ve been focusing on lifting 3 times per week with a routine that hits all my muscles groups. Now I’m thinking about doing more exercises for each body part. That means, however, I can’t finish an all-body workout in 1 hour (it’ll probably take more like 2.5 hours).

Yesterday’s strength training focused on legs and chest. I also ran 2 miles at 5.1 mph on a 1.0% grade/incline. The entire workout lasted 1hour 26 minutes.

I started the workout intending to do my usual full-body workout. However, by the time I finished the leg press, squats, leg curls and calf-raises it was already 30 + minutes into the workout (I wanted to do squats but the rack was being used so I started on the leg press and then moved over to the squats afterwards). That’s when I decided I’d better pick another muscle group and wrap it up with a run.
Today I’m going to do back, shoulders and arms. If my body holds up I’m going to try doing a run outside later this evening after the kids go to bed (in lieu of a treadmill run).

The problem I foresee is not being able to do this workout back to back to back because it’s going to really fatigue my triceps. The alternative is to do back, biceps and legs on one day and shoulders, chest and triceps on the other day. This might workout better.

I’m going to see if this increased focus on strength-training may help me get my workouts re-energized!