Stryka’s BodyBlog

I apoligise for the lack of motivational blogs of late. I have simply been finding between work and gym and triathlons that I haven’t had the time or energy to type. But I have been thinking about this post all week and reading one of Veronique’s blogs gave me the enthusiasm to type it out.

You see earlier this week I was sent to Melbourne for a couple of days to do a short course on giving presentions, something that I have to do from time to time in my work. This course involved having to give a short talk on anything you like so I decided that the best thing I could crap on for 10 minutes about would be an unqualified talk on burning fat and building muscle. 

Rest assured for any Nutritionist/Personal Trainer Nazi’s out there I did qualify my talk that I wasn’t qualified but that I simply wanted to point them in the right direction.

I thought I would probably bore them to death when I started talking about Squating and Deadlifting, Eating 6 times a day etc but instead they got excited, they wanted to know more, my alloted 10mins quickly disappeared but I couldn’t stop them asking questions. They were genuinely excited.

But then the excuses came: "I can be really good at going to the gym every day for a couple of weeks but then I just stop if I haven’t seen results" said one overweight girl.

"I am really good at eating during the day but when I get home I just open the fridge and eat eat eat" said another.

One by one the excuses came out, the self defeating excuses for why something cant be done or why they aren’t in shape. The sad thing was that they genuinely did want to get fit, they did want to lose fat they just couldn’t defeat the mindset that put them where they are.

I just smile and nod when people start talking like that because I realise that until they find that motivation within themselves to change then nothing I can do or say will enable them to see past the excuses.

So I decided to use this forum instead and hopefully here I can offend some people to start thinking about beating the excuses for themselves. Chances are that if you are on this site then you are already one step ahead of the people I spoke to and maybe this will be the blunt object that might get you over the line???

I don’t care if you tell me that you don’t have time to get to the gym! If you wanted this bad enough you would either make time or you would go and get some weights to use at home. I have no more time than you do. Just because Australia is in a different timezone to most of you doesn’t mean we have more hours in a day. I just make the sacrifice!

So you have a bad back/knees/shoulders whatever. I would probably say that the problem is in your heart more than anything else. Do you think that any soldier comes out of the military without something wrong with them. My problem is my knees. I can squat 190kgs and leg press over 800 pounds. If you have a weakness don’t you think you should do all you can to strengthen the muscles around the area??? Sure take it easy and build up slowly just don’t expect me to care when you whinge about not being able to do something.

So money is the issue? I am pretty sure Sweet Potato and Brown Rice cost less than french fries from fat Mac’s. Smarten up a little bit champ. If you wanted this you would find a way.

So for all of you that stopped reading because you got offended good riddance. For any of you left go and check out someone like VT dad that runs in sub zero temperatures. Or maybe someone like ShanBl who works hard and gets it done (her latest progress pics are proof!!!) In fact just go and randomly look at peoples profiles - you are guaranteed to find people who have exactly your excuse….

Only they just see it as a challenge that can be overcome.

Official Race Times: Swim 11:06 (2nd Last)

Ride: 24:36 - Ranked 7th out of 28 (and within 20seconds of 4th)

Run: 12:24 - Ranked 9th out of 28 (again within 20 seconds of 5th)

Total: 48:06 - 16th overall

Bring on next season!  But for now bring on the weights

I have been so excited about riding a fast bike in todays tri that when I woke up this morning to bucketing rain I was almost ready to go back to bed instead of racing. But I didn’t, I got ready and by the time I got to the beach the rain had eased to a light drizzle. The race was still on, I had already paid my entry fee, so I stayed and got ready.

By the time the race started the rain had pretty much stopped. The temperature was about 17 degrees C which is about perfect for the race, there was no wind to speak of but there was a fairly decent swell.

We started off and I eased my way into the surf, I don’t see much point in rushing too much at the start, would just mean everyone would swim over me and before we hit the first buoy. Today the swim was tough with the swell and on top of that my goggles fogged up so I had no idea where the far buoy was so I could only go off the main bunch which fairly quickly left me behind. Basically I zig zagged my way in the general direction. Although Today I only decided to quit about 5 times instead of the 10 last race. And each time I made that decision I pushed through that little bit further before all of a sudden I was only 15 metres away from the buoy, I only had to get around that and I could then swim towards land so I swam back out to it (I had gone off course again) and then headed for the beach.

Just as I thought I would never reach the sand my hand hit the bottom and without realising I was back in knee deep water. Another race without drowning.

I was sucking in some pretty deep breaths here and my transistion felt slow. I enventually got the bike off the rack and looked at my stopwatch, roughly 12mins had gone past. I was two minutes slower than my first swim. Need to learn to swim in a straight line The swell obviously accounted for some time too as did a very slow transistion.

Now for the real test - I have only had my cycling shoes for about a week and I haven’t gotten used to walking in them yet let alone run on the greasy wet road to the mount/dismount line. I hobble and I hop on the bike, again because of the road surface I gingerly take off, my intention was to really but the big power done out of the turnaround points but because of the road we have to really slow down to get around the turn and then it took a couple of turns to get full power out of the turn. I was dissapointed I couldn’t really get a good idea of how much improvement I had made since the first race because of the difficult conditions but I know I was faster and when I looked at my watch about 36minutes had elapsed. Average speed was roughly 30kms per hour including hobbling through the transitions trying not to slip over.

The run started well. It wasn’t the fastest ever 3kms I have run but it felt ok. And when I got towards the finish I picked the pace up a fair bit. I finished strong with a total time of around 48minutes. Roughly 30 seconds slower than the first but faster than the second and in pretty average conditions.

I am satisfied with this. Today for the first time I felt like I competed instead of just dragging my ass through it (well except the swim). I mowed down about 5-6 riders as if they were standing still and ran down another 5 or 6 on the run. I wasn’t last out of the water which was a race goal and I think that I should have achieved my other two goals of top ten splits on the bike and run. 

I am eagerly awaiting the official times  

Now to eat some more so I can get in a good weights sessions this afternoon

Well thought I was an ok cyclist - and I thought that hill climbs were my speciality because of the strength in my quads to push up the road. I was wrong!

Today was my first ever cycling race and granted it does fall outside of my less than 1 hour criteria for these races (and tougher than the super sprint triathlons) but It was a challenge and those of you have have read these posts over the last few months know that I like nothing better than a good hard challenge.

Todays challenge was a time trial race to the top of Mt Wellington. The same mountain that I ran the half marathon up back in November although the first half were from and different (and easier) approach with a six km climb followed by 4km of slight downhill then on to the main mountain road that I ran so many times last year for another tough 12 kms of climbing. I think the average gradient would have been about 5-6% but there are also sections that hit closer to 10% so pretty damn steep.

I rocked up this morning and whilst waiting to register I checked out some of the competitors bikes. Some serious money in those bikes and some very serious cyclists here too. Even before I registered I felt a little out of place (but I bet they can’t squat and deadlift what I can!)

We were setting off 30 seconds apart. The guy behind me took all of 2 1/2 minutes to bridge that gap and all day long it was the same story - I felt like I was going backwards with the speed some of those guys raced uphill past me.

Training preparation for the ride was hardly ideal (not an excuse but) we did one ride to the top but taking the same route as the point to pinnacle and one trip from the start line to the turnoff to the top. On that second trip It took 34 minutes to cover the 10kms. Today I blitzed that down to 29:30 for that first 10km. I should have been happy but with people racing past me the whole time it was a bit disheartening.

It got tough from there. I just couldn’t settle in to a good rhythym. I was already in my lowest gear but I had to ride standing up to get the pedals around at anything over 10kph, I just had no power!

Was surviving at about 12-13kph for the first 5km of the mountain road but then I hit what I have now renamed "the death zone" which is about 3.5km of really steep road that is virtually straight and where the scenary barely changes so it really feels like you are pedalling with no effect.

I hit the next checkpoint of "the chalet" meaning I was almost to the home stretch. On the runs this was a great motivational boost. Today still meant there was 3.5km of climbing to go. Mentally I was already spent. I was literally taking it one pedal stroke at a time. The big bend gave about 100metres of relief where I actually hit about 16kph…. then the climb hit the final 2kms, running you don’t really notice it kicking up too much but on the bike… holy crap can I even get up this? 1kms and I can pretty much see the finish. I tried with everything I had to crank it up a couple of gears and push harder - it lasted about 100 metres before dropping back to granny gear. I try again, and drop back again. I am almost there, I give everything I have and finish in about 1hr27 averaging about 14.6kph to the top.

I should have been pretty happy with that but the way so many others flew past me I was actually really disappointed. I was hoping for about 10minutes faster which would have been a respectable time (the winners I think were closer to 50minutes!)

The thinks I learnt:

Expensive bikes = fast bikes ( I am seriously considering finding the money to upgrade after today!)

I am nowhere near as quick as I thought I was on the bike!

Backing up for a chest session after a ride like that is hard work but it had to be done, weights still come first

I need to spend more time on the bike if I want to even come close to a lot of those guys (but they prob cant squat and dead what I can)

Next week is a 100km charity ride but that will be at a nice sedate pace and despite 2 decent hils it will be relatively flat