Wii Fat

Now I'm not working away anymore I'm attempting to use my Wii Fit a bit more, if only to stop it stropping the next time I leave it for 200 days! Even if I don;t get round to doing much apart from some yoga and strength work it'll be a helpful way to monitor whether all the exercise I'm planning on doing actually helps me lose weight, or whether I'll just eat more becuase I'm exercising more.

So tonight I did the fitness test, I weigh 155lbs (just over 11 stone), have an ideal BMI (just) and my Wii Fit age is 20! Considering I'm 33 I feel pretty good about that. According to the Wii my perfect BMI for absolute health is 22, which means I have to lose about 15lbs. I'm not sure if I want to lose that much weight, and if I do then I want to do it slowly rather than going on any silly crash diets, so I've set a target on the Wii to lose 2lbs in the next 2 weeks. If it happens I'll be stoked but if not, I'm not really bothered, as long as my jeans still fit then I'm happy!

Couch to 5km

As part of my getting fit for the mountains health kick I've decided to try actual running, you know the type of thing...outside, on the path as opposed to indoors on the treadmill. Jools has been trying to convince me that it's a good idea for a while now but I've tried to avoid it. I've finally given in though and so today (after a mini-false start before Christmas) I started the Podcasts for Running series of podcasts from iTunes. These were created by Robert Ullrey and are based on the Cool Running website's Couch to 5km training programme.

The idea is that by following the training programme and using the podcasts anyone can get off their ample butt and with regular, progressive training run 5km. So I'm going to give it a try! Since I'm in France for a week in a couple of weeks time it's unlikely that I'll do it in the recommended 9 weeks (plus I'm lazy and running makes me tired), but I'm going to do my best to keep at it and see how I do. Even if I stay at one of the earlier levels but exercise regularly it's got to be a good thing.....right?

So here are today's screen shots from my gadgetous tools....my Nike+ sensor is slightly out on the mileage, I think this is because I calibrated it on a treadmill and that confuses it a bit. Not to worry though because I also tracked my route using Nokia Sports Tracker which showed my distance as 4.48km. I know that's almost 5km but I think the overall aim is to run for the full 5km and not just do what I did today which is a mix of walking & running!

7 Random Facts About Me

I was hit in a virtual game of tag over Christmas, as it's the first time I've been tagged in one of these I thought it was only fair to join in, especially as it'll get me started on another of my New Year's resolutions, to blog more!

It was Sukhjit who tagged me and you can read about her here. When she contacted me on Twitter to tell me I'd been tagged she expressed an interest in plastic snow so I've included some details related to that.

1. I've always been sporty. When I was 5 I started ballet and acrobatic classes, because I sucked at ballet (I failed my first ballet exam) I took up gymnastics at the age of 6 and continued until I was 18. When I was 12 I started figure skating, I did this alongside my gymnastics and competed in both. I stopped both sports when I went to uni in 1993.
2. I used to be a cheerleader. I blame my mate Adi for this, he was on the American Football team at uni and convinced me that they needed cheerleaders, so I spent Sunday mornings on the sideline of a muddy field in Bristol (in mod Winter) in a short skirt waving pom-poms while trying to stay warm.
3. I have very little contact with my family. Since leaving for uni I haven't really seen eye to eye with my mother so I don't really see her, my dad or my brother much. I haven't been home to stay at Christmas since J (my other half) and I got kicked out of the house on boxing day 1997 because I was spending too much time studying for my final exams and not enough watching Jerry Springer with my mother.
4. I studied Biomedical Sciences and have a pass degree because I didn't complete my final year project. I also spent 2 years working in a Haematology lab as part of my uni studies. I decided it wasn't a job I wanted to do long term so moved away from NHS work.......until now
5. 10 years after leaving uni I'm back working for the NHS again, all be it as a freelance business analyst rather than in a lab. It's my first freelance job and it feels very much like it was meant to be!
6. I started snowboarding at the age of 27, I'm now 33 and have competed in 3 British Championships and a number of other competitions. Some of my friends think I take it all too seriously as I tend to view it as a sport rather than a lifestyle or just a holiday, but I think that if you're going to enter competitions you need to do some amount of training, both on the slopes and off otherwise you'll never perform as well as you can. I'm currently 59th in the Ticket to Ride World Snowboard Tour Rankings
   
7. I love riding plastic snow! Sad as it may seem I really enjoy riding dry slope in the UK as well as mountains when I'm away. I find that snowboarding is the best way to get fit for snowboarding so I make use of the facilities in the UK which allow me to ride all year round. There are 3 main types of plastic snow in the UK, dendix, snowflex and permasnow. Dendix is the original diamond's with holes in, and even though I almost broke my thumb riding it, I miss the fact that there aren't as many comps on it as there used to be. If nothing else you'd really try to stand up on your landings 'cos it stung so much when you fell. Snowflex is my favourite plastics snow. Developed by Briton Engineering it has foam padding under the surface and no holes for limbs to get stuck in, having ridden in 4 comps on this surface over the summer it's improved my riding and my confidence no end and in my opinion is much better for progression than riding indoor snow due to it's consistency and nicely shpaed jumps. Permasnow is hole-less like snowflex but is abrasive and eats snowboards......AVOID! or at the very least ride a very, very old board.

So there you have it 7 things about me...and now I get to tag 7 people myself:

artbizness
rustedsteel
Joanna Geary
Gbay - her 7 things
Swinhoe - his 7 things
markhawker
warriorgrrl
Whatleydude

Just noticed that's 8! But someone's bound to not bother

Rules as copied from Sukhjit's blog:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Getting a head start on New Year's Resolutions

Today is Monday 29th December, so not quite 2009 yet but I thought it would be good to start my New Year’s fitness regime now rather than wait a few days, especially as I’m due to hit the slopes in a couple of weeks.

So at 6am I was down at the gym, raring to go and managed to get a good workout done without giving up. Today’s work out consisted of a 10 minute warmup on the cross trainer followed by 30 minutes on the treadmill using a Nike Plus training session, Treadmill Training: Mixed Terrain 1.

Regular readers will know that I allow my inner geek to invade my workouts as well as my normal life, so I currently run with a Nike Plus sensor on my iPod which tracks distance, time etc and a Nike Traix C6 heart rate monitor, so that I can tell when my heart’s about to explode and I should ease off a bit. What I’m going to try and do is use this blog as a training diary to keep track of what I’ve been doing, when I’ve been doing it and also to pull together all the different sites I use to track how well I’m doing.

Hopefully I'll manage to keep it up as I could do with dropping a few pounds and making sure I'm fit enough not to get over tired on the slopes this year