First Comment, New Program, and Hitting the Three Month Mark!!!

I would like to thank NB for being the first person to post on my blog. I felt a little sheepish when I linked over to their site marathonpreparation.blogspot.com and found out they were running a couch to 26.2 program. Hmmm makes me feel a little uninspired about my c25k program. Onward and upward I go anyways.

I convinced a buddy of mine to start running the c25k program as well and he currently is about four weeks behind me. The current plan is for me to keep running the 30 minutes a day until he finishes the program as well. After he is finished, we'll find a different running program that will last a little longer and hopefully add some mileage to our base. It will be nice to have someone I know working on the same program and week as I am. Competition tends to keep me motivated.

We talked about possibly running a half back in Boise in a year from now. The idea of running a half-marathon scares the crap out out of me, but I didn't think I'd be running a 5k any time soon either so what the hell, Ill give it a go. A goal that can't be completed til a year from now may be just what I need to keep motivated and stay on the fitness course. I'll update more on this as plans become finalized.

One final note. Yesterday, April 21st, marked the 3rd month of making up my mind to stop being fat and lazy. Here are some things I've learned along the way.

1. Weighing in daily works well for me. People say this is a bad habit and can be discouraging. I personally need the daily affirmation that I am on the right track or the instant negative feedback that I am doing something that is not good for my body.
2. Running outside beats working out inside any day of the week. I look forward to my running days a lot more than I do to the days I have to spend in the basement on the bow flex. I realize that lifting is important to help keep the weight off, but sitting in my basement pumping out sets is tedious.
3. Having someone go through the process with me has been invaluable. I'm not sure If I'd have stuck with this for three months if my cousin wasn't trying to lose weight at the same time I was. The competition to lose the most weight was and is still a definite success factor.
4. At the 3 month mark, I've lost roughly 23 pounds and 7% body fat. I'm not sure if these are good, average or below average numbers for three months time, but I'll happily take them.
5. My goal for the upcoming three months is to see the 160 lbs mark and see where I stand on the body fat percentages at that weight. I'd like to get to the 12-15% range. I'm not sure why I picked that number but I started at 26.5%, am currently at 19.5%, so 12-15% sounds like a good goal.

Well that's all for now, thanks again nb for the first post on my blog, you have no idea how exciting that was for me, kind of childish isn't it?

I'm running week 8 this week in the c25k program. This entails running for 28 minutes straight 3 days a week. I'm skipping week 7 which was 25 minutes at a time but I don't think the extra 3 minutes will break me. I'm doing this because I think this will better prepare me for the 5k coming up May 3rd.

Whatever you're working at, keep grinding.