Time for a comeback…

Well, it’s now been 44 days since my last run, the Wickedly Fast Half Marathon that I dropped out of with a stress fracture.  I still don’t get to run just yet, but more details on that in a bit.  For now, I want to sum up what’s been going on since my last post.  I obviously haven’t posted much since my injury, and that is simply because there has been little to say.  I’ve been very disappointed in myself.  I used my injury as an excuse to slack off.  Why not?  I couldn’t do any cardio, I could only do upper body weight training, I wasn’t moving.  I’ve learned something over my year and a half + of working out and eating healthy; if you get used to sitting still it is hard to get moving, if you get used to moving it is even harder to sit still.  With my stress fracture I couldn’t do any cardio, so I was running low on motivation and on energy.  The less I moved the worse I felt; the worse I felt, the worse I ate.  So, to sum up: little exercise & bad eating.  You don’t need a doctorate to know that this equation means I’ve gained weight.  I’m not even close to being back where I started, but I have gained a bunch of weight back.  I was now sitting at 195 lbs, I was down to 175.  So, I’ve got some work to do.

On 5/19 I was given permission from my doctor to start biking on the stationary bike at low resistance, so I hit that hard!  It needed to get my energy level back up.  In 7 days I did 155.68 miles on the stationary bike!  I started to get my energy back, but more importantly I started to get my motivation back.  On 5/26 I was given permission to start biking outside.  I still don’t have permission to run, but I have a schedule laid out by my doctor as follows:

                5/26-6/1 = Elliptical

                6/2-6/14 = Running up to 3 miles on treadmill in shoes

                6/15 = I see the doctor again and hope he lets me start running outside

Game on!  It was time to get serious again.  It was time to get back to the kick-ass, get in shape no matter how hard it is mentality I had at this time last year!!  Is it scary how excited I get about that idea?  On 5/23 I brought back the Excel spreadsheet I created last year to track my fitness routine and stats.  I am a business analyst, so numbers, trends, tracking, etc are very interesting and helpful to me. This tracker helped me last year and it will help me get back again this year.  I’ve done the elliptical twice now and I’ve had some nice, long bike rides.  On 5/16 I started a 100 Day Challenge; a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise per day for 100 straight days.  I’ve done well so far, no excuses will be accepted!!

Yesterday (5/29) I started P90X.  Day 1 was Chest & Back along with Ab Ripper X.  Wow, it kicked my butt!!  I can’t wait to see what Kind of results I get from the full 90 day program!  Later today I’ll be doing day 2, Plyometrics.  I’ll post how it goes.  I need to get back to posting here regularly and I will do so to allow you to follow my journey with P90X, cycling and getting back to running.

I also started using MyFitnessPal.com to track my nutrition.  I am aiming for about 2500 calories per day and a 65/20/15 carb/protein/fat mix.  I’ve been doing great so far.  I used yesterday as a real kick-start to get back to the long workout days I used to do on weekends.  I rode 15 miles to the gym, did 30 minutes on the elliptical, 15 minutes stretching in the sauna, rode 15 miles back home and did Day 1 of P90X.  It was a long, challenging day, but it was exhilarating!!  I’m back to my old life!

I'm also going to do something a little humiliating.  I going to post my weekly weight and body fat percentage.  Each Friday I will be taking my stats and will post them here.  On 5/27 I was at 191.6 lbs, 0.96 waist-to-hip ratio, and 28.91% body fat. Not good.

I’m looking at all of this as a fresh start, a new beginning. It’s time to reawaken that fire I had for fitness and nutrition. I hope you will join me as I restart this journey anew. Let’ have some fun!!