How i've been fitting it in.... Bernie Style

Well, to be honest, I haven't.
My excuses?

1. No time.
2. No sleep.

Imagine a ZOMBIE on a SCHEDULE. That's me.

www.zombieinfo.com

If you can be bothered reading my crappy selection of why, feel free, it's diarised below.

I am running on empty, due to lack of sleep and each day's plan of beginning the day with a 45 minute exercise bike ride has come to pass just once this fortnight. The other days? I've slept through my alarm and woken up with 40 minutes to get myself ready and out the door to work. I've missed yoga for a few weeks, because when I went when I was tired, I fell asleep. It was embarrassing and I don't plan to do it again. I missed it for two weeks prior to that because I had a terrible viral infection and was bedridden for half a week, lethargic the week before that.

My week:

Sunday:
I worked out on the exercise bike, which was a pretty good start to the day. I ate well and made good choices, unfortunately I couldn't sleep at all that night. My husband was away, and our unsavoury neighbours were screaming and carrying on. Not a good start to the week.

Monday:
I woke up exhausted, slept through my alarm and didn't go to yoga that night because I was so, so, so tired. I would have fallen asleep (i've done it before). Unfortunately, that night I didn't sleep either. I woke up all night.

Tuesday:
I woke up exhausted, slept through my alarm and didn't have time to exercise before work like I'd planned. I knew I was going out that night, so I'd set my alarm for 5:15, but woke at 6:20 (I start work at 7:30, 40 minutes away from home). I went straight from work to see my mum. Her father died. We went to Sizzler for dinner and I had a steak for dinner, with sweet potato fries and brocolini. I didn't make any stupid choices because I couldn't. I got home at about 11pm.

Wednesday:
Woke up tired, slept through alarm, got to work on time but... tired. I had book club that night. I ended up leaving work late, had to stop by the shops on the way home and by the time I got home, I had very little time to spare. My husband rang me from overseas, and we had a good chat. Getting to book club meant NO time to exercise. I had to water our garden.

Thursday:
Woke up after NO sleep. Ran on empty all day. Had long standing plans to hang with my sister after work, but before seeing her I had an appointment in the city. Sigh. No time for exercise, but beautifully I FINALLY got a full nights sleep. Yes, I fell asleep on her couch from pure exhaustion and stayed the night there.

Friday:
I felt perfect and fresh, but - you guessed it, I had NO time for exercise that morning, as I had to drive home from her place (it took 1 hour to drive home), and I had to attend a morning conference after doing some academic reading.  Friday afternoon I did household chores, did some gardening, did some grocery shopping and then went to dance class (I burn nearly 1000 calories on a Friday night at dance, so it's 'incidental' exercise and also fun). I picked up my husband that night.

Saturday and Sunday, I literally filled with household chores. I know I could have fit some exercise in there somewhere, but chose to spend my time between laundry loads and shopping trips, catching up on reading. Sunday I did more laundry, went shopping and then had a bunch of social events to attend. It was a bad weekend exercise wise!

Don't worry peeps, I know lethargy can only be combatted by good sleep which goes hand in hand with exercise. I also know that life happens, and keeping a house hold running as well as finding time for you can be tough (particuarly when life throws you incidentals). I'm going to try harder, because I have to, for me.

Getting past the busyness of life

Do what it takes to get to where you want to be.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Be a woman of your word.

These are all part of my personal philosophy, for lack of a better word. I started out this year with a workout in Mawson's park on New Years Day with Bernie, Lesley and Toni. Lesley and I had been sitting with our Perth Crew girls after the New Years Eve run and it must have been about 11pm by this stage, and we didn't have plans for new years day. We weren't drinking and we decided to get together for a workout. So we did...and this is how my year is working out for me! 6kg lost so far this year (since Dec 28 weigh in) and a dress size as well - now able to buy clothes in a size 14 and so excited for this round!

I often get comments from people about how much I do and that they just don't have time to exercise, so I thought I would demonstrate how I am fitting in my exercise around my crazy life. I'm not doing as much as I did in January when I was on holidays, but I am still training 6 days a week.

I work full time as a music teacher and Head of House at my school, I run my own business self-publishing music workbooks and I am studying (doing my masters externally online). So, I know about busy lifestyles but I also know that if I don't exercise I just won't lose the weight, I will become depressed, I will eat more and I will be so tired all the time and the cycle just begins again. Well, I'm not going back there!

Sarah's SUPER Saturday :)
So, yesterday was a pretty crazy day for me. My day started with catching up with Erin and Carolyn from the Perth Crew (and it was Erin's first time at a Perth Crew event so I was stoked to see her!) for ocean swimming training at Hillarys Nodes. Then I came home and made my awesome ricotta pancakes for breakfast (at 150 calories for 2 pancakes why say no??); organised the five orders I was sending out to schools and then did the post office and bank run (like I can get to a bank during the week!!!). Then it was lunchtime :)

The afternoon consisted of meeting Nat for a workout. I picked her up (only about 4mins late...I was very impressed with myself) and we headed off to Arena for PUMP! Being the crazy chicks that we are, pump was not going to be enough so we had planned to do an hour of cardio in the gym afterwards. So...10 minutes on the bike, 15 on the crosstrainer (both on foothills) then 5 mins on the rower and 15 mins on the treadmill (where I ran for 15 mins straight!).

So, now it is 4pm and I was meeting another Perth Crew awesome chick Nicole at 5:30pm in the city so I dropped Nat home, showered changed and glammed up for the school ball I was going to after coffee...Made it into the city basically on time and had a great time catching up with Nicole (so love meeting people for coffee and getting to share stories!) and then over to the ball I went!

6:30pm until midnight I was 'on duty' at the school ball and I had a great time. I made good choices from the buffet (filled most of my plate with green salad, a bit of cous cous and then salmon) and only had fruit for dessert. No softdrink, no cakes, no creamy pasta or potato salad - all the things that in the past I would have had (especially seeing I had worked so hard at the gym).

So that was Saturday...today I made the mistake of not exercising when I woke up - in hindsight I should have just gone for a walk to clear my head! But, I met up with the Perth Crew for the WAMC twilight run and got a new PB for 5km with a head wind...so I'm pretty impressed with that.

So, what does my week look like this week?

Monday - early rehearsal at school 7:30am and a meeting after school until around 5pm
WORKOUT PLAN: Early walk or run (depending how I pull up) and then my lean and fit weights session after work.

Tuesday - SWIMMING CARNIVAL DAY! Workout plan - cycling to and from school, possibly with a 3km run before hand (did this last week and loved it!)

Wednesday - early rehearsal at school 7:30am. Workout plan - Lean and fit weights at 6am. Massage booked with the AWESOME Tara Mitchell from Dynamic Massage and Fitness and then the weekly dinner with mum and gran.

Thursday - Excursion to a concert in the evening. Workout plan - 5.6km run at 6am followed by cycling to and from school (10km each way).

Friday - MY BIRTHDAY!!!!! Nat and I are having a special PT session with my trainer at 6am. I get to leave school at lunchtime to fly to Sydney for the long weekend.

Amongst that schedule (which includes working from approx. 8am-5pm each day) I will be doing about an hour of readings/forum discussions/course work for my ICT units. So, I think you can see that I know busy...but I choose to work in my exercise and make sure I'm eating well. Most of my friends just expect it of me now and rather than just ask what I've been up to, I get asked what training I've been doing...I think that says a lot about where I am at now.

Upcoming events in the life of Sarah...stay tuned for more craziness!

March 2-5: Visit to Sydney for long weekend. Workout plans - hotel gym, running at bondi, opera house steps...
March 10: Birthday dinner with my friends (with a killer SSS before that you can count on!)
March 11: Rottnest cycling and snorkling
March 18: Freeway Bike Hike - 70km from Mandurah to Perth
March 25: Triathlon (250m/10km/2km)
April 1: Bridges Fun Run - 10km

So...now that I've exhausted you with my crazy life...get moving people!

Sarah

Sarah's STRENGTH goals

So this year is all about strength for me and like many Perth crew girls, I have a leather pandora bracelet with the first letter S.

To earn the other letters I have come up with some goals, and the first one will be achieved this Sunday when I compete in a TRIATHLON! I am doing the Women's Triathlon at Hillarys where I will swim 300m, cycle 7km and run 3km.

The letters won't be achieved in order (because I needed to find letters for specific goals...because I'm a bit special like that) so the word may look interesting at times! All my goals will test my strength of will to complete or to get to but I am up for the challenge!

My other goals are:

S
T - Triathlon (February)
R - Run 10km (Bridges 1 April)
E - Endurance ride (70km) Freeway Bike Hike (March)
N - Never Give Up - Round 1 Finale in Melbourne (it was hard to find an N word...and that is a catch phrase for me!)
G - Goal weight (60kg)
T - Tunnel Run - HBF Run for a Reason 14km (May)
H - Half Marathon x2 (Perth and Melbourne!)

Goal 1: Triathlon = COMPLETE!!!!

Watch my video blog!




 Official times...

My run pace was 4:29!!!! No wonder I was hurting! My time trial was 5:51 for 1 km and I did 3 in 13:28!!! So stoked with that!


Photos of the Tri (will be updated as I get more, so y'all come back now ya hear?!)

Before the race - Perth Crew girls

Crazy transition

Off for the cycle

Cycle - done!

Crossing the finishing line (Toni is 2 behind me!)

FINISHED!!!

Day 1

Wow, what a day!

Check out the video below, and there are some photos to start off the round (in my M or size 14 clothes!)

Friday 10/2                                                                                           Monday 13/2

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsj0CVhCxQg

Fitness Test revelations

Well today we had the NOR Fitness Test at Carine Open Space. Lesley, as always, was super organised and with the help of the awesome Toni we got things going!

It was so great to see people doing their fitness test together and owning their results. I was timing the wall sit and push ups and there were some great results! Our champion wall sit for the day was Tarryn with 7:13! My legs were in so much pain doing the wall sit and my goal was to get over 2 minutes. In round 3 I did 1:37 and I mainly wanted to beat that. Well, I made it to 2:32 with the girls telling me I looked really comfortable and I said to them "You get to the point in your training where you refuse to give up" and that really was me today.



I've never done push ups on my toes in my fitness test before so today I gave it a go. I basically did the same amount of push ups in the minute but with the first 10 on my toes. My goal for week 4 is to do them all on my toes!

The time trial was the biggest revelation for me. Now, I know I have been doing a lot of running but generally I am fairly slow. My 1km time trial is obviously always faster than my average pace when doing a 5km run but I haven't done much 'fast' running lately so wasn't expecting a PB. Well, in round 3 I got my time down to 6:19 from 7:02 (round 2 was over 8 minutes) and today when I crossed the line Toni said 5:51. My response was 'what?' several times as she kept telling me the time. I just couldn't believe I had cracked the 6 minute mark!

My flexibility has improved as well (remarkably so!) with my sit and reach going from -10 to +16! I guess doing some yoga, making sure I stretch well and going to get pummeled by Tara has helped!

Overall the afternoon was an amazing success! It was great to see so many there, newbies and return members.

So...Round 1 is upon us in about 36 hours and I am ready to go! I'm really excited about doing Lean and Fit (don't really qualify according to fitness test results but I know I can do more than the intermediate program) with some of the running sessions from the 10km running program.

I'll be in Melbourne for week 9 of the program or thereabouts, on a school trip and I am going to make sure I am in great shape for that trip!

Until the next time you read my random ramblings...


Sarah

Gear up! Bernie Style.

This year I am going to try a few different methods!

1. Outdoors - I am going to learn to run.


2. Indoors - a) Exercise bike each morning before work (30 minutes?)
                   b) Zumba! Well, I think I should make use of my lovely new open lounge room right?

3. Classes - yoga for stretching. Once or twice a week.


4. Dance class! - several hours of class and social dance can burn hundreds of calories! I shall endeavour to participate in as many progressive dances as possible. Fun and fitness!



And as for toning... hrm... what things should I buy for this? Some weights perhaps? Some insight would be great.

2012 goals. Bernie Style!

My goals this year are the same as always - wanting to regain health and fitness and to lose excess weight. It is always disappointing to look back at a year and not have achieved the goals set previously. I am determined this year to not look back with regret.


Here's what I want from this year:

Overall goal of 35 kilos lost.

My goals for the next 12 months

1 Month Goals

At the end of one month, I want to be able to run 1 kilometre without stopping.
I want to regain my fitness

How I Will Get There

Follow the learn to run program
Maintain 30-60 minutes of cardio exercise per day (aim to burn 500cals).

3 Month Goals

At the end of three months I want to be able to run 3 kilometres without stopping.

How I Will Get There

Follow the learn to run program.
Book and run the HBF Run for a reason.
60 minutes cardio per day (aim 500-1000cals per day)

6 Month Goals

I want to be able to run 5k without stopping.
I want to lose 35 kilos by now.

How I Will Get There

Continue the learn to run program.
60 minutes cardio per day (aim 500-1000cals per day).

12 Month Goals

I want to have a body that is fit and healthy, ready to start a family.

How I Will Get There

peristance and continued maintainance of nutritional eating plan and cardio.