Pneumonia = Pno training...

It feels like I've never trained in my life.... For the past few weeks things have been a blur and I'm back to feeling like I'm at square 1 again.

It started with a couple of conferences - The first one went ok, with me being able to squeeze in some light evening runs. Then the second I had great intentions to hit the on-site gym.. Got up at 6am all fired up only to find it was locked and I had no way of accessing. Crud. Back to bed and watch crap TV until a heavy bacon and eggs breakfast an hour later. That was productive....

Then the day after I return to work feeling some skin sensitivity, which is a little alarm bell for me that things aren't right. Still - I managed to fit in the lunchtime training (focused on pull-ups. Ouch), and on Friday felt manageable as well. Saturday was worse however and by Sunday all thought of training couldn't have been further from my mind.

What followed was a week of misery, or more accurately viral pneumonia. Not a pleasant way to spend a week and I'm still now, a week later, in the process of recovering. While I'm back up and moving I know I still can't get enough air in my lungs to work out properly, and am having to accept that training will have to wait. 

Here's hoping that this will serve as a suitable physical/emotional/mental break so I can come back and hit it hard when it's all ok again.... At least the weather's crap so that doesn't make me feel so bad about it right now :)

Tough Mudder Melbourne 2013 - new dates!

Registrations for Melbourne/Phillip Island 2013 opened this week, and the most notable thing was the dates have moved from Feburary to the 19th and 20th and January.

The date change hasn't caused any real problem for our team - We've all signed up for the Sunday straight away - But it's certainly going to cause some training issues. Weather won't be much different (with a scary prospect of a 40-degree celsius race day - Yes, that's quite possible here at that time of year!), but the real problem is going to be trying to do that last critical month of training during the Christmas/NY silly season. 

In some ways it might give us more time with the holidays 'n all - But it also means we won't be together as much. Pros and cons.... But certainly something we'll need to take into account.

It also means one less month of training!!! 

Nutrition for tightwads

It's funny how we've slowly started unconsciously training...

It all started with someone feeling like keeping up a weekly jog and heading off, then lamenting how much harder it is alone... So we all joined in.

Then we felt that it'd be good to keep the strength stuff up. So another lunchtime was chosen to be our second workout day with a mix of intervals, sprints, tabata, and such.

Then we invited other staff to join in.... And before you know it we're back into a training regime! 

And then last week we actually commenced the preparations for Tough Mudder Melbourne 2013, starting with the recruitment of new victims colleagues, and encouraging them to make sure they're doing 3 sessions a week of something or other for the next few months (and then we'll ramp up the severity about 3-4 months out)

Personally it's all been coming together pretty well too. On top of that above routine of weekly jogs and weekly strength stuff I've also got 3-4 days of riding to work, one session of boxing after work, and then 3 mornings of brief crossfit stuff (which has been the hardest element to keep up, given my limited equipment and hatred of mornings). But most of the time I've been at it pretty reasonably...

But something funny often happens to me once I finally 'get into' a routine. After a couple of weeks I get sick. Nothing severe, just something that makes me feel blech and awful. And sure enough - yesterday it hit me. Straight after boxing and the ride home there was this dramatic decline until I was in bed huddled up and planning my day of sick leave for Thursday.

Fortunately this has happened enough times to know what's going on - It's when I'm not paying attention to my nutrition.

 I've got a few things working against me when it comes to appropriate and sufficient nutrition during training:

1. I'm a tightwad - So I'm loathe to spend money on exorbitant lunches or protein powders. All those recipes for power smoothies sound great, but that macrobiotic yoghurt, fresh blueberries, flaxseed oil and why protein isolate powder adds up! And I'm loathe to spend that much....
2. I'm largely vegetarian - While not strictly vegetarian, for a combination of tightwad and ethical reasons I generally try and avoid meat. So the regime of endless grilled chicken breasts as a nutritional plan ain't really going to work for me. 
3. I'm lazy - So anything that's too onerous or complicated or time-consuming isn't practical either.

One thing I've been particularly bad in ignoring is the need to consume enough calories and protein within that hour-space after exercise, and that's something I'm keen to remiss. It does make me wonder how much better my improvements could have been if I'd paid more attention of the last year or so.

So, some new goals for me:

1. Eat more, overall.
2. Ensure I eat an hour after every exercise session. That might be as complex as a smoothie after my morning routines, or just a peanut-butter sandwich and a glass of milk after lunchtime sessions.
3. Do it without too much $$$ or resorting to fancy powders and bars.

One thing I have in my favour is that as a skinny runt, I'm not worried about just picking protein above carbs and fats. So things like whole milk and whole eggs are still on the table as far as I'm concerned.  But it will be something to watch...

And to help me track my progress, ideas, and recipes even as I stumble across them, I'll tag this appropriately :)