30 day challenges

Day 23 : Went for a walk at lunchtime, then did weights in the evening. I'm liking the "Do Weights till calories expended" challenge, as it gives me a focus for a weights workout, and means I have to keep going, rather than stop when I feel like it. Day 24: Commute. Ride to work quite straightforward when I've booked it in. Day 25: Not really feeling very motivated or good at this stage, I just had 180 Calories to get rid of the end of the day, which was easily dispatched with 15 minutes on a bike. Did this "Just because" and didn't enjoy it in the slightest. Day 26 : Outdoor bike ride. These have really been improving recently, and whilst I think the main improvements have been as a result of the commutes, where often I'll race against previous times, or try and do the hills as quickly as possible, the extra sessions done purely to satisfy this challenge have contributed. Day 27 : First day of a holiday where we were camping and going to the...

Day 19 was a bike - commute day. Piece of cake. Day 20 was somewhat of a breeze. Went for a run at lunchtime, easily completed all 3 circles. Day 21 just kind of happened - it was a Saturday, in which I took my son to an abandoned golf course so he could knock some balls around (the kid is currently golf obsessed - which could be a lot worse I guess, but any chance he gets, he's playing), followed by helping a mate decorate his house, followed by cinema, followed by playing football with some kids, so that quite happily racked up all 3 circles. Day 22 was a family visit, which is where completing the circles becomes tough, and it's always been the thing that I've had to work round. What helped was there was a garden with some football going on again, and actually if I'd have got involved with that sooner, I may well have hit the target; Upon returning home, Lu and I cleared the place up, watched the tour, and by then, lethargy won the day I'm sorry to say. :( ...

Usual 1-2 today of a lunchtime walk that accumulated a few hundred kcals on the red-ring, and finishing with some weights in the garage. Keeping a weather eye on the progress, it worked out about 10Kcals a set of 10x bicep curls to shoulder press super-sets [12kg each side], followed by 10xshoulder-flys + out in front arm-raises [5kg each side]. With about 130 Kcal to go at the end of the day, that was a pretty good workout. This would have been a trivial calorific expenditure on the bike, I guess it's that the legs are bigger than the arms, and my body is heavier than my weights. However, since we're doing it every day, I can't do meaningful bike workouts and keep up the pace... so these are good to slot in.

Disaster Strikes : I spent most of Monday afternoon at work feeling pretty ropey. Even though I'd camped far away enough from the festivities at Morgan-stock to warrant going to bed at the same time as Jack (10pm... impressive for him in how late it was, impressive for me in how early it was) which meant I walked away pretty unscathed, I still felt awful on Monday, and must have gone down with the same bug that had prevented Daisy from going. Got home from work at about 6:30, conked out for 3 hours, got up, spent an hour hanging out with Lu, then went back to bed. Tuesday, I was on the mend, but still pretty tired, so didn't make it that day either. I'm optimistic for Wednesday!

Day 13 : Finished with another "felt a lot harder than I expected" weights session. Good to have done though, and gives the legs a rest, and gets the torso going nicely. Had another day's failure, but not by as much as I'd have expected. My battery died at Morganstock (another social event involving fields, beer and kids running free - range ) which made me realise I can't just expect to hit the target, even on a weekend. I've got to make sure I'm making time in the day to do stuff, or at least make a concerted effort as often as I can to drip-feed the points.  That said, last night (day 15) I went out for a quick 10 mile bike, which got me in nicely. Another "wouldn't have done it otherwise" workout, so got to be grateful for that.

Knowing I was going to the cinema with Alex in the evening (to see the mind-blowing MUSE - Drones tour broadcast... his birthday treat haha!) I went for a walk at lunchtime, cycled in to town to see him, cycled back again. I only needed to do an extra lap around the block.  This was an odd one, as ordinarily, faced with Alex and a pint, I'm happy to sit for the evening, but in the back of my mind was "close the ring, close the ring" so I had to cry off early. Oddly, I'm normally mindful that socialising time is eating into training time... in this case it was the other way round. Ho-hum, such is the nature of these challenges! So far, I've noticed that it's easier to complete the circle on a bike than in the gym, so I've found myself going for that more than anything else. In that respect, it's a limiting factor. On the plus side, it's got me training when otherwise I likely wouldn't have.

Always massively satisfying... Riding in to work clears out both the 2 hardest circles of "Active Calories" and "Minutes Exercising" before I hit my desk. Today I didn't really push it on the bike, since I need to be able to do it every day and don't want to make things difficult for me tomorrow / later on. Fitness advice tells me that rest and recovery is as important as training, but I'm pretty sure that Pro athletes (admittedly, I'm not one of these guys!) train every day, so there's surely something to be said for it! The general trend with this challenge seems to be that the bike is the easiest way of achieving the challenge... which is either 'gaming the system' a bit, or just that the challenge has encouraged me to get on my bike more than I otherwise would have. Definitely true of Sunday night, when I was hungover, sweating and had to stay in. Horrible. Days like today though, when the weather's good and I'm riding ...

When I'm working from home, I can be on my bike and out the door in 5 minutes flat! I deliberately tried to keep close to 20mph on this one, as the fact I'm doing workouts every day means I don't want to push myself too hard. It was a lovely pleasant ride, and far nicer than being inside in the garage!

This was always going to be a bit of a challenge... Friday night (Day 6) was another hot Mag session in the garage. It's about 28 degrees inside and out, so even with the massive garage door open, it's still hot. I watched IronMan (the Marvel film, not the sporting event) and sweated buckets to nudge myself over the line. This is my go-to catch-all activity at the end of a day. Where I can see this falling down is if I've had a sedentary day at the office, and social stuff in the evening. So far I've been able to manage this pretty well. Day 7 was Edenbury - our work summer do. It's an absolute riot, the kids love it (they just charge round a field playing with new friends ) and it's a great relaxed event. The football was on too, but it did involve a lot of sitting around. On the plus side, the bar and toilets are a bit of a way from where the entertainments are, so you clock up lots of steps! I found myself having closed the activity ring, but not the exerci...

The plan for Day 5 was to ride to/from work, which is normally a straightforward easy way of getting through the rings. Lucy had been up late the night before socializing with her mum-chums, so I forwent the ride to give her a bit more time in bed in the morning. This put me behind schedule.... It's been super hot in the UK recently, which makes certain types of exercise a complete pleasure, and others less so. A ride outdoors is a complete joy. Last night Lu was out, leaving me only one option to complete about 400 calories to get the ring.  I was on the mag-trainer... In about 30 minutes I'd cleared the target, but I was drenched in sweat. This was another time when the 30 day challenge got me to do a workout when otherwise I almost certainly wouldn't have, so for that I'm grateful. In other circumstances, I'd probably just think "oh well, I've missed a workout / target, never mind, there'll be another one along soon", but since I'm commi...

I was working from home today, which would normally afford me a cheeky lunchtime bikeride. Today I thought I could get some gardening done, we went to the park in the evening, and I cleared the kitchen and mopped the floors. All of this I thought would make a meaningful contribution to the days' target. Sadly not, and once again, found myself at that time of 10ish pm with over 130 calories to get rid of, using weights. Still, this is what this challenge is about - pushing that little bit extra when ordinarily I'd be heading to bed with the reasoning "sleep and recovery are really important, so I should really be getting my head down". So, heading off to the garage, I got some INJA drum and bass on, and just repeated chins, pressups, bicep curls, tricep extensions. It seemed to take forever. Again, I'm not 100% sure how the activity rings are calculated, but I don't want to game the system (yet!), so I kept at it. It's still hard, and often I over-estim...

Having read up about a bunch of different 30 day challenges, I thought I'd take one on. The first one is relatively simple, and one that I'm pretty confident I can hit. These blogs are going to document how they go, what benefits and difficulties I got from them, and at the end, a summary of whether I'd do them again, incorporate them into my lifestyle, or whether I even completed them! I'm going to be a bit forgiving on myself, in that if I miss a day's challenge, I'll carry on with it and give the challenge a score out of 30. The challenges will be a combination of physical and mental, kind of like a protracted Crystal Maze... I've got a full time job, family commitments and whilst I wouldn't describe my social life as ravin' mental, there's always lots of fun stuff in the diary. The challenges will have to fit round those... So; to July's 30 day challenge :  Complete the Activity Rings on my Apple Watch. Now this should be doa...