Fat Charley and Delightfully Chubby Owen
I’m the fat kid in the picture.
No, the one standing up.
It doesn’t look too bad, right? You may be able to tell that I’ve had an athletic body in the (distant) past. It’s not the worst I’ve looked. I’d say I topped out on the bad end maybe a month ago before I decided to train for a triathlon held on July 3rd, 2010. I was 199 pounds a month ago, on a 5 foot 8 inch frame. This morning I was at 189.5.
I assure you, my man-boobs sag when I sit down. Side view is pretty scary too. I look six months pregnant.
Making Change
I like to perform experiments with various elements of my life, kind of like using myself as a personal laboratory. I have another triathlon, The Summer Sizzler, coming up in a month on August 7th and I’d like to not feel like a self-conscious fat dork when I do this one.
This triathlon is a 400 meter swim, 17km bike ride, and 3km run. Again, nothing overly fantastic, depending on your current reality.
So for the next 31 days I will be doing a simple Triathlon workout and a simple body weight workout I found recently online called, The Bodyweight Exercise Revolution (aff).
Tracking My Progress Daily, Here
My intent is to track my progress on this blog for the next month, so you will be getting more articles than usual. If this annoys you, I beg your patience. We’ll more than likely return to the normal posting pattern after August 7th.
I may combine things so that I am updating every other day but I will disclose everything that I am doing in a workout and what I am eating (I am a vegetarian).
I don’t have a lot of time to fit in the workouts, so I try to use existing blocks that sit idle or are misused throughout my day.
For example, I can ride my bike to and from work which is about a five mile jaunt each way and only takes me about ten minutes longer than it would to fight traffic and drive there.
Then on my lunches, at least twice a week, I can walk over to the gym and go for a short swim of 400 meters or so.
Twice a week I will be doing a 1.75 mile run (approximately 3 km) outside around my block.
That’s the normal workout for a sprint triathlon of the size that I am doing on August 7th: 2 Runs, 2 Bikes, 2 swims. That’s the minimum. None of the workouts lasts more than a half hour. Ideally, you should do the occasionally “bricks” workout, which is combining the swim, bike and run all in one day, simulating a race.
You’re also supposed to strength train, which I have a problem maintaining because I hate gyms and I hate waiting for equipment.
So I was pleased to receive the suggestion of a blogging friend, to check out The Bodyweight Exercise Revolution. It’s a series of four workouts on four consecutive days that progress from zero intensity to high intensity, looped seven times for a total of 28 days. I did the first, zero intensity workout today and it was a 15 minute guided video that walked you through some dynamic range of motion stretching from head to toe.
Tomorrow’s workout would then be 10 minutes of Prasana Yoga. The third day is moderate body weight workout for 20 minutes and the fourth day is high intensity body weight workout for 20 minutes. Rinse and Repeat.
So, between the triathlon workout and The Bodyweight Exercise Revolution
workouts I will be working out for a total of 45 minutes per day, or if we consider the 5 mile bike commute to and from work twice a week, an hour and twenty minutes. This is very achievable for anyone out there, I believe, and I am trying to prove that a 37 year old, detrained couch potato with a full time job, infant triplets and an active blog/business can do this.
The workouts are fun and very managable. I really enjoy my bike rides along the waterfront to and from work and may very well do them more than twice a week, we’ll see.
So I’ll begin reporting tomorrow, what I did on the prior day. I’m planning to do a 1.75 mile run on my lunch break today and as I said above, I’ve already done the fifteen minute dynamic stretching routine. In fact, I did that before I took the picture above.
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