Wednesday, January 20, 2010

'Twas the season...

I am so a creature of habit, it's not even funny...After the NYC marathon, I resumed a regular workout routine but I didn't do any runs longer than 10km. It certainly felt refreshing to sleep in on weekends for a change! Then came the holidays...I tried not to eat too much but 10 straight days of parties, rich foods, alcohol...it is not my regular routine so I shouldn't be surprised that I put on a few pounds.

Now that I am back to work, the routine workouts at the gym have resumed. For example today I did an embedded circuit training workout and tried to pick up at the level I left off, but lo and behold...fitness levels reduce amazingly fast. I decided not to push it too much so I did a 1.5 mile warmup run followed by my exercise sets with no rest and then a cool down. I was supposed to do a 2 mile warmup and a 2 mile cooldown, but after the circuit, my legs were really tired so I ended it there.

This winter, I won't be doing my long runs outside as much but I will be snowshoe running - if you haven't tried this, I can assure you that I have never sucked wind so much as I do when I'm running with snowshoes. This is a really intense exercise so I definitely will not be out for 3+ hours on Sunday mornings to get a great workout in.

That said, these are more cardio than endurance workouts so I will have to do a few long runs every now and then and I will resume to more rugular long runs once I've decided what my next marathon will be.

A few years ago, I gave myself a head start on weight loss by doing the first two weeks of the South Beach diet. It really worked but the first week is really restrictive and difficult to prepare meals when there are three other people living in the house - not on the diet. Now that I have a belt notch to tighten, I will be applying some of the principles from the South Beach Diet such as good fats, bad fats, good carbs, bad carbs, and the use of the glycemic index of foods. I came across this eating habits adjustment strategy video and website that pretty much sums it up so I'm sharing it here. I'll report back in exactly 2 weeks with my results.