September 15, 2009 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Event, Swimming
So the big day arrived, not quite the day that every girl dreams of, but as days go it was big enough to require the same sort of dietary preparations. 6 weeks of off and on Stella abstinence brought me to a point where I was prepared to at least attempt a public shoe-horning of my wobbly bits into the rubber encasement.
Sunday was a hot day and the combined sweat of 2402 lady swimmers had condensed on the marquee roof and was starting to drip onto the dressers below. Other peoples sweat, wet skin and rubber only combine to create more stress and more sweat. I successfully directed my right foot into the wetsuit but then started hopping around and cursing my full English breakfast as I tried to squeeze my left leg through my left arm hole.
There was no time for this sort of faffing, we were late and were already supposed to be sitting in the lake “warming” up. Despite expecting the seams to burst at any moment leaving me pink and vulnerable like a lizard shedding its skin, I did actually manage to yank up the zipper. After patching all my grasping finger nail holes with a puncture repair kit I waddled out in full glory looking like a fat, black, naked lady with a severe nicotine withdrawal problem.
Not exactly my best look but here we go – that’s me next to the tall skinny guy, who I will not be swimming with next year. I’m going to find myself some fat friends.
As per last year I secreted myself towards the back of the pack in a vain attempt to avoid mid-lake battles. This year though I wasn’t swimming in the last wave and had to cope with the chasing hoards of sub 30 minute swimmers.
I had a few new strategies for this year’s attempt at the Great North Swim. Firstly I was going to remember my nose clip and then stick my head in the water, I wasn’t going to bother much with my legs as they’d proved useless in unscientific pool timing tests, I was going to wear shoes (?) and finally I wasn’t going to get asthma.
The nose clip really helped as you’d expect and I’m still sure that legs are overrated in swimming; I tried to observe every swimmer that passed me and a good deal of the sub 30 minute swimmers did not appear to be kicking with their legs. Of course they may have been kicking like crazy up til that point but its good enough evidence for me.
Probably the most significant decision in my overall performance was to give the asthma a wide berth. No idea how I did that, I took on heavy quantities of caffeine in the run up to the event, stuck my head in cold water a few times but there also seemed to be less motor fuel hanging around on the surface of lake this year and that may have had something to do with it.
So all in all, I had another pootle round a stunning lake, positively enjoyed myself for a few hundred metres and came home with a new pb, knocking 10 minutes off last years time and dragging myself out of the bottom 1% and well into the top 96% of all competitors. Result!
The only disappointment was that I managed to look decidedly camp in my sprint finish photo, not that I need to share that with anybody.
Actual stats:
Time – 1:01:57
Overall – 4392/4579
Age/gender – 366/385
As Dan can’t be arsed to keep a record of his times, I will jot them down here for prosperity:
Time – 0:44:14
Overall – 3148/4579
Oh and I got a new t-shirt.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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Tags: "Great North Swim", Diet, Stella, Swimming
August 17, 2007 at 6:43 pm · Filed under Rambling
Oh dear, I’ve been had, EatDrinkWoman tagged me the other day and although I did my best to ignore it, I now notice that Kathy got in on the act and tagged me too. Clearly no escape, I have to answer a list of questions, boring you all senseless in the process and then make folk like JogBlog and NoWetsuit Girl repeat the chore – I’m sure they’ll love it.
Jobs I’ve Held: Newspaper gal, fruit picker, sandwich maker, factory worker, care assistant, packer, merchandiser, van driver, supply chain assistant, SBO analyst, SBO manager, data analyst, web master, personal tutor, management accountant. A little eclectic selection of jobs many of which all of which have been carried out between studies. So in addition I’ve been a medical student, a chemistry undegrad and a postgrad astrochemist.
Movies I Can Watch Over & Over: None, I can’t imagine anything more torturous than watching a film I’ve already seen. I might come back to this though, there is perhaps something I’d be prepared to watch again. I’ve been to see the musical Blood Brothers 3 times if that counts?
My Guilty Pleasures: Gadgets and Stella, and for a very guilty pleasure I might combine gadgets, stella and a box set of the L Word – joy for a week!
Places I have lived (in order): Aldershot, Cyprus – Larnaca & Limassol, Bridlington, Sheffield, Nottingham, London
Shows I enjoy: L Word, Desperate Housewives, The Apprentice
Places I Have Been on Holiday: Good grief, I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in this stuff! Cyprus, N. Spain, S. Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Italy, Germany, Switzerland (I know, I should have just put W. Europe and be done with it), San Francisco, Madeira, Borneo
Favorite Foods: Chilli, Spag Bol, Curry, chilli prawns, listen I’m salivating now and this list could go on for ages, how about we say I like every type of food except Celery!
Websites I Visit Daily: The pages that open automatically on my browser are: admin pages for my blog, iGoogle,Bloglines which then leads me to read as many of your updated blogs as I can manage, Flickr, Facebook, Runnersworld and PhysicsDiet. I couldn’t live without Bloglines and facebook though.
Body Parts I Have Injured: Skin and right side from hip to toe. Nothing to really moan about though.
Awards I’ve Won: got a few judo medals in my prime and the odd consolation academic award
Nicknames You’ve Been Called: Deathwish, warriorwoman and Wolfie – take your pick!
Popularity: 23% [?]
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Tags: Diet, OGB, runnersworld, Stella
January 30, 2007 at 12:43 am · Filed under Diet, Equipment, Software
I’m building up for another assault on my weight.
Over the last 15 months I lost 20lbs! Unfortunately no whooping and a hollering is deserved as the net position sees this 20lbs declining to a mere 7lbs loss. I went through 3 clear weightloss phases and as the chart shows, I don’t have too much of a problem in losing weight but a big problem when it comes to maintaining a constant weight.
(Note that all the graphs can be enlarged by clicking on them)
Fortunately, I have discovered some new tricks for my arsenal. The first is The Hackers Diet, which is a free ebook/webpage designed by John Walker of Autodesk/AutoCAD fame. He reverts back to his engineering roots to develop a nerdy yet satisfying approach to weightloss and weight maintenance. Particulalry appealing is his approach to trend monitoring, to avoid the boom and bust nature that most dieters will be familiar with.
This annotated chart makes me giggle and reminds me why the daily scale ritual tends to leave me so apprehensive. With the hackers diet you continue to monitor your weight daily but you enter the figures into an excel spreadsheet that plots the trend based on an exponential moving average to smooth the noise. Moving averages are explained very well in his section on Signal and Noise. If you haven’t already noticed, I ought to point out that this diet is only going to appeal the real data fiends out there, its not called the hackers diet for nothing. After application of the smoothing, the above chart now looks like this:
The point of this is that the red smoothed line, illustrates the very satisfactory weightloss situation, suggesting that the diet and required monitoring could proceed without need for prozac. I’m convinced that I keep stopping perfectly successful diets because of the misery I feel when the scales tell me the wrong number, regardless of how transient that may prove to be.
Each individual data point (daily weight) will either appear above or below the trend line, below is obviously great as it means that it is having the effect of pulling the trend even lower. The odd appearance above the trend isn’t too worrying either as individually their impact on the trend is insignificant. You can get even more deeply into the system and determine your bodys energy balance, going as far as planning your required intake etc. I’m not going to look at this just yet. It suits me to develop the system for monitoring purposes, possibly using it alongside the BodyForLife program that I’ve had success with previously.
All the excel spreadsheets designed for Hackers Diet are available free on the site mentioned above – they really are worth delving into if like me you go crazy for complex excel constructions and his manual is extensive, explaining the process far better than I have.
My second great discovery is the PhysicsDiet, which is an online fitness log/charting site developed to support the Hackers Diet. So many geeks have been successful with the hackers diet that complementary programs are popping up all over the place. The physics diet uses the same maths as the hackers diet spreadsheets but visually it is far more exciting. I’m going to maintain both the spreadsheet and online version for a while but I think I will use charts like these to post my progress:
This shows the January results and so long as I can keep the chart green, I’m smiling.
Popularity: 28% [?]
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Tags: Diet
January 27, 2007 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Latest Nerd Diet Stats
Here is the latest trend chart, updated at PhysicsDiet.com and based on the Hackers Diet principles that I blogged about here. The blue line is the exponentially smoothed moving average (trend) and green means great!
Monthly Phys Stats
Here are the approximately monthly results from the speak your weight machine:
[TABLE=2]
This page is going to show the scary truth of my weight and given that I possess numerous gadgets, from blood pressure monitors to speak your weight body composition monitors, I ought to be able to include a whole variety of other stats.
To date, I have lost a total of 7 stone over a period of 6 years. Unfortunately I didn’t keep records until fairly recently. I tend to find that my weight loss occurs in steps and sometimes it can be a struggle to push myself from the plateau. The chart below shows how I have pushed myself through numerous weight loss phases over the last year and shows, quite frighteningly, what happens when I take my eye of the ball.
I’m hoping that by being so open in the blog, I will be encouraged to keep regular updates and therefore keep a check of any weight increases. I could have saved myself a lot of hassle last year just by staying exactly as I was!
I’ve recently discovered The Hackers Diet which uses engineering principles to reduce the noise from charts like the one above to allow the actual trend to be extracted. The suggestion is that people who struggle with their weight have an inefficient feedback system so fail to stop eating at the optimum point and likewise fail to cut back following a pig out. By using trend data you can actually use the spreadsheet as your feedback system, in a sort of aid to maintenance.
Check out the official Hackers site for details and the spreadsheets.
Popularity: 9% [?]
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Tags: Diet
August 4, 2006 at 11:01 am · Filed under BodyForLife, Running
I have committed to cutting back on the alcohol, in order to get the diet back on track again. Therefore this view of the brewery is the closest I’ll get to a beer for a while.
It’s the sight I get on the last few hundred yards of my run, just after I’ve crossed Barnes Bridge. Beautiful stretch of the river.
It’s a bit overcast this morning and the photo looks a bit dull but it gave me an excuse to try out this new photoshop tutorial I found on Photojojo. The tutorial shows you how to select areas of the photo based on their colour and then alter the levels to either increase or decrease exposure. Quite good fun, but I suppose the skill is in subtlety and I’m not sure I possess much of that.
I struggled on my run today, I had intended trying out a new variation on my route which would have come in around 9k. Once I’d set off though, I felt like a furnace and ended up cutting it short and finishing after only 3.5k. I don’t know if I’m still feeling tired after last week – I went a bit giddy and increased my weekly distance from a typical 13k to 25k. I’m certainly sleeping well anyway.
Maybe I’ll try my new route out tomorrow.
Popularity: 23% [?]
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July 23, 2006 at 8:32 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
So I am about 5 weeks into the BFL – Body for Life challenge and thought it was perhaps time to drop in an update and outline my progress so far.
There have been a few changes, the weight has started to drop – 9lbs in total. I lost a bit in the first couple of weeks and then as usual I hit a plateau and then over the last few days its started to drop a bit again. Here’s the weight chart:
There also appears to have been some change to my body composition, with a small but definate (I think) increase in muscle mass and a decrease in the body fat mass – which is what I’m in it for.
I am probably not quite on target to achieve my high weight loss goals for this challenge, so I better start making more of an effort. I am spot on with the exercise, doing more cardio than prescribed and working hard with the weight training. I am mostly ok with the diet but I am allowing myself a drink once or twice a week, which I really ought to stop.
Generally I have found the diet ok. It took a while to fathom out what I needed to eat to get a portion of protein and carb at each meal but when that was sorted I find my six meals a day amounts to about 1800 cals a day. Thats not bad – all about portion control.
A typical days food intake will be:
Breakfast – Banana and protein smoothie
AM Break – Ham slices and 3 rice cakes
Lunch – Chicken fillets, couscous and carrots
PM Break – Myoplex Diet shake
Tea – Grilled Tuna, new potatoes, cabbage
Evening – Cottage cheese and 3 rice cakes
Initially I was sceptical of the protein supplements but they are a blessing. It’s hard work preparing so many meals with 1 portion of carbs and 1 portion of protein, particularly at breakfast. The protein powder means I can have a nutritious fruit shake and still get the protein I need. The myoplex diet is useful after my gym workout as its easy and actually feeds my sweet cravings as its basically the only pudding style food I allow myself.
I think the program has proved very positive so far. It has given me a boost on the fitness front again as I’ve joined the gym and go every day. Not only does this mean that I’m lifting weights but I also use the treadmill. My running has shifted up a gear as a result. Since I’ve started BFL, I ran my first 5k, this morning I increased this to 7k and I’m registered in a 10k event for October.
Popularity: 24% [?]
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June 22, 2006 at 1:52 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet, Running
I was told this morning that I was arsey, something that I attributed to my restrictive diet but it’s got to lunch time and I am now on a high!
No, I haven’t gone on a major blowout and gorged myself on bangers and mash. Nope I have been to the gym.
I went on the treadmill, and after my usual 20 min run I decided to keep going. For the first time ever I managed to run 5 km non stop! Yeah, my first goal completed already. It has to be said, I only managed this, because my occassional gym buddy came to tea this morning, boasting that he had run 2.5 km in 15 mins. I am so god damn competitive I had to find someway to top it. Lets hope he doesn’t do 10 km tomorrow or I’ll be stuffed.
Anyway, I now have a yardstick to measure my progress by:
5 km treadmill run: 40 mins
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June 19, 2006 at 11:39 am · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
Today is the official start of my latest fitness drive. Not content with the results I’m getting from cycling, jogging and kick boxing, I am now about to embark on Bill Phillips “Body For Life” regime.
The BodyforLife program is a 12 week challenge, which you can complete either privately or take it as part of a competition, requiring before and after photos and measurements. Some of the results seen by earlier challengers are truly inspirational.
The program consists an intense exercise program and a strict nutritional component. The exercise involves alternating your days with weight training and 20 mins of intense interval aerobic exercise. You can find out more on the Body for Life website.
The nutritional component requires you to eat 6 meals per day (whoa!), although they are relatively small, comprising only 1 portion of protein and 1 portion of carbohydrate per meal. It’s all about the portion control and for a self confessed carb addict, it is bloody hard to find enough protein to eat at every meal.
Given that there is only a 12 week slot to record my bodily transformation – enter the competition – and win loads of super prizes (PositiveMentalAttitude), I have taken a few weeks to prepare or to practice living with the regime. I have been trying out all of the weight training exercises and got myself sorted out with dumbells and a gym membership. I just didn’t want to waste time when the program had actually started and find that I didn’t know what weights I could shift to reach a maximum effort.
Also the food aspect is really novel to me, so it helped to practice here too. I’ve got a few recipes sorted out, things like protein smoothies for breakfast and tried out egg white omelletes. So today I can start out with a well stocked fridge and a clear idea of my weekly dietary routine. At least half of the key to success is ensuring that you plan well in advance.
Wish me luck!
Popularity: 19% [?]
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October 26, 2005 at 6:07 pm · Filed under Cycling, Diet, Running
Well I’ve well and truly overloaded myself with vigorous activities but I have to say it seems to be working out in my favour. I lost 10 lbs in the last month, with my spreadsheet diet and ridiculous exercise routine:
So on top of the daily cycling, I’ve been out running – pretty much daily for the last 4 weeks, covering a measely 3km each morning with my shuffling run/walk approach. Then as this isn’t enough I’ve done two more lessons with Skate Fresh so I can wobble round Hyde Park every weekend on the skates. Then recently I took up kickboxing, in fact I am just sitting here waiting to go in for my third lesson. Yesterday I started a crash course in Kung Fu and then tomorrow I am starting Astanga Yoga.
The martial arts classes are super, blimey do I sweat!!! They must be doing me so much good. Pity I look like a gormless buffoon, tripping over my own “eagle claws”. I’d definately recommend KBKickboxing to any woman who fancies getting fit in a friendly, energetic environment.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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April 5, 2005 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Bikes, Cycling, Equipment, Road
Well it arrived, a beautiful yellow dream machine. It came flat packed but I managed to keep singing throughout my frustrating attempts to put it together. Really it shouldn’t have been that hard, I’m just rather unfamiliar with all the road bike components – never heard of a Ring-go star.
Anyway, I better stop calling her it and introduce you, she’s called Peryl and she has taken to living in my bath. Either I’m going to get pretty smelly or we’ll have to get over our inhibitions quickly and start showering together.
I took her out for a ride today and I’m pleased to say we got on well. Its going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, moving from my hybrid cannondale designed with comfort and more comfort in mind. The new Airnimal Chameleon Ultegra Ultra is very much more hardcore. Light, fast, sexy, although that is not how I feel after sitting on the saddle for an hour.
I really need to up the ante on the diet front again. I am not designed for sitting on a knife edge and the new bent forward, aerodynamic seating position brings my knees perilously close to my tits (which are certainly not my most aerodynamic feature).
The wheel size turns out to be fine, much better than the Brompton style wheel. It handles like a big bike and isn’t too jittery on the steering. Not quite sure about powering myself out of the saddle yet but I think my fears are because the bike is so light (and I’m not) rather than because of her diminutive size.
Not sure how the speed compares yet, it feels fast, my throat was burning in under a mile so I must have been going for it. I will try and rig up the polar S725 tonight and then I can tell for sure.
Popularity: 29% [?]
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Tags: airnimal, chameleon, Diet, folding bike, knee, polar
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