25/28 Mixed Emotions...

Tomorrow morning is the last Pinpoint Fitness fitcamp session of my 4 week term as a Guinea Pig.  I am happy that I have burned more fat and lost more weight and inches, but I am sad that I won't be turning up "Bright & Breezy" on Monday to workout with my new "pioneer" friends :-)  We've worked hard together and we've had plenty laughs along the way, so hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch with them - the wonders of social networking lol!

I will however endeavour to keep up the workouts and will also be back to the gym to start the weightlifting routines again as of next week.

I have entered a race in August and I have a goal to lose more weight and get stronger before then so I fully intend to stick to the healthy eating and fatburning principles that I've learned over the past few weeks.

Who knows, I might even convince my long-suffering husband to thole me getting up at 5am once in a while to head to Cumbernauld to join in a session with the next batch of fatburners :-)

When I was looking for pictures tonight I found one which I am going to include tonight in honour of fellow Guinea Pig Iain.  Iain makes no secret of his love (or not) of vegetables, although he claims he is now eating "Tonnes" of them and certainly looking at how successful he's been shifting the weight he has been :-)

So Iain this is for you...

 was a fast day today so just about to sit down to dinner of chicken with broccoli and cauliflower, have drunk peppermint tea, tulsa tea, and at least 3litres of water today :-)

I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning's session and will continue to blog until the 28 days so that I can tell you the final results, however as I'm racing tomorrow evening it might be late before I get back.

24/28 Meet Dave!

Last Friday I missed a session at fitcamp as I was resting before racing on Saturday, unfortunately this meant that I missed Dave's first visit...
He came back this morning - but really folks he's a pussy cat :-) a BIG wimp!!
Fantastic session this morning, a real endorphin rush and was pleased that I managed as well as I did, felt good for the rest of the day, so much so I was all set to go for a run after work til I remembered I had a physio appointment at 6!  Got the knots in my calves and hamstrings kneaded out so all good to go for next race which takes place Friday evening - run out onto beach, round rock and back uphill to finish line outside of pub before tide comes in... should be fun!! (or something!)
If any of you who take the time to read my random ramblings, are interested in trying it for themselves, then John and Pamela of Pinpoint Fitness are putting on a free taster week next week, just look them up online or on facebook and get in touch with them they'll be delighted to see you.

Came home this evening and the postie had delivered my race-pack for the Ignis Women's 10k in Glasgow a week Sunday, I love getting a race number in the post - it's exciting :-) the tshirt is pink again this year :-)

Was starving after this morning's workout so had blueberries, banana and yoghurt for breakfast,
Lunch: 2 slices roast beef and salad
Dinner: chicken curry with cabbage and kale

drunk loads and loads and loads of water and tea today and can honestly say my hydration has balanced itself back to normal after the weekend lol!

I wanted to post another photo tonight but I couldn't take one that showed properly what I wanted to show so you just have to believe me, I bought a fabby skirt last summer, real 1950's style full panelled almost circular, black with white polka dots.  Just loved it - put it on this morning and it is fully 4 inches too big on the waist!!  I wanted to take a photo showing this but I couldn't get it to show the full effect!  Maybe before the end of the week I might manage to get a photo to post, will keep trying :-)

it's my Friday :-)

I hope John and Pamela from PinPoint-Fitness don't mind me using their logo tonight.  I like to put a picture on the page, it helps me to think about what I'm going to write and I've sat for about half an hour trying to think about what I might write tonight and what I could use as a picture...
if you're looking for PinPoint-Fitness online then you'll recognise the logo.

I've had another day out of the office, I was presenting at a conference on transformational learning, it was quite an interesting day with input from a number of people - I had to speak about a project we are doing which has given every p7 pupil in one of our schools an Intel classmate notebook which they can use whenever they like in the classroom and can also take home with them.  It's really interesting watching how the kids use the devices and how they have developed as learners.

However, the downside of this is that I don't think my nutrition has been as good as it should have been over the past 2 days, I'm usually reasonably well organised and can prepare food so that I have the correct things to eat and drink, I managed ok yesterday but today wasn't as well planned.  The conference was in a hotel and lunch was provided, the last time I was at a similar event with this company, it was a restaurant lunch so I was pretty sure I'd get something that would be suitable for lunch.  Unfortunately today it was a buffet lunch so I managed to get a couple of chicken and salmon skewers and some salad - there was couscous, pasta, potato salad, mini steak pie - which I wouldn't even have eaten in my past life.  I feel quite tired and a bit woosy this evening so I guess I probably should have eaten more but I have the day off tomorrow so will get sorted out and back on track in the morning.

Today I've eaten
Breakfast:  Scrambled eggs
Lunch: chicken and salmon skewers with salad
Dinner:  Quorn chilli (rice for John)  I should have cooked some greens with it but I was a bit disorganised and didn't have any...

I have drunk 3L of water today - plus side of conferences there's always water on the table
OH and I ignored the bacon rolls which were provided for breakfast at the start of the morning!

I have decided not to go to tomorrow's early morning session - I am racing on Saturday and I think that my legs will benefit more from the rest as they're still quite tired from yesterday's workout - I will also hopefully benefit from a wee while longer in bed :-)
I'll miss the rest of the gang though!

Tomorrow night we are staying overnight in Milngavie so that we're there for John's early start and I can register the team for the relay so there might not be an update from me tomorrow.
It might be Sunday til I'm back online...

Day 5/28

Friday 13th, luckily I don't suffer from triskadekaphobia so this was just another day for me - except it was another 5am rise! I don't actually mind getting up early, I'm definitely a morning person, I don't do late nights very well, probably haven't since I was a teenager and even in those days I didn't lie abed until lunchtime, so 0450 and I was awake and up out of bed to get ready for session no. 3!

It was another nice morning and it's quite a noticeable difference as the week has gone on, just how much lighter it is every morning. It's about 15mins from Monday in terms of when it gets light, and ok Monday morning was heavy rain and cloud whereas Wednesday and this morning were much brighter and frostier! Both mornings when I have been driving home, there has been ice on the Forth at Stirling...
We'd a great session this morning it was called Ladders - you do 1 rep then 2 reps then 3 reps up to 9 reps so that you've reached the top of the ladder, unlike a pyramid, you don't come back down again you move onto another exercise :-) Really tough strength and conditioning exercises too. We worked in pairs and I was working with the lovely Lauren and we should get an extra gold star because we did 51 reps of each exercise, but the 'T pushups' we assumed you had to twist to both sides as 1 rep, but turned out that that should have counted as 2, so we did 102 of them! Bet we pay for that tomorrow :-(
Most of Scotland has experienced some pretty heavy and sudden hail and rain showers over the past few days and the park we use for our sessions is no exception, the mossy grass is therefore slightly squidgier than normal so trying to keep a grip with your feet while doing planks and pressups adds that extra dimension to the exercise experience lol! The worms seemed to quite like the company too and were popping out to join in. They should have been out on Wednesday morning when we were doing inchworms...
I felt good after the workout, strong and invigorated, I even ran back to the car! However the early start is taking it's toll this evening as I'm really sleepy now... but as John is preparing for his marathon on Sunday and we have a potentially early rise tomorrow I can go to bed soon ;-)

Today is the first day that I've felt hungry at all, I forgot to take a banana or muffin to work with me for my snack so I didn't have anything from my breakfast at home til lunchtime and from about 1130 until I had my soup at 1245ish I was ravenous! However I'm pleased that I resisted the temptation of the choccy biscuits and things that were available at coffee time - that's the time of day I didn't drink a coffee!

Today's menu:
pre workout I had 1/3 of a small banana and half cup of decaf green tea
post workout I ate the rest of the banana and drank rest of tea(cold)

Breakfast: berries, pumpkin seeds and yoghurt, half of a wheat free apple&cinnamon cookie very kindly produced by Pamela after our workout :-)
Lunch: vegetable soup
Snack when I got home: 2 slices nutty bread
Dinner: Roasted sweet pepper soup with rocket leaves & goats cheese

Now I know I should have had more but I don't feel hungry so I haven't had anything else - we had planned to have steak and veggies, but John who's fuelling for his race on Sunday had been eating extra so he wasn't hungry either so the steaks and veggies will be tomorrow night's dinner.

Hopefully I will get up in the morning Bright and Breezy and ready for parkrun, but if I sleep longer then it will be the long lie which wins. Sunday morning will be another very early start as we have to be up in Fort William for John's race start and I will go for my longish run on the Caledonian Canal - which isn't nearly as scenic at that point as the Forth & Clyde but it's still an ok place to run so I am looking forward to it - Neptune's staircase is an interesting challenge, I would hope that I can climb it even better than I managed it last year!
I will then meet up with Susan & Courtney whose husband/dad George is running his first marathon and we'll be there to cheer the runners home.
I'll need to plan carefully tomorrow to make sure I take food with me etc but I'm sure I will manage :-) However you might not get a Sunday night update as we will be fairly late home and very tired...
Have a good weekend folks, let's hope the weather is on the up and may the marathon gods smile on the boys and all our friends who're racing at Lochaber or in Edinburgh at the Rock'n'Roll Half!
As well as our friend Sylvie (from Toronto) who is running the Paris marathon.