What's Next?

I believe that I mentioned in a previous post that I won't be updating the blog as much since I'm not in a traditional training cycle right now. I didn't do an update on Extra-Life yet so I will say that it went pretty well. I was disappointed that I didn't make my fundraising goal, but I know that overall over 2-million dollars was raised for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals nationally. I don't yet have results for our specific hospital, but I know it was at least $686.

Even though I don't have any major track and field events coming up it's still a good time to look toward the future so I can plan my training and recovery accordingly. I did my cycle of the Beachbody Ultimate Reset a couple of months ago now and that went extremely well. I'll even have some exciting news about that coming up soon, but I can't share it quite yet.

Since I finished the Reset cleanse I have been working out to Chalene Johnson's Turbo Fire program. It's mainly a cardio program, but not as insane as Insanity. It's been keeping me in shape without breaking me down which is what I need right now. It has also given me a chance to work out with my wife for the first time ever since I started working out at home. The new Insanity: Asylum Volume 2 program came out earlier this month and I had planned to start it, but I'm enjoying the workout time with my wife and it's nice to be able to accomplish our workouts at the same time. If I switched programs right now I would probably have to go to an evening workout schedule if my wife keeps the morning. It's not worth it for me at the moment as long as I'm still getting a good workout with Turbo Fire.

I did pick up a special deal on Rev Abs, which is a total-body and core strengthening program with Brett Hoebel. He was one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser. They had a one-day deal where the entire program was only $22 for coaches with free shipping so I thought I should at least pick it up and add it to the collection. I started doing some of the workouts on days where my wife was running or working out later than me. I've really been enjoying it so far. The core training is one of those things that is very important for injury prevention in sprinters. I would love to do the 90 days straight through sometime, but for now I am working it in when I can with Turbo Fire. Kind of like my own little hybrid program.

So looking forward. I know that my plans always seem to change, but I am not currently planning to run in the USA Track & Field Indoor Masters Championships this year. It's just too far away and I'm not sure it would be worth it. I have a series of Charities Challenge indoor meets that I plan to run this winter and I'll probably try to make it to the Minnesota Indoor Championships as well. So the only National Championships this year that I plan to run is outdoor. It is in Olathe, KS which is probably about a seven hour drive. My buddy lives in Kansas City so I have a place to stay and hopefully we can get a relay together. It's also my birthday weekend so it should be a good time.

The deal

I didn't realize it had been so long since I have put up a blog post. I've been spending a lot of time lately on Facebook and replying to emails about the Ultimate Reset. I guess I have neglected to post. There has been a lot going on lately. I was featured as the Transformation Tuesday on the Beachbody Ultimate Reset Facebook page about a month ago. Things have kind of taken off from there so September has been a good month. If you want to check out my review of the Ultimate Reset program and see the before and after pictures that Beachbody reposted, you can find them at www.PromiseToBeFit.com.

The main thing that's going on around our house right now is football. My son is in third grade and started tackle football this year. It's been an exciting past few weeks. I wasn't sure how he would like it, but he loves it. I wouldn't consider myself all that coordinated so I didn't know what to expect going into my son's first game. The first time he touched the ball in the game he ran the kickoff back for a touchdown. I don't know where he gets it from, but it's fun to watch.

So I made a deal with my son for the last game. He wanted to practice knocking the ball away on defense so he has me throw passes away from him and he tries to deflect them. I think he just likes diving for the ball. I told him that he should practice trying to intercept the ball instead of just keeping the receiver from catching it. He should also try to stay on his feet. I told him that if he returned an interception for a touchdown that we would go out to eat wherever he wanted after the game the next day. This seemed to get him pretty excited.

Now for anyone out there saying I am bribing my kid. I am not running some kind of bounty program. I am not paying him to make tackles or hurt other kids. We were going to go out to eat anyway and I was probably going to let him pick the place no matter what.

Anyway, we were at the last play of the game. Our boys were up 30-6 and the other team had the ball. Their quarterback dropped back to pass and threw it in the direction of the field that my son was covering. He went after the ball and got the interception. Then he broke a few tackles and ran to the outside and scored. That was it. He got the interception for the touchdown on the last play of the game. Of course he had already told all of his friends about the deal so they were pretty excited.

After the game I asked where he wanted to eat and he picked a restaurant that would have the Vikings game on while we eat. You couldn't have wiped the smile off of either of our faces all afternoon.

So the moral of this story - bribe your kids. It works.

13 Pounds...What?

I lost thirteen pounds in the past two weeks on the Ultimate Reset. I figured after last week's weight loss that I was about as light as I was going to get. Honestly, I can hardly believe it. I even checked the calibration of the scale that I have been using. Imagine if I would have done this before a race. I would have to think that not carrying around an extra thirteen pounds would allow me to run even faster, whether the weight is from water, fat, or wherever else it is coming from. I'm already planning my diet and exercise strategy for next year to see if I can hit that All-American standard time in the 400 meters. I'm not really sure I want to go through this again, but maybe in a year I'll forget and only remember the results I got from the program. Just like every time I would start up another round of P90X and then suddenly remember how tough it was.

I'm on the home-stretch. The last seven days of the Ultimate Reset program and I am looking forward to being done. The food hasn't been bad, but it's the convenience more than anything that usually drives how I eat. I keep a lot of bars and Shakeology shakes around because I'm all about convenience when it comes to eating. I need something good for me, but it also has be easy. I understand now that the meals that I am having are really good for me, but there's a part of me that just wants to be able to throw a pizza in the oven, take it out in fifteen minutes, cut it up and start eating. One more week left. I am feeling really great though and have had a lot of energy lately.

"Can you feel this?"

So we're getting ready for school now. My wife is getting back to work and the kids will be starting up in a couple of weeks. This is the first year that we will have both kids in school so it will be nice to be able to take them to the same place every morning.

T-Dawg started up football camp and this is his first year of tackle football. I never played organized football in school so this is all new to me. We figured it would be a good idea to make sure we could get all of his equipment on so one night we put all of the pads on. Then the kids decided they needed to test them. My daughter got out a big inflatable hammer and started hitting him everywhere he had protection. They quickly realized that he did not have a cup. My wife went out and got him one a couple of nights later because it seemed like a good thing to have. The girls were out so I had him put the cup on and then I hit him with one of my daughter's play kitchen utensils a couple of times. Seems to work.

The quote for today is from Shaun T - "I'm smiling because I love it."

The Ultimate Reset - Week 1

I've been doing this program from Beachbody called the Ultimate Reset. It is a cleanse, but I don't have to starve myself or just drink only juice for a month so I figured I could handle it. I'll explain basically what it is. It's a 21-day program where you follow recipes made with whole foods and take various supplements. It is set up in three phases which are seven days each.

This seemed to be the right time to do the program because it is recommended that you do not do any strenuous exercise during the 21 days. Since I just finished up my last race for the summer I would normally take a little time off to give myself some rest. Well, that time for me often ends up being where I get back into some bad habits and gain back some weight. This way I can take a good amount of time off to recover without gaining weight. In fact, I should end the Reset quite a bit under where I started which was already pretty light for me.

I don't want to go into too many specifics about the program. You can get more information at UltimateReset.com if you want to know more. I would rather just focus briefly on my experience during this first week.

When I weighed in on Day One I was 169 lbs. Today I weighed in at 161 lbs. That's as light as I can ever remember being since college. I don't know exactly what to attribute that to, but with that kind of loss I think there must be a good amount of water weight. My biggest change has been giving up diet soda. I have been drinking a lot of Pepsi Max lately. I often lose track of how much I drink, but I'm sure it was a lot. That has been a challenge. I'll call it my very own Pepsi Challenge. The first few days my head was throbbing and I had  a feeling of just not being sharp mentally. It was hard to focus and I felt groggy. This did go away and I'm feeling pretty good now. I used to just be tired and feel like I have to drink a soda to get my energy back. Now I don't seem to have that dip that I use to have.

The food is also a big part of that. It's mostly things you would expect. Lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and little dairy. It does adapt as you move through the phases so there are things you can eat in the first week that you won't have later. One thing I noticed is that there are a lot of Japanese food items. Many of them are very alkaline-type foods which are good to counter the normal acidic foods that we usually eat. There is an entire collection of recipes and an online cooking segment for each recipe that you can access with your Team Beachbody username and password when you purchase the program. My favorite recipe so far has been the Nori Rolls, which are a lot like sushi. That's something I think I will eat even after the program is done.

One thing that really surprised me was the feeling I had during the first week which is very similar to working out. They say in the program that you are giving your body a workout from the inside out. Your body is working to remove the toxins that you've been putting in it for years. This is part of the reason why you aren't supposed to work out. Your body is already working hard.

The last thing I wanted to mention is the supplements. There are some pills that you take each day as well as a packet of green powder that you mix with water called Alkalinize. I do not like Alkalinize. I have to plug my nose and then I can drink it down, but I just do not like the taste. I looked up the ingredients and did some research on the benefits and it is some good stuff in there, but I have a hard time with that one.

So those are some of my thoughts on the first week. I'll be posting more of a full review on PromiseToBeFit.com as I go through the next two weeks. I'm already 1/3 of the way there so I'm confident that I can make it through the program.

"Your journey won't always be easy. But like all journeys of growth, it can change your life for the better."
 - Isabelle Daikeler - Cocreater of Shakeology and Beachbody Ultimate Reset

Time to get serious

Enough time off from workouts. Enough Reese's peanut butter eggs. Enough spending nights and weekends at work. It's time to get back on a program.

I finished up P90X2 and now I'm ready to get into my track training. I had a choice between doing the new 21-day Ultimate Reset or get myself back on a consistent workout schedule and eating plan. The reset seemed like a good option to reset my body since I've been slacking these past few weeks, but you're not supposed to work out while you're doing it. There is a group of coaches that are starting the Ultimate Reset so this would have been a good time. I just feel like working on my cardio and strength is a better option right now.

So here's my plan. Insanity: The Asylum for 30 days. I took new before pictures and statistics. I also video recorded my fit test and I will record a workout each week. When that's done I plan to do the P90X2/Asylum hybrid program that's included in the P90X2 guide. I'll have some track meets in there so hopefully those will fit in between the three phases. I think I'll stick with one or two track workouts each week and I'll try to do those on days that won't mess up the rest of the workouts. I should finish up around mid-August which will be right after the USA Track & Field National Masters Outdoor Championships. Then I'll think about doing the Ultimate Reset.

Sounds ambitious, I know. I'll just have to adjust and adapt my workouts based on my track schedule. This is the time to get serious. What I do now is going to have a big effect on what happens in August, so let's get out there and do this. No more messing around.