95 Days to go... To Train, but not to Train

Those of you that know me well will know (and those that don’t yet will learn…) that I don’t do things by halves - it’s either ALL or NOTHING with me, and getting myself in shape for this this challenge will be no different…

As I no longer belong to a gym (they just don’t inspire me, and I never seem to be able to do more than about a 3 month stint, before I start to get bored and regret the money its costing me NOT to go!) and I also have a fair dislike of running (hence I’ve never signed up for a marathon!) I’ve needed to devise a training plan that I’m going to enjoy sticking to… My philosophy is to engage in as many enjoyable energetic activities as possible, and not to look at them as 'training'. That way I figure I’ll enjoy getting fit and it won’t seem such a task!

So, three weeks in, this is what I’ve been up to…

• 15km of Dragon Boating (with Thames Dragons)
• 14 miles hiking in the Lake District, covering 4 peaks and 3160m in elevation (with Backabush Xplorers)
• 6 hours of Rock Climbing
• 9 miles jogging (even though I hate it, I take the train to a station further away and run home through the park – that way I have motivation to keep running, or else it’ll take me longer to get home)
• A morning of kayaking and afternoon of walking on the South Coast (with MountainTrax)
• 1 days diving in Brighton (with LSD)

That’s on top of the obligatory step climbing daily (London substitution for mountains!) and my 4 mile walk to and from work each day.

And since I’m trying to get my body in tip top shape through all this activeness, I figure there’s it’d be counter productive to feed my body crap, so I have given up caffeine and alcohol while I train.