The Birthday Challenge

With my birthday only one week away, and my thirty third year approaching I have decided to undertake a Birthday Challenge of sorts.  I follow Steve Edwards’ blog, he's someone involved both in climbing and Insanity so it’s generally a good read. He does these Birthday Challenges each year, I think there is even a website for people doing them, his one this year looks particularly demanding.

But not as demanding as the one I shall undertake (maybe); which if you know me well, you will cry out “Dude, that’s impossible, you don’t stand a chance, you are too weak in the head”.  But rise up I shall, to defy your pessimismisations and attain a holy glory unbeknownst to my fellow man.

Here is my challenge, that will begin on 24 Oct 2013 (the day after my birthday to allow proper celebratory cake eating) and last for a full 32 days:

• No added sugar and full avoidance of all things sweet:
• I haven’t said no sugar completely as that is unrealistic unless we make all our food from scratch which we won’t.  And I am not including fruit as obviously the benefits far outweigh the negatives despite a bit of fructose.

• No dairy:
• Or at least as little as possible. Close to zero should be pretty doable though I think.

•  Less booze:
• I will only drink two nights in any seven day rolling period. Have got in an unfortunate habit of regular beer consumption that I need to eradicate before it becomes too ingrained.

• Training:
• One minute extra each day on the Ice Rig before I leave for work. Yes, that is right, training in the morning. Unprecedented.  The logic being, I wil have suitable attire on anyway, including a helmet.  I will start with only four minutes on day one and add one minute per day, each and every day.

This means my breakfast White Russian is off the cards. Oh Dude.

I have been pretty banjaxed this week, maybe the sleep thing is finally catching up to me, but I haven’t had much inclination to train (other than sticking with T25).  Hopefully this steady build up will see me do better than my usual overkill approach to things. I will try to add some bigger workouts as and when I have time and energy (which an absence of sugar crashed may assist with).

I think I have approximately 14 weeks until the thing that I am training for happens.

In other news, the mighty mite now weighs in at a gargantuan 9lbs 2oz.  Mostly in her cheeks I think.

The Moomin

Bend that!

Fixed!

The Ice Rig is re-certified as safe.

M8 coach bolts replace 4mm nails 

October update

As you can imagine, not a lot has been happening other than attending to the Little Moose, bless her.  She has taken to vomming a bit but doesn’t seem too phased by it, and is still chubbing up nicely, now weighing in at 8lbs 9oz.  She is also becoming a bit of an insomniac and thus so is Holly.  

The Raspberry Moose

Holly had a bit of a Willow themed birthday, with presents of a book called Willow, a bluray called Willow (the fantasy film and yes, Tyrion Lannister is in there somewhere if you look hard enough), a Willow tree (dwarf) and even a bottle of Willow mineral water among other things.  We actually made it out from brunch that weekend.

Five Willows and a Holly

Last weekend I went to the Castle (a sign of the times that I am blogging about going to the wall) and surprised myself by top roping a few 6b+s cleanly – a shadow of my former self, sure, but better than I expected.  I also did a proper training session on the home wall on Tuesday – a good solid beasting on the wall, the bar, the kettlebells and the ice rig.  One of the nails folded over on the ice rig which made me lose faith in it slightly – still can’t work out why as I bounced off other nails with hardly any flex let alone bending.  I suspect it was a defect in the metal, but I will be triple nailing it this weekend.  I have also ordered a few more jugs for the wall as my homemade plywood ones, whilst being a nice idea, are very tweaky indeed. 

Beastly (and too hard)

 

I am now in the second week of Focus T25, the time compressed version of Insanity from the BeachBody stable. It’s pretty similar but it’s nice to have a new set of workouts to follow – it won’t be quite as effective as Insanity due to the shorter running time but that combined with more climbing specific work should see me fit for Nor..., I mean, the secret plan.

I heard that 2011/12 had the highest birth rate for forty years. If the number of babies erupting around us is anything to go by, this year will be higher still.