Slurping the dribble with dav3

Muay Thai Boxing

And so it begins, my 2nd attempt at losing weight. In January 2008 I began a weightloss regime which took me from 105kg to 93kg. But through a lack of discipline I have put most of it back on and I'm back up to a smidgen under 103kg. At least I never got back to what I was, but we won't argue about 2kg!) I've decided it's time, once again, to do something about this. For a multitude of reasons, my blood pressure is through the roof, I'm unfit, I do not eat all that healthy and I'm fat.

A friend of a friend recently tried a "21 day plan" to break bad habits (or if you prefer, 21 day plan to introduce new "good" habits). So this is the same. I am trying to introduce a 21 day plan to bring fitness into my daily life.

Today was Day 1, and I am hurting. As how I usually tackle most things, I have not done this by halves, and went into a full-on Muay Thai (beginners) training session. I am physically in pain. Writing this, my elbows are glued to the desk and my fingers are doing all the work. My shoulders feel like someone has a blow torch on them. Hopefully the radox bath I have running will help.

I have already met some inspirational people. One gent, started 6 months ago at 126kg, and he is now 86! That's 40kg! and he's now ready to go competition!

I have been told it will get easier. It won't get easy, but it will get easier.

My goal for this is to participate in this for 21 days (which works out to be about 24 days as they aren't open Sundays and I need some rest), with an ultimate goal of losing 10kg by the end of the month. I also hope to reduce my blood pressure and increase my general level fitness. All this in time for August, my month in Thailand.

Fingers crossed.

5 Laps around Centennial Park today (3.8x5=19km) plus to and fro (another 5.5km) makes the ride today almost 25km. I'm kinda enjoying it, but my behind is really wearing the brunt of my (current) 96kg. And that is the main reason I decide that whatever particular lap is now the last lap.

I do have two lucky features for the ride around the park: 1) lots of things to look at, and 2) the gradient of the park has me not so buggered when I reach the gate to come home and I often fell "Yeah, I can do one more"... A few hundred metres into it and I'm thinking about turning around. But then it gets easy again... and hard... and easy... LOL

And when I get back to the start... "yeah, one more!" :-)

What a beautiful day it is out there... Maybe I should now go for a walk... Circular Quay anyone?

I bought the bike last week and straight away I got on it and done 30km. That was Saturday. On Monday I went and did a couple of laps around Centennial Park (well, 4 laps to be precise) and then came home. I wanted to do more laps, and felt physically capable, but my bum was so sore from all the riding that I simple had to call it quits. That ride, on the Monday, was pretty much 4 laps around the park, and directly between home, there, and back again (which is the east-west line in the map to the right.

Todays ride I did much the same again except this time, after the third lap, I left the park from the Paddington gate and rode back to the bike shop. The ride down Oxford Street was great, since it was pretty much all downhill. Very enjoyable indeed. The reason I was going back to the bike shop was due to the speedometer I bought (the "Incite 8i"). I was really unhappy with it due to it being wireless and it receiving phantom signals from random sources. Over the last couple of days I have had "MAX" speeds approaching 200kmph! On the two rides I had been on (30km and 22km), the speedo had registered 82km, instead of just 52km. And then on todays ride it added on an extra km (only one). So for a total of 73km that I had ridden, the speedo registered that I had done over 100km. This amount of error was unacceptable. It is (apparently) a problem generally with the new generation wireless speedos. I do hear you can pay extra dollars and get a "digital wireless", but figured that a wired variety is going to give me less grief. So, I went into the shop (Clarence Street cyclery) really not knowing what to expect, and they were happy to upgrade/downgrade the speedo at no cost. Which is good for me since I didn't have any of the boxes or manuals for it.

Half hour later, I was back on my bike with the "Incite 9i" and I was happy. The wiring is a little ugly (it definitely looked better without it), but I don't want extra kms added onto my ride just because of some simple interference.

So my recommendation is to NOT grab yourself any of the TREK brand "Incite" speedos that are unwired/wireless. I strongly recommend getting one of the wired models, or maybe forking out the extra and grabbing a digital wirless model, if you so desire. More generally, however, the Incite 9i is vastly superior to the 8i in other ways IMHO. Such as it has an included temperature guage, the up and down mode buttons work in an up and down fashion (pressing one side sends the mode to the left, the other side goes to the right - where-as the 8i just moved sequentially through the modes), and the mode button is more responsive.

I stumbled and fell, and now I have picked myself back up again. My weightloss was going well, and when I peaked at around 12kg I simply stopped. Initially it was the walking that stopped, then it was the diet that went out the window.

But now I am back on the band wagon. Starting off simple, no carbs in the evening, bringing back my protein shakes, and riding my new bike!!!

In this map, the blue line is the walk to the Clarence St Cyclery to pickup my the bike in the previous post. The green line is the ride I went on. Without zooming in, you can't tell that the ride around centennial park consisted of 2½ laps! The whole ride was spot on 30km.

Obviously with this posting, it can be inferred that I am still alive. That IS the case, I AM! But I am soooo STUFFED!!  read more »...

In my efforts to lower blood pressure and get fit, I'm deciding to increase my heart rate with one of these little beauties. It's next years model and the colour scheme (black with dark gray) is simply spot on. I paid shelf price on the bike and probably a little more than I actually wanted to pay and I probably could have done better on ebay, or gone for a lesser model. But it's next years model, has a 5 year warranty on parts and lifetime on the frame... You can't put a price on good health... right?

That said this is the baby I pick up today at 1 o'clock. It's Sydney, the day is abso-bloody-lutely gorgeous, I live in the city, the sun is shining and it's approaching 30 degrees. Almost time to go pick it up and probably scour the beaches. I'll know more this afternoon once I actually get on the thing

(click on the image for a larger picture)

Shameless plug for Clarence Street Cyclery

I had another game of squash today, I have found it hard to get back into the fitness groove lately, but squash is easy. I love the game, it kills me, but I love it. We played for almost 2 hours today! Only about 10 games. I prefer playing handouts, the new international rules make games go too quick.

I played a friend who I rarely beat... We played a few weeks ago and played 16 sets and I only got 4 off him. And it was only at the end of each 4 games when he was tired that I got one from him.

But today started off with a bang. I got 2 sets from the outset! I wanted to go home then, but he wouldn't let me :-P. Towards the end of the second set he was getting a bit gnarly and decided to clonk me in the head with his racket. I tell you what, a squash racket in the head puts you on your arse pretty quickly. I dropped real quick. I recovered well, and took the final 2 points I needed to get the set, but then couldn't find the groove again.

I was feeling a bit off, but at the end of the day he is a much better player than me. The thing is, he makes me work hard... Work REAL hard for those hours.

We're pretty closely matched. Today we played many sets where we were stuck on 2 points for handout after handout. And we had about 4 games where we went over the 9 points to finish the game. 1 game went to him at 13-11.

It's a good game.

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I only went for a short walk to Moore Park (2.2km) today because I wanted to see what was out there in LCD land. So I paid a visit to Bing Lee, Dick Smith PowerHouse and Harvey Norman... I think I have found the one I will buy, it's the Samsung "SyncMaster 245B", features a resolution of 1920x1200 and a 5ms refresh. It only has DVI and VGA inputs (why is it so hard to find dual DVI inputs?). So, I have contacted my bank and I am upping the limit on my credit card - Australians LOVE credit...

Well, I do :-)

All 24" varieties were very expensive at these stores, the cheapest of which was around $750. The Samsung though was $999. A little out of my price range. Although a quick search on StaticIce (link) found many places selling these little BIG beauties from as low as $530...

One place would even sell them from little more than $500 if purchased with a new system. I don't need a new system... Or do I??

That's almost 2 for the price of 1! Maybe I should buy 2 :-)

I had another game of squash planned for today, but the guy I was to play didn't recall that we'd made a pact to do such... and he'd already settled into a couple of beverages and so it would have been a little unfair to do it to him.

So instead, I troddled on down to the gym in my building complex. It's not too bad, a rowing machine would really spruce the place up, but beggars can't be choosers. I only did another short workout, 13 minutes on a stepping type machine (i don't know the name of one machine from another... it wasn't actually steps, but more like a "cyclic walker"???) and 10 minutes on an electronic bicycle.

I have to admit, these cycles aren't too bad, almost as good as the rower, but it's not... The rowing machine is my favourite. The cycle machines hurt your butt! Maybe that's only a problem if you have a big butt, or something.

I did a little over 20 minutes, but I was sweating profusely today. The place isn't too greatly ventilated, and the sweat was literally dripping of me (I mean, how else does it come off you?). I went back up to my place for a shower and fell asleep instead.

I was woken by a friend that reminded me we were having dinner tonight at "Taylors On Central". I had steak (and chips)... tisk tisk... And two glasses of soda water. So upon coming home I donned the workout gear and back to the gym. Only another 20 minutes, pretty much the same routine.

But then I did something I have NEVER done before, or at least it feels that way... I WENT FOR A SWIM!

I only did half a dozen laps, but that's half a dozen more than I have done in the last 10 years. I HATE swimming, but recognise it is an exercise that is low impact, so I should try and get into it. I don't see it myself, but we can only wait and see.

Weight wise, I started this phase on Sunday 6th April 2008 at 95.6kg. This morning I weighed in at 94.8kg. almost 1 kg in 3 days. Tonights meal is not going to help matters too much, but we can't eat healthy ALL the time.

We have to be realistic. :-)

I played a game of squash with Woodsy today. A tall bastard with the reach of inspector gadget. I don't know why I play him... Yes I do, because he kills me... Literally

He wipes the floor with me, but today I had a reprieve. He had a visitor from out of town so we played 2 on, 1 off. The sitting off never lasted long, but it was a break none-the-less. And this other guy gave Woodsy a run for his money. I don't think he dropped a set all day, but I got close :-)

So we were on the courts for almost 2 hours and it was good. On the way home I stopped off at the Strawberry Hills hotel for a $5 steak (and a soda water). Considering these meals are so cheap, they are of exceptional quality. I have paid 2, 3 and even 4 times that for a steak of a much lesser standard. If you are ever in Sydney and like a simple meal (I mean, it's can't be too complicated for $5), then drop into the Strawberry Hills hotel on Devonshire Street. The serve meals til late. This almost feels like a shameless advertisement, but it isn't. I have no vested interest in the place, other than the occasional meal.

Then after getting home, having a shower and getting changed, I decided to go to the gym at work and start and get all sweaty again. 15 minutes on the rowing machine which equated to about 3km. I then jumped on one of the computerised cycles and did another 10 minutes there. I raised a sweat, but I probably should have raised more...

next time...