Welcome to 2012

Ciao Amici e Buon Anno!

Being the start of the New Year nearly everyone I know and many others will be setting their New Year’s resolutions for the year, to some extent I don’t believe they should be called New Year Resolutions as there is often a negative connotation associated with this as most people who set them give up after a month a two. So why not change the name then, I’ve decided I shall call mine ‘My Bucket List’ yes it’s normally a list of things you want to achieve before you die, or in my case maybe it’s a list of things I wish to achieve before my body does not allow me to. Either way I think it’s fitting 🙂 and not being a ‘New Year Resolution’ anything you add to the list does not have to be for this year only. Having a list down somewhere where you can read it often helps keep you motivated. For me I have added learning Italian to the list, rest assured the more I learn the more I’ll be using it in my blogs 😉

Being the New Year as well means that public holidays are over and training goes back to normal 😀 Spinning classes have also started again :D, and after nearly 5 weeks of being sick during December and not having done any training it feels really good to be back at the gym and to be back on the road. If I think about it all this exercising and training is like a drug, you stop it even for a little while and you get withdrawal symptoms, you want to go back, you NEED to go back. So if getting fit is your goal for 2012 don’t let it stop there, getting fit is the goal but staying fit is the real challenge, it becomes a way of life. Don’t let this way of life become a chore, the moment you do you’ll lose all motivation, do it because you love it. I love training – that feeling you get when you walk out of the gym after an awesome weight session or after a cardio class, and for me especially after an awesome few hours on the road on a Saturday morning – catch some sun, breathe in the fresh air and its great place to work out all the frustration from the past week of work 😉

Speaking of, I had a fantastic club ride this past Saturday, what was supposed to be a 80km (50mi) club ride turned out to be a 92km (57mi) ride, can’t say my muscles enjoyed it though not having done such a long ride since the 94.7 Cycle Challenge in November last year. It turned out to be just over a 4h ride with about 20 – 30 mins of stopping time, pretty good pace if you ask me. On that note If you feel you’re lacking motivation to train or just don’t want to train on your own, join a club – not only will you then have to train due to the financial commitment but the benefits of training with a group will soon become apparent 🙂 Not saying you can’t train on your own, you just better be committed to it, I’ve done most of it on my ace since sep’10. The hardest part of getting back into my training has been the running, haven’t built my way up last year to 5km and now getting to 2km before being dead. It’ll take another week or two and I’ll be back on track. There is a saying I heard a while ago which I feel is very fitting in my case – runner’s can cycle but cyclists can’t run.

There is a great little website I use to track my fitness (www.fittrack.co.za), it doesn’t give you a full breakdown but it is nice to see where your fitness lies on a line graph and how you have progressed over the weeks. For a more detailed way to track your workouts try Runtastic on your phone (www.runtastic.com), I’ve only been using it for a week now but so far so good, I will see how the reports fair over this month. Seems like my phone might just become my new training partner (HRM, GPS, MP3 Player) what more do you need 😉 That gives me an idea I might just create a tab on my blog to track my weekly and monthly training, watch this space. If you have any other apps or website that work, let me know I would love to see them.

I just had to share this photo, took it at the garage as we got into Randfontein on Saturday morning on our ride, just amazes me what some people do their cars..

You know you're in Randfontein when...

Here is to wishing you many happy hours and mileage of training in 2012.

J