In changing to a new gym, I had a regular fitness assessment. Ouch. I’ve got tons of room for improvement. You’d never guess that I’m coming from one gym and not just off of the street with a New Year’s resolution.

The news:

• I’m lighter than I thought, but I think this is loss of muscle mass.
• I’m taller than I thought – by 1cm.
• BMI is still a flawed system for body measurement. I’m not in my best shape, but I’m certainly not overweight.
• My body-fat measurement is up.

The plan:

• I need to get back into running shape. That’ll cut off the extra fat.
• I still have shoulder rehab work to do, but it shouldn’t stop me from much weight training activity.
• There are yoga and pilates classes that fit my life, which should help with my core stability and flexibility problems.
• I should probably get better with my food choices again. More cooking, less throwing things together.
• Everything really hinges on a regular schedule. 5 days/week is good. No cheating.

The goal:

• Over 6 months, my body-fat reading should drop by at least 2%. It’s not unreasonable.
• There’s still that half-marathon in August.

While living in Auckland, I’d maintained a morning gym routine. The gym opened at 6am and I was at work by 8 or so. Some driving was required, but it was a workable situation. I held onto a 5–6day/week routine and it didn’t conflict with my after work activities. Moving to Wellington was hard. The house I moved into wasn’t near a gym and neither was work. I’d ended up joining a Wellington City Council gym which was sorta on my way to work. It still didn’t work out too well – the last bus to work leaves too early, and I wouldn’t get in there long enough to get a decent work out. Also on the downside was carrying gym stuff with me all the time. As a result, I’d get to the gym once or twice a week, and usually one of those was for a yoga class. Not nearly up to my self-expectations.

With my year membership expiring at the end of April, I had a chance to rethink everything. There is another WCC gym, which is much closer to the house I’m in now. It’s about a 5 minute run over there, which should make everything fall in place and still get me to work on time. I can even drop off my gym bag at the house before heading to work. I gave it a try this morning – at the gym by 6:05 and on the 7:05 bus into town. Flawless.

There should be no excuses, just a plan to get back into proper shape. As it is, I haven’t been running enough to be ready for the half marathon at the end of June, but I’ll happily run the 10km portion for now and consider running the half at Taupo. We’ll see how this goes.

The annual Round the Bays fun run was this past Sunday, with over 10000 participants. The course follows the harbour-side roads between Frank Kitts Park and Kilbirnie Park, for a total of 7km.

Results were printed in the newspaper the following morning, based on the real-time clock results. I was listed as taking 34:35, putting me in 717th place. Since then, the online results have been posted, which takes the time difference between crossing the start line and crossing the finish line. My differential time was 31:35, moving me up to 588th place. I was the 4th fastest Greg and the fastest Bodnar¹. I’m satisfied with that.

¹ Of the 6 registered Bodnars, 2 didn’t show and 3 were walking. I guess this is a hollow victory…

It’s been a while since I’ve been doing regular morning running, but it’s something that I really want to get back into. I got out of the house this morning at 5:38 and got back at 6:23. I didn’t have a route planned, so I just wandered over the hill to the waterfront and around into the city. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to come back through Newtown, which meant that I was coming back through the tunnel, lungs full of car exhaust. Next time, I’ll have to plan better. This walking track should be a good place to start.

Over the weekend, I completed the Massage & Sports Therapy class I had begun in September. It’s a very interesting class, and I learned a lot more than I had anticipated. At least a few things are worth noting:

• Even though it listed Stages 2 and 3 as prerequisites, one really should have a firmer knowledge of anatomy and physiology.
• Stretching is wonderful. A good reference is Kit Laughlin’s Stretching & Flexibility
• Release of fascial tissue can do a lot more than expected.¹
• Economy of both time and energy is key to practicing sports massage. It’s not easy to see everything and do everything, especially in 15 minutes.

I have an assignment yet to complete for the class, with 2 months until the deadline. It includes both theory and practical components, so I’ll be strapping someone to a massage table for a few hours yet. Further down the line, I have Stages 4 and 5 to complete, which will take me up to the Christmas break, with practical assignments going into the new year. Maybe I should ask Santa for a massage table for Christmas…

¹ Because of an old spinal injury, the fascial release that was done to me left me in a large amount of pain. It seems as if I don’t have the core stability to hold my back in place without the assistance of the fascia. I was almost unable to do my assessment because I was barely able to stand without a lot of discomfort. I stayed out of my volleyball game yesterday, but I’ll be playing tonight.

I’ve been waiting nearly half a year to take the sports massage course offered by the New Zealand College of Massage. This past weekend was the first of two weekends that make up the course. I can’t say that I came out feeling rejuvenated or relaxed, but I did develop a new sense of excitement for massage, and a new sense of respect. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Instead of learning out to get into muscles that are rock hard and make them relax, we learned to realise that relaxation isn’t a necessary goal. Through that, we learned to think about the effects of our actions and what we want to achieve.

The next weekend is nearly a month away. There is a lot of reading to get done in between now and then, and an opportunity to put this to practices. Any volunteers probably know how to get in touch with me already…

Yesterday was the running of the Harbour City Marathon [1]. Having done next to zero proper training, it comes as no surprise that my placing was poor. I was over 20 minutes slower than in Taupo.

I think I learned a lot yesterday:

• It’s entirely possible to run a half-marathon with next to no training.

• It’s still not a good idea.

The next running of the Levene Half Marathon at Taupo is in less than two months. I’m taking a short break from running, and if training doesn’t go phenomenally well over the next month, I’m not even going to enter. While it might sound a bit defeatist, it’s likely because I was a bit defeated. Despite that, I’m actually in a decent place to pick up a proper training schedule again, and I’m quite hoping that everything goes well.

¹ Including half-marathon and 10km run/walk.

I stopped off at a Shoe Clinic store over the weekend to replace my ailing running shoes. Conveniently placed in the bag was an entry form for the Harbour Capital Marathon.

I’m looking forward to this race. I’ve run over most of the area already, which passes by my house around the 5km mark, and it looks as if there will be harbour views over the entire course. Most importantly, there’s a decent amount of time between now and June 25th to build up my training safely.

Looking at the map, I think my run this morning was on the order of 13–14km. It’s hard to tell with the windy roads, and the map scaling makes it hard to measure out. Luckily, wind wasn’t much of an issue and the little bit of rain could have been much worse.

Afterwards, I went down to the Kilbirnie Recreation Centre to try to get a feel for skating on an incredibly smooth surface. I felt surprisingly cramped by the size of the rink, and I now realise that I’m going to have to learn how to skate all over again if I’m going to play inline hockey. Some turns were okay, but some were awkward, and high speed turnarounds are right out. It was nice to have a hockey stick in my hand, though. Shooting on net was trickier than I remember¹. All told, it was a workout on its own. I was sweating over 45 minutes of play-testing. I had to head off to volleyball, though. I was filling in on a team and didn’t want to be late.

I walked into the gym wondering if I’d recognise anyone from the other places that I’ve played volleyball in New Zealand. It wasn’t the case this time, but it didn’t take long before I started to get to know some of the other players. The game is very social, after all, and this one more than most. Teams of 4 play on a full court, and everyone is an eligible hitter. The game is fast, and you really have to watch your corners. I’m still trying to figure out how to cover spikes effectively. The block goes up, but there’s a lot of space on either side. Good spikers have a field day. Played a first game, and then stayed around to fill in for a second, which turned out to be even faster. By the end, I was empty. I was starting to get lazy and I was dropping blocks all over the place, which doesn’t do anyone any good. It was time to go home and make up for the light lunch that I’d had.

I’m going to hurt tomorrow. That’s a promise. I can’t go from slacking off for most of the week to fully on without side effects. Of course, this just means that I’ll have to pull up on the rest of my week for that balance. It’ll be good for me. All this slack has translated into extra weight and a bit of lethargy. I’ve had enough of that.

¹ The last time I’d played hockey, I was still in high school. That’s probably about 14 years ago.

I decided to head out for a bit of a run this morning, despite the drizzly weather. I decided to head south from the house, more or less on a whim. I hadn’t gotten for than 100 metres when I heard the arhythmic footsteps of many people behind me. I was still walking at this point, allowing the muscles to warm up to the motion, and the joggers quickly caught up and overtook me. Around that time, I decided to pick up my pace to a light jog, which put me about in pace with the group. Again thinking of a decent warm-up, I kept the light pace. I noticed that most of the joggers were dressed similarly, in team colours. They were all members of the Wellington Marathon Clinic, and nearing the end of their 1h40 run. I talked with them a while and asked a few questions about upcoming events. They suggested following them to the finish and they could give me a newsletter with all the information included within.

They meet Sunday mornings, and various groups will head out, organised by pace and distance. This sounds more or less perfect, but for one thing: Sunday afternoon is a volleyball game. I’ll have to teach my legs all over again to get over any thoughts of laziness.