I’ve been very happy with my training results so far, and I owe mucho kudos to Zach, my personal trainer who built a plan tailored to fit my goals for this spring and summer. He just started his own blog, so I thought I’d share!
There are about 6 months of training and fundraising left. There’s no turning back, no time to be fickle about the proper training plan or how to eat.
With this in mind, I’ve decided to begin working with a personal trainer who is also a cyclist. I found mine through STLBiking.com. All I had to do is ask for coaching recommendations on the forum and the suggestions started flying in. Although we haven’t met yet, I’m excited to be working with a trainer who knows a lot about bike racing, endurance over 6-12 hours on a bike, and strength training. We’ll have our first session Sunday morning!
My main issue with training and training nutrition is that there is so much information out there, so many conflicting messages from ‘experts’ that I tend to flounder back and forth randomly. What I really need is ONE human being to command me and send me on a positive path.
I have a few goals, the first of which is to lose about 15 lbs before April. There are about 15 weeks until then, so it’s entirely doable and I certainly have that much available for the losing. While I may not be able to increase my strength, I can probably maintain it with circuit training, but I’ll be so much lighter that I will *feel* stronger.
I would also like to uncover the secrets to eating when riding A LOT. I worry a lot about overeating when I’m putting 200-250 miles on the bike per week. I want to make sure that I maintain my body composition through racing season and into the cross country ride. I’m sure it’s not rocket science, but it’s certainly more complicated than calories in and calories out. In the last week I’ve decided to switch to getting most of my carbohydrates (about 55% of my total macronutrients) from fruits and vegetables and some whole grains. I’m also cutting back on wheat because of its infammatory effect and eating more rice. I just learned I may be able to get fish at cost, which means more healthy oily fish in my diet. We dined on Arctic Char, steamed broccoli and scrambled eggs last night.
Lastly, a report on fundraising progress. I’m actually approaching $1000, my first benchmark! I’ve had some incredibly disappointing setbacks. Bake sales are hard to get going when you don’t have connections at local supermarkets. This may not be the case if you live in a smaller community. In cities, people get to be a lot choosier about charities and how they conduct their fundraising. Nonetheless, James helped me think of a fantastic idea that I’m hoping we’ll be able to do in January. The fundraiser is generally called ‘Penny Wars’, but I’d like to think of a better title that indicates it includes all change, not just pennies, and that it’s more fun than competitive. Basically each advisory in my middle school would get a 2 Liter soda bottle with a small slot cut in the top for coins. They will add pennies, nickels, and dimes to increase their total, and can add quarters to other advisories bottles to subtract from that advisory’s total. It’s a game marked by sabotage, but at least it goes toward a wonderful cause! The winning advisory will have the most money after sabotage quarters have been subtracted after two weeks, and I will be providing them with a pizza party. I’m hoping this will be really effective and will generate some positive publicity for what I’m trying to accomplish!
Additionally, my mom is putting together a fantastic quilt that I will be raffling! Tickets will be sold over a four month period and the raffle will take place in May. I’m so excited and thankful for her support… the quilt is just beautiful although it’s not finished yet 🙂
Anyway, that is all for now. Ta ta!
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