3 Month Progress Update: Jan-April 2022

3 Month Progress Update: Still chasing fitness goals not body stats

Fitness Goals over last 3 months:
5k PB ✅
10k PB ✅
4x4x48 ✅
First Adventure Race (Quest Glendalough 59km) ✅
Gym PBs in Bench, Deadlift and a silly ton of pull ups ✅

It’s the time of year where running is added to a lot of people’s training plans to burn fat, burn extra calories. And while, in theory, that can be true, I believe it’s a terrible strategy for two reasons:

If you base your running off body measurements, how do you judge and see progress in every run? After a 10k, it’s not like you can accurately track how much body fat you’ve lost or how measurements have changed etc

And two, over relying on how many calories your smart watch says you’ve burned in a session. They’re wildly inaccurate, over estimating how many you’ve burned. People can over consume to eat back their calories which leads to over eating. Plus, over time, I feel like your body becomes more efficient at running, further widening the gap between calories you’ve burned and calories you’ve think you have burned. Calorie tracking for food is a different conversation.

Overall, it’s a bad strategy to keep yourself motivated and accountable. But if you’re chasing fitness goals, that’s something more tangible where you can see the progress each week. And it makes training that more enjoyable too when you have a reason to work out each time as opposed to going through the motions until you hit a calorie number you think is right.

Also, for full transparency. This InBody was done, like all others, on a Friday morning. After a very busy Thursday. I assume body fat and weight might be higher if it was Monday morning for example. It’s consistent with progress though and as long as the training PBs are going on the right direction, not too much will change…

Even though I haven’t felt restrictive with food, with BBQ season on the way and an increase in mileage towards the 80k Eco needed, it’s probably the leanest I’ll be and I’m more than ok with that and adding more calories in🍻🥃🍺🍗🥓🌭🌮

Progress in next 3 months should be fun. Half Marathon PB, Kerry Cycle and another crack at a sub 20 5k…

#LetsGoGetEmAgain