Weekly Training Blog 1: "You can't eat like a show pony and race like a racehorse"

I felt like my newsletters over the past few months have been a little too self serving in describing my own fitness journey. I tried to use it as a way to get my point across in the newsletter, but I am afraid that they come across as just talking too much about myself and my journey rather than helping people.

Having said that, i do feel like most mistakes in my fitness journey can be a positive note for someone else not to follow that path so here we are with a new weekly blog that I will be attaching to the weekly newsletters.

Hopefully, this lasts and I do have some cool events coming up in 2022 that I feel will make for some interesting topics. Blogging is probably something that went our in 2010, but here we are.

For the next few weeks, this blog will be centred around my 5k PB goal for mid-February, getting into cycling, predicting my future issues with nutrition and an activity that I hinted about at the end of this week’s newsletter that scares me.

In the newsletter this week, I touched on how horrific my diet used to be. As a Personal Trainer, trying to help others, I feel like I was not leading by a good example. Don’t get me wrong, I indulged over Christmas. Coffee was not a coffee without Baileys in it. I had chocolate, I drank beer. And I enjoyed my few days at home. But I also trained during it as well. Not because I felt like I had to burn the excess calories. But because I enjoyed my routine I was in. Trust me, I never thought I would be one to do a casual 13k on Stephens Day, but here we are.

On Christmas Eve I did an InBody and was delighted with the results, for complete vanity reasons, of course. It was the first time I was ever under 10% body fat, a goal for the year!

I kept my training up and, while I did eat more (or felt I ate more), I actually pretty much stuck the three meals a day. It didn’t really feel like a Christmas break only because not much was open (and A LOT of my friends were isolating!) So training it was!

I borrowed a bike and took up cycling too, with the aim to do Quest Glendalough in April! I also foolishly tried to cycle to work on Saturday to get extra time on the bike. I made it through the hail, low visibility, the cold, puddles etc to finally get to Clane, lit up streets, no rain and, right at the last turn to the gym, bounce the front tyre off a pothole and get a puncture! I think I’ll stick to the Assault bike indoors for a little longer… I’ll probably try to cycle to work again next Saturday!

Cycling is part of my journey towards Quest but it’s also included in my 5k running plan. With ABC Gym Clane, I have signed up to the Streets of Clane 5k in February. My current 5k PB time is 21:55, so I am hoping, in a true race scenario, to knock a bit of time off that. Working towards my 5k dream goal of getting under 20 minutes.

But back to my original goal for you to learn from my mistakes. On paper, my InBody score may look great. Then again, my body fat percentage may be too lower for the activities I want to do. After all, calories, while demonised, are really just a source of energy!

So, with the Christmas period done, and having not done a 50k as I did on Christmas week when I did an InBody above, I did another InBody on Friday morning. And I expected that body fat percentage to go up. I was wrong…

I can’t explain what happened here to be completely honest with you. I feel like my performances are improving, that I am getting closer to my fitness goals. But I didn’t expect another drop in body fat percentage. And I am not so sure it’s a good thing. I’m happy the muscle went up, and it shows how 0.2kg on the scales can mean a lot more. But there’s a quote we got from Conor Jamieson on the Any Given Runday Podcast that stuck out to me after I read this sheet: "You can't eat like a show pony and race like a racehorse".

I realise the huge irony in a post being about eating more in a newsletter about Operation Transformation, but maybe my diet isn’t as good as I think it is. I feel like I am in a good routine with eating, training and not feeling hungry during the day. But it is something that I will be monitoring on this blog in the weeks and months ahead as well as my training in general!

And I am definitely having a few beers watching my 49ers tonight… wait, I ended the newsletter with this…

Ah, it’s a big game, it stays!

Seán