Working Away

Over the last six weeks I have been working away from home. Whilst my summer job is very active (walking around the hills of northern England and Scotland doing butterfly surveys), hill-walking is not an all round activity and I have found my old injuries of lower back pain and dodgy knee starting to twinge again.  I am living with my co-workers and whilst we eat healthily (mostly vegetarian), I have found my portion size is creeping up and chocolatey snacks appearing back in my diet. I wasn't overly worried about this (as I'm burning all the calories, right?), but when I came home this weekend and got on the scales I found I have lost ZERO weight over the last month, despite an average of 6 hours fat burning activity per day.  So I have resolved to decline second helpings at the evening meals, and cut out the sugary snacks again. I really should be making the most of this summer project and getting fitter and losing weight while being paid for it!!

Last night I paid my penance. In the morning I did the 5km local Park Run, and took nearly a minute off my time to get a personal best. It was really humid and I struggled around some of the course, but for a few minutes I really found my pace and felt really good while running - hopefully I'll get better and more of my runs will be in that feel good zone!

In the evening, I went to the gym and did a modified W4 D5 interval weight training session.  I did seven exercises interspersed with spurts of all out cardio with as little rest in between as I could bear (normally just enough to move on to the next machine). Then I repeated the whole lot again, and tried to increase the cardio performance. Here are my workout and results (x2):

15 push ups + 1 minute row (213m + 216m)
15 sit ups + 1 minute bike (0.52km + 0.56km)
15 fit ball squats + 1 minute cross-trainer (20 'moves' x 2)

15 deadlift and raise + 1 minute step (0.48km + 0.50km)
1 minute plank + 1 minute row (235m + 227m)
15 band pulls + 1 minute bike (0.55km + 0.55km)
15 leg raises + 1 minute run (3 minutes on last round) (0.11km + 0.35km)