Good luck to those on week 1!!

Good luck to all the new joiners on the PCP.. Great to see a few familiar faces joining up!! Good for you..  Can honestly say for 1 months experience, the hardest thing is without doubt signing up, taking those photos and committing to this project....So you're done! I genuinely felt a lot better in less than 10 days and that for me was better than anything.. Ive been impressed at how this program gets you results fairly quickly both in the way I feel and improvement in the workouts which is vital as it provides the confidence and encouragement to press on. At the start of each week I have been daunted by the week aheads plan.. But by the end of the week been pleasantly surprised by thinking "well that wasn't so bad!"

So yet again I look down the list of next weeks workouts.. diet... And  think Oh Shit this is not gonnna be fun! In the good ol' days.. my pre-PCP workout regime involved running on a treadmill and when I was in relatively good nick (relative for me) then I could do around an hours run.. with the assistance of a few towells, decent aircon, one of those poor guys at the  gym whose job it is to mop up the gallons of sweat being produced by whale-like-wannabe-Paula Radcliffes such as myself, a bit of Jay-z "I got 99 problems" blaring away in my ears - yeah we all got fukkin problems Jay.. And a bottle of water from whichever mountain spring is currently in vogue..

So as I smuggly marched past the treadmills armed with my jump rope, pressup bars and a look of "yeah.. That's right.. I know what Im doing.. Despite the fact theres ALL this equipment I bring my own gear to the gym!!" it came back to me just how hard that used to be... for the guilt of my infrequent visits.. I would work really hard and got myself to the point of exhaustion seemingly for no real long term benefit.. Probably coz I was killing myself to the point of hating it and not being able to move for the next 3 days. But however unfit and infrequently you train it still hurts when you do it and you need to mentally deal with it.. So for one hour runs the lowest point would be that 20-30 mins.. Your knackered and not even half way! So you tell yourself just get to half way.. Then its downhill.. or get to 40 mins.. And then youre on the home straight and that'll feel good... And in terms of my PCP.. I feel Im at 23 mins... Its seems a long way to go despite feeling as though Ive been running for ages!!  So Im trying to tell myself... Just get to half way then you can hang on and let the competitive stubborn Al do the rest..  The other thing Ive noticed that's different is that despite being shattered after the workouts Im not getting the same muscle aches and stiffness the following days as I would have after a game of football or a run.. Im giving Patrick credit for this (begrudgingly) as it seems as though he steps the workouts up at enough of pace to test your limits without breaking you (although jury out for 2 months on that) but Im also hoping its something to do with getting fitter as well!!


Anyway speaking of targets.. got one out the way... promise not to think about it anymore.. just need to make sure that I dont let myself slip above that again!