Burn baby burn

Distance: 1.8km
Time: 15 mins

This evening I spent an hour in the gym. I was having my own programme set-up for me by a personal trainer. Basically I want to lose a bit of weight (I still have a bit of a spare tyre in spite of the 730 miles I've run in the last 18 months), work on my core (to aid my posture and improve my running), and generally improve my strength & fitness. Oh, and I also need a plan so that as well as a target to aim for, I have a structured approach to gym work. As long as I know what I'm doing, I have an incentive to go along twice a week and work my way through the exercises.

I started with 15 minutes on the dreaded treadmill. But hey, 15 minutes isn't bad. I've spent over 1½ hours on one before. And better than just running a flat 1½ miles or more, the PT set me off on a mixed hill programme where it ups the incline automatically. I was up to 6.0 a couple of times, so It was giving me a harder workout than just normal running. When it returned to 0.0 at the end it felt like i was running downhill.

Then a set of core fitness reps. 15 of each V-sits; Ab crunch & Russian twist.
Then 20 of each. Then as many as poss of each. I found the V-sits really hard on the 2nd go, so swapped them for a Long arm crunch instead. The Ab crunch on the fitness ball was the easiest, and the Russian twist got really hard towards the end. Apparently these do get easier after a couple of weeks! After 25 reps of each, I was feeling the burn.

Now onto the machines for some strength work. Leg press (60kg). Leg curl (30kg). Chest press (20kg). Shoulder press (15kg each arm independently). Ab rocker (30kg?) The PT wrote all my benchmark weights down, so I don't need to remember them. Lastly I tried the "Woodchopper" at 10kg, but ended up doing the reverse version (more like a golfswing) at 7.5kg to start with. I may try alternating them to work on the different bits of the same muscles. Just 12 reps on each machine, upping the reps or the weight when it gets too easy.

Right, that's all the core & strength work done. More cardio to end with. 10 minutes on the Elliptical Trainer. 5 minutes forward at level 4 and 5 minutes backwards at level 5. I think I covered something like 0.6k (again it's on my progress card, so I forget the exact distance). Next time, and every time thereafter, the idea on this exercise is to beat the distance. So each time I try a bit harder and up the pace a bit to get further than the last session.

Now I'm all tooled up with a proper workout plan, I shall be back 2-3 times a week to put the plan into action, followed by a catch up in 2 weeks' time to monitor my progress. And I should see an improvement in my running too. Hey yeah, I can run a marathon. So I can run for 4½ hours nonstop. But if I'm going to keep on running, I think I need to improve my all round fitness and keep my motivation levels up. It's harder to do without a goal at the end, but one day I will run another marathon, and I aim to be fully fit when that happens. You never know I could go for a sub 4-hour one next time...