Week 9, where's the pause button ?

I have been doing a lot of thinking this past week, just about what happens at the end of my 12WBT. Will I fall back into bad habits, make wrong choices and give into peer pressure? Cant I just hit the pause button on life, I really like the person I am at the moment. Focused, fit and feeling good. Unfortunately in years gone by when I'm on a "fitness high" so to speak thats when the little man on my shoulder says "Go on mate, things are going well, rip into a few beers" then a few beers leads to a thousand beers and I wake up the next day hungover as hell craving crap food and I spend the day on the lounge pigging out on chocolate, Crust pizza and everything else I have been leaving out of my mouth for the last 12 weeks and the vicious cycle begins.


This is what Im hoping for once my 12WBT is over, and I'm putting it on my blog so that I can try and be true to myself. I will tone the training down (Chappy tells me every week I'm over training and he is dead right) but still do at least 1 session a day, 6 days a week. Maybe even try and do a Super Saturday Fun Session once a month just to keep things interesting. Also try and train a little more sport specific. By that I mean, work more closely with the boys at Shift60 and put together a training program that will help me improve my power, stability and stroke on the SUP. Reason being is my long term goal is to get back to Hawaii in 2012 for the Molokai 2 Oahu paddle race. I'm also hoping to continue with my Hexey diet. The team behind the Hexey are just fabulous,they really know their stuff especially when it comes to nutrition for athletic types. Also the convenience of being able to focus much more time on training and less in the kitchen while knowing I am still getting the right healthy fuel for my body just makes life so much easier. As for my old partying lifestyle, I think its time I grew up a little and used some self control. Unless there is a real reason to celebrate I think from now on I'm going to do my best to be booze free. Believe it or not but something this past 9 weeks has taught me is "you can still have a good time without a gut full of grog".


This weeks weigh in was a big surprise for me when I saw I had dropped 1.5 kilos. I totally expected the scales to go up. Not quite sure wether to be happy or sad? I have a fair idea why this might be. Normal weigh in day is Wednesday morning and Tuesday nights I do swimming training where I don't think I sweat a lot. This week I forgot and didn't weigh in till Thursday morning and Wednesday night I did one of the hardest Shift60 Full Throttle classes ever. It was about 30 degrees in the shade and Nicholas was flogging me after my little photo stunt in the last blog post. I have never sweat like that in my life and I reckon I lost 3 kilos in fluid. I did try and replace as much as I could but there is only so much you can drink. Either way a loss is a loss and I'm happy, although I'm weighing in at 67.1 kilos and I don't think I wanna lose anymore.


As most of you know I work as a recycle loader in the mornings through the week. I have my own set daily run which covers the coast from Dover Heights to Bronte beach through out the week. I work with a great couple of blokes and we love the early starts and physicalness of the job. Every now and then something random happens. See below:

Another random thing I saw this week was a tree house, not just any tree house, this thing was proper. It was high up and hard to get to, just how I liked them as a kid but unfortunately it got me thinking again. Most kids these days aren't allowed to build tree houses, most kids aren't allowed to do a lot of things that are active and usually its through fear of them getting hurt. Have you seen those new age trampolines? They look like space ships and you couldn't hurt yourself on them if you tried. Whats wrong with kids hurting themselves? Sure I don't wanna see anyone get seriously hurt but heck I used to hurt myself all the time as a kid, hurting yourself is a sure fire way to learn the difference between right and wrong. If we wrap kids up in cotton wool and don't let them have any fun then what will they know when they are older? They'll think there will always be a safety net there to catch them and sometimes there isn't.

Anyways, enough of my rambling, this weeks Super Saturday Fun Session just happened to be on a Friday (due to work all weekend for me) but it definitely was a lot of FUN. I was invited by the Red Kite team to be a part of their inaugural Sailing Regatta to raise money to help kids with cancer. Along with super cool Australian actor Les Hill from hit channel 10 show Terra Nova and Australian TV personality, host of much loved Channel 7 Deal or No Deal, Andrew O'Keefe plus the crew from Everjoy Consulting we raced 11 other teams around the Sydney Harbour on Sailing boats. The weather was amazing and the day a massive success with lots of money raised. I had so much fun just hanging out and meeting new people while enjoying all the views our beautiful harbour has on offer.

Sydney Harbour

Holy Cow was the winner on the day. Moooooo !

Mosman Sailing club

Our crew

Not a bad view

Di from Red Kite

On Saturday afternoon after doing a 9 hour lifeguard shift at Bronte beach I decided to do an 800m time trial in the swimming pool. I just wanted to see where I'm at with achieving my goal of breaking 11minutes at the end of my 12WBT. Unfortunately I was left very disappointed. My best time ever for 800 meters freestyle is 11:15 and on Saturday I swam 12:48. I was shattered, If that was the lifeguard test I would have nearly failed. Feeling gutted I went home a sulked about it but after speaking to few friends that know how much I've been training they put It down to serious fatigue and said to make sure I have had a couple of days rest before trying it again. I am not going to let it break me and am determined to smash that 12:48 time next swim. I still believe my goal is achievable and will try even harder next time.


I would like to apologise for this weeks blog. I had been trying to put it together through out the week but towards the end I just got so snowed under with work and training that I really didn't get a chance to do it properly. Its now Sunday night at 8pm, I have just finished a 9 hour shift on Bondi and I'm buggered. We weren't overly busy with rescues but the sun was shining and there was plenty of people to watch over all day and that really takes it out of you.


I hope everyone had an awesome weekend.


Be the best you can be :)


Reidy