Over Memorial Day I ran my very first Bolder Boulder.  In fact it was my very first race of any kind and the first time I’ve ever run 6.2 miles in my life.  I’ve never been much of a runner and while leading up to the race I did do some running to train for it I mostly did cycling for my cardio.

The race was a blast and I was really pleased with how I did.  I had 2 goals for the race, first to finish running the entire way and second to finish under 1 hour.  I hit my first goal just fine with one exception (that hurt my second goal).  At about mile 3 nature called and I had to stop for a bathroom break.  This cost me just over 2 minutes which pushed my time to 1:01:35 – just over an hour.  If only nature hadn’t made me stop I would have hit both of my goals.

I was also rather pleased that, other than my first mile, I got faster every mile of the race (when you take the bathroom stop out of the mix).  My fastest mile was 8:47 and my slowest was a 9:51, not too bad for my first race.  Not sure what I’ll do next but as I did really enjoy it I hope to find another race to do this year.

A few friends asked me about my curry recipe and as it’s rather simple I decided to write it out last time I made it.  So here you go, my easy chicken curry recipe.  Makes about 6 servings and takes about 45 minutes.  You can easily substitute various vegetables below and use shrimp instead of chicken.

Ingredients

• Sweet Potato
• Mushrooms
• 1 Onion
• 1 Green Pepper
• Spinach
• 3-4 lbs Chicken breast
• 2 cans light coconut milk
• 1 oz jar red curry paste
• 3 TBSP peanut oil

Directions

• Heat your wok (or large pot) to medium-high and coat with peanut oil
• Add sweet potato and sauté for about 5 minutes stirring often
• Add the bell pepper, onion and chicken and liberal amounts of salt (I don’t use chicken broth so it’ll be pretty bland) – sauté for 10 minutes stirring often
• Add the mushrooms, sauté for 5 minutes
• Add 2 cans light coconut milk and 4 oz (small jar) curry paste (or less depending on taste).  Simmer for 10 minutes or so over medium-high heat, stirring in the curry paste.  Add liberal amounts of salt to taste.
  (If the chicken isn’t fully cooked don’t worry, it will finish while simmering.)
• Add raw spinach right at the end and simmer another 5 minutes
• Serve over rice, quinoa or some other grain

I’ve been hesitant to write this post for quite a while as it feels rather self-serving.  But as I’m ending phase two of my training program and now entering what I’m calling phase three I figured it was time for a little reflection.

Phase 1
If you’ve known me for more than 3 years you know I used to be fat.  Hey, let’s not dance around it, I was fat.  Fortunately for me I’d finally had enough and decided to finally get healthy.  This is what I call phase one of my fitness program or really fitness progression.  I tend to be fairly obsessive with things I care about and fitness has been no difference.  My first goal was to lose weight – and a lot of weight.  I did two very simple things to accomplish this: I ate significantly less and exercised significantly more (that is to say I finally started exercising regularly).  I cut my daily caloric intake to around 1000 calories and added in cardio work, mostly cycling.  I continued on this program for roughly 10 months to reach my first goal. 

I guess it’s time for some numbers huh?  Wow, these are pretty scary: (I’m 5’11” by the way…)

Beginning: 235lbs | 40” Waist | 32% body fat | 32.8 BMI
Ending: 145lbs | 30” Waist | 8% body fat | 20.2 BMI

So in those first 10 months I lost roughly 90lbs total, 10” off my waist, 65lbs of fat (and 22lbs of muscle).  It was that last stat that made me begin phase 2 about 3 months ago.

Phase 2
Ok, so I finally got myself thin and healthy.  After a few years at my new weight and loving it I decided it was time I finally got strong.  I’ve never been anything even resembling athletic in my life so I wondered, how hard could it be?  Could I do it?  Could I actually become strong?  I started going to the gym regularly and doing some weight training.  As I’d never used weights before I really had no idea what to do – until I found P90X that is.  If you’ve never heard of P90X before (you’ve probably seen the infomercials for it) it’s essentially an extreme home fitness system.  You only need a few things: weights (or bands), a pull-up bar, chair, TV/DVD player.  And really that’s it.  It’s a 90 day program that changes it’s routines every 30 days.  You do a workout 6 days a week with rest of the 7th.  I’m now in the last week of the 90 days and it’s been amazing what it’s done for me.  While I’m not done yet (doing a modified P90X for phase 3) I’m really happy with my results so far.

So here’s some new numbers:

Beginning: 155lbs | 31” Waist | 14% body fat | 22lbs fat | 109lbs muscle
Ending: 170lbs | 31” Waist | 9% body fat | 15lbs fat | 126lbs muscle

So that means in 90 days I lost 7lbs of fat but more importantly gained 17lbs of muscle.  On the first day of the program the very first thing you do are standard push-ups.  On day one I did 7 for my first set.  Uh, yeah, 7.  The last time I did that workout I did 40 for my first set.  I now do push-ups in sets of 50.  I could do 2 pull-ups that first day, now do them in sets of 10.

Phase 3
So what’ next for phase 3?  Well in short to get hyper-fit.  My final goal is to be between 170-175lbs at around 5-6% body fat.  That means I have 5lbs of fat left to lose but also 8lbs of muscle to gain.  This week I began my new training program for phase 3 which will be: Weights on Mon/Wed/Fri.  Boot Camp on class Mon/Thurs (very intense).  Spin or Run/Swim on Tues/Thurs.  Bike/Hike/Run on Saturday/Sunday.

I’ll obviously miss some of those workouts each week due to life getting in the way but even if I miss a few I should be getting in plenty of time to hit my goal.  I hope to finish up in the next three months ending on August 24th, my 37th birthday.  Hopefully this will be a pretty good birthday gift to myself.

Final Thoughts
I plan on blogging more regularly about this subject now that I’ve finally published this post.  I hope to write about thoughts on eating, exercising, and my journey through all this.  If you’ve got questions or comments please let me know, they can be very motivating.  And if you’re considering doing something similar to this START NOW.  There is no better day than today to be healthy.

Oh, and now to leave you with a picture that I’m still scared by.  Left is old, Fat Ross.  Middle is thin Ross from about 3 years ago.  Finally on the right is me a few days ago.  Just wait until you see me in 90 more days.

Last week I started work on a web based application to track all my workout data.  One of the things I wanted built into the application were inline videos – examples of the various exercises I would be doing.  As I started looking into the various formats that Android could play I came across an issue – while Android will play a number of formats locally it is much pickier about the formats that it will support for streaming over HTTP.

The most logical format for this would be H.264 – as the proposed standard video codec for the upcoming HTML5 spec it is set to be the new standard for web based video.  I tested a number of encoding tools and while they would all play locally just fine I couldn’t hit upon the right combination of video codec/settings and audio codec/settings.  While H.264 video worked just great using AAC LC audio appeared to be a deal breaker.

Finally I found a sample video that did stream just perfectly, also encoded using AAC LC audio (I found that the audio piece was the tough part).  While the encoders I was using would create AAC LC audio there was always something wrong with the settings.  Until I found 3GP Converter.

This little tool will take in almost any type of video (I am converting from WMV) and convert it to H.264 with AAC LC audio.  I did however have to hit upon the right settings in it as well.  When you run the setup program it first asks you the language then the device type.  I choose English and “MP4 for iPod” as the device.  You are then given a small screen that you can drag and drop your files to be converted onto with a small drop down in the middle to set the final settings.  I found that the only one that worked is “AVC QVGA/384kbps”.  The only trouble is that this setting creates “M4V” files, all you need to do is renamed them to MP4 and you’re good to go.

Embedding your videos using the HTML5 spec is insanely easy (that is if the client browser supports it, many don’t).  All you need to do is:

<video width="320" height="240"id='videoWarm-Up' src="/path/to/video.mp4" controls autobuffer></video>

And that’s all there is to it.  No encoding in Flash, no embedding objects, just that one line of code.  I’ve tested this in the latest Chrome and Safari (and Safari on the iPad) and it works great.  Here’s a quick example video for you (if you use Safair or Chrome that is!):

Yesterday marked 30 days into the 3,000 push-up challenge, where you do at least 100 push-ups each day for 30 days.  That means I’ve now crossed the 3,000 mark, which honestly happened a while back as many days I would get 150+ (my biggest day was 318).  So what’s next?

Well another 3,000 of course, but this time I’m going to add the 1,500 pull-up challenge in as well.  So starting yesterday 50 pull-ups a day.  They can/will be any form you’d like so long as you do 50 of them a day.  That’s going to be tough for me as right now I can only do about 10 a set.

When I started the push-up challenge I was doing 20 per set, now I’m doing at least 40 per set and many times 50.  My maximum in one set so far has been 60.  Later in the week I’ll do the Men’s Health push-up challenge: how many can you do in 3 minutes.  You can stop as much as you want but you’ve only got 3 minutes from start to finish.  Last month I did 75.  Wonder how many I’ll do this month…

Today is day 10 of my 3000 push-up challenge.  I’ve had several friends jump on board with me (thanks Frank and Stevie).  And today marks 1000 push-ups since I started the challenge.  When I started I was doing them in sets of 20 and would be pretty beat by the last 2-3.  I’m now doing them in sets of 30 and can get to 40 if I go until I can’t push myself up at all.

So are you playing along at home?  How many can you do at once?  Even if you have to do most of them on your knees get up off your butt and bang out a few right now!