10 Ways To Use Diversity In Fitness Development

What do you do when you get bored of your training and racing?

Motivation can wane through time, so we should be mindful when our enthusiasm and passion loses it fizzle and sizzle. Just as we can 'get our goose cooked', we can experience fatigue, boredom and lethargy. Over-training and over-racing can accelerate our sense of malaise. So, what can do to rejuvenate our interests?

1) Reduce training mileage, and maintain intensity (tempo, track-work, running up slopes).
2) Focus on speed and strength (higher intensity, strength-training).
3) Race in shorter events (add intensity and focus).
4) Participate in fun events (Colour Run, Illumination, mass yoga, Superhero Run).
5) Challenge different muscle groups (do CrossFit, yoga).
6) Take on challenging races that challenge different aspects of your fitness (Spartan Race, aquathlon).
7) Focus on your weakest area (swimming for me).
8) Take on harder terrain (ride on hills, off-road running).
9) Slow down and do fun activities (trekking, mountain-biking, wear a costume in a short run).
10) Do a team charity event to raise funds.

All it takes is to include variety, diversify your energies and interests, and learning new skills - and you will be confident with newly-discovered fitness and prowess!

Splitting the Difference

When was the last time you split the difference?

In negotiations, splitting the difference is about making and giving concessions. You make ‘compromises’, or ‘shared promises’. If you do this for me, I’ll do this for you. When you give me this, I’ll give you…

We are familiar with group meals, where we go Dutch, and pay for our own share. However, splitting the difference may mean sharing the total costs, with you ending up paying a little more. Now, if generosity is the name of your game, then this extra difference that you give expresses your willingness to compromise.

Today, I split my Ironman training workout into two sessions. I did 90 minutes running and swimming in the pool. It comprise 10:10 run/swim bricks, that is I ran for 10 minutes than followed it up with 10 minutes of front crawl swimming. I ran these sets, one after the other, with no rest.

In the evening, I rode almost two hours with 3 sets of 10 minutes on the highest gear. On arriving, I did 20 minutes of strength & conditioning (mainly CrossFit) with the balance-board and kettle-bell. I am pleased with my effort, and await tomorrow’s early group ride. We’ll share the workload pulling the pack, for that is what riders do to return the favour of drafting behind another rider.

Split the difference.

Making the Time to Eat, Pray & Love

No, I did not watch the Julia Roberts’s film. However, the title of the indulgent book gives food for thought, where lifestyle balance is concerned. To eat, to pray and to love: can be done in private, or within a group. It is a mysterious title, isn’t it?

I continue to preach and praise those who commit to the One-Hour Challenge. Give yourself 60 minutes, and measure what you can do, or complete a fairly difficult task. This morning, I wrote up a bunch of invoices, completed writing one training module, and answered priority e-mails, and still had time to read one blog.

Andrew and Hui Koon (via a blog comment) invited me to train with them, however their running locations are far from where I live. I will give it serious consideration though, since I am keen to improve my timing by a wider margin of terror. Yesterday’s time trial rejuvenated my latent interest for cross-country racing. I used to, consistently, post sub-20 minutes for the 4.8K Macritchie route when I was in secondary school and pre-university. I missed those days of unbridled and reckless running.

This afternoon, I rode for an hour focused on being comfortable on my bike. I then did a short CrossFit session: 2 set of each (20 elevated pushups, 10-12 chin-ups, 40 step-ups on bench, one parallel bar walk) with a minute rest between. That was enough to get me winded and fatigued with my upper body all pumped up. That was a full investment of the 90 minutes I gave myself for fear of procrastinating it away.

*****

I headed for the Janet Jackson concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium; it started one hour late, however I was suitably entertained. I had my share of local celebrity watch, even taking a photo for MTV-jay, Utt (who thanked me). More ‘can you take a photo for us?’ followed, which was fine with me since I expected the concert to start late. I was also seated next to the unofficial Janet Jackson fan-club as they waved their banner loyally for their idol, while I was occasionally wrapped in the fabric and their overwhelming enthusiasm. Monday evening traffic and parking was a bitch, thus the big delay for early-birds. Ms Jackson did not disappoint as she sang and danced to all 30 of her chart-hits, albeit as a medley of songs strung seamlessly together. She sang, she danced and the decibels were way too high! I stuffed tissue wads into my ears after I experienced mild ringing. The bass was great, but the mid- and high frequencies were exceedingly stabbing. I missed the dateline for yesterday’s blog, so here I am.

Ambiguous Anagrams and Atmospheric Anomalies

How’s the weather? It rained overnight – sustained over 48 hours – and now we glimpse a punctuated sigh of arid relief. Funny how we like to wish for opposites when we are racing for we - homiothermic creatures - abhor extreme weather conditions. I moderated my warm-blooded, body temperature today with the ambient cool winds, afforded by the torrential downpours. You have got to be creative when you face variations in the external variables: weather, stock markets, delivery schedules, late showings, people’s moods and reactions, and misplaced parcels.

I was examining my EDGE wheel-set when I realized that its logo was an ambigram. An ambigram is word-picture that reads the same upside-down. If you remember well, the word Illuminati was featured in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. 

Here is an ambigram of my name that was designed by a secondary school student.

Sun Microsystems’s logo is an anagram.

An anagram is a word that can be reconstructed from the same number of letter. Thus, Scrabble is a game of figuring out the highest scoring word for the longest word you can propose while sorting through the ambigram-ic possibilities. Twitter is a derivative, in that you squeeze up to 140 characters in each tweet, within your précis writing ability.

It is always good news when a fellow multi-sport athlete is featured in the newspapers. Here is a winner at last week’s Duathlon.

*****

I could not attend this evening’s TriFam club swim training, as I was preparing for a new workshop tomorrow. Instead, I did a short, intense session of unshod intervals (4:55-5:20 minute/K) with a short CrossFit Endurance training session. Since it was my second self-prescribed session, I did three sets of [push-ups, chin-ups and step-ups (off a bench)]; I topped it off with core exercises that included the Plank, and proprioceptive work (close-eyed, balancing). That took the wind out of me, and I then walked back as a cool-down. I wolfed down several slices of pizza and a generous helping of raw-fish salad as my post-training, recovery meal. Early to bed should see me fresh tomorrow with a lower heart rate, and better muscle tone.