No holiday weight-gain - shocking! :-)

Well, despite shoveling as much yummy French cheese, croissants, wine etc down my pie-hole... followed by a weekend of sheer excess (we got through boxes of wine!), I haven't really gained any weight! In fact, when I left for warmer climes, my weight had crept back over 11 stone - bahh.

Today I thought I'd bite the bullet and hop on the scary scales and was pleasantly surprised to see myself back under (albeit just ever so slightly ;-) ) 154lbs!

however, that being said, I'm not going to celebrate too much as

a) I've found in the past that holiday weight has a habit of sneaking on the week after the week after a holiday! Kinda like DOMS (Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness) which is basically that bizarre thing that happens when you feel great the next day after running/weight training, but later on, or the next day you find you hurt like hell! I've done road races where I've felt superb the day after... but then hobbling around like an invalid the next - it's most odd!

and b) it's a little depressing to think that if I'd not over-indulged, I might be a hell of a lot lighter than I am today, boo

Whatever. With b) being unchangeable and a) unknown, I think I'll embark on some damage limitation/future fat loss exercises and get back into the swing of things :-)

I have actually started already, hurrah!

Wednesday

On Wednesday, my first day back at work, I did my Upper Body Workout #2 which produced a plethora of different emotions! I felt mostly elated throughout, and thrilled to have done it afterwards... however, towards the end I was so tired I felt a bit weepy from the exertion! It wasn't that it was unbearably tough, it was just that it was bloody hard work and I've not worked my muscles like that for ages! I also added a couple of other exercises to it to see how they felt:

Instead of my usual standing Biceps Curls I have swapped to Dumbbell Concentration Curls which are a lot harder because they isolate the biceps - which makes them more effective :-) I found that I was using too much of my body to help with the standing normal biceps curls so I think I'm going to stick to these! I can still do them with 9kg dumbbells but only 3 sets of 8 reps instead of 10

I also tried out another shoulder move, the Dumbbell Shoulder Front Raise - though not exactly like this clip as I don't feel comfortable raising my arms higher than shoulder height - it causes my back to arch and means I'm swinging with the motion a bit - don't want to risk hurting my back.

This may be incorrect, and I'm fully aware that my knowledge of all things weight-training related is sparse at best... but I'm muddling through I reckon, and learning every step of the way :-)


Thursday

Yesterday my shoulders ached, as did my biceps - job done! :-D

I did my Lower Body Workout #2 at lunch time and was really chuffed by the fact that I was able to do it! I started off feeling quite tired and worried that I'd only be able to do 2 sets (I do all the exercises as a superset) but was pleasantly surprised at my surplus energy. Also at the fact that I didn't drop the weights! I'm still using 12.5kg dumbbells and have no desire to move up right now tbh. When I first started using them they would literally drop out of my hands by half way through the 2nd set, and during the 3rd. Any exercises that required me to hold them for any time - like forward and rear lunges where I do 10 reps per leg instead of in total - i.e. 20 reps really - my grip would start failing and they'd slide from my grasp. Yesterday I was fine right up until the last set of rear lunges where at about 8/9 they were starting to slide.

I'm sure this'll help my climbing too as good grip is vital!

I didn't really feel much yesterday until I was legging it up the escalator at Oxford St (went to meet Joe at my company's store - going to buy some rather lush brown leather sofas, can't wait!!) and realised that my bum was quite sore!!

Today I am very achy, and I love it, that familiar feeling is back again - huzzah!

------------------------------

I've decided that I need to split out my workout further. I'm going to start concentrating on just one area, or a smaller groups of muscles as I just don't have the time to do all my exercises in one or two hits!!

I haven't worked out what I want to do just yet so will continue as I have been doing until I work it out properly.

-----------------------------

a couple of brief updates:

France - Joe

I haven't got a pic of Joe finishing the etape as it's on his camera which he left in his crossbar bag and got sticky from race gels - smart!

Here's a pic of him, complete with medal, at 3am (that same night!!) with our 'token girl' (i.e. an actual rider - not just one of us WAGs!! ;-) ). This woman is a legend, look at her, there's nothing to her! But she took on the mountain and won, beating *so* many other men in the process.

To put it into perspective - out of the 8500 riders who started the race, 7162 finished and out of that, the women numbered a mere 234!!

She's ace, made of steel, and a thoroughly lovely lady to boot :-)


France - Training

As promised, here's a picture of my 'gym', haha. The first night our room was amazing, all stone with the huuuuge bed raised up in the middle of the room and a walk-in floor-level shower... though I swear the hallway was haunted as the light kept turning itself on and off!!

We only had that room for one night though, boo, so ended up in a smaller one which was nevertheless quite adequate for everything but skipping!! I managed to get some training in though, it's amazing how much you can do with very little.

Resistance bands are great as they're super lightweight but can provide some real, well, resistance!

This is the door tube I bought. The strength was pretty weak so I threaded a medium strength band twice through the loops to give some more to tug on - it was really very effective! The door tube idea is very simple, and probably not very good for the other side of the door, but it does mean you can position it where you like on the door which is very handy :-)

The ball and light-grey band I got as part of this Everlast Pilates Starter Kit. The ball was a little small for me, I'm sure it was only 55cm which isn't great as I'm 5'8"! Still, it was okay to travel with as was very light and the kit was quite good value for money. The grey band that came with it that is described as a 'heavy duty band' is quite weak on the resistance but that was okay as it meant I could do my more subtle shoulder internal and external rotations :-)

Not featured in this picture is a grey band by Manuka - nice company, I like their stuff, can't seem to find the band on the John Lewis website but here's the rest of the range. The band is super strong, was very impressed, did some biceps curls just stood on the end of it, was really taxing! I also bought the Manuka Eco Yoga Grip Towel which feels great to lie on :-)


Secret Garden Party

Finally, well, SGP was messy, what can I say ;-) I enjoyed the festival loads, but the company more! We were pitched round a huge gazebo that was a perfect place to do make-up, hair, coffee and wine :-)

One criticism I would have is the number of people this year! There were *so* many more than last year, the vibe was different, not as intimate

And Jarvis Cocker was shit! What a let-down >:-(

Other than that, the rest was fab, will have to post some more pics at some point but here's me in my full Babylonian get-up :-D

I would like to point out that my waist is actually smaller than this, no, really, haha. The corset thing is something Joe's Mum picked up for me from a charity shop and is a size 12-14... although that's perfect for my lower half, the thing wasn't intended for that so I had to keep hoisting it up as I couldn't tighten it enough at the back!

Other than that, I loved it, and the weekend :-)

One last thing - Liquid Egg Whites

I discovered yesterday that Sainsburys Market in Victoria have started selling Two Chicks liquid egg whites - hurrah! I knew they sold them in Waitrose and other sainsburys but hadn't found any nearby to me. Very chuffed with my discovery, bought 2 cartons, one's gone in the freezer, the other straight in the fridge.

I've been wanting to use liquid egg whites for ages but my conscience prevented me from buying the normal kind as I can't stand the thought of those poor birds being locked up in a caged hell like that. I'm more than happy to spend a little more for happier egg whites :-)

besides, I wouldn't dream of buying anything other than free range eggs for normal everyday use, so why would I drop my standards for the sake of my weight-loss plan.

I'm going to experiment over the weekend, shall be pinching some ideas off people - watch out!! ;-)

Une petit inscription

I don't speak French, which I'm finding to be such a handicap here.

My headteacher agreed to swap GCSE French for Drama, on the proviso that stopped playing truant. My linguistics have suffered because of that choice. Incidentally it didn't stop me bunking off either. God I was a nightmare teen!

So here I am, in sunny France, Orange to be precise. As I type this, my lovely boyfriend is riding up mountains with thousands of sweaty, smelly, lycra-clad cyclists!

Joe woke up at 04:15 this morning, got his gear on and headed down to the special early breakfast that our hotel was putting on for 'l'Etapers'. There are quite a few guys in our group, a mixture of IT geeks and Financial professionals - cycling is *not* a cheap sport, although I do believe that boys do bow to peer pressure a little too much when it comes to bikes and their components! Joe trained for most of l'etape du tour on my 5 year old Trek 1000, they don't even make that model anymore! It's only a double, has an aluminium frame, and no fancy parts at all - in case you're wondering, it *is* a boy's bike, as I'm quite tall I didn't see the point in buying a woman specific bike, I wouldn't make that choice again though because women are built differently to men... So a guy with my length legs would generally have a longer body and arms, and I never felt entirely comfortable on that bike. Mind you, I never learnt to ride properly as a child so it was rather a baptism of fire and I should have opted for a mountain bike or hybrid at most... but then I so wanted to do triathlon!

Anyway, I'm going off track, back to Joe. So yes, he trained for months on my aluminium framed, £500 entry level road bike and it was fine! He did replace the back cassette with a compact rather than suffer the ignominy of 'down-sizing' to a triple, but that was it in terms of modifications. As soon as he got his cycle to work voucher he went and bought a Wilder, all carbon-fibre and expensive components. I don't know exactly how much it cost but it was more than £1,500!! And for what, one mammoth race and then a life of loneliness in our shed... Actually, scratch that. Unless we had an armour-plated shed there is no way his bike will be stored anywhere other than the bloody hallway or breakfast room, grr! *My* mountain bike is chained outside, *my* road bike is in the shed along with my son's two MTBs, pah! ;-)

I'm thinking "we could have had a really super swish holiday somewhere interesting" but now my beloved has spent thousands on this whole race experience (bike, cycle clothes, training weekends away, including a recce to Mont Ventoux a little while ago, transport, accommodation....etc...!)

Ahh well, it could be worse, he could be one of those guys who spends his weekends or evenings after work in the pub or on the sofa, beer in hand... As it is, his thighs look awesome! ;-)

The guys were discussing race fuel tactics over dinner and Dan revealed his secret weapon for ventoux (which is the very last and hardest mountain, we can see it from Orange, it looks ominous to say the least!!), some tablets that contain a lots of interesting unpronounceable ingredients, plus the obligatory Ginkgo Biloba, Guarana and caffeine. The interest was hilarious, it was like he took on the role of drug-dealer right then and there at the dinner table!!

Anyway, hilariously, the pills are nothing more sinister than Maximuscle's 'Viper Extreme'! So the good thing about that is that the ingredients are gonna be quality and non-illegal!!!

Apparently Dan and his colleagues tried them out at work and felt the effects on a massive scale, there was *no* 'afternoon lull' haha!

I've looked for some info on Viper Extreme caps because I didn't know they existed! Joe's been using the Viper powder during the latter stages of his training. He says it doesn't taste too bad and is easy on the stomach, but I don't personally like it very much. I think it's its viscosity that I don't like, it sounds weird but it's 'thicker' than sports drinks I'm used to, and I know that's because it's not just a carbohydrate sports drink, it's got loads of good stuff in it to help with performance and recovery, but I'm used to Lucozade and Isostar etc, all tasty and very thin!

Anyway, found this bit of blurb about the pills:

"Maximuscle’s Viper Extreme capsules have a unique high potency formula containing; glucuronolactone, Ginkgo-Biloba and caffeine, which some experts believe improves concentration, alertness and reaction times. It also contains L-Tyrosine, a key excitatory brain amino acid."

It'll be interesting to hear if the lads (and our one token woman rider, that girl is seriously impressive and has definitely added some balance to our testosterone-fuelled bunch of bikey blokes!) noticed any difference after taking them, it'll be the perfect test conditions! The other partners (or the WAGs as we've decided we are!) have joked that we might raid Dan's 'stash' and turn up in the finishing village completely buzzing and annoyingly chatty and full of energy! ;-)

Anyhoo, that's enough bike talk. So in terms of me and my own training and diet - well, I haven't done as much as I'd like but hey, I'm on holiday! We got here on Friday night, so no exercise was going to have been able to take place that day. That night we went out for a nice meal and I ended up staying out drinking with a friend who I haven't seen for months so had *so* much to catch up on and some air to clear after falling out a while ago. That took until about 5am! Eeek!

Saturday morning didn't really happen, my friend and I managed to surface in the afternoon and resolved to walk around and find the public pool that we'd been assured existed at the top of a hill over looking this amazing ancient amphitheatre. We didn't find the pool but we found a nice café and sat there for many hours talking. Very nice and chilled :-) two coffees, two half pints of lager and one goat's cheese salad later, we made our way back. I'd been careful with the suntan lotion, I bought Boots Soltan 'Once' which did really last for hours. Unfortunately, I didn't have a hat so I've burnt the top of my head a bit - ouch!

Most of the rest of our group turned up that night so we went out - steak again, they know how to cook it here ;-) yesterday I had monkfish, very tasty :-)

I haven't eaten too badly, yesterday everyone had pizzas for lunch but I had omelette and salad. We've got a fridge in our room so my maxi-milk is nice and cold, I could have brought the chocolate flavour, damn!! Going to take one for Joe for after the race. I have definitely been drinking more than usual, too much vin rouge, blanc, rosé... Oh dear :-D

I have been taking my appesat before dinners though which has helped to prevent my inhaling every morsel in sight... I'm dreadful on holiday usually, it's like my routine gets thrown out the window so therefore my will-power goes along with it! Heh

So, yesterday I decided it was high time to exercise. I've taken a picture of my 'gym' which I'll have to upload once I'm back in the UK as I'm typing this all on my little blackberry at present!

Shit, just seen the time, I have to go now as we'll be driving to the finishing village shortly and I haven't even showered yet!

But very quickly, yesterday I managed to do a 3 supersets of press-ups, bench dips, biceps curl, pull-down, pull-in, pull-out (all my rotator cuff work basically) and seated rows. I've brought a stability ball with me, along with a 'door gym' that has a resistance tube and hooks over and under the door. The resistance is too week so I doubled a band through it and it's worked a treat!

Will go into more detail when I have some time and a computer with internet connection!!

TJx

P.S. Yesterday I also went for a 30 min run which nearly killed me!! I thought that running in the late afternoon would be okay but it was nearly 30 degrees and I'd no idea the humidity would get to me quite so much!! The water in my bottle went from cold to bath-water temperature in about 10 mins!! It was the oddest feeling, I had energy in my legs but felt like I was running in someone else's body, someone a lot taller and heavier than me!! I had to lie down afterwards, after only 30 minutes, pathetic!!

P.P.S just heard from Joe, he's at Bedoin already!! Now it's Ventoux, last mountain and he said he feels really good, so exciting, can't wait to see him afterwards. Gonna go now :-)