April

Personal:
I had a couple of personal goals that I had set myself for the first part of this year and I’m stoked to say that I have achieved both of them in the first 4 Months of the year.

My goals were simple; run an ultra-marathon and become a certified personal trainer.

As always with smashing goals, it is empowering to say that both are now complete and even surpassed as I have run 2 ultras, and am a BCRPA certified personal trainer all before May.

I Have a couple of other goals I’m working towards right now, mostly running related which ill state out in another post, but want to celebrate these achievements before targeting the next ones.

Time to Celebrate!

Running:

Finally got back to some sort of training schedule only to break it with a bender of a trip to the Bahamas, a few lazy days off work and then a fun filled 4 day weekend in Seattle.

Ill pick up again when I get back from Seattle with hopefully a full week of training and then the First 5 peaks race of the year on Saturday the 9^th.  I’m hoping I’m fit enough to really run this one hard and it’ll be a nice change to be running fast again as opposed to running long.

I had also registered for the BMO half marathon this weekend which I was supposed to pace a friend through, and unfortunately my travel plans to Seattle means that I got a $90 Saucony t-shirt and a DNF at the Vancouver ½ marathon.

Boys in the Bahamas

Cross Training:
Even when my running is slacking, I’m always focussing on cross training. It’s a real passion of mine and I want to share a workout I did the other day. It was 20 degrees out and a beautiful sunny Vancouver day. I had the day off work and a lot on the plate for the day so a long ride or run was out of the question.

I was about to head off to the gym, when I was grumbling in my head about how wrong it was to be working out in the gym when it was so nice outside when I had the idea to take my workout outside.

I remembered a children’s playground just through china town and jumped on my bike and rode on down. 20 minutes later and warmed up ready to go I began a circuit using the jungle gym, my body weight and imagination and put together a great little workout that had me working to failure in my muscles why my heart was racing.

I based it mostly around:

Explosive pushups
Elevated pushups
Pushups to failure
Burpees to pull-ups
Wide grip pull-ups on the rings
Chin ups on the monkey bars
Inverted rows
Squat jumps
Box jumps
Vault jumps
Bodyweight dips

Moving quickly through the series of exercises, this workout had me sucking wind in no time. It was just what I needed after a mischievous few days drinking and partying in the Bahamas.

My Gym