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Exercise Health

Expanding my exercise regime

I heard that one of my friends (Roger Lawrence) had taken up a new challenge in time for Christmas. It didn’t take much for me to decide (being the proactive fellow I am) to join him on his quest to be able to perform 100 pushups by Christmas.

Boys & Sand
Boys & Sand

I invested a few $ in the official app to help me stay on track with the challenge, and so far it has not killed me. I decided to do this to help support Roger (and I found out later, our mutual friend Robin Dickinson), but also to improve one of the 2 things I believe everyone should have: health and fitness. I’ve never been one for feats of strength but know this will benefit me in the future 🙂

Sandringham
Sandringham

Last week I decided to look into completing at least one triathlon (swim, run, cycle) in 2011. Many of you know of my exploits on a bicycle or my penchant for a half-marathon or 2, but nothing about swimming: namely because I have a strong dislike of swimming. In our family, my wife is the swimmer, and I’d be more than happy to do the swimming on behalf of…but it doesn’t work like that! Swimming is my “ISuckAtThis” activity, probably through no fault of its own. I know at school I hated the swimming carnival where they forced everyone to have a go, even when ‘having a go’ included near drownings on a regular scale!

To make the most of the great weather we had on Sunday morning, I took the boys to the beach where they played in the sand and I cranked out 10 laps of the swimming enclosure (approximate 300m or so). I know my form is crap and I had numerous stops (no-one said they were nonstop laps ;-)) but did complete what I set out to achieve. I am not sure how well I will go with the swimming in the future as my breathing sucks and my form is bad, both of which I hope to make better in the future.

It helps that the day started out perfectly – you can see from the pics that the day was simply great, weather-wise. I’ve decided to give swimming a chance; what sport, activity or exercise would you say is your “ISuckAtThis” that you could work on to become better at?

* Edit: I neglected to mention that the idea of the “ISuckAtThis” is not new – I was introduced to it through the Zombiefit Workout of the Day.

2 replies on “Expanding my exercise regime”

Running. Substitute running for swimming (except for the wife part) and that’s my story. I dreaded the annual school fitness tests that had me being lapped by everyone else as we ran around the track.

Ouch. Just thinking about running as an “ISuckAtThis” is making me feel extremely uncomfortable.

That’s a sign, right?

@Matthew Hall
It sure is! So the question for you is: are you wishing to become better at it, at least to slay some of the demons from the past?

Fortunately for me I was OK at running (sprints) so didn’t dread the ‘athletics carnival’ as much as the swimming carnival! At one stage I was actually in the 4 x 100m relay (LittleKnownFact) 🙂

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