Holiday Tips!

With the holiday season upon us, we all need a little help staying on top of our workout plans! Here's a few fun tips! The fun folks at  Refinery 29  really know what's up!

Other Blog

I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I do have another blog that has my adventures at work and abroad,so please go ahead and follow that one!! I post way more often and have cool things about Disney World!!! www.adventuresinroaming.blogspot.com

St. Augustine

ROAD TRIP!!! As you know, traveling is just about my favorite thing, other than training! So with not much time left in Florida, I've got five days off and we've gone on a road trip!! As a fitness junkie, it's always a little worrisome to leave my gym and workout habits. BUT, I just got my new best friend in the mail, the TRX training system!! Check it out at TRXtraining.com!! It's amazing!! You can hang it from doors, or a tree, or just about anywhere that's weight bearing, and do a fantastic body weight workout. It's amazing. I just hung it from the hotel room door and had a killer workout! I've also become somewhat of a Nike NTC junkie. It's an iphone app and it has some amazing workouts when you're strapped for time, as I often am. The nice NTC lady even talks you through your workout and you use your own playlists and the more minutes you workout, the more cool rewards you unlock through the app!! Loving it!! So anyway, we are currently in St. Augustine, Florida which is a gorgeous town. I just love it!! It's actually the oldest town in the US, there's gorgeous architecture everywhere. There's even an amazing old fort that they do historical re-enactments at! We got to see them shoot a cannon today!! Anyhow, I'm off for a swim in the hotel pool, gotta get some cardio in! Here's  few pictures of St. Augustine! Tomorrow we head to New Orleans!!! So excited!!

Beat the Heat

So training in the super hot central Florida humidity is interesting. I went for a run last night at 10pm and it was still brutally humid out. Im adapting. Starting to get used to it, but I still prefer to stay in the gym if at all possible!!

A few of the concierge girls have been asking for exercise advice and the other day I instituted hourly cardio blasts in the lounge kitchen! So much fun, every hour we do jumping jacks, pushups, mountain climbers, knee-ups, and burpees. It's a great activity break in our day, I love it!!

I'm currently working fairly hard at gaining muscle mass before I get home. Once im back to really intensive triathlon training, it'll be a nice solid base to start back from. Plus it gives my body a bit of a change, switching it up is fun! I'm looking forward to coming home and training with all my favorite friends from Victoria!!

Norwegian Sky

So I set sail with 3 South African friends from work for fun and adventure aboard the lovely Norwegian Sky cruise ship!! I've never been on a cruise ship so I was pretty excited! I've also never been to the Bahamas so it's a double win! The ship is amazing!! There's so much to do!! Ping pong, a driving range, bingo games, a spa, a gym, comedy shows, shops, a nightclub, and a billion places to eat. My favorite thing has to be the fresh fruit!! It's everywhere all the time! I haven't eaten so much fruit since I left Canada!! I sure do miss fruit!! I've taken a pledge to myself to take the stairs everytime. No elevator, no matter what!! I feel like it helps counteract the amount of food I've consumed!! The on board gym is amazing. Cardio equipment with tv's on them and full length windows that look onto the ocean! I keep getting distracted by the movies on the tv's and staying on the cardio machines for hours! Yesterday we dropped anchor at Great Stirrup Cay, which is Norwegian Cruise Lines private island. It's lovely. We got there nice and early and lounged by the beach, and did a bunch of swimming! Today we went to Nassau, which reminds me a lot of Martinique! I loved it. Tonight is our last night then back to Miami and the drive home!!

Adapting

One of the hardest things about being away from home so often and for so long is that you lose your support network a little bit. I still keep in touch with all my really fabulously motivating friends from back home, but it's different when they're not here to kick my ass into gear all the time. So I've had to adapt and really work on motivating myself. Which isn't as easy as it sounds. I also don't have any built in triathlon trainers out here. So I made due, I use the resources that I have available to me. One of those that I'm loving right now is Triathlete Magazine, they have some really great articles and resources for everything I need to work on. Another thing I have to work around is that I don't have my bike here, so it's all about the stationary bike. The nice thing about that is that I can really work on my cadence, which is really tragic, so I've been working on that, using some workouts from "Workouts in a binder: For indoor cycling" by Dirk Friel and Wes Hobson. I'm loving this resource and find the workouts challenging, but still interesting enough that I don't get bored.

Here's today's workout:
• Warm Up: 17 minutes
5:00 - Pedal easy
12:00 - 3x (1:00 right leg, 1:00 both legs, 1:00 left leg, 1:00 both legs) Pedal mostly with one leg for a minute then pedal evenly, then medal mostly with the other leg for a minute
• Main Set: 30 - 60 minutes
30:00 - 60:00 Zone 2 (a fairly light effort during which you are able to speak comfortably) Do this workout while watching tv. Pedal at 95 rpm until commercial breaks; during the breaks, alternate 30 seconds of isolated leg training per leg
• Cool-down: 5 minutes easy at 90 rpm

I did this today and LOVED it. It really helped me focus on my cadence and trying to keep it more consistent. I'm working on building up my tolerance to training in the heat. It's HOT and HUMID over here, which I love, but training in it is a whole different monster. I've been trying to train in the morning and the evening, but eventually I'm going to figure out how to run during the day. Maybe.

back in action

Well I'm now feeling totally settled here. I'm getting a routine down. Linds and I moved from one complex to another so now I'm further away from the lap pool but my plan is to run from our complex to Mickey's retreat, swim, then run back. I'm not sure how far it will be, but my Nike+ will tell me! I've been trying to get 20 mins of jump rope done in the mornings before breakfast. Great way to get my day started! And I really need to have my gym time in my life. My job requires very heavy guest interaction and by the end of the day, some time for myself is absolutely necessary. I also made it to a bookstore recently. So now I have some mental stimulation. I really needed books to read, my brain was starving!! I'm also switching my weight routine up. When I'm tri training I find I life weights to supplement my other training, but since I'm not racing, I'm lifting for definition now. Higher weight, lower reps, I'm liking it! I also have the expedition everest challenge coming up in may, my lovely friend T is coming here from Vic and we're in a team together!! Team Canada!! So excited. It's like a 5k bootcamp adventure challenge type of thing. It's going to be so much fun! Can't wait!