I’ve passed the mid-point on the Life’s Gym challenge and the Men’s Health Challenge is fast approaching the mid-point.  I’m doing well in both but need a little bit of work with my CT’s which I have finally found an activity that I can do and enjoy.  The guys at work play a 2×2 or 3×3 basketball game every day before work and I have started coming in and getting in on it.  We played four games total Wednesday night before our shift and it felt great to finally get back into the cardio game and enjoy it.

I thought that since I am participating in two separate challenges I would go ahead and blog for both of them.  It’s actually a lot easier to track than I figured it would be.  I’m just keeping a couple of pieces of paper under the keyboard with both goal posts and little hashmarks to the side to track numbers.  My current challenge numbers look like this:

Mens Health 52 Day Challenge
CE: 16/18/95
RT: 4/25
CT: 2/15

Life’s Gym 52 Day Challenge
CE: 30/32/94
RT: 6/20
CT: 3/15

Both PG’s are the same
0/1″ lost from gut
1/6 small projects completed around the house

I spent my last CE on a night of drinking with some old friends and it’s something that I am regretting dearly right now.  I’ve packed on five pounds from that night, most of which I know will be gone in a couple of days, and I feel like shit.  Even two days later, I’m not hung over (thank God, I was hurting yesterday) but My general good feeling that I’ve experienced since starting working out has dissapeared.  It’ll be back in a day or two, but this whole experience has given me the knowledge that I’d rather be sober and happy than drunk and miserable.  I guess there really isn’t a happy medium between the two, at least not for me.

The first week of the Mens Health Forum 52 Day Challenge has been characterized by complete lack of sleep and no motivation to hit the CT’s.  I’ve averaged close to five hours of sleep a day topping it off with having to swing back to days today for my normal life (we switch from days to nights or nights to days every week).

I am making good progress on clean eating but it’s going to get harder on my days off.  My wife describes clean eating as an entire can of lite pringles or a bag of sweet hearts valentine candy so I get little inspiration and less help from her. 

Hopefully things will make a turn for the better with my cardio.  I really hate SS Cardio so maybe I’ll switch to HIIT this week to try and jump start my cardio motor…

Well, Thanks go to fargofargo for putting this one together.  I’ll assume that they are responsable for this since they are the ones that put it up on a post in the forum.  Either way, it’ll be a good way for me to log journals and keep anyone interested up to date on my progress working out. 

I’m actually participating in two challenges simultaneously, which is good because while they overlap, they are both 52 days which will allow for an extention on the first challenge of the year when the first one ends.  It’s only a difference of about a week and a half, but it’s enough of a difference that I think it will help keep me going into the second challeng of 2008.  It really isn’t that hard to keep track of as all I need to do is keep track of net cheats, RT’s and CT’s from now on. 

I’m still struggling with my CT’s as I really hate running and it’s the only form that I have aside from a HIIT training session.  Maybe it’s time to get the old HIIT dvd’s out again to get my cardio back on track.  There really isn’t any excuse for me to not have one of each right now, working on two of each. 

 I suppose we’ll have to see how the coming weeks go.  I’m starting to get hardcore on eating again and not allowing any slipping at all in my eating.  Challenges prior I would allow a little bit of ‘reward’ eating but I need to stop that practice and focus on appropriate nutrition for muscle gains if I’m going to get the reults that I am looking for.