I have finally been allowed to start work earlier and take a 2 hour lunch break to get the extra hour in the morning back. This means that Every day except Mondays (I work in the office so not enough time) I will go to the track and ride at lunch time. I tried it last week and there is definitely enough time to get a solid 1 hour training session in and get home and showered in time to start work again! My on call day has also changed from Tuesdays to Wednesdays so I will get a half day on Thursday now instead of Wednesdays until the end of august.
As I will be starting earlier I will not have enough time to get a proper walk in before getting ready for work in the mornings so I have decided to do the couch to 5k running challenge 3 times as week instead (Mon, Wed and Friday) and do downhill sprints 2 x a week (Tuesday and Thursday) to get my leg speed back as it is severely lacking at the moment.
I will either get my upper body weights done after my sprints on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s or do them after work before Coaching which I get to the track about 6ish.
My son is away in Brazil for 2 months so at the weekends I will try and get up early and go to a pump track to work on my skills on Saturday and Sundays and then rest the rest of the time.
I think if I can consistently do this from next week I will be able to get in pretty good shape by the end of August then I can start doing more BMX race training from September onwards although I will then be limited by the lack of light in the mornings and evenings but I will be able to change my Lunch time track sessions from skill based to full lap skill/ fitness based instead to get track fitness over the winter. I will most likely also start doing leg weights going into the winter as my trining load will decrease a lot due to the lack of sun 🙁
My training for the next 2 months will be:
| DAY | Exercise AM | Exercise Lunch | Exercise PM |
| Monday | Couch to 5k | Walk 1 hour | Track |
| Tuesday | Sprints | Track | Weights Upper/ Coaching |
| Wednesday | Couch to 5k | Track | Rest (on Call) |
| Thursday | Sprints | Track | Weights Upper/ Coaching |
| Friday | Couch to 5k | Track | Gates |
| Saturday | Pump Track | Rest | Rest |
| Sunday | Pump Track | Rest | Rest |
I have been pretty consistent with my getting up early and walking and although my weight hasn’t changed a lot my fitness has definitely got noticeably better. My walk to the track that used to have me blowing out of my arse is now actually enjoyable although I am still breathing heavily but it hurts a lot less than it did. I have also noticed that I fell a lot happier and less stresses when I exercise in the mornings before work and the starting work earlier has helped as I get a lot of my backlog done in the first hour from 6:30-7:30 so I am less stressed about the lack of time to do anything but fire-fight for the rest of the day. Going to the track has also shown to make me more productive in the afternoon too as I am energised from the post ride endorphin rush and also really de-stressed too 🙂 I am also using the lunch time sessions to work on my weaknesses so I have been getting out of my comfort zone a lot on the track which is making riding the whole track way more fun. I hope adding pump tracks at the weekend will accelerate my skills improvement a lot faster as you can practice the skills way more on a pump track than you can on the BMX track. I see the rapid improvement of the kids who ride the pump tracks a lot so hopefully that will work the same for broken old men too.