A literal pain.
Who knew that exercise was going to hurt so much. After last year's hurling exploits and reaching the county final it got me in the mood for sports again.
I was dragged onto that team last year and had no fitness and no preparation time before we started the matches. That put me at the bottom of the rankings even with our extended age bracket for the team.
It's sad to be unfit but even sadder on a team of 40-50 year old's and be the least fit of them all all. That's not going to happen again this year.
I might still be shite at hurling this year but i can at least be able to outrun them all. That's slightly more achievable. It's entirely up to me how fit I am coming into the summertime and i've started already.
Last year we had three weeks of training to get ready for the first serious game and that was coming form zero fitness. By the end of the season in November I had lost a nice bit of weight and increased my fitness massively. The only problem was that everybody else had increased their fitness as well so I was still bottom of the pile.
That's why I want to get my base a lot higher from the start of the year an start moving past some of the other players. We might be entering a team in the Hurling league for the spring as well which would be ideal as players don't take this as seriously as the championship and would give me a chance to get more game time and increase my fitness, my skill level and my confidence before the summertime.
The real difference will be the work that I do myself however. Putting in that consistent effort every week and building my base level and my body to be able to improve.
I started form the second of January and will be trying to do a solid bit of exercise 3-4 times per week. The reason why my legs hurt is that I have found a local soccer game to join every week and we did a solid 80 minutes last night which i can feel today. Add in a physical day at work and today will be a rest day.
Sunday I did a lovely local walk/run that will be my main measure for the next few months.
It's a nice little 3k that i walked about 80% of and ran the other 20% but the goal will be to run the whole trail in the next month or two and to cut minutes off the time above.
My wife has signed up for a 150 mile cycle in the summer and will be doing the same as me.
A combination of stretching, running and lifting to create a balanced approach to my fitness and balance the body for this extra exercise rather than just focus on one type of exercise and hurt the other parts of the body.
It all works together and if i want to increase speed and fitness then i will need to stretch out my muscles and build more strength to power it all.
It will be a challenge to combine the different training with life, family, crypto, work but if i can manage to avoid wasting my time on unporductive events then it should stand to me over the long run.
Like anything it will come down to commitment and consistency.
