A few weeks ago, before the ironman blues hit, I mentioned starting #ProjectPilla. In the extraordinarily selfish days of my training I promised Pilla when I was done I’d help her get fit. To be really honest, I probably wasn’t convinced how seriously she would take it. I mean everyone wants to get fit but without having a specific goal I know I find it incredibly difficult to do anything.

After a couple of weeks of massive grumpiness and hardly any training I made her a plan. I used a couple of the things I learnt in my training, namely that consistency makes a huge difference and that mixing up training keeps it interesting. The basic plan was something like this:

Mon: rest
Tue: run 20 mins
Weds: yoga
Thurs: class (aerobics or similar)
Fri: stretches or class
Sat: run 5km
Sun: circuits

We did a weigh in at the start, took some measurements and committed to weighing in every week. It’s sort of fun to track progress this way, but as a lot of the things on the plan build strength and fitness it is not a perfect measure, it’s just an easy one. Much like with my training (are you spotting a theme?) we tweet how she is doing. It makes your goals public, which is a really powerful way of getting them done. The first time we did a parkrun Pilla got round in a bit over 36 minutes.

So 7 weeks later how are we getting on? Well yesterday Pilla absolutely sped round the same parkrun in 27:40. 27:40! Nearly 8 and a half minutes faster. I honestly could not be more proud of how she is doing, she is absolutely caning every session. When we started she couldn’t do a single full press up or plank for longer than 20 seconds. Last week she did 21 press ups and today 3.5 minutes of planking. In circuits today when she finished she could hardly stand up! I cannot believe the difference. Pilla has always been full of mysteries and surprises but the fact that she can train harder than me might just be one of the biggest. LOVE IT!

We spent a fair portion of our time off this week going to some classes, one of which was boxercise. Now I’ve never been to any sort of classes before so I didn’t really know what to expect, but deep down, well I’ve just done an ironman, seriously how difficult can a couple of classes be?

Well, three days later I’m still hurting. My arms are battered. It hurts when I laugh. Loved it!

One hugely unexpected thing for me is that it’s got me back into training. I’m back running, the yoga has been revolutionary for me, and the circuits is great fun. I’ve pb’d a couple of 5kms and am thorough back in love with running. I went to a Sale Harriers training session on Thursday night, my first EVER run around a track and really enjoyed, I’m pretty sure I’m going to join them. And it’s all because of my awesome wife. She’s ace 🙂 #proud #ProjectPilla