Paul Walker

At the new year, Ross and I made a new years resolution to take part in the RAF 42-day fitness programme.   As I was under pressure from imminent deadlines at the time, I couldn't take part in it immediately, so we postponed starting the programme until this week.

On Monday, we began with a quick fitness assessment consisting of a 1.5 mile run, and as many press-ups and sit-ups as you can do in a minute.   Despite Ross beating me by a small margin in the number of press-ups and sit-ups, I was overall satisfied with the results....and my 1.5 miles in 8 minutes 55 seconds was far better than I'd expected (coming in at about 10 miles an hour).

Tuesdays twenty minutes of low intensity exercise (swimming) actually proved more challenging, though I think that it's mostly because (despite thoughts to the contrary) I haven't been swimming much in the last seven years.   The steam room and sauna afterwards made it a pretty nice session overall though.

Due to having too many lectures on Wednesday, we switched the circuits we were meant to be doing then with Thursday's rest day.   Having now done the circuits, it's possible we could cram them into an hour, but doing it today allowed much more freedom for warming up and cooling down, along with the insentive that we have kayaking tonight too (which will hopefully benefit from this programme too).

Tomorrow (Friday) we have to have a 20 minute run at moderate intensity - this is obviously intended to boost endurance in particular.

So far I feel dedicated to the programme, and actually felt that I hadn't done anything the one day that I wasn't in the gym.....from someone who's not seen the inside of one since their freshers week!   If this continues, I imagine I'll be happy with the results, even if the only difference is being able to perform a shuttle run for kayaking faster.

On Saturday and Sunday of this week I have a river trip and a kayaking competition, and while it's naïve to presume that this training will have had any effect by then, I would love it if I can feel the difference by then.