End of 2009 – General thoughts, musings and diet updates.

Well the end of the year is upon us and I think it’s time I reflected a little on what’s happened diet wise, fitness wise and a little in general.

First time in a while the exercise has been above and beyond the beer intake. With this and the diet that I’m undertaking with my wife the weight has gone down slowly yet steadily which is good. At least this way I am more likely to keep it off. I’m also feeling a lot healthier now that I have lost some weight and generally eating better. Improving what we ate (using Weight Watchers cook books) the food has been filling, tasty and yet not fatty or loads of points.

At least once a winter period I go down with a stinking cold, I don’t get the flu as I have the inoculation every year, and it hits me for 6 for a few weeks at a time. Since going to the gym regularly and eating better I have felt great for the past few months not being worse than a bit of a blocked nose, until now. Ah well, hopefully will start feeling better when I get back into the swing of things with gym, food and work on Monday.

I’ve been impressed that I’ve managed to keep the weight off as well and I feel good for it. Only downside is the bits they don’t tell when you’re on a diet like you’ll feel the cold more as you don’t have so much podge to keep you warm! Below is the graph of weight loss since the start of the diet. As you can see it’s been a bit poor over the festive period but will get it back on track in January.

As for work related stuff, it’s been up and down this past year as I’ve posted before, but I am looking forward to the new year and what it will bring. I’ve got a lot of things planned both work and external related and I look forward to implementing most if not all of it. Also in the new year I will be posting more disc golf related content as well as more coding and design posts. I hope you enjoy!

Right, last bit to do is the first thousand beers update …

Current weight loss (since Aug) : 13 3/8lbs

Current Status : Bad! (-94.8)
Beers: 386 + 75 =  461
Miles: 97.3 (gym: 64.3; road: 33) + 65.2  = 162.5
DG Rounds: 62 + 5 = 67 
Gym visits: 70  + 12 = 82
Lengths : 51 (total: 512) + 35 =  547 => 54.7
Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

Week so far ...

Last night was another evening of disc golf practice which involved essentially starting the final 9 jungle holes which the finalists in the Adv Am and Open divisions play, but ended up playing a few additional holes. All in all another nice evening of golf, it all helps :-)

Current Status : Bad!
Beers: 270
Miles: 44.3 (gym: 11.3; road: 33)
DG Rounds: 49
Gym visits: 63
Lengths : 48 (month: 0; total: 486)

Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

A couple of weeks on ...

So the past couple of weeks have been a bit mad. I've not been able to get to the gym due to work and being too tired when I have finally finished work. Last week was a long old week with working the evenings once I got home each night except for Friday and pulled over 55 hrs. Due to this no additional miles where run, however with a some practicing / warm ups over the weekend and 3 competition rounds of disc golf and also club night on Wednesday I've done 5 rounds of disc golf!

As for the tournament, I didn't play great but I did learn a lot through different shots etc. I drove a couple of times with drivers and they all went a bit way ward, so decided to drop down and use my Buzzzz. This had the downside of not getting far enough to get birdies, it did however add some acuracy to my play and on Sunday morning when I only used a Buzzz for drives I shot my best round of the weekend.

On Wednesday evening after some driving practice and trying out a couple of different discs I had another round with Rich and only used my Buzzz (mainly) again. Starting on hole 10 it was an interesting start which was ok but could have been better. Once we got round to hole 1 I only used my Buzzz exclusively for drives and shot an even par. I was 1 under until I grip locked on hole 8 so had to recover for a 4. So for that I was very happy. Now why can't I play like that in tournaments?!?!


Current Status : Bad!
Beers: 268
Miles: 39.2 (gym: 6.2; road: 33)
DG Rounds: 48
Gym visits: 61
Lengths : 0 (month: 0; total: 486)

Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

Exercise Week #5 & Hyzer Cup

Another week has passed so its time for another blog post to document the exercise vs beer ratio! :-)

It's been a busy week both at work and home with a few ups and downs so I've not managed to get to the gym as much as I'd like to have this week; however this has worked out quite well as I didn't want to over do it before the Hyzer Cup at the weekend, so all is good.

It was the inaugural Hyzer cup meeting between Quarry Park DGC and Croydon DGC at QP. The format was doubles match play in the morning and singles match play in the afternoon. It was a great day, the weather was good (for the time of the year - sunny but feecking cold!), the banter was good, the golf was good! I won both my matches, the first with my team mate Rich Hatton; the other half of team "Double Impact".

Qp went on to win the event by 11.5 points to 9.5.

Bring on the return leg down in Croydon in January!!!

Exercise
Monday - 40 lengths (b,f,b,fly,b,f,b,back,f,b)
Tuesday - rest
Wednesday - 30 lengths (b,f,b,fly,b,back, b(6))
Thursday - rest
Friday - 10 lengths (b,f,fly(1), b(1))
Saturday - 2 rounds disc golf - Hyzer cup QP vs Croydon
Sunday - rest


Beers
Thursday - 1 beer
Friday - 1 beer (burger friday)
Saturday - 1 beer (dinner)
Sunday - 1 beer (lunch)



Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 105
Miles: 33
DG Rounds: 18
Gym visits: 8
Lengths : 38 (week: 80; total: 380)

Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

Strength != Power

Something I was reading yesterday made me realise something which I already knew but didn't overly think about much ... strength does not equal power! You can be as strong as a weight lifter but if you haven't got the muscles working in fluid, relaxed motion together with the bone structure of the body then you won't achieve your true potential.

Something to think about :-)

Exercise week #4

Another week on, another week of exercise!

Exercise
Monday - 40 lengths (b,f,b,back,b,fly,b(8),f,b) - fly is usuall setup, next week I'll try doing 4 full lengths :-)
Tuesday - rest
Wednesday - 1 gym (body combat on a school night, what was I thinking?)
Thursday - rest
Friday - rest
Saturday - 1 round dg
Sunday - 1 gym visit - 8 lengths (f(8))

Beers
Tuesday - 5 (Dev social)
Thursday - 2 (with dinner)
Friday - 1 (burger friday)

The round of disc golf on Saturday morning was pretty reasonable even though the round score doesn't reflect it. I shot a round of 64 which is about my average at the moment. However, looking at the positives I shot ... 3,3,3,3,3,OB 5, 3,3,4,3,Double OB 7,3,4,3,4,3,4,3 ... so 12 pars and only 4 4's. So in 16 holes I was only 4 over par, so if I can cut down the silly OB on 6 (stupid wind!) and work out how to play 11 without loosing discs in the river I hopefully can start shooting sub 60 regularly! hope! LOL!!

Another mile stone this week; I've clocked up the 100th beer since I started this madness ... only 900 (well 899) beers to go!!

Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 101
Miles: 33
DG Rounds: 16
Gym visits: 8
Lengths : 30 (week: 48; total: 300)

Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

It's taken over 3 years, but I'm 1337!

Time for some geekiness, but today I became 1337 on the BDGA forum!!

QP Open weekend

The weekend went and another Quarry Park Open has gone; and as expected I sucked!

Started off well and made a great start. Was placed in the group starting on hole 3 which was good, not usually started that close to the beginning of a round before. My round started off with 4, 2, 3, 2, 4 (OB), 2 ... so after 6 holes i was -1 par! It all went completely to pot after that and scored 3 of my worse rounds in years ... 69, 70 and 74 :-(

Ah well, there is always next year!

So 3 rounds of disc golf, but also 2 beers in the house so beer / exercise ratio is still negative. But soon it'll get better ... hopefully :-)


Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 9
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 5

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

Big Beach Sports - Disc Golf on the Wii

New game released today which has disc golf in it!

Not played it or anything, but at least its getting the sport more coverage and hopefully more people will have a go and then want to have a go in real life :-)

Round of 66, how rubbish am I?!

Last night went over to Quarry Park and played a round with Rich and Scott. Was good fun and played some good shots. Managed to get a couple of birdies on holes 8 and 10, but got to hole 13 and fell apart some what and ended up shooting a 66 which was rubbish! Hopefully I can improve at the weekend.

As for the beer, had dinner at my parents came home and drank a couple of bottles of Stella while eating some left overs and watching some west wing. So the round of golf was good, but then went and completely un-did it with the beer.

Ah well, I'll be playing at least 3 rounds at the weekend and planning on going for a run tonight so should be in positive in my beer / exercise account. Will keep you updated :-)

Current Status : Bad!

Beers: 6
Miles: 1.5
DG Rounds: 2

Key
Good => Miles + DG Rounds > Beers
Level => Miles + DG Rounds == Beers
Bad => Miles + DG Rounds < Beers

February spam

well it seems to have leveled out a bit and Feb's spam count was approx 23,500. I say approx as it happened over the weekend I was busy playing in the second BDGA National Tour event at Quarry Park in Leamington spa. Was a great weekend, as usual up in Warwickshire, and thanks go to Del, Sue and Ivan! :-)

Right, off to see the mrs and then drive back down to Reading :-)

Beer -Fu was strong (for a change)

This week was an interesting week in the life of me. From a work aspect I wasn't looking forward to it as I was being put on the project from hell and I could see a few late nights creeping in to finish bits off which I wasn't looking forward to. However, this was changed early on Monday morning and I was left on my other urgent project fixing defects which had been raised by the test team and that was a good thing.

During the rest of the week I managed to get to Body Combat twice *shock* which was awesome. It was a new release launch weekend last week and I was unable to get to either of them so it was good to get there on Monday. The new release is brilliant! I really enjoyed it and I will definatly make the effort to get to the class more over the next few months because of this new release.

Due to this gym visiting week, with a fixed car, I found myself not drinking any alcohol all week. Not even wine! This i feel is helping with the weight loss and will see how much on sunday when I weekly weigh in at the gym.

Something else which sneeked in this week was the change of the BDGA board after the annual AGM. I was asked to be the Director of Competitions by the leaving DoC and the National Director. I said I'd do it as long as the outgoing DoC organises the '08 tour as at the moment I don't have time to do it with organising my wedding, looking for a house etc. This will give me the opportunity to get involved in the sport I love so much and enable me to influence the shape of the sport in the UK.

So all in all it was an interesting week ... added to the fact that I'm still recovering from the groin strain which I picked up playing football a couple of weeks ago. Its pretty much done now, it just twinges every so often so will take it easy this week, carry on working out at the gym and attending BodyCombat and hopefully make it back to football next week.

PDGA Rating update...

On the 28th August there was another PDGA rating update. This took into account the last two events on the BDGA National Tour which I competed at. These events were the Quarry Park Open and the Whitcombe classic. My performance wasn't overly great at the Quarry Park Open, so much so that I managed to win the most OBs over the weekend award, but saying that still came 13th in the Am division.

I was a lot happier with my performance at Whitcombe. Saturday was solid play, but the round on Sunday morning was very good (+1 over par). I was very pleased with the play and came 7th in the Am division clicky.

My rating is now looking like it should and starting to reflect my ability (869). I'm not playing any more events this year, but the target is to get some good off season practice in and try and improve my rating next year ... and compete in a AM final :)

BDGA Tour #7 - Quarry Park

A great weekend of disc golf was enjoyed by all at the weekend. The weather was spot on and I even got a wee bit sun burnt.

I will post more when I have time, either at work or when my internet at home gets sorted. For a quick over view of the weekends joyness the results are below:

In Open Division
1 188 Derek Robins
2 200 Bruce Webber
3 204 Matt Cutler
4 209 Charlie Mead
5 214 Conor Davies

In Amateur
1 210 Andy Solomons
2 212 Angus Bruce
3 213 Jesse Denny
4 218 Richard Wood
5 224 Andy Cotgreave

Spirit Award Ivan Bromage

And the award for the most OB's over the weekend went to ...




... ME!!!

I won a t-shirt and mini disc which were donated by the chaps north of the boarder.

First thing I've ever won at a disc golf event, hopefully next time it'll be a bit better than most OB's ... but hey, got to start somewhere ;-)

PDGA Ratings Update

Yesterday the PDGA had its quarterly ratings update for all the events which had been submitted since the last update and the 12th (think) of June.

In this time frame I had two of my best results since starting in 2004. This included my first 900+ rated round score at Quarry Park (Tour Event #3).

My rating went up by 49 points, to a now reasonable (for now) score of 845.

Roll on QP open in just over a week ... we'll see what I can do then ;-)