November 2017 Fitness Summary

This monthly post is quite overdue but I guess it’s better to report it later than never. Let’s see how my November went from the fitness side. The month was quite boring and not that much happened. However, I could still find a few highlights:

1. Staying consistent on my strength training program;
2. Participation in a trail run “XTrasa Belmontas”;
3. Testing my fitness level in a sports lab.

This is how the monthly statistics look like for November:

Weight training

Again, time spent in the gym takes most of the time and I am happy that I could stay consistent to my program. I kept visiting gym 4 times a week and continued my strength training program of 12 weeks. There is not much to say about this one as I think that consistency is the key in strength training. You will not get better overnight but staying on course really delivers results after a few months.

XTrasa Belmontas

Another highlight of the month was a competition run called “XTrasa”. It’s a very challenging run of 10,6k with a lot of vertical ascent (~830m in total). It was hard to even walk up the hills after the first few kilometers so the average pace was very low. The descents were also challenging due to the steepness of the hills. This is me descending from one of them:

I finished the distance in 1h 49min 14s and took 45th place out of 63 men in my category. Since I don’t run a lot lately, I was not disappointed and was not planning to take high places anyway. My plan is to participate in other “XTrasa” races as there is going to be a cup (6 races in total). My target is to finish in top 40% of the final rating of the cup when it finishes in April.

Fitness test

Finally, I also tend to test my fitness level twice a year and I participated in one during November. The tests are organized by students and employees of a local university and it’s quite interesting to find out some information about yourself. Since my last test in April 2017, my weight increased from 77.5kg to 80kg. The good thing is that the muscle mass also increased from 45,4kg to 46kg so I guess the weight training program is working. Unfortunately, the current weight after multiple Christmas dinners is a few kilograms higher when I am writing this but hopefully I will get back on track in the new year 😀

Multiple other ratios of my muscle power were also measured but they are quite complex so I won’t add them here.

Summary

All in all, I am quite happy with the month, especially considering that the weather outside was getting colder and wetter. Since I am writing this post at the end of December, I know that this month will not look that good but I guess we have to take a break from time to time 🙂

P.S. I hope you had nice Christmas and I wish my readers Happy New Year! 🙂