Weekend warrior.

Recently, Andrew and I have been working on changing a few of our habits. We're trying to eat out less, drink less, eat more fruits and vegetables, and get to the gym more often. We also returned to Weight Watchers, where I picked up a little tool to help with those goals:

This is the ActiveLink active monitor, a fairly new addition to the Weight Watchers program. It tracks all your movement throughout the day and then calculates activity points to offset your food points. Under the regular WW program, you calculate your own activity points by entering any exercise you do, the duration, and the intensity. So, under that system, I give myself about 5 points for my weightlifting class.

What's different about the ActiveLink is that it considers your whole day's activity and requires that you hit a "base line" for the day before you earn any activity points at all. In other words, if you work out hard at the gym for an hour, but then sit for the rest of the day, you may not earn any activity points at all. Just this morning, I did a really challenging TRX class, but it wasn't enough to hit my base line for the day. Once I do hit that base line, any movement I do for the rest of the day (walking, fixing dinner, etc.) will earn me activity points.

The whole point of the Active Link is to promote movement and discourage being sedentary all day, every day. I decided that this would be good for me because I've fallen into a bit of a "weekend warrior" pattern, where I slack off on my weekday workouts and then go all out on the weekend with hard trainings and races. This isn't good for my health or for my performance in those races, so I wanted a little push in the right direction.

I had been thinking about this for awhile when I happened to attend a WW meeting specifically about the ActiveLink. I was a little skeptical (as I am whenever anyone tries to sell me something), but the device was cheap enough ($35 on sale plus a $5 monthly fee, no contract) that I thought it was worth a 1-3 month experiment. I took it home, set it up, and clipped it on (first pleasant surprise: it really is invisible under your clothes).

From the moment I activated the ActiveLink, it started an 8-day "assessment" of my activity. For those 8 days, I was instructed to just go about my normal routine. I plugged it in periodically to charge it, but I couldn't see any data until the assessment was over. My assessment week wound up being an extreme version of my weekend warrior pattern. Literally within a few hours of putting the ActiveLink on, I came down with a bad cold. I did half of a tri-training workout the next day, but I spent 5 days after that too sick to go to the gym. I even left work early a few days to come home and lie down. So, a very sedentary work week. Then, come Saturday morning, I forced myself back to the gym and out to run a many errands as I could manage.

Sunday was my first "real" day on the ActiveLink and what did I do? I ran a half marathon! The IronGirl Columbia half-marathon, to be specific. I was still pretty sick and knew I had no business running a race, but it was an expensive one and I hated the thought of losing the money. This was also the first leg of the IronGirl "Triple Crown," which consists of the half and two IronGirl triathlons later this summer. If you finish all three, you get a special award at the end. I love special awards. So, I did my best and it wasn't pretty. The course was super-hilly and I was dealing with chest congestion that hampered my breathing. I ran my second-worst time ever and felt every second. Still, I had a moment of pride at the end when I realized that this was half #15 for me!

When I got home from the race, I plugged in my Active Link to get the results of my assessment and personalized 12-week challenge based on those results. Sure enough, the weekend warrior problem was right there in my data. On weekdays, I earned between 0 and 1 activity points. On the weekends (ie: the two days I worked out), I got up to 5. Based on those results, my initial challenge is just to get up to 2 activity points each day.

The first day of my challenge was race day and I got a whopping 26 activity points (or 421% of my goal). Day 2 (yesterday), I was beat from the race and feeling lousy again. I reached my base line, but I didn't exceed it enough to earn any activity points and only met 73% of my goal. So, with just these 2 days, I can see how the ActiveLink is helping me. If I think of my goal in weekly terms (ie: 14 points/week), I'm already way over it. But I'm thinking of it in daily terms- a minimum of 2 points each day. Its not about crazy weekends (I got that); its about more active weekdays.

April was a race-heavy month. I did the Cherry Pit 10-miler, the Arbutus 5K, and the IronGirl half. Now, I have a bit of a break with no races until the Rock Hall tri on June 2nd. With lighter weekends, this is the perfect time to work on steeping up the weekdays. Wish me luck!