Focus with Gem

Well, it’s here; 2024. This is a big year for me as it’s, brace myself, the last year of my 30s. I know what you’re thinking, I don’t look a day over 30. Okay, okay, maybe a bit closer to 35? 36 maybe on a bad day? The problem is I feel like I got stuck at 30. I’ve often heard people saying that they don’t feel over a certain age, and I never really got it, until now. When I’m fast approaching 40 and I honestly feel like I’m still 30. I see 30-year-old influencers or TikTok users and I think ‘yeah they’re about my age’ only for it to dawn on me that I’m actually nearly 10 years older than that. So as this big milestone is approaching, I’ve started wondering what I want to do with this momentous year. And quite frankly I want to get Fit As F*ck (FAF).

When I turned 30 all those years ago, I was running and dabbling in weight training. I’ve gone through periods where I was really quite fit and others where I was not-so-fit. I’ve been predominantly a runner or a weightlifter (is that what you call someone who weight trains?), but I’ve not really done both. Until this last year, that is. I spent 2023 trying to get my running legs back by training for and running, badly, a half marathon in September. And even though that run didn’t go well, I can run again, and I’ve kept it up since, even managing to achieve a new park run PB of 29.19. I know that’s not fast for a lot of people and for others that sounds unachievably fast – remember we are all on our own journeys and comparison isn’t helpful. Throughout this year I’ve been maintaining strength without actually seeing much progress and I know that’s down to the way I’ve been training and managing my programme. I’m not pushing myself and rarely get close to failure in my sets. If you’re not getting close to failure then you’re unlikely to see progress. What I’ve been doing has still been good for my bones and muscles and overall health, but I want to start building again and match the weightlifting PBs of 2019.

So for me, Fit as F*ck is being a hybrid athlete (using that term loosely cause let’s face it, I am not an athlete). I want to improve my running and my lifting and give equal attention to both, so obviously neither will get 100%. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I’ve decided to aim for the following goals to measure my success:

• Sub-27 5km time. This means shaving 2mins off my current 5km PB.
• Sub-57 10km time. I’ve never done a 10km faster than 60mins, but if my 5km time gets to sub-27 I should manage a sub-57 10km (5km time multiplied by 2.1).
• 100kg deadlift. My lifetime PB is 107.5kg and I’m currently at 85kg 1RM so this feels very doable within a year.
• 2 x chin ups. This is a pull up, but with palms facing me rather than away. It’s slightly easier as it uses your biceps more than a palms away pull up. I can currently get my chin over the bar if I jump into it and in previous years I have been able to do 2 reps so I’m aiming to get back to where I was.

I have a whole year to reach these goals and I’m excited to get going on them. I will need to work hard and consistently throughout the year and make sure I equip my body to achieve these goals, with proper sleep, rest and recovery as well as making sure I fuel it properly. I’m not for restricting and have spent too much of my life weighing food that I really want to leave that behind in my 30s, but I do want to make sure what I am putting in my body is going to benefit it, so I’ll be focussing on protein and for the most part home cooked meals with loads of vegetables and fruit. And because I think it’s good for the soul I will still be eating chocolate, crisps and pizzas. Like I said, I don’t do restricting around here.

So I invite you to join me on this journey. I’ll be blogging about it on a weekly basis, recapping my progress, next steps and how I’m feeling. I’ll also be doing video updates on TikTok if you want to join me there too. If you’re on your own fitness journey, I’d love to hear about it.