Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for a fantastic year, I look forward to seeing you all in 2010 to make even more imrpovements in your health and fitness.

Have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year.

Well, as we draw to the end of another year, we can all look back and think about what a year it has been.

Think about goals that you set for yourself and whether or not you achieved them. Maybe you didn’t achieve them, but maybe you made steps towards them, which is a great start.

A lot of us have time off over the Christmas break, so it is a great opportunity to sit down and think about our goals for 2010. These goals can be related to work, friends, hobbies, family, relationships, holidays, property or my favourites health, fitness and weight management.

Something I have learnt as I get older, is that we are a product of who we associate with. So if the people you hang out with are not travelling in the same direction as you, it might be time to find a new circle of people to spend time with. Do they make you feel good or bad? Are they successful or unsuccessful? Are they healthy or unhealthy? Are they positive or negative? Are they fit or fat? Are they achieving or are they plodding? These are things you can ask yourself after spending some time with them and you might be surprised at what you find.

Something that has made my year in 2009 was taking control of my sugar addiction and then helping others to do the same. I am so happy that I could convince more than 20 of you to try no sugar for 30 days and now I don’t have to keep preaching because you all saw for yourself what happens when you kick the sugar habit. Many of you are looking to the next event which will be SUGAR FREE FEBRUARY. All you need to do is try it for 30 days and the results speak for themselves.

Everyone’s goals are different, so don’t think you need to conform to some special list of goals to be successful. Success is different for every individual. You also need be realistic about what is achievable. You don’t want to get 6 months into the year and be nowhere near your goal because you set some unrealistic target. Some goals may even be more important than others and so to achieve one, you need to be careful in planning another.

Here are my goals for 2010. As you read it, I want you to think if these goals are the same as yours. I am guessing that they are so different form yours, you probably can’t understand why I would write them down. But that is my point. Everybody should have goals, and you should write them dowm, but they don’t have to follow some standard blueprint, they are your goals, make them what you want! 

My main goal this year is to spend as much time as possible with my 2 beautiful daughters and my awesome wife. I want to be the best father and husband and this means lots of quality time with the 3 of them. You can’t get back these early years of their life, so spending my time doing less important things is off my agenda.

My fitness goals are minimal this year so I can achieve my main goal. I want to stay fit and maintain the level of fitness I have, I want to compete in as many adventure races as possible, I want to increase my strength on Olympic lifts by 20% and I want to improve my kickboxing skills and maintain 1 kickboxing session per week.

I am going to stay off sugar as much as possible. I will only eat sugar at pre-planned special events if I deem it suitable, not because somebody else tries to force it on my. 

I am going to take an awesome family holiday in February.

I want to continue to grow my business into a crew of people who strive to achieve their health and fitness goals. I don’t want a global company, I just want a personal business where my client base is made up of people who are moving towards their goals through correct training and healthy eating. People will come and go this year and the achievers will stay and join the Fitta Bodies team of success stories.

This my list so far. It may increase over the holiday period, when I have time to sit and ponder, but for now, that is how it stands. Health and fitness covered, family covered, work covered, holiday covered.

So take some time, write out your goals and after you have written them out, you have to write down what you have to do to achieve them.

Good luck.

We had an awesome workout this morning. Something different, a team challenge. 

This morning we had 1 long challenge instead of several small challenges. It was tough, but made touhger by the extraordinarily warm and humid weather at 6am!

Thanks to everyone who turned up last night, we had a great time.

It was awesome to see everyone out of their sweaty exercise gear. You all scrub up nicely!

My apologies to everyone who left before the camera came out ;(

I think I am still digesting the lamb that was on that pizza. I think 3 sheep gave their lives for that meal.

Don’t forget, we’ll still have the traditional Christmas breakfast on the 23rd.

In Canberra last weekend on the 28th Nov was the 2nd out of 4 events in the adventure racing season for AROC sport.

I competed with my regular team of Matt and Frank. My mate Jack competed with my client Scott and their friend Patrick, but didn’t race under the Fitta Bodies name. We also had 3 new adventurers try it out for the first time.

Darrin, Adam and Jason formed the second Fitta Bodies team and decided to give it a try after many months of me convincing them they would enjoy it.

I always say that once you do one, you will be hooked, it is just making that commitment to giving it a try and realising it is not as competitive and scary as you think.

So, with quite a few of you giving it some interest, I have decided to write an in depth description of what this last race entailed. Bear in mind, this was quite a tough race, one of the hardest ones I have done and all 3 of the guys are hanging to do the next race, so that tells you something. 

The race can be as competitive as you like, some people are there for fun, others are there to win it, others are there for the achievement of finishing it. Either way, you’ll have a blast!

There were 127 team in the classic race. My team finished in 44th place in 5hrs 20 mins and Darrin’s team finished in 104th place in 6hrs and 7 mins. I think the organisers underestimated the distances so the kayaking leg was cut short for a lot of people and even eliminated entirely for the tail end of the group. We did the entire kayaking leg, but Darrin’s team missed out on the kayak leg altogether, which was a shame because that was the leg they were looking forward to. That leg took us just over an hour, so you can see why it was taken out for the late finishers.

So, here is how the race went from start to finish. Bear with me, I could waffle on for a while, but it was a long race and I want to go into detail so you know exactly what to expect when you do your first race…

Each team consists of 3 people and you must stay within 100m of each other for the whole race.

Firstly we dropped our bikes off at a remote location and then drove about 20 mins to the race headquarters which is also the finish line. We register and are given our race pack which includes our maps and control cards. A timing stick is strapped to our wrist which must be checked in at each transition area throughout the race. We spent about an hour preparing our maps with highlighters marking out the trails that we are going to take to get to the checkpoints. Maps are placed in a waterproof map case, control cards are placed on lanyards around our necks, any other paperwork is covered in clear contact. We put on our race bibs and listen to the race briefing incase there are any changes to plans.

We all board buses and are taken back to the suburb where our bikes are, but not right where the bikes are.

The race starts and everyone runs up and over a huge hill. Maybe you could call it a mountain. 

Over the other side of the mountain are people with maps. Each team collects a map. The map is of the area we are now in and you need to collect 100 points. Checkpoints are marked on the map with point values beside them, so we establish where we are based on landmarks and head off for our check points. Each checkpoint is punched onto the control card around your neck. 1 control card per team. We collect our 100 points and then establish where we are on our map that we marked out before the race and head to transition area 1. We hand in our 100 point control card, punch the timing stick and get on our bikes.

We ride via the first 4 checkpoints (all marked on your map) to Mount Stromlo where we ride to the top. Collect checkpoint 5 and ride the marked single tracks to Transition area 2 via checkpoint 6. Mt Stromlo has some of the best mountain biking single tracks in Australia, so this was a blast!!! You don’t need your map here as the track is marked with pink tape, so you can just enjoy the ride!

We punch in at TA2, leave our bikes and start running. We are now using a smaller map that is zoomed in for just the immediate area we are in. It leads us to checkpoint 7. At CP7, it shows the location of CP8, mark it on your map and off you go. Here you find the location of CP9 and so on with each CP showing the location of the next CP. All CP’s are also punched on the control card around your neck.

Head back to TA3 which is in the same location as TA2, so you are right back where your bikes are. Punch your timing stick and we’re away on the bikes again. We now need to find the location of CP15, but it is not marked on the map. It has co-ordinates for a single track location, but we don’t know how to use co-ordinates, so we find the only single track on the map in the direction we should be heading and go for it. We start to get nervous as we near the end of the single track with no CP, but it was right at the end, so we are filled with relief. We now know where we are and there are no more surprises, so we can follow our prepared maps to CP16 and CP17.

After CP16, we hit the open roads. Good bye dirt tracks, we’re in the streets of Canberra and riding their awesome urban bike tracks. We get to the edge of Lake Burley Griffin and punch in at TA4. We leave our bikes and get told that the swimming leg after the kayak has been called off. Thankfully because the wind was howling and the water was super choppy. 

We board our kayaks and paddle to CP18 and CP19. We then paddle to a peninsular where there is the Canberra museum. We leave our kayak and use a google earth map to navigate around the area to collect CP’s 20, 21, 22 and 23. They are not punches, but they are answers to the questions located in various places in the area. We get back on the kayak and paddle via CP24 which was supposed to be where we leave the kayak and swim back to the mainland, but as mentioned, the swim was called off, so we paddle back to our bikes. 

As time progressed, the kayak leg was shortened for other people to be only a substitue for the swimming leg and then as time progressed further, the kayak leg was called off altogether.

We punched in at TA5 and cycled to the finish line via CP25, which again was a qestion to answer about a landmark.

The finish line was in a park in the city, so the race finished by cycling briefly through the city streets.

What an awesome race. One of the more technical races, but so much fun. It was a really hot day, so we went through a lot of water, but there was a fill up station at Mt Stromlo. A lot of the races are not as technical as this one ie. you will usually be able to mark out your entire course on your map prior to the race start. But, it is awesome to have these surprises to keep you on your toes!

So, who’s in for the next one?