Friday, February 27, 2009

The road less travelled

S U P E R SHRED day 1 week one PIC.

When you look at this pic you can appreciate that I felt more dread about publishing this than I did about deciding to have potentially life threatening surgery.

It is incredibly hard to expose yourself in the most naked way possible, literally. You can hide nothing.

However it is done... for the planet to see and I suppose I can retain a shred of self respect by convincing myself that I have been out of action for pretty much a year now without being able to improve as a result of any of the on, off training I was able to do since it was so sporadic.

Accountability allows for no secrets...Once exposed the journey has begun and soon enough I will be able to post comparitive pics that will show significant improvement week by week as I dance towards being my best ever.

One month after my original surfing accident having spent a month in hospital flat on my back I found I had lost 22lbs/10kgs of muscle mass. One year later I have added 33lbs/15kgs primarily of lard.

Comfort eating tends to become top of mind when one is recovering from a serious injury and cannot train.

I am feeling good now and believe that I'm on the road back. I really believe that I can get back into peak condition during this shred.

I can write all I like about the pitfalls of disregarding health and fitness and very smugly admonish those who disregard the obvious signs of neglect....but I have to face the fact that the prime target for my sometimes 'in your face' style of writing is.....ME.

I sit here with renewed energy, committment, persistance and resiliance....I have climbed many mountains, I have fallen many times, but I have got up, dusted myself off, wiped the tears from my muddy cheeks and told myself through clenched teeth determination...I WILL NOT BE BEATEN, I WILL PREVAIL, and I WILL COME THROUGH BETTER THAN EVER BEFORE.

Although I am starting a new journey, I am near the end of the old one and as I shrug off the cloak of despair I don a new one of brilliant colours and hues and I look upwards with hands raised and say " Thank you that you walk with me and help me up when I fall."

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The road less travelled

As I walked up the steps of the gym this morning I was rudely reminded of my ' mickey mouse' workout yesterday. My quads felt tight and my hammies cramped a little, but it felt great. It served to remind me that a) I'm still alive and b) I'm able to exercise...well sort of.

Did 5 min walk on the T-mill and 15 mins of mild intervals on the stationary bike. Then some core work with the swiss ball and I was done.

I'm glad I have a record of this because I need to look back later this year and remember this as a starting point. Unless we record where we are, how will we know how far we've come.

Have eaten well today and even after a couple days of this I feel more organised and focussed. Funny how an exercise program tends to order things in your mind.

South Africa is playing Australia in a cricket test match in Johannesburg right now. Wonder if Adam is watching. Good luck mate.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The road less travelled

So...day 1

Boy I'm out of shape, but had a super day and got the endorphins going which made me feel great.

Eating was good and my training went like this:
Quad Blaster 1 x 10reps
Lunges 1 x 10 reps
Bulgarian split squats 1 x 10 reps
Leg ext 1 x 10 reps

5 mins steady state on the indoor bike.

Big deal right....well it was for me, my legs were fried.

Tomorrow I will do some non neck stressing core work and a 20min cycle including some moderate intervals.

I'm going to go very easy and build slowly... my gut feeling tells me that I will need to resist the urge to go hard and focus on really getting healthy and re building my immune system.

I was struck by President Obama's words " we WILL rebuild ". That really resonated with me and my affirmation is also "I will rebuild and be better than before."

I'm really excited and looking forward to dancing down "the road less travelled"

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The road less travelled

DANCING INTO THE DARKNESS

My rehab has gone well, I'm starting to feel like I want to get back into shape but I have no point of reference. I feel like I'm dancing in the dark. Like, no one can see if I'm getting the moves right.

I'm ready to go but I have no idea what I can achieve with some indoor bike work, and swimming, with slow and gentle leg work in the gym. "Quad Blaster" obviously gets priority, but no upper body weight work.

Clean eating will clearly play a much bigger part than ever before since I will have to to take great care not to lose any more muscle along the way.

So in a round about way I'm getting to publicly designing a "shred" for myself with accountability to all of the you.

Let's start with a time frame:
How about 18 weeks, starting tomorrow wed Feb 25th 09 and running to July 01.
What can I hope to achieve?
Well that depends on what I believe. Do I believe I can get to 9% body fat, because that's what I'd like to be at. Can I get more muscular? Doubtful based on what I can and can't do. Probably end up looking more like an endurance athlete.
What is my start point
22olbs/100kgs
20% body fat
What are my goals
To attain a body fat % of 9
What action steps will I take to get me there
I will train 6 days a week using a mixture of walking, indoor cycling, swimming and lower body weight training as allowed by my neurosurgeon.
I will take one rest day per week.
I will train sensibly and cautiously
I will eat at least 5 balanced healthy nutrititious meals per day 6 days per week.
How will I be accountable to my fellow shredders
I will post pictures once a week (fridays) to gauge progress
I will post weight and body fat measurements on the same day

This is my contract with my fellow shredders

Please come along for the ride and let's see what I can do with what I have.


Monday, February 9, 2009

The road less travelled

The EAGLE has landed


Not your average Mechano set



This is what they pulled out of my head.
The infection was so bad that it has
lubricated some of the nuts, which had
come loose and were floating around
inside me.

























I'd be a shoe in for a part in an axe murder
movie don't you think?


Hey Mr Macdonald, great to see you back. Excuse me...The only time those words don't make you feel good, is when you are walking back into the 'orthopaedic' ward of your local hospital to have operation number...ummm, oh yes, number 5 in 9 months.

However, after being checked into a private room...one of the perks of everyone knowing you in the ward...all the nurses came in to say hi, I settled in and waited for wednesday morning.

6.00am, take this Mr.Macdonald. 10 minutes later the edges wern't so sharp and I was in a really relaxed frame of mind...happy, cheerful and not a care in the world.

Being wheeled into theatre didn't even bother me..I felt at ease and philosphical about the outcome. I had asked God to guide the hands of the surgeons....no more to be done.

I chatted to the anaesthetist about how the op was going to unfold and .....I was gone.

Next thing I knew I was in recovery and half asleep but feeling fine. 6 hours later.

I even amazed myself, for later that afternoon I was able to get out of bed, make sense of the myriad of pipes sticking out me and into a drip machine and together with the machine walk to the bathroom unaided. The nurses of course were horrified when they saw me out of bed.

I have got through the hospital recovery part of the op so much better than last time and within a day or two I was wandering around the hospital chatting to everyone.

Fast forward 10 days and I am recovering at Karen's gorgeous place out of town, which I plan to do for a week and then I'm back into it.

I have been told that I am only to swim for the next six months with bi-lateral breathing, to strengthen the neck which is now standing on it's own two feet, so to speak, and perhaps a little stationary bike. NO WEIGHTS for now.

Considering I was probably a little gung ho last time I'm going to take my time to get back to full health.

I want to do a 'shred' however and details of that will emerge during the course of this week.


I'm back. I'm feeling fabulous and looking forward to the fresh chance I've been given.

Wonderful to be back with all of you and I'm looking forward to catching up with you this week.

THE E A G L E has landed.













Sunday, February 1, 2009

Hello everyone in the world,

This is Dougal's First lady reporting back to you because
I am sure you are all waiting with baited breath to hear about the infamous Dougal,the iron man who has survived the miraculous accident he had on the beach last year.Well .......here goes:

He had to have surgery last week to remove the hardware out of his head because his body was rejecting it.I arrived at the hospital after lunch on Wednesday to find him sleeping like a baby in his ward. I was told by the nursing staff that the op was a success,no complications and they managed to remove everything. In fact when they opened him up most of the hardware was floating around in his head,so it was not doing much good anyway!

I left him to sleep and therefore did not plan to go back to the hospital that eve,thinking he would be very drowsy. Well how wrong was I,he woke up,had some dinner and chatted to me on the phone as if he was at home after work. His pain was under control because of the wonderful morphine and he felt fantastic.He went through the pre- op process with me and he had a good feeling about what was going to happen to him which accounts for why he felt so good afterwards.

Its been 5 days since the surgery and because the infection was so bad,he is still in hospital and will be for at least this week. He has a pipe into his back dripping anti biotic onto his spine and only once his blood has tested negative for infection on 3 accounts,will he then be able to come home.

The surgeons have had lengthy discussions with us explaining that he has no support on his neck any longer and he has to be really carefully what exercises he can do,which at this point is just swimming.The cut on the back of his head should be used in a movie set,it is severely gruesome...wow,Vitamin E will come into play pretty soon.

He is recovering well and very bored,which is a good sign,so lets pray he comes home soon.Keep up your prayers and thoughts and I shall keep you posted if there are any changes.

Cheers
KAREN