Since I posted the premise for my LlamaRun 2012 training program yesterday, I wanted to follow that up with the initial results from my first week of training. From here on out I will post these Sunday night or Monday morning.

This experiment kicked off three weeks ago. The first two weeks didn’t involve any exercise, they were more aimed at ridding my fridge of tempting treats. I counted some calories, got re-acquainted with eating fruit, drinking more water, and decreasing my meal portion sizes.

That got me to last week when I actually went outside and started pounding the pavement.

I use a system called “The Cubes.” It resembles a schedule grid for a music festival, with weeks running down the left side and days of the week running across the top. I track workouts, days/off, distances, times, stretching, water intake, calories, cardio-strength workouts, sleep hours, etc.

I need a system to keep a workout routine going. If I start throwing workouts in haphazardly, and taking days off from training whenever, it makes it too easy to one day say I don’t feel like exercising – and with no system in place one day off can easily stretch to weeks or months off.

A schedule allows me to mentally prepare for my next workout, apply guilt to my subconscious if I’m trying to weasel out of a workout, and use an upcoming day/off as a motivator to finish hard the day before.

A good percentage of accomplishing a successful weight loss program or getting back into shape comes from winning the “Head Games” played between your mind, body and soul. It’s easy to sit on the couch and eat wings with fries and a Coke. Throw on the Olympics and it’s virtually like working out.

I want to push through that hankering for the dopamine chemicals that junk food delivers to my brain’s pleasure centers. It’s about flipping the television back off, changing clothes, and going outside to do my run.

I even cut deals with myself. If it’s a particularly hard day and my body does not want to step out the door I’ll say, “look let’s go out and do the run, then I’ll take you to Buffalo Wild Wings for a reward.” And I’m good with that. It can’t happen all the time, but if I hit my marks it’s cool to take a sidestep and eat some things less than healthy.

I was inspired to see U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte consume two Quarter Pounders with cheese, a Big Mac, McNuggets, two medium fries and a McFlurry as a celebratory dinner upon finishing all his events. That rang up around 5,000 calories.

There will be missteps along the way for me, maybe even an injury or two, but through consistency and determination I hope to limit the damage, and move this program along one day at a time for 155 days.

The first couple weeks may be a bit hit and miss as I work the kinks out of my training program and figure out how I want to report this information on Urban Llama, but it will be streamlined shortly.

My basic intention is to run four days a week and bike one, with Mondays and Thursdays being my rest days.

WEEK 1 (July 30-Aug. 5)

Tuesday/Wednesday: 3-mile runs

Friday: 3.5-miles

Saturday: Sit-ups/push-ups; 3 rounds shadow boxing; 3 rounds heavy bag; ran 3.5-miles

Sunday: Biked 12-miles

Total Running Miles: 13

Weight: 206.6 (-3.8 lbs.)

Notes: The runs were decent enough. I’ve been putting a new mix CD together, so that was a nice distraction listening to selected tracks through my iPod along the way. By Sunday my legs were out of it. I meant to bike Saturday, in order to split those last two run days up, but time got away from me, so I did it Sunday. I have a  mountain bike with street slicks to do my cross-training on, so it drags a little on longer rides. The course Sunday has a mile-long hill about halfway through that was killer. It served its purpose.

On the food I did OK. Snuck in a couple Hostess fruit pies that were hanging around. That needs to stop. Those bad boys are 480 calories a pop.