Thursday

Today was the first day of the second week of the plan. It's now four sets for the next five weeks, rotating on a heavy, low rep/light, high rep basis, each week. Abs remain at three sets, but have five extra reps per set.

Today was 10 reps with a 10 per cent weight increase on last week. Here's the chart:

Went pretty well; the bench/push-ups remains difficult, and four sets of pull-ups was a beast.

Managed to better my row time by two seconds as you can see. The first and last 250m were great; the middle 500m or so a total nightmare. Every 20-30 seconds I had to force myself not to quit. It was only through sheer stubbornness that I managed to beat my previous time.

Here's what I ate:

Too low on the calories; amazing what a difference even a modest intake of alcohol makes to your total, especially when you remove it. However, while I wasn't hungry all day, this needs to be a minimum of 2000 kcal. Looking back now I didn't eat a big enough lunch.

Weigh-day tomorrow. I've felt a bit bloated the past couple of days for some unfathomable reason and I hope it's not my body playing some kind of game with me by holding water or somesuch. At the very least I should have lost a couple of pounds this week.