Training

After getting my butt kicked on hikes and mountains, I decided it was time to pony up and see Ingrid's trainer. I figured something was lacking in my workout if I was not increasing strength or endurance on my own.
We decided to focus on losing fat (not just weight), bumping up cardio and muscular endurance and balance (as my balance on rocks and snow is horrible). We started by doing a body composition to track fat loss and hopefully muscle gain. It's sobering to see the numbers (66 pounds of fat?), but it gives you incentives to work harder.
All of our workouts have been awesome and really hard. It's cool to show up and not have to think about which exercises to do and for how long. It seems what I was lacking before was pushing through the "this shit hurts" barrier. It's all about the extra few (or 20) reps when it hurts instead of stopping when it's "good enough".
I've been seeing pretty good gains cardio wise, in the first weeks my heart rate would stay jacked and take a long time to come back down. Now after a hard exercise with a rate of 160, my heart rate will drop to 120 in no time. I'm noticing differences when running stairs on Tabor or running around Ingrid's Cyclocross races. It's nice to see hard work actually pays off.
Instead of focusing on weight numbers, we are aiming for a body fat percentage. When I was my skinniest 2 years ago I was around 21.5% and now I'm almost there at 22%. For spring I'm hoping to be in the 10-12% range and around 210. I calculated that for our Mt. Hood climb I was at 250lbs, had over 50lbs of backpack weight. If this year I was at 210lbs and went with less gear, I could be at a total of 230 or so, close to 70lbs less than last year.
Body measurements so far:

Date	6/4/08	9/1/10	10/4/10	11/4/10
Shoulders	47	50	49.5	49.5
Chest	43.5	47	46	45
Biceps	14.5	15	14.75	14.5
Waist	39.5	43	42.5	42
Thighs	26.5	27	27	26.5
Weight	225.6	245	237.6	235
LBM	177	179	179.1	183.3
Body Fat	48.5	66	58.5	51.7
Body Fat %	21.5	26.9	24.6	22