Day 7, Week 2: Glutes on fire and my barbell love

Confession:  I didn't do my bike ride today.

My busy life got in the way and I just had time for some strength training goodness.  Cathe's Total Body Giant Sets, to be exact.

In this workout, there are six giant sets.  Well, I don't know about giant.  Maybe slightly oversized.  Or a venti, if you will.  Anyway, each set works a different muscle group, according to the description.  But that description is LYING to you. Here's the real deal:

• Sets #1, 3, and 5:  GLUTES ON FIRE with some deadlifts and lots of exercises where you slide on a slidey thing (said slidey thing can be a disc or a rag...but rags don't slide well on my carpet.)
• Set #2: Back, including my ultimate fave dumbbell pullovers.  
• Set #4: Shoulders and chest.  No lateral raises but for cryin' out loud enough with the push-ups, lady
• Set #6: Whoops almost forgot those triceps and biceps-let's do three quick exercises for them to wrap this workout up

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking the workout.  It's a solid workout, and leaves me feeling worked out, which I think is what a workout is intended to do.  During my last round of half-marathon training, I did this workout every single Saturday and enjoyed it.  I'm just not sure why so much leg work is included other than to get your heart rate up and burn more calories.  And maybe for torture.  I mean, even the cat was shocked at how many leg exercises there were.

As I said, despite the leg abuse I love the workout.  And I love it even more because I get to use my beloved barbell.

Dumbbells are nice, but the barbell makes me feel like a complete badass.  Even if I do only lift no more than 70 pounds with the thing.  I asked for a barbell for Christmas one year, and Santa came through, even if he did get me the cheap one that was at Walmart on clearance the week before he had to shimmy down my chimney.  This cheap one has served me well for a bout 5 years now...maybe because it knows I care.

So barbell today and no bike ride because getting groceries and doing the laundry was way more important.  Tomorrow I have a 20 miler on tap, to be run a minute slower than marathon pace.  Life is going to get in the way again tomorrow, as I have a 5K to run in the morning at my place of work and then a birthday party after that.  The plan right now is to get up super early and get as many miles in before I have to leave for that 5K...I'll let you know if that really happens.

Just a boring little post today.

Workout:

45 minutes of weight work (total body) - Cathe's Total Body Trisets total body express workout
35 minutes of cycling (9 miles)

I have discovered that if I actually get to working out at 5 A.M. and stop farting around until 5:30, I can actually do two workouts in the morning rather than hurry through one lest I be late to work.  Time management is a wonderful thing.

My weight work today was deceptively easy.  I have done this workout a bazillion times before (approximately), and it never fails to turn my glutes into lumps of skeletal muscle soreness by the end of the day.  I usually don't notice the lumps of soreness that have developed on my ass until I try to get out of a chair some time in the afternoon.  Today I didn't notice the lumps until the car ride home, so maybe I'm getting better at this workout.

Being away from home this weekend, I found that I missed my bike.  Yesterday's elliptical session at the hotel just didn't give me my "I must be outside and see the sun rise and avoid critters attacking me" fix that the bike gives me.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to cycle very far today, but it was just what I needed to lift my spirits.  In fact, even some lady giving me the finger after almost backing into me couldn't dampen my joy at being outside on the bike.  Not even the huge mutant raccoon that sprinted out in the middle of the road on my way back to the house this morning that did not move an inch from its spot in the middle of the road as I sped by could dampen my mood.

And you know what made me even happier at the end of the day?  The fact that I get to do speed work tomorrow.  Sick, I know.

It's a ladder workout, and, after I put it into Garmin Connect, it looks a little something like this:

Click to embiggen the pink and purpley goodness!

My Garmin gets to boss me around tomorrow.  Super cool.  But ever superer cooler is the fact that I get to run them in my new bright yellow pair of Saucony Shadow Genesis(es?).

I'll be all aglow running my little ladder workout, prancing away in the darkness of 5 A.M.  That is, if I don't fart around until 5:30.

I'm tired, so all you get today is a bulleted list.

Workout: 17.5-ish miles on the bike; 45 minutes of upper body weight work courtesy of Cathe's Total Body Trisets Upper Body Split DVD.

My brain is tired.  I don't have the ability to form multiple coherent paragraphs today.  So, in the spirit of the information age and paying homage to the fact that everyone's brains have been reprogrammed to only tolerate about a sentence's worth of information at a time before skipping to something else, I have decided to write this post as a series of possible status updates I could have written on Facebook about my workouts today.  I'll get to them now just in case your attention is already starting to wane:

• I only do push-ups so I won't look even more ridiculous than I already do climbing up ropes and walls in my obstacle course races.
• I think I pulled a bicep.  Is that even possible?
• Great bike-ride today: no dogs chased me or even had the courage to give me snarky "How dare you pass my territory hairless monkey on a machine?!?" looks.
• Boy, the smell of manure plus rotting trash sure makes for one unique olfactory experience.
• Cars: do not slow down as I slow down-PASS ME ALREADY SO I CAN TURN.  I'm attached to the bike, dammit!
• If a car hit me while I was riding, I wonder if the resultant force would be enough to unclip my shoes from the pedals and send me sprawling through the air like a ragdoll.
• Boy, car that passed me out on Stone Quarry Road; are you sure giving me an inch of space while you passed me was enough?  
• With this bike ride and weight workout today, I wonder how much I have screwed myself for my 16 mile long run tomorrow.

And because I cater to all learning styles on my little blog here, I have included a headless and armless picture of the cute Avia tank top I wore today, with which I am in a heavy state of like:

Now if I can only get rid of some of the fat underneath that tank top.  Maybe that will happen during my 16 miler tomorrow.

Don't even pretend that you don't have eating conversations with yourself, too.

This morning I got up and did some Total Body Tri-Sets and let Cathe abuse me with her multiple painful forms of push-ups and her lower body exercises that made my glutes sore by mid-day.  But before I went downstairs for this completely voluntary exercise abuse, I weighed in.

And today's weight is.....

I have some veiny feet.

Down another 0.2 pounds!  I'll take it.  It didn't come on all at once, and it sure won't come off that way.

I spent the work day today figuring out how to stop snacking so much in-between meals (oh, and actually doing my job, too).  I realized that since I get up at 4 AM, lunchtime for my body is actually around 10...and, since I don't teach that period, I started eating my lunch then.  And when I say "started" I mean I ate half of it--my carrots and my yogurt.  I then taught for a period, and then ate my sandwich during my regularly scheduled lunch period.  Then it was all teach teach teach snack teach teach snack sit down and get some work done now go home and blog about my weight like a fool.

What struck me the most was the mental gymnastics that occurred within my brain right after school let out at 3 PM.  I finished my afternoon snack (apple and a cheese stick) with the cheese stick and then sat down to do some work.  Within a half an hour I wanted something to eat again.  The convo in my brain went a little something like this:

Body: "I'm hungry."

Brain: "No you're not.  You just ate half an hour ago."

Body: "No....I'm pretty sure I'm hungry.  There's food over there in the office.  Let's get some."

Brain: "I don't think so.  I'm not feeling hungry.  Are you sure you're hungry?"

Body: "Pretty sure, even thought your stomach isn't saying so! The food is just about 10 feet away! Let's Goooooooooooooo!"

I used to eat constantly from the time school let out until the time I went home.  I think it's a vestige of when I used to smoke-when I couldn't smoke I had a tendency to nosh a bit.  And, since they tend to frown upon smoking in school these days, eating seemed like a less risky alternative.  

Well, I quit smoking almost 3 years ago.  It's time to quit all these nasty little habits that went with it.

On a completely unrelated note, I feel like I have more energy now that I am eating real food I cook myself for dinner rather than going off in search of an easy meal that contains mystery ingredients or ingredients that are food in name only. Since it's only been two days, however, this may all be my brain's way of trying to make the best of a bad situation by lying to itself.

Hopefully the scale will keep trending downward tomorrow. 

Anatomy of a Winter Run

Since I went for a long run of 20 miles yesterday, I thought it might be beneficial to share my winter running "getting ready" protocol with all of you, because none of you asked and I have pictures.  So, without any futher ado, here are...

MY PREPARATIONS FOR A WINTER RUN:

1) Freak myself out about how cold it is going to be outside.
2) Wonder if I should do half of the long run outside and the other half on the treadmill.
3) Decide I am going to run tomorrow, not today.
4) Decide I am going to run today and not totally wimp out.
5) Fart around on the internet for an hour mapping several possible routes based on wind speed and direction.
6) Look outside and think about how cold it is.
7) Finally decide to get dressed.
8) Put on first layer of clothes:

Those are my FAVE purple calf sleeves.

9) Put on second layer of clothes:

10) Put on third layer of clothes:

11) Realize I forgot to put on my hydration backpack and go talk to the hubbs while I'm putting it between my second and third layers, telling him where I'm going.  Watch helplessly as he takes a picture of me adjusting my hose:

12) Take away the hubbs' privilege of sleeping with his phone by the bed.

13) Waffle for about an hour as to what route I want to run.  I usually end up basing my decision on the "least amount of loose dogs" rule.

14) Load up with hand warmers, pepper spray, mittens, 6 gels, my phone, and lip balm.  Bray like a pack mule before putting in headphones.

15) Leave for run.

Overall, it was a pretty good run yesterday.  However, in case you didn't already know, don't ever do a full body weight workout that includes squats and lunges with a loaded barbell the day before a long run.  Why? Because when you do your 20 mile long run the next day your legs will be tired by mile 5 and you'll have to slow down in order to make it to mile 20.

At least the weather was freaking gorgeous for those 20 miles.  I mean, you couldn't ask for better weather on a February day in Illinois:  it was in the upper 20s, no wind, and sunny without a cloud in the sky.  Nothing but blue skies did I see.

And, when I got home, I saw nothing but sunburn in the mirror from the nose downward.  Apparently I forgot that the sun will still give you sunburn in the winter when you're traipsing about outside for almost 4 hours with no sunscreen.  Because I was wearing sunglasses and my balaclava up over my chin, I have red marks that look like a painted on clown face.  It made work today that much more interesting, ("Hey, what happened?  Are you sunburned or did you tie one on before you came to work today?  Is that really "water" in your water bottle?")

Anyhoo.

Tomorrow's workout is 8 x 800m, and it looks like Mother Nature is going back to her cranky self again tomorrow: high winds and snow starting in the morning.  Treadmill Tuesday, here I come.

Cathe's Burn Sets Round 2: I can't smell my own fire

In order to recover from my 18-mile run I did yesterday (my quads still aren't speaking to me), I decided to fill this cross-training day with the wonderful world of weight work.  Specifically, I did Cathe's Burn Sets again from her new XTrain series.

This is a solid workout, and I actually heavied up all my weights this time.  In fact, at some points I was using heavier weights than Cathe.  But not as heavy as I should have to feel the burn.  I know I should have looked like this during some point in the workout:

photo credit: pasukaru76 via photopin cc

But instead I felt more like this:

photo credit: slworking2 via photopin cc

In this workout you do three exercises per muscle group (chest, shoulders, back, biceps, triceps), and then you do what Cathe calls a burn set, which is an exercise designed to really make those muscle fibers burn baby burn.  They usually involved resistance tubing and a firewalker band, which required me to go get even more equipment (I hate workouts that involve a lot of equipment).

Again, I wasn't feeling it.  I mean I was feeling it.  But I wasn't FEELING it.  There was no spontaneous combustion of my muscles going on.  At all.  Maybe a sputtering of a flame.  Like a sparkler on the 4th of July.

Hmmmm.

I did heavy up on all my weights, but the heaviest weight I own is a set of 20 pound dumbbells.  I could have picked up my 40 pound dogs, but I am not interested in getting bitten.  I mean, I was using those 20s on exercises I never have before (biceps and shoulders, mainly), and was whomping out tricep extensions with my 12s when I normally use 8s, but those burn sets didn't burn.

Maybe my muscles are made of flame retardant materials.  Or I just need heavier weights.

Lazy Triceps & Mental Ruts

I love my cross-training days.  I love my run days.  Right now I have a training schedule that is an awesome mix of both, making me look forward to both activities with a rapturous joy that only an exercise addict can muster.

So it was with a happy yet maniacal gleam in my eyes that I pulled out Cathe's XTrain series and decided to do Supercuts again yesterday.  It's the second time I've done that workout, and I am thinking it is going to be one that I return to again and again.  It moves fast, has effective exercises that you don't feel until the next day (hello, squats with your elbows to your knees and those crazy sit-outs and kick-outs), and gets your heart rate a-going up and down with all its compound moves.  If I had to describe Supercuts in one word, it would be DEEE-licious.

Since I did some cardio/total body yesterday (I always like to do one total body workout a week), I decided to give my legs a rest before my third week of marathon training begins with another fabulous Treadmill Tuesday.  So, I decided that I would do some upper-body weight work, and settled upon doing two of Cathe's workouts from her XTrain series--Chest, Back, and Shoulders followed shortly thereafter by Bis/Tris.

My little dumbbell family wasn't enough for these workouts.

Cathe was using 30s and 35s for some exercises (!!!!); I only have 20s as my heaviest set of dumbbells.  I feel so inadequate.

Anyhoo, I won't go into the specific exercises in the workouts, but there was a nice mix of old favorites (push-ups, chest flies, bicep curls, hammer curls, kickbacks, pullovers, preacher curls, etc.) and some newer ones that I have never seen before that issued a nice challenge.  Both workouts just kept moving right along, so the boredom factor wasn't an issue.  You do 16 reps of each exercise, unless you chose a heavier weight than you could handle, in which case you should try and do 12-14 reps.  This is what I did during the tricep exercises, when I tried to bust out all sorts of kickbacks with 12 pound weights and ended up at about rep 12 trying to avoid dropping the weight on my head, neck, or face regions.  I have to say I did the sloppiest reps I have ever done in my life on those exercises, laughing at myself the entire time.

And that's when I discovered my triceps--especially my left one--are pretty damn lazy.  At about rep 10 they started acting as if they were flimsy noodles, stalling out on the bottom of any kickback, refusing to come back up because it was just too much work for them.  We'll just have to work on those lazy SOBs, won't we? I should make them write a damn SMART goal and give me weekly status updates--that is, if I wasn't so busy attending pointless meetings during the day to actually read them.

But on the bright side, I had a moment of confidence-boosting that, again, only the truly exercise addicted can understand.  You see, I pulled off 16 reps of dumbbell overhead presses with 20 pounds in each hand.

Now, I know some of you do that just for fun every day to entertain small children or coworkers.  However, I have had a mental block for a while now with my weights, thinking that 15 pounds was SO HEAVY and how could I ever LIFT HEAVIER THAN THAT on any exercise that wasn't a back exercise.

I was in a mental rut; have been for quite some time.

But when I saw that Cathe was using 30s, I just couldn't pick up the 15s.  I went for the 20s, and pulled off 16 solid reps with good form.  When I put those weights down, it was like I was on top of the world.

It may seem like a small accomplishment to you, but it was a huge mental hurdle for me.  You see, I don't just weight train to look like I could kick someone's ass (but that is a vital part of my motivation) and still be able to do things for myself when I am 70; I do it because, every once in a while, it reminds me that I can do much more than I currently do. I just have to finally decide to pick it up and make it happen.

Any excuse to pull out the barbell.

Since the weather outside looked like this when I wanted to go for a run:

I decided that this was a fantastic excuse to use my new barbell again.  So I pulled that sucker out and decided to do Cathe's Muscle Max workout, which I haven't done in quite some time and thus forgetting just how barbell-involved it was.  I don't really know why I stop doing workouts; I think it may be because the new ones come in all shinier and newer and hold my attention until I get injured and then I notice the older ones again.  Also, for some reason I always think my older workouts are easier, therefore I don't do them.  This is a lie my brain tells myself all the time, that pathological liar.

The workout was tough but easy at the same time.  Using the barbell definitely increased the intensity--I was busting out weights on exercises like barbell curls and barbell pullovers that I had never used before with just dumbbells.  I was breathing like a woman in labor during those barbell curls, just trying to get through them with 30 pounds on the bar. (Cathe was using 45!  I'm such a wimp.) And those pullovers...now I know how people die horrible deaths involving barbells because I was almost one of them; I barely made it through the last rep without dropping the bar on my head and/or chest.  I also grunted a lot, making the dogs bark "shut the hell up!" at me in their crazy barking dog language.

On a more positive not-thinking-about-death-involving-barbells note, I did notice that I could use the same dumbbell weights as Cathe during this go-around without feeling like any limbs were going to fall off or like my muscles would burst into flame after a few reps (yes, I'm talking about you, plie squats with a 15-lb dumbbell).  It's nice to see that I have made some strength gains since doing this workout.  I also noticed I was getting faster at changing out the weight plates on my barbell.  I'm going to start timing myself lit pit crews do in NASCAR.

However, lest I feel a little too good about my workout accomplishments, this was the face that supervised me as I cleaned up my living room of all the scattered-about weights:

Emma is clearly not impressed.  Or right-side up.  Going to have to work harder next time.