Summer Training

I'm three weeks into six weeks of teaching summer school. It makes for fairly busy days, but one thing I like about the schedule is that we have an hour and 45 minutes for lunch, which is a good amount of time to get to the gym, change, work out, shower, and get back for my next class (you may have noticed I didn't say "eat lunch"--no, there's not time for that, too). 

This spring, my training was (sometimes reluctantly) focused around preparing for a half marathon. This summer, I'm a little more up in the air. I'm playing in a summer tennis league, and since I didn't play at all from October until June, it hasn't been a surprise that I've been playing pretty poorly. So the last couple weeks I've worked in at least one day a week of hitting serves or groundstrokes from the ball machine. That's been Friday and/or Tuesday. 

One of the things I liked about being done with the half marathon was that I could get back into the gym and get back to weight lifting, so I have been. I think it was in May that I was introduced to the hex bar (or trap bar) dead lift. 

This is pretty much what I look like doing these, except better dressed.

There are two things that are appealing about hex bar dead lifts: one, they're easier on the lower back and two, they're supposed to help develop speed better than any other lift. I'm lifting two days each week, with one day being dead lifts, bench press, 1-leg box jumps, and chin-ups, and the other day being squats, shoulder press, and lat pull-downs (or more chin-ups). 

This week, I finally brought some running back into my life. 

It's not that I haven't run at all since the half marathon, but I haven't run much. Twice? Or is that giving myself too much credit? I'm not sure.

On Friday I hit with the ball machine and hit some serves (that's tennis, not running, in case you weren't clear) and then did a 20-minute run up on the infamous wooden track (because the weather was lousy). I think I was going at a faster pace than usual, because I was pretty tuckered out after the 20 minutes, but I didn't keep track of distance, so I don't know.  

Then today (Sunday), I went for a long, slow run. I ended up just shy of 9 miles (8.93) and just shy of 90 minutes, which worked out to a 9:58 pace. Which, if my math is correct, is faster than a 10:00 paces, so I was pretty happy with that, all things considered. 

One of my friends invited me to run a half marathon in Chicago in October, and I'm considering it. Either way, it seems a shame to squander the endurance I built up this spring. We'll see how I feel about it as we get closer, but if I get back to running now, that at least keeps the door open. 

Training Log - Catching up

I have a lot of catching up to do, though fortunately the catch-up work is all in the recording, not in the running. I'm pretty sure I couldn't make up for not working out at all in three or four weeks or whatever it's been, but I can fake my way through a recap.

I'm pretty sure that the first week that I neglected to report was right after spring break, and I only managed one workout of any kind that week. Part of the problem was that traveling back at the start of the week was a total disaster (a flat tire on our borrowed pop-up camper necessitated an unexpected hotel stay), and then we had a lot of clean-up to do from spring break, and then I was back at work and--shockingly--it's always busy right after a break.

Who am I kidding, it's always busy.

But anyway, I'm pretty sure it was that Wednesday that I did a run on the famous suspended-in-air wooden track because it was raining, and I ran for 80 minutes, which was the longest time I've ever spent running in my life. To that point--I can say from my current perspective that I've repeatedly broken that record, such as it is.

But I didn't do any more working out that week, and then it was the Big Birthday Weekend. I turned 40 on Saturday, our middle child turned 5 on Tuesday, and so we had family in town that weekend to celebrate. We went out for breakfast on Saturday, which was an appalling-yet-appealing all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. So I ate too many pancakes, even if they did have crappy margarine spread instead of butter and high-fructose nonsense instead of real maple syrup. I have standards, but I can ignore them when necessary.

And I'm not the only one who ignores standards, apparently.

For that matter, those standards were pretty thoroughly cast aside at lunch, at my daughter's birthday party that afternoon, at my own birthday dinner, and at the late-night cake-fest that followed.

And Sunday wasn't much better.

These things happen.

I came into the next week feeling like I had a lot to make up for, between just one workout last week (albeit one run that I was proud of) and a whole host of dietary sins over the weekend. Additionally, it was a gorgeous day on Monday, so I went to run outside along the lake by our school.

And it absolutely killed me. Ugh. I had zero desire to do that run, and the fact that I seemed to be running into the wind almost regardless of what direction I was running didn't help matters any. I stopped after a mere 17:38, during which time I ran (according to Google maps) 1.728 miles--which turned out to be a better than expected 10:13 pace. Not expecting that, because I felt slow slow slow, and that's just slow.

To compensate in some measure for the shortness of my run, I went to the weight room and pumped some iron: a very quick workout, my 2-minute all-out effort on three exercises: leg press, bench press, lat pull-down.

Wednesday, I planned to go over to the track and run 400-meter repeats. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans (though, to be perfectly honest, this wasn't a particularly well-laid plan). Pretty much everything that could go wrong did. First, as I jogged over to the track by way of warm-up, I was futzing around on my phone, tripped, and went down. I got right back up and kept running, but my leg looked like this:

Now, I don't have a lot of experience with running 400-meter sprints. Like, pretty much none. To the extent that I have worked sprints into my workouts, they've tended to be more like 100 meters. The first supposedly-400-meter sprint, I approached it basically like a 100-meter sprint that would just be painfully long. And it kind of was, except that it was painful enough that I quit after 300. I walked back to the starting line, recovered a bit, and thought "Well, how about 300-meter repeats?" So I basically just went out there and did the same thing, except that I pooped out after 200 this time.

Well, shit. This was not at all what I was planning.

As a side note to this, one thought that crossed my mind as I was taking that recovery walk was that I really didn't want to write on my blog about what a colossal failure this workout had been. Finally, as I was walking the longer distance back to the starting line, I decided that maybe--just maybe--a 400-meter run was not just a long 100-meter run. So, like, maybe I couldn't set the same kind of pace for both?

As I toed the line for the third time and mentally sounded the starter's gun, I found a pace somewhere between my regular long-distance pace and my full-out sprint, and then ran my 400 meters. It still wasn't exactly fun, but it was doable. I ran a 1:39 400, which is incredibly slow by most standards, but whatever. It's where I'm at right now. My second one, after a minute and a half's rest, was 1:44, so I didn't totally tank it.

And then I called it a day.

Friday came around with glorious weather, and though Friday was a busy day, I decided to get a little run in. I had in mind more where I wanted to go--running along the lake--than how far I wanted to go, except that I knew I couldn't go too long, because I had places to be and things to do. So. I ended up running... uh, I have no idea actually. I wrote the first part of that sentence a week or more ago and I don't remember that run at all. Moving on.

Since Friday's run wasn't all that long and I hadn't done a "long" run in over a week, I decided to try to get a longer run in on Saturday. It wasn't an ideal run by any means, but I guess it was okay.

I set out to run a big loop around the town where I live, though with no very clear idea how far I would be running. My vague intention was to run anywhere from an hour to two hours, and I ended up running an hour. I felt pretty good through most of the run, but during the second half my shoes were rubbing in a couple places on my feet and my nipples were chafing (good idea, wearing a t-shirt instead of one of my dozen or so shirts that's designed to wick away sweat). A little tired too, but I think it I hadn't spent 30 minutes trying to ignore irritation on my feet and nipples, I would have been all right to go further.

According to Google Maps, I ran an evil 6.66 miles. I apparently didn't start my stopwatch, but it was around an hour and six minutes that I ran, which worked out to a 9:55 pace. Not sure if I believe that or not, considering all of my runs so far have been just slower than 10:00 pace, but I will say that the first half hour of the run felt really good, so it's not totally inconceivable, I guess.

Let's review then: in one week, I had my longest run of my life (but nothing else) and then the next week I had a lot of smaller workouts, none of which was particularly impressive on its own. So which was the better week?

***

No workout Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, but finally on Wednesday I was able to set aside some time for a longer run. As a side note, I'm beginning to think the stopwatch on my phone is faulty, because I swear I hit start but--just like my last run--there was absolutely nothing on it when I finished my run. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I ran for 100 minutes, and I felt pretty good throughout. I was glad to be done, but feeling really good about it.

Then I sat down with Google to see how far I ran. I was hoping for 10 miles or close to it, but Google had some unpleasant news for me: 8.77 miles.

Well, crap. That was disappointing. 11:24 pace, way slower than I was hoping for. If that's my pace on race day, I'll be closer to two and a half hours than to two. But still, it was my longest (ever) run, so that's something. And it wasn't all the grueling, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised that it was slower.

I didn't work out between then and Sunday, when I did another long run. My goal was to do a 2-hour run, however far that would take me. I ran a loop around town that took just about a half hour, so--employing my ingenious math skills--I should make four loops.

Unfortunately, things happen. For instance: I planned to wear my new Vibrams for this run. I've discovered that they rub funny on my instep, so I get around that by putting two big fabric band-aids on my feet. Problem solved.

Except that all but one of my bandages are at school (30+ minute round trip) and I have two feet. So instead I wore my old pair of Vibrams, which are full of holes that let my toes peek out... but I cleverly used duct tape to patch the holes.

And that was all going splendidly until my third circuit of the course, when I lost the duct tape on my right second toe--actually, I probably lost it long before then, that's just when the constant scraping against pavement started to irritate me. So I stopped after three circuits instead of four.

But once I got home, I put a bandage on my right instep and wore one new shoe and one old shoe and went out to add another [approximately] half hour to my run. So I'd say there was probably 20 minutes or so between my first run and my second.

According to Google Maps and my watch, my first run was 93 minutes that covered 9.12 miles (a perfectly acceptable 10:12 pace). And my second run--despite feeling like god-awful hard work, was just 2.74 miles in only 27 minutes, which is apparently a 9:51 pace. Well what do you know! Maybe that's why it was so hard.

And so, for the day, I ran 11.86 miles in 120 minutes, an overall pace of 10:07. So it was my longest run even without the extra few miles, and by far my longest run if you include them both, and it ended up being a pace that I was fairly satisfied with. But my legs are also more tired than they have been after any other run and I expect I'll still be feeling it in the morning.

But here were at T-minus 13 days to the half.

Training Log - Week 4

Week four was spent on the road, so I transitioned from mostly lifting and occasionally--almost as if by accident--running... to ONLY running.

Sunday we were at my in-laws in suburban Cleveland, so I got in my long run on loops of a housing development where every pair of houses looks like those pictures where you have to identify the five differences between them. I actually like running there. If nothing else, it's flat, which I think I made clear in my last post is much preferred.

So I ran a big loop through the neighborhood and circumnavigated it six times in 57:27. Turns out I ran 5.64 miles, which turned out to be a 10:11 pace. I was pretty happy with that. It wasn't nearly as miserable as last week's run, though I also did not achieve Zen-like equanimity. So it goes.

From there, we went to southwestern Kentucky for five days of camping. I'd like to say that I only ran every third day because I was tied up with the necessities of bare survival or family fun time, so that's what I'll say. Totally not lazy.

Wednesday, I explored the campground at a jog with my running buddy.

I haven't really run with a jogging stroller before, but of course it does take a bit more work to push the stroller, to guide it, and not dump her out of the stroller. Yeah, yeah, she's buckled in, but it's not exactly a five-point harness. It's not even a three-point harness. It's just a strap. You can't see it in the photo, but there's also a strap for my left hand which allows me to periodically let go and just run while it coasts along without the risk of, you know, letting her outrun me on downhills. We ran for about 20 minutes, and around that time I thought I'd try out one of the trails.

Ugh.

Even though it was paved, it had all kinds of things to jiggle my baby around: cracks and bulges, sticks and debris, and it also was very up-and-down with relatively sharp curves. In short, it was not buddy-friendly. So we walked for ten minutes until we found our way back around to the campground and ran around for another twenty (so back to my 40-minute running, albeit with a break). All in all, a fine run.

Then on Saturday, I got to take a solo run. I ran on the nice pavement, but I was once again drawn in by the idea of trail running. I saw a sign for parking for The Heritage Trail. That sounded promising. What led away from the parking lot was a gravelly path to an area that served as a dump site in one direction, and this in the other:

If it looks like that goes more or less straight up, that's because it more or less does. And it's rocky. Apparently the trail celebrates a heritage of pain and struggle. Or maybe not. A bit further on--and a bit further up--I came to this:

And the path, at this point, grew more... let's say subtle. Like "is this actually a trail? Have they just not gotten around to clearing away this fallen tree? Or marking any of it as a trail?"

I finally decided I was mistaken about this whole trail thing and went back the way I'd come. Which was, remarkably, worse going down than up. Wearing minimalist shoes, stones are not a lot of fun, particularly with the added force that comes from going downhill.

Anyway, I got back out to the road and followed it up to this sign:

I'm not sure why, but the bike has octagonal wheels... and the hiker has an octagonal head.

The path was just a dirt trail, but it was clear and well-marked. Lots of ups and downs, it kept me working pretty hard throughout my run. It's a very different experience than running on a  road, where I can kind of zone out, kind of get into a meditative state. Running on a trail like this, I had to remain alert throughout to avoid stepping on stones or tripping on roots, to track the trail's twists and turns.

It was also a rather pretty run, though that could be a bit of a liability too. Our campsite was very close to a beach, and the beach area was on a sort of bay. I found that this trail went out to the edge of the bay and then on along the lake, and I wanted to take a picture... but my phone was full. Even after I deleted voicemail messages and photos, even after I restarted the phone, it still insisted that it didn't have any memory left for photos. So I lost some time there trying to get the camera to cooperate.

It didn't.

I ran about 27 minutes, then kind of walked around futzing with the camera for five minutes or so, then continued my run long enough that I'm pretty sure I ran at least an hour all told. A good run to cap off a decent week before we left the next day for home.

Sunday: 5.64 miles in 57:27 (paved and flat)
Wednesday: ran 20 minutes, walked 10, ran 20 (paved, a bit hilly, with a jogging stroller)
Saturday: Ran approximately 60 minutes with one break of about 5 minutes about halfway through (mixed trail and pavement)

Training Log - week 2

If you read about my first week, you'll soon notice that the second week wasn't actually that much different. At some point, I should, you know, shift more toward actually running, but as I think I made clear in the first post, running isn't really my thing, so I plan on putting it off as long as I can.

And I will justify my decision to do so under the aegis of "minimum effective dose." If you're not familiar with the term, it comes from the pharmaceutical world, where they ask the question about how much of a particular drug is needed to get an effect (perhaps not completely irrelevant to the current discussion, they also sometimes look at the dosage at which half the subjects die). But anyway, whether it's a drug or whether we're talking about running (which I like to call the opium of the middle class, so also a drug), it should be obvious that too little will not be effective. But on the other hand, more isn't always better, so I'm kind of wondering where that sweet spot is (in other words, how little can I run and still managed to get through a half marathon in less than 2 months?). I mean, the thing is, if I get injured, I'm not going to be able to run much so, you know, better safe than sorry.

With that lengthy preamble out of the way, here's what I did last week.

Monday: nothing. Too busy adulting, couldn't find the time.

So on Tuesday , I did my leg press, bench press, squats, and lat pull-downs routine, and on Thursday I did my dead lift, shoulder press, pull-down routine. Sandwiched in between, I did actually do some running (see? I really might be training for a half marathon!).

I "discovered" running much the way I discovered a lot of things: in a bookstore. May of 1998, killing time in the Kenyon College bookstore as either graduation or reunion weekend approached, I found a book on running. The recommendation there was to block out 40 minutes, and depending on your level of fitness, you might start by just walking the whole 40 minutes, then you might go to four blocks of 1 minute running, 9 minutes walking, then you'd keep working your way up until you were running for the whole 40 minutes. I think I jumped right into running 4, walking 6, because my ego told me to. But anyway, that was my template, and before too long I was running 40 minutes at a chunk. As a result, I kind of internalized 40 minutes as the right amount of time to spend on such an activity, however far that would take me.

So Wednesday, that's what I did. It was cold, so I ran inside on this rather odd track we have at our school. It's a big catwalk around one of our gyms, with a wood floor. Kind of like a basketball gym floor, except it's suspended in the air up above actual basketball courts.

I started running, aiming for 40 minutes, and then I kept going until the song I was on finished, 43 minutes total. I didn't stop to walk at all, though I also wasn't setting any land speed records. If I had to guess, I'd say I ran 10-minute miles, but honestly I have no idea. I'd like to think I ran faster than that, but I'd also like to think I am a physical specimen in the prime of my life, not some dude who's almost 40 and looks more ancient than that to his high school students. Anyway, I will absolutely concede the possibility that I was slower than that. For now, I wasn't too worried about my pace, I just wanted to keep running the whole time and I did.

And wow! I was pretty tired after that. The kind of muscular fatigue where you can't get to sleep because your legs are achy and restless (which, I have to say, is not very good design: I mean, if my legs are that tired, clearly I need a good night's sleep to recover--someone should work on fixing that design flaw in our dna).

Here's the thing though. If you were following the sequence earlier, I ran on Wednesday and then lifted again on Thursday. My legs were still tired on Thursday, but I went ahead and did the workout I'd planned, because that's what you do. And you know what? My legs actually felt better afterward than before. Kind of weird, no? Go to the gym with sore, tired legs, move heavy plates of metal with my legs, they feel better. My hypothesis is that the short, intense workout didn't tire my legs the same way a 40-minute run did, but it did help to move the lactic acid out. Whatever. All I know is they felt better.

Friday, I did a little more running. Once again inside on the wooden track, I ran one mile, and this time I actually inflicted a stopwatch on my mile (9:48, so I think my estimate of my Wednesday pace was reasonable), then I walked for a minute or so, then I ran another mile, which was also sub-ten-minutes, though not as rigorously timed (i.e. I know what time I started, and it was 9+ minutes later on the clock when I stopped). And that was it. Just two miles with a short walk in between. I was crunched for time and wanted to get at least a little running in.

Perhaps because they were still stinging from their treatment on Wednesday, I found my calves particularly sore. Particularly when I stopped and started again. Because of my embrace some years ago of "minimalist" running shoes (which goes nicely with my approach of minimal running), I've transitioned to striking first with the balls of my feet rather than the heels, and one consequence is that my calves do a lot more work. Combine that fact with the fact that my calves do not do nearly as much work when I squat or deadlift (i.e. all the times I've exercised in the last several years), and that's probably all the explanation needed.

Anyway, it's a decent week of training in the books. I'll take it (as if I have a choice!).

Tuesday: Leg Press (2 min), Bench Press (2 min), Squats (3 or 4 sets), Lat Pull-Downs (2 min)
Wednesday: ran 43 minutes
Thursday: Dead lift (2 min), Shoulder Press (2 min), Box jumps (1 set, c. 36"), Lat Pull-downs (2 min)
Friday: ran 2 miles, slight break between them
Saturday and Sunday: rest

Training Log - week 1

As I announced recently on Facebook, I've committed myself to running a half-marathon in just under two months. On the surface, this might seem like a crazy idea: I mean, I haven't run farther than 6 miles at a time in my entire life and when I say "I'm going to go work out," I most pretty much never ever mean "I'm going to go for a run." But if you dig deeper, it actually is a crazy idea.

I mean, I don't have any business running a half marathon. Seriously. I did track for exactly two years of my life--seventh and eighth grade--and I was not only terrible, I also hated pretty much everything about track except for walking from the junior high to the high school with my friends and eating sugary crap on the way at the gas station.

But, okay, actually, I have at various times in my life taken somewhat to running. But not all that recently. So why a half-marathon? Well, in part because one of my co-workers asked me to. Not just me, pretty much everyone in the whole school, and it was totally an option to run a 5k instead of a half. But the thing is, even though I know I'm in pretty terrible cardiovascular shape, I'm still pretty confident that I could go out and complete a 5k right now. Maybe not very quickly, but I could do it. But 13.1 miles? I don't know. It's the challenge, I guess. See if I can do it.

So let's talk training. For most of the winter, I have decidedly not been training for a half. My training this winter has been almost exclusively weight training, shaped by some time I spent hanging out with the Marines in San Diego in late January. While there, we took the Marine Combat Fitness Test, which included this thing where we lifted a 30-lb ammo can overhead as many times as we could in 2 minutes. Now, 30 pounds isn't that much, but I found that trying to do it continuously for 2 minutes got really, really hard.

So I thought "Huh, I thought I was fairly strong, but apparently I don't have a whole lot of endurance." Which makes sense since for the past few years I've mostly been lifting in the 1-5 rep range. So, with that seed planted, this winter I've still been focusing on the "big lifts," but I've structured my training around a 2-minute max effort. It took a while to find the right weights and, for that matter, all the right exercises, because it turns out that it's really hard to do back squats continuously for two minutes while maintaining good form (so I've been doing 2 minutes of leg press and adding in some heavier squats later in the workout). Besides that, I've been doing bench press, lat pull-downs, dead lifts, and shoulder press. It's been pretty enjoyable overall: I feel like I'm getting a pretty intense workout, but it's very efficient. Even with warm-ups and time to recover between exercises, I get in and out pretty quickly.

Last week, before I signed up for this half marathon, but with the possibility in the back of my mind, I went for one run in addition to my weight lifting workouts. And I have to say, it wasn't exactly the kind of workout that screamed "Hey, you should sign up for a half marathon!" Because I ran like 25 minutes and stopped several times along the way. So maybe a half-5k...? Is that a thing?

But I had an abiding faith that it would get better this week and--SPOILER ALERT--it did. But more on that in my next post. I figure I'll use this half-marathon thing not only to motivate me to train in a different way but also to blog more frequently. And just like it would be a bad idea to go out the first time and try to run 13 miles, it would also be a bad idea to write much more than I already have. So I won't, except to recap my training last week:

Day 1: Leg press, Bench, Squats, Lat Pull-downs
Day 2: Dead lifts, Shoulder Press, Lat Pull-downs
Day 3: a very, very sad little run

Daily Movement Practices

Yesterday I blogged about meditation, a practice that I recognize would benefit me greatly if I did it more often than sporadically. Today, I would like to add a few more things that I do do, and wish I did even more often.

You've probably heard by now that, as a society, our health is basically screwed because of all the routine practices we have. Spend most of your life commuting in a car? You're going to die young. Sit at a desk all day long? You're going to die young and fat. Probably with diabetes and cancer. Yeah, yeah, I'm exaggerating, but I'm sure you've heard all about it too. Even if you get yourself some kind of awesome standing desk (like I have), it turns out you're still up a creek, because it's not just sitting that's bad for you, it's not moving around. And the research is pointing toward it being the case that just going and exercising isn't enough to make up for all the movement you're not doing throughout any given day.

Anyway, I've been trying to incorporate more movement and mobility work into my everyday activities at work. What I'm going for here is not to add another workout to my week; the point is to have some little things that I can add, that just take a minute or two here and there, but that add up to big improvements in flexibility, strength, what have you.

One of the most basic things I've added is the deep squat. I just hang out there for a while. Not surprisingly, this is easier to do on Sundays--the day before my workout that includes back squats--than it is on Monday (or Tuesday).

I started doing deep squats even before I saw this article, and since it recommended squats along with three other movements, I was pretty sure it was legit. So to squats I added glute contraction, a hamstring stretch, and something called the crucifix stretch, which is almost as much fun as it sounds (good for the chest, shoulders, and back, anyway).

For a while, I was really into Kelly Starrett's Mobility WOD (Workout of the Day). I started with episode 1 and for a while there I was doing every stretch in the first four or five daily, but in retrospect that probably wasn't sustainable. I did feel pretty good when I was doing it, though.

The real magic that I've found, though, is something called shoulder dislocates. Which sounds almost as good as a crucifix stretch, I know, but it's done great things for me. Specifically, the last couple years, I've had elbow pain when I play tennis. So you might think it's some kind of repetitive stress thing, like, you know, "tennis elbow," but it turned out, as I tracked this problem to its source, the source was my shoulder. You see, a couple years ago I injured my right shoulder in the weight room. What stupid thing I was attempting to do isn't important, but between the injury and the time off to recover, I lost a good deal of mobility in my shoulder without realizing it. Then when I played tennis, to compensate for poor shoulder mobility, I would--unknowingly--put my elbow in a compromised position. I started doing shoulder dislocates regularly, improved shoulder mobility, and the elbow pain disappeared. Cue the choirs of angels.

I really liked the idea of hanging as being a good thing. For that matter, I like the idea of doing chin-ups or pull-ups or what-have-you more or less every day. Outside of the gym, however, my options are limited. Living in an old farmhouse, we literally have no doors that will fit a standard pull-up bar. My office door at work is perfect for a pull-up bar, but... I feel kind of awkward doing chin-ups in my jacket and tie any time anyone walks into the building. And it's pretty much a guaranteed thing that as soon as I hang up the bar and start to hang or do chin-ups, someone's coming into the building, even if it's been dead quiet for the previous hour.

But then, all of these are things that I feel like I could/should/would do more of, otherwise they wouldn't have made this blog post, so in that regard there's nothing special about hanging or chin-ups.

What do you think, gentle readers? Do any of these things appeal to you? Are there little things that you'd like to put into practice in your own life?

Pain and Discomfort

Wednesday, uncharacteristically, my almost-5-year-old asked to go to bed early. She wanted me to put her to bed, so I laid down and snuggled with her. She snuggled in the crook of my arm, her head on my shoulder.

And it hurt, mostly because I was still sore from my bench press workout a couple days before. Which got me thinking about pain. First, there's your response to it. We have a natural aversion to pain (uh, duh). Even a little bit of pain sets my little girls off, screaming and fussing. Yet as we get older, we learn to put up with it. For instance, I was happy enough to put up with this pain, because it seemed to serve a purpose. If I pushed my daughter off my shoulder, denied her the snuggling embrace, I would set back the going-to-sleep process. So even though it was uncomfortable, and a bit painful, I endured it.

For that matter, this pain came, in the first place, from exercise, which itself is a form of enduring discomfort. Whether one is lifting weights or running or doing yoga, there are always--if you're doing it right--moments when you become uncomfortable and you would like to quit. However, you endure that pain, you push through it, and you do more of the exercise in question. You get another rep, you rest a little do another set, you run another minute, another ten minutes, another mile, you hold a pose that much longer. We do it to make ourselves better: stronger, faster, with more endurance. We embrace the pain of the moment, we even embrace the pain that comes in the days afterward, may come to enjoy it because we know the benefits it ultimately brings.

All this, of course, goes against our natural instincts. Young children don't do this--they stop running when it becomes uncomfortable. They don't even seem to know how to "push through." Many people who start exercising for the first time, they encounter the pain and they can't push through it. They encounter the post-workout pain and they decide this isn't for them. We have to learn how, and we can only learn by doing it, by stretching our boundaries.

We all do this to some extent, of course. It turned out, I discovered in the middle of Wednesday night, that my daughter was coming down with a cold. She had a miserable night, which meant that my wife and I had a miserable night. Adults, we have developed a certain stoicism. A cold is lousy, we all know that. But we don't tend to fuss and cry and make everyone around us miserable too. We keep it to ourselves, we manage as best we can.

Now, all of this can be carried to extremes. We probably all know people who won't go see a doctor no matter how sick, how miserable they are. The only way they get to a hospital is by ambulance or carried there by someone else. In the exercise world, there are people who take the maxim "no pain, no gain" to the extreme... and end up injured as a result. There's a certain truth to the phase, but it's only in the way I described earlier: we have to endure some discomfort, push past it. Real pain, in this context, is a bad thing. If you tweak your knee or injure your shoulder while lifting weights, for instance, and you keep on exercising because, you know, "no pain, no gain," you're actually just going to further injure yourself, which will keep you out of the gym longer, which will limit your gains. Likewise, while it may be appropriate in your run-of-the-mill illness to "don't be such a baby," to keep a stiff upper lip and keep working through it or avoid burdening your family or friends with your complaints, we can also make things worse if we don't treat an illness.

In the end, it all comes down to moderation, and the wisdom to find it.

Trusting the Process

Sure, I'm going to mention today's workout a bit, but this isn't a post about which metal plates I've been moving around in the gym lately. It's more about the plates I haven't been moving today--or at least, not moving as much as I'd like, and dealing with that.

My workout protocol calls for five sets of five being completed at a given weight in order to move up five pounds the next time the workout comes around. If I don't get that, I've "stalled" on that weight, which means that I'll be trying the same weight again next time. Today, I stalled on both squats and bench press. Gah!

I was frustrated when, on my third set of squats, I got two, went down for the third and couldn't get back up. Not only did the workout suddenly feel unsuccessful (I mean, I stalled! I didn't get the weight I was going for!), but I knew I had two more sets to do, and that's tough mentally. I mean, if I stalled after just 2 reps, what's the next set going to look like? It was a minor victory that I was able to push out 3 reps on each of the last two sets, but it still feels like failure.

From there I went to bench press, where I've been feeling pretty good for weeks. On my third set, I got all five, but the fifth one was rough. I took an extra thirty seconds in my break between sets... and stalled on the fourth rep of the fourth set. I had it maybe halfway up, and it just wasn't going any further. The minor victory here was that I kept pushing and pushing until I just couldn't, instead of giving up right away. I got four on the fifth set as well.

So if it's frustrating to stall on one exercise, what is it to stall on two? The thing I had to remind myself of, though, is that this is okay. It's all part of the process. It's expected that stalls will happen. It's not as though this program is designed such that hitting 5x5 every single time and moving up 5 pounds is the only outcome that's okay. Yeah, I'd like to do that, but stalling is part of the process. If I never hit a stall point, I'd be worried that I wasn't pushing myself hard enough and that I wasn't really growing. If I was really afraid to stall, I should have followed the recommendation to start with an empty bar on all exercises--I'm sure I could have had several months of stall-free lifting... which wouldn't really have challenged me.

What it comes down to, then, is that I have to trust the process--a process that knows stalls will happen from time to time and has a system for dealing with them: try it three times, adding rest time between sets; if you don't get it on three tries, you take off 10% of the weight and get back on it, focusing on technique. And if that doesn't work... there's a plan for that too. Trust the process.

Catching up on the Training Log

I haven't posted any update--much less a training update--in almost a month, but that's not because I haven't kept up with my training. All in all, it's been a good summer for training, though the last several weeks have seen it evolve somewhat. By the way, I don't really expect this to be of much interest to anybody--and my expectations have been similarly low with all these training updates. They were helping me to stay accountable to myself, but I'm not sure what kind of accountability I'm imposing on myself by updating 3 or 4 weeks of workouts now. Maybe I always knew I'd catch up eventually?

The second week of July didn't finish particularly well: I missed my Thursday workout, spent much of my Friday driving to Detroit or getting ready to do so, then once I got there I spent a few hours trying out for Jeopardy (woot!) and picking my wife and girls up from the airport, but I did get in a short, lousy workout on the hotel treadmill. Saturday morning, we left for a week at a beach house in Canada.

I took the weekend off, but Monday morning I got back to my body-weight workout  routine and Tuesday saw me doing a long run on the beach--it was hard to track accurately, but I'm pretty sure it was about 7 miles, making it my longest run of the summer. Wednesday of that week saw a big shift in my summer workout routine.

You see, with my body-weight routines, the pattern into which I eventually settled was 3 days per week, alternating two workouts (so one week workout A is done twice and B is done once, then that's reversed the next week). The basic pattern was based on StrongLifts 5x5, with the thought that I would transition to that program or something like it in mid-August when I go back to work (which is also to say: back to the gym). Up in Canada, I decided to go ahead and take my workouts to a gym, because I didn't have the equipment otherwise to do pull-ups or Australian pull-ups (or anything comparable). A quick google search showed that most "gyms" in town actually looked more like cults, so I settled on Physical Culture Gym, which not only happened to be closest to our beach house but also the least cultish. The owner seemed like a heck of a nice guy, too.

Since the rest of my summer has been influence by StrongLifts 5x5, I should probably say a few words about it. It's 3 workouts a week, and every workout includes 5 sets of 5 reps of squats. There's an A workout and a B workout--one of them includes 5x5 bench press, plus 3 sets of Australian pull-ups, dips (or, in some versions, push-ups) and ab work, while the other includes 5x5 shoulder press, 1x5 deadlift, pull-ups/chin-ups, and ab work. For the main exercises, the idea is to increase the weight 5 pounds at a time (maybe 10 pounds for squats and deadlifts, at least for a while) from one workout to the next. Now, I said earlier that my workout was "influenced by StrongLifts 5x5," and I say that because while I liked the basic idea of the workouts, I ignored a lot of his advice, so it would be disingenuous to saying "doing Stronglifts." I mean, if it works out well for me, I'm happy to give StrongLifts credit for good principles; if it fails, we can all say it was my fault for messing around with a winning formula.

The first change I made, which isn't that egregious, really, was that I didn't start with an empty bar on all my exercises, which is what he recommends. I mean, I've been lifting on and off (mostly on!) for the past 10 years now--I'm just not going to start off benching the bar and then add 5 pounds my next workout and add 5 pounds the workout after that, etc. Besides, Mehdi, the guy behind StrongLifts, says that when he's working 1 on 1 with clients, he often starts them at higher weights. I did appreciate the basic principle behind starting with lighter weight: he wants you to use perfect form and build up the weight gradually rather than trying to lift more than you can handle and rather than plateauing quickly. Fair enough. I used my two days at the gym in Canada to start calibrating where I would start my StrongLifts-like workout program, trying really hard to set my ego aside and not go too heavy too quickly. So, that said, I don't think of that as a major change.

The other thing I did, at least early on, was that I super-setted some of the exercises to make the workout go faster (super-setting, for those who don't know, is where you perform one set of one exercise and then immediately perform one set of another exercise with no break). I tried to be judicious in how I did this, not super-setting exercises that would work the same muscle group(s) or that would have me doing one of those same muscle groups immediately when I moved on to the next exercise. And I only combined the central exercises (squats, bench press, shoulder press, dead lift) with auxiliary exercises, or combined two auxiliary exercises. So, for instance, I did squats+pull-ups and shoulder press + abs in my one workout, or dips + abs in my other.

One more thing: the ab work that was recommended were reverse crunches the one day and planks the other day. Those are cool and all, but I've been doing myotatic crunches on the BOSU ball and torture twists for a minute at a time instead, since I'm in the gym

That said, this last week I've followed the StrongLifts program more closely (except the abs), because I was hitting a point where my squats and my shoulder press were "stalling" (i.e. I wasn't getting 5 reps on all 5 sets, and therefore couldn't go up in weight the next time), so I wanted to focus more closely on those exercises and using my breaks between sets to recover. It seems to have worked so far.

You might wonder why this program appealed to me. Why cut out a lot of exercises that I've done in the past to focus on just a few pretty basic exercises? And why the heck would you want to squat 3 times a week?! Most people avoid squats every time they go to the gym!

And that's pretty much why I'm doing it. My legs have always been the weakest link--except when everything was the weakest link! I've never been a fast runner; when I have lifted leg exercises, it's never been very impressive. I've tried not to be that guy at the gym who only does upper body exercises, but no doubt about it, my legs have always gotten relatively short shrift. In the midst of this StrongLifts-inspired training, I've found that my bench press numbers have been as good or even better than my squat numbers, and that just doesn't seem right. Even when I did leg exercises in the past, it was mostly the isolation type stuff: leg extensions, leg curls, maybe some calf raises. I flirted with squats, but I was usually trying to do too much weight and wasn't using very good form. The same was true of dead lifts when I did them. On the whole, I'm feeling much better about both lifts now, and it's good to feel like I'm making steady progress on both.

Oh, and after we got back from Canada, I dropped the running I was doing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm not totally satisfied with that decision, but particularly as squats were becoming more difficult, it seemed to make sense not to lift heavy on squats (and maybe dead lift), then run 6+ miles the next day, then lift heavy on squats (and dead lifts, if I didn't already), then run again (albeit a shorter distance), and then lift heavy on squats again the next day. I expect that I'll get back to running at some point, but right now I want to focus on leg strength, which I'm expecting will help my running in the long... term.

STR: Days 26-30

Time to catch up on the last several days of workouts!

Day 26
Finished up the week with a strength workout. Feeling tired at the end of the week, and also heavy--we over-ate to honor our Founding Fathers (and it would be downright unpatriotic not to drink a Sam Adams on the 4th, right?). But I got through it, so that's that.

Day 27
Rest day. Nothing to see here.

Day 28
This was a rest day, but late in the evening my 3-and-a-half-year-old suggested a bike ride, and since I knew Lauren would appreciate not having the kids underfoot while she did grad school work, I agreed. Who am I to turn down a surprise workout? I did a wandering loop around town that amounted to 5 miles, which isn't that much on a bike... but also isn't that short when pulling around 2 kids and a bike trailer. Our older girl actually fell asleep on the ride, despite the train tracks and frequent pot holes.

Day 29
I've settled into a routine for my strength training: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I alternate between two routines. This Monday, however, I started to feel like it's getting stale. Maybe the problem is that I had high hopes that I didn't quite meet. Both of the routines start with one-legged squats, and I felt like I had a good enough week last week that with rest Saturday and Sunday I ought to be able to have my best one-legged squats yet. Nope.

They were okay, but no better than any of the sets I did last week, and a little worse than some. Maybe the bike ride from the previous night sapped my leg strength?

I actually had the best one-armed push-ups of the summer: on my right side, I got through all five sets of five, and I got one whole set of 5 with my left arm (I had to cheat with the others). Australian pull-ups were good, push-ups were good, core work (reverse crunches and back raises) were good. Still, I couldn't shake a vague dissatisfaction.

Day 30: Tuesday
Back on my regular schedule of doing my 6+ mile run on Tuesday. The first half of the run was faster than it has been: 8:15 to run the first mile, 28:00 to run the first 3.31 miles (8:28 pace). Maybe the unleashed dog who came out from one farm to "greet" me helped with a little adrenaline burst--he seemed friendly enough, but the barking and the way he ran at me from behind probably prompted the production of some adrenaline to help my run along. However, despite how fast the first half was, the return trip was not just slower, but painfully slow. I wanted to quit. I wanted a water station. I wanted to quit and drown myself in a large pool of water. It was a minor victory that I didn't stop and walk. My entire 6.62-mile run took 57:34 (8:42 pace), closer to my time two weeks ago (57:37) than to my time last Thursday (57:05). So even though my first mile and the first half of the run were the fastest I've run them this summer, I was almost as slow, overall, as my slowest time on this distance. Why?

Well, it could be that I ran too hard on the first half, that I pushed myself and didn't leave enough in the tank to bring it home. But if that's the answer, it's only part of the answer. I think it has more to do with when I ran. You see, Lauren is down in Indianapolis all week for graduate school, so I couldn't start my run until our nanny got here at 8:00. Normally, I'm out the door for a run around 6:00, when it's still nice and cool. I think the sun just killed me.

Of course, this is a bad sign for my racing career. I'm going to have to limit myself to events with names like the Dusk Dash 10k, the Midnight Marathon, or the 10 k-rack of dawn race. (I have no reason to believe that any of those exist).

STR: Days 24-25

Day 24
Wednesday saw me get back to my usual routine of alternating strength-training workouts. And it goes like this:
5 sets of 5 reps of one-legged squats + 10 deep squats: some lucky few of these were actually getting close. I'm still using a short chair, and the goal right now is to just touch the chair and get right back up (as opposed to plopping down when I get there). A few times, I achieved my goal (however ugly the process of doing so might have been). 2 minute rest between sets.
5 sets of 5 reps of one-armed-push-ups Once again, some lucky few were actually one-armed. The others had the other arm as a spotter.
3 sets of Australian pull-ups to failure: 2 minutes break in between
3 sets of push-ups to failure: 2 min break
3 sets, alternating between reverse crunches and back raises: no rest between sets, 20 reverse crunches and 10 back raises.

Day 25
Today I did the long run that usually happens on Tuesdays. When I started off, I wasn't entirely sure that I would do the whole 6.62 miles, but by the time I was 2+ miles into it, I figured I might as well. It was a foggy morning when I started--not so bad that I couldn't see cars speeding toward me (or, sadly, that I couldn't see the cat that didn't see the car speeding toward it) but there was enough cover to keep it cool on the first half of my run, even though I was up and at it a little later than usual.

Last time I did this run, I was a little daunted by the hills that came at me in the 3rd and 4th miles, but this time I knew they were there and hit them pretty well. I ended up with a slightly faster time than what I had last week (57:05 vs. 57:37), but this time my time for the first half was faster than the second half, even with the kick at the end. So it goes. That came out to an 8:37 pace overall, which I'll happily take at this point.

What I won't happily take is all the aches and pains that came with today's run. I'm not sure why today was special, but I ran into a few things today that haven't bothered me the rest of the summer. First up: inner-thigh chafing. Okay, it's not like this is a new thing that I've never encountered before, but I really thought that box-briefs had taken care of this. Shows what I know--I'd started to feel discomfort just a couple miles in and, well, that didn't just go away. Speaking of chafing, let me just say that chapped nipples are not something I want to spend a lot of time thinking about, much less speaking about. Apparently, I need to ditch cotton shirts for runs and, while I'm at it, consider additional protective measures. We'll see.

STR: Days 17-23

It's been a while since I've checked in, so what have I been up to? Travel, travel, travel. Which, for my workout regimen, would better be written "travail." In short, it's been more eating than running, more drinking than lifting. So it goes.

Day 17
Wednesday: This was the day that we were leaving for the first leg of our first summer trip: Indiana to Cleveland (family) to western PA (friends) to D.C. and Maryland (friends). I didn't get any kind of workout in before we left (too busy getting ready to leave), though I tried to shoe-horn one in before bed once we arrived. It was a pared down version of what I would have done that day: 1-legged squats and 1-armed pushups (both modified as I've talked about before). I skipped the extra pushups and the Australian pull-ups but did the core work (reverse crunches and back raises).

 Day 18
Thursday: I got up early at my in-laws and went for a run. As runs go, it wasn't much, but I guess I didn't really expect it to be.  Their subdivision is not my favorite place to run. It's nice enough, in that there's little traffic and all of it is slow, and half the streets even have sidewalks, but there's just not much of it to run. I could go our of the subdivision, but that puts me on a road with no sidewalks and very little shoulder--but a lot of traffic. Since it was also looking like it might rain, and since I barely felt like doing any running (maybe because Day 17's workout was late at night instead of the morning?), I stayed in the subdivision so that I could call it quits whenever. I ended up doing 3 laps of the place, which added up to 1.99 miles. I just barely managed to do better than 10-minute miles, thanks to a bit of a kick on the last lap. Some days you just have to be happy that you did a run at all. We drove 3 1/2 hours to visit friends in western PA, where we had a great time and ate some delicious food (but too much of it!). The vegetarian chili was tasty and nutritious, though the cornbread and the other snacks and beverages probably were not. But hey: who are we to spurn hospitality? Although I'd kept in touch with most of my friends there, we hadn't actually seen any of them in person in at least 3 years, and it was great to see them. One of them was my best-ever workout buddy, but we didn't find the time to get a workout in.

 Day 19
Friday: We drove 4 hours to Washington D.C., where I dropped my Lauren and the girls and picked up one of my college buddies, so we could drive another 2 hours to get together with several of our friends. Five of us represented the old gang, though we spent the next few days eating enough for all 12+ of the guys. Do I need to add that no exercise happened?

 Day 20
Saturday: does walking around throwing a frisbee count as exercise? Near my friend's house, there's an abandoned military base, where the housing units were all demolished, but that roads that linked them are still there, and it's been turned into an official frisbee golf course, with the baskets and everything. So we went out and played 9 holes. It was strange for us--we've all played our share of frisbee golf, but it was always of the kind that begins each hole with "the next hole will be" and then inserts some object from the landscape ("that big rock," "the second tree on the left," that car that's been stuffed full of paper and wrapped in TP"). Actually having baskets, into which your disc was supposed to end up, well, that as a bit much for us.

Actually, what was a bit much for us were the guys walking around with 20 discs, especially the guy who was talking to his buddy and saying things like "We could go out and play a round every day, but we're never going to get better that way. We need to be training for this." O-kaaaaaay....

 The lived-experience highlight, which was also the health/fitness lowlight, was dinner, for which one of my buddies used this:


to make the absolutely most amazing pulled pork I've ever eaten. I probably--no [intentional] exaggeration--ate a pound of meat. Minimum. Plus the coleslaw another friend made. After a walk (hooray for token exercise!) I had room for apple pie with strawberry cheesecake ice cream. Good lord. And I wish I could say that's all I ate/drank that night--I could tell you more, but it's making me a little nauseous just to think about it three days later.

Day 21
Sunday had me saying goodbye to my friends and hitting the road for 7+ hours from D.C. to north-central Ohio. It also had me getting my diet inched closer to where it should be after the weekend's week's excesses. And that's no small feat when you're on the road. No exercise to speak of, except playing around with squats. To the extent that I've been doing 1-legged squats, they've basically been negative reps--that is, I have a controlled descent (down to the short chair), but getting back up, I've got to cheat one way or another (usually my off foot ends up pushing against my active leg's ankle, so it's helping but the focus is still on the active leg). So I was playing around with doing deep squats and then leaning into one leg or the other to work on the muscles I need to complete the one-legged squat. But I was doing that as much to get the stiffness of the long drive out of my legs as anything else.

Day 22
Monday was another travel day, with almost 6 hours in the car, all told. As such, it was a minor miracle that I got any exercise done today, but all I did were the one-legged squats from what would be my normal routine. I figure since I do squats M-W-F, I should get them in so that I could potentially make up the rest of the workout the next day without doing squats on back-to-back days.

Day 23
Up early to get ready for a run, but by the time I was set to go, it was raining pretty hard. I guess if I was a real runner, I would brave rain and sleet and snow, derechoes and tornadoes and hurricanes to get in my daily run, but I'm really more of an in-the-gym kind of athlete. So... I finished up yesterday's workout instead: handstand push-ups, kettlebell swings, skipped the pull-ups (for now) as they're out in the rain, and super sets of plank and bridge for a minute each.

I did some light cardio (i.e. picking up around the house) and then braved the drizzle to go for a run. Since it was still raining and the weather map showed that we were still on the front edge of it, I decided against the long run that has become my Tuesday tradition, and kept it short and quick, just to the one corner and back, 1.62 miles. I knocked the run out in 12:18, a 7:35 pace. Given where my times have been on longer runs (or Thursday's short run), I was pretty happy with that.

STR: Day 16 (Running... with hills!)

Tuesdays are becoming my 6+ mile mornings, apparently. Last Tuesday I headed east, into town, running around the park. This morning, I headed west, out into the country, running to a friend's house and back, 6.62 miles, an extra .36 miles compared to last Tuesday. My pace was a little slower--8:42--but I managed the last half of the run faster than the first half, so that's something. My first mile was actually an 8:30 pace... so what happened?


In a word: geography. This run was basically the same as the one I ran last Thursday (Day 11), just with another country mile added to the out and back. That seemed like it would be easy enough, until actual geography intervened. You see, it turns out that the nice, [mostly] flat run that I did on Thursday turns into a bunch of hills a half mile after where I turned around. Hey runningmap.com, how about a heads up there? And who put these hills in Indiana, anyway? I'm pretty sure "Hoosier" translates to "one who doesn't do hills." The scenery was great though--woods and rolling pastures--even if I didn't particularly want to be running through it. No doubt the hills slowed me down though, in part because of the actual effort of going up hills, and in part because of the mental drain that comes with knowing you have to run hills. These weren't nearly as bad as what I encountered when I lived in western Pennsylvania, where I'd nicknamed one hill "soul crusher."

At the same time, it's amazing how my mood lightens as soon as I get to the middle of the intersection I was headed for and turn for home. My steps felt lighter, and although the hills may not have been any faster going in the other direction, the next mile after the hills definitely was. It took me just over 29 minutes to get to where I turned around, but my total time was 57:37. Isn't that fascinating, though? I mean, I've just run 3+ miles, so my legs aren't exactly fresh. And I've got another 3+ miles to go, so it's not even like the end is that close--at my pace we're talking 29 minutes of continued running. Yet as soon as I started heading for home I felt better, stronger, faster, like the whole thing was easier. It's all in the mind, all in the mind--so how do I make the whole dang run feel like that? Shouldn't that be possible?

"It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful. But it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." --Henry David Thoreau, author, philosopher, and--who knew?--running coach

Also, that is some serious running hair there. Or maybe he's tapering for a race and he'll shave the hairdo and beard right before the big one. Go Thoreau, go!

But I guess if affecting the quality of the day is "the highest of arts," we can't expect it to come easily. Another run, another chance to try, right?

STR: Days 13-15

In the last three days, my workouts have included another body weight workout, running with a jogging stroller, and sitting around reading and watching Game of Thrones. Can you guess which was my favorite day?

Day 13
As planned, Saturday was a big day of nothing. We sat around reading, we got caught up with the last four or five episodes of Game of Thrones. No strength training, no runs.

Day 14
No real plan for Sunday--it could have been another rest day and maybe it should have been another rest day, but I was feeling an itch to do something and my wife and 3-year-old both seemed like they'd be happier if our nigh-on-15-month-old was out of the house (or at least somewhere she couldn't knock down their block castles). So I decided to give the jogging stroller a try.

I didn't like it; I had a lousy run.

Now, maybe some of that is because I'm not used to it. Maybe some of that is because I'm no longer used to evening runs and have gotten to where I really prefer a run first thing in the morning. Maybe it's because--wheels or no wheels--I've got something like 30 pounds or more to move around besides the pounds that I carry around on a normal day. Whatever the reason, I was slow and I knew I was slow, because I felt all out of sorts.

This seems like a good time to talk about one aspect of the way I run: I focus a lot on stride rate, working to keep it above 90 steps per minute with each leg. This idea came from The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris, and it was a big help--everything feels easier when I get this right. How do I get this right? I could use the metronome app on my iPod, but that would get awfully boring awfully quickly, just listening to the tick-tick-tick mile after mile. So I went for a different type of crazy and went through more or less all of  my music library with the "tap" function of the metronome (you tap a beat, it tells you how fast it is) to figure out which songs in my library were at the right tempo to keep me going at 90+ steps per minute.

In general, I've found that--at least where I am in my running right now--a higher stride rate doesn't necessarily translate into a faster run. Because I can't find an hour or so of music that's all right at 90 beats per minute (or the subdivision of that, 180), my mix goes from 90 up to around 102, and everything in between. On a treadmill, I've run at a constant pace with my running mix on, and I find I'm keeping the same pace regardless. The same, I think, can easily be true out in the real world, because in order to keep up with the faster pace, it's probably natural to shorten my stride, so that even though my steps are faster, I'm taking more steps per mile, so it all comes out the same (except that I'm working harder at a faster stride rate).

I mention all this, because it relates to why the run felt wrong with the jogging stroller. Except for the songs that were right at 90 beats per minute, I couldn't get my legs to keep up. Just couldn't do it. Normally 90 is easy and 102 is a nice challenge, and most everything in between feels good too. Not last night! Everything felt like a struggle. I wasn't planning on a long run anyway--which was fortunate, since I don't think I had a long run in me. It ended up being 2.58 miles in just under 25 minutes, which put me at a 9:37 pace. I was afraid it was going to be slower than 10:00, so I guess there's that.

I really do have to look at it as a whole different beast from a regular run. Even though, compared to a regular stroller, the jogging stroller moves pretty easily, it's not like it can somehow overcome the laws of physics and have no effect on my run. There's a 22-23# child in it, plus whatever its effective weight is, and the energy to move that has to come from somewhere. I suppose if I could get myself to do this kind of run more often, it would probably be good for me--certainly, it was good for mommy, sissy, and maybe even the little nugget herself, though it was hard to tell if she enjoyed it or not (no squeals of delight, but she wasn't crying or fussing, either--at least, not that I could hear over my headphones...).

Day 15
Start of a new week, back to the body weight workout (except for the kettlebell I brought into the workout). And it goes like this:

5 sets of 5 reps of one-legged squats: I'm still building up to doing real one-legged squats, with a tiny little chair behind me. I'm basically doing negatives here, but once I get down to that point, I don't have the oomph to get back up. To be clear, I "should" be going this low (basically parallel) or lower, but I'm not there yet. Again, I added 10 regular, unloaded squats after each set, then took 2 minutes of rest.
5 sets of 5 reps of handstand push-ups: still the ultimate shoulder exercise, still couldn't actually get 5 sets of 5 reps--once again, I did what I could and then did five with my feet up on a chair.
1 set kettlebell swings: I have a love/hate relationship with kettlebell swings. I feel like I'm not quite getting the form, because I feel something uncomfortable in my knees. And once upon a time, I threw out my back, and I know that wasn't how these things were supposed to go. I did one set of 75 reps with a 60# kettlebell, but I'm thinking next time this workout comes around, I may drop down to the 35-pounder and really focus on form.
3 sets of pull-ups to failure: Always fun. Note to self: switch grip to chin-up next time this workout comes around, just for the sake of variety.
3 sets, alternating between 60 seconds of plank and 60 seconds of bridge: Last time, I did 30 seconds each. Is anyone surprised that it was harder this way? I mean that in a good way.

STR: Days 10-12

Day 10 (otherwise known as Wednesday)

We're back to another body weight workout, with a similarity to Monday's workout. But before I got to that, I took our 3-year-old to her tennis lesson and spent 30-40 minutes hitting serves. Which must have been some kind of workout, for reasons I'll mention later. But first, the workout I did after we got back from tennis:

5 sets of 5 reps of one-legged squats: taking a cue from a YouTube video that I'm too lazy to locate that suggested sitting back onto stairs to build up to a full one-legged squat, I used one of my daughters' mini-chairs (they're wood chairs that survived decades in a church nursery, so I trust them to handle me) and sat back onto it, so I got a good negative getting down to it, as long as I didn't just plop down. I couldn't just use one leg to get back up from there, but I tried to keep as much weight on that leg as possible.
5 sets of 5 reps of handstand push-ups: the ultimate shoulder exercise--I couldn't actually get 5 sets of 5 reps, but for each of the sets I started off with full on handstand push-ups, went to failure, and then used a chair to take some of the weight off and do 5 reps that way.
3 sets of yoga wheels: it's hard to mimic the dead lift with a body weight exercise, and doing wheels like this seemed like it worked my shoulders more than my posterior chain, but I did 3 sets of them.
3 sets of pull-ups to failure: I sure am glad that our back yard came with clothes line poles.

The workout that I was basing this body weight workout off of called for "prone bridges," which everyone I know calls "planks." Since someone calls them prone bridges, however, that gave me an idea:
3 sets, alternating between 30 seconds of plank and 30 seconds of bridge (another yoga pose, which hits the posterior chain at least as well as wheel pose.

Then, because even all this wasn't enough workout for me, in the evening I biked the three miles each way to my tennis league and played a doubles match there. Where I pretty much stunk it up, starting with the serve that I'd practiced twice now this week. Which points to a couple things: 1) serves take more work than 1 hour in 1 week to really groove and 2) that was enough time to make my elbow and (to a lesser extent) my shoulder sore. No excuses, though: we should have won our match. Grrrrr.

Day 11
Up early in the morning and out for a run. Usually (as much as "usually" applies to something you've done 3 times before) I run east, into town, and run around town. Except for the first, mile and a half of each run that way, there are sidewalks, which are nice enough. We're on the edge of town, though, so heading west took me out into the country. Since I grew up firmly planted in the cornfields of northern Ohio, "the country" feels like a very comfortable place to be--and to run. In fact, when I was at my most avid, I was running in a landscape that looked very much like what I tackled Thursday morning, surrounded by fields, woods, and the occasional house, encountering the occasional car speeding by at 55 (or way s'more than 55) on what's basically a narrow 2-lane road. I ended up running 4.6 miles (for a weekly total of nearly 11 miles for the week) in just over 40 minutes, which made an 8:47 pace: I knew it was slower than Tuesday's run, even though it was a shorter run. So it goes.

Day 12
Today brought me back to a workout that was so much like Monday's workout that it was identical, barring a few tweaks:
5 sets of 5 reps of one-legged squats: 2 minutes between sets, but in that 2 minutes, I also did 10 deep squats.
5 sets of 5 reps of something-like-one-armed-push-ups (The other arm just supported from my fingertips): the first couple sets had 2 minutes between them, the last three I cut it down to 1 minute)
3 sets of Australian pull-ups to failure: 2 minutes break in between
3 sets of push-ups to failure: 2 min break
3 sets, alternating between reverse crunches and back raises: no rest between sets

There were so many ways I didn't want to do this workout. I just wasn't feeling it, probably in some measure because I spent 2 and a half hours push-mowing a lawn yesterday and then we had friends over for dinner, which was exhausting on top of exhaustion, and wonderful, and a great excuse to have a few beers and eat a lot of delicious (but not necessarily healthy) food: pasta with a lemon cream sauce, salad, a rice dish, s'mores... and probably not enough water. Lauren went to bed with a headache and nausea, while I just woke up feeling crappy. It didn't help that this morning was a warm, muggy morning.

So it wasn't the best workout I've ever had, but I pushed through and did all the sets and reps that I'd planned to do. Some days, that has to be enough, I guess.

STR: Day 9

I've decided to start abbreviating "Summer Training Regimen," in part because it's long to write out every time, in part because I'm afraid I'll accidentally type "Regiment" one of these times, and in part because the acronym "STR" looks like an abbreviation for "strength." Neat how that worked out, eh?

This morning, I was up bright and early for a run--protein shake in my belly, Vibrams on my feet, headphones in my ears, and tunes pounding down through my legs. It was 6:48 at Mile 0. My run took me from an industrial park to an actual park. At one point, I politely greeted a pair of runners heading the other way, then as I looped around, we "ran into" each other again. We flashed smiles all around, as strangers became familiar faces.

My big loop through the town ended up totaling 6.26 miles and eating up 53:45 of my day, which meant a pace of 8:35 per mile. It wasn't as fast as I would have liked, nor as slow as I feared I was going, especially when the going got tough in the last mile. Seriously: who put that hill in the last mile back to my house? I don't like running up it at the start of my run and I sure as heck don't like running up it at the end of my run, even if it does make the final bit mostly downhill.

But anyway, I did it, my calves are leading the rest of my leg muscles in a "we did it!" chorus, and I'm showered, dressed, and ready to face the day.

Summer Training Regimen: Days 6-8

Day 6--otherwise known as Saturday--was intended as a rest day, but I almost ruined that plan by going for a run. Don't worry folks: I managed to stop myself!

Day 7, I almost did it again, but instead I picked up two of these babies that we bought from friends who are moving to NYC:






Moving these suckers was just a bit of a workout, which I compensated for with some German Gatorade--if you're not familiar with this magical exercise-enhancing elixir, it's a combination of water, hops, and some grain or another that uses a natural fermentation process to make it more delicious and nutritious. It's basically the beverage equivalent of yogurt or sauerkraut in terms of healthfulness, I'm pretty sure. Speaking of yogurt, we had some of that too--frozen, with workout-enhancing, rapidly-digesting carbohydrates, as well as peanut butter, cake batter, cookie dough, and marshmallow.

Okay, so I took advantage of Father's Day for all it was worth as an excuse to eat bread and cheese and ice cream and beer.

Today, Day 8, got me back on track (I say that as if I hadn't planned for my weekend to be basically what it was!) with a body-weight workout: today, I simplified it a bit but added sets, so it looked like this:

5 sets of 5 reps of one-legged squats
5 sets of 5 reps of something-like-one-armed-push-ups (I did use the other arm to provide stability and take a little of the weight off)
3 sets of Australian pull-ups to failure
3 sets of push-ups to failure
3 sets of reverse crunches (holy cow! it's an ab exercise sighting!)

Although it might be a stretch to count it as a workout, I did also get in some time on the tennis court this morning while our 3-year-old was at her tennis "lesson" (I've said it before and I'll say it again: any lessons at this age--tennis, ballet, pole dancing--are basically about developing physical coordination and the ability to listen to directions and focus a little bit, with a little bit of excitement also generated for the nominal activity). I got in a half hour to forty minutes of much-needed work on my serve. I've always said that the only excuse for a bad serve in tennis or poor free-throw shooting in basketball is lack of practice. And right now, I'm pretty lousy at both.

Summer Training Regimen: Days 4 & 5

Yesterday morning, I decided to take another run, but since 1) my calves were still a bit stiff from Tuesday's run and 2) I was looking at a league tennis match later that day plus 3) I needed to take our 3-yr-old to a tennis lesson, which meant that I couldn't go out too long if I wanted to work out in the morning (and I do, because I'm not a big fan of running under a heavy sun). I wasn't really sure how far it was to run down to one of our corners, but I thought it might be a mile. It wasn't--more like .81. So I ran there and back a bit faster than what I did on my longer run on Tuesday.

It was something like an 8-minute mile, but I can't say for sure because the stopwatch app on my iPod did something very weird: it didn't start right away. I started it (I thought) as I took off down the road. When my second song came on, I realized that I was on the wrong playlist (yes, it makes a difference), so I went to change it, and the stopwatch was only at :36, even though I was sure I must have been running longer than that. When I got back to our house, the stopwatch app said 10:30-something, even though I left at 6:48 and got back at 7:01. I started walking at that point, but then decided to take an easy jog down to the other corner from our house, which turned out to be about a quarter mile each way. So ended up doing 2.1 miles.

Day 5
I was back to a strength-training day, but I wanted to mix it up, so I decided to give a different Bodybuilding.com bodyweight workout a shot.  It mixed in some different exercises and a different approach: a circuit workout instead of doing sets of the same exercise before moving on to the next exercise. The cycle went from Handstand push-ups to One-armed push-ups to pull-ups to one-legged squats to knee jumps to headstand leg raises and finishing with Mahler Body Blasters, which are either named after the guy who put together this workout (Mike Mahler) or else requires you to whistle, hum, or sing (depending on your fitness level) the tune to your favorite movement from a Mahler symphony. The idea was 5-10 of each of these, except the last, which was a lot more than that. And doing 5 circuits. So how did that go?

Handstand push-ups: I've been doing these previously with my feet on a high stool because I couldn't do them straight up. I figured I'd try to actually do them, and I actually got 5 of them the first time through. I only ended up doing 3 circuits, and I got 3 each of those next two times through. I was pleasantly surprised.

One-armed push-ups: So, clapping push-ups are easy enough that I'm getting more than 15 on my first set and quite a few on subsequent sets, so one-armed push-ups seemed like a good step up. Except that I can't really do them. I eeked out 3 each circuit, but only by using the other arm to offer a bit of support (but not too much--I mean, there's a reason I only got three on each side!).

Pull-ups: Okay, I can rock these: 10 or more each time.

One-legged squats: I'm right where I have been all week: I'm doing 5 each time, but I don't have the full range of motion--you're supposed to get all the way down, with your butt barely off the ground. Cripes. I can't do that with both legs. I'm getting down about as far as I usually get with back squats (the one with a bar on, you know, your back), which is to say not far enough. If I'm ever able to actually do one-legged squats the way God meant them to be done, I will feel like the biggest badass in the history of badassery. And you will all know about it, either because you'll see me strutting around like God's gift to one-legged squats, or because you'll read about it here and/or on Facebook, 'cause you know I'll be bragging if I get there.

Knee jumps: I wasn't familiar with these, and the description on the workout didn't quite do it for me (thank you to Youtube for clearing matters up, even if the video didn't deliver on the promised "tips"). Basically, you start out in a kneeling position, resting on your knees and the tops of your feet, butt down on your heels. You use your arms a bit for momentum with a backward and forward swing, and spring up into the bottom of a squat. It sounds harder than it is. I went ahead and stood up from there, which made it marginally more difficult, but even so, I didn't find it that hard. I was managing 20 of these in the third set, which my math skills tell me is more than the requested 5-10. Does that make up for my poor performance on Handstand and One-armed Pushups?

Headstand Leg Raises: In the first round, my basic conclusion was "What the frak are these?" I couldn't figure out any way to make my body do what it was indicated that I was supposed to be doing. So during the 3 minutes I took between cycles, I looked it up--thanks once again to Youtube, though the first video I looked at was not very helpful--yeah, thanks for showing me you can do them, now how about some advice since I can't? Getting my back up against a wall helped, but I still found these to be crazy hard. With the wall, I did 3 each time, but they were quite possibly the crappiest headstand leg raises in the history of headstand leg raises. I had to use momentum to get them going, I bent my legs, struck deals with the devil mid-rep, just to get up there. It was not pretty. Oddly enough, I won't feel nearly as hardcore mastering these as I will if I ever get the one-legged squat.

Mahler Body Blaster: this is like a 1st cousin once removed to the classic burpee that everyone knows and loves and/or hates. Start out in a full squat, rock back on your back all the way so that your feet touch the ground behind your head, then roll forward so you get back into a squat. Hands down, kick back into the top of a push up, do the obligatory push up, bring those legs back, and stand up. Which, I now see, is not quite how this guy interprets it. He doesn't roll back as far and doesn't stand up, but he's more explosive in the way he gets to the push-up position. And, looking around, I see that Mike Mahler describes it differently elsewhere, in way that's exactly what the guy in the video was doing. Nowhere did I hear a symphony theme, though.

All in all, I'm a little bit ambivalent about today's workout. I cut it down to 3 circuits because I was short on time and short on energy too. I felt like the workout was hitting my quads pretty good, but most other things weren't getting as much--no doubt that's in large part because I couldn't actually do the requested 5 reps of several of the other exercises, so even though I was getting to the point of muscle failure, I wasn't really getting quite that feeling of muscular exhaustion that I might have expected. I don't think I'll do this same workout next week, but maybe I'll come back to it later in the summer with hopes of being able to complete it more fully (I was stoked about getting 5 real handstand push-ups the first round)--I may also incorporate a few aspects of it into what I'm doing.

Oh, and when I do get around to this workout again, someone remind me to throw Symphony of a Thousand in my playlist.

Summer Training Regimen: Days 1-3

Overview
Monday, I started my summer workouts after a week off. I took a week off because 1) the school's gym is closed and 2) I was feeling too busy to work out. Now, with the true advent of summer, I've got a couple other problems: 1) the gym is still closed for another week or so and 2) the gym is 15 minutes away, which is kind of inconvenient now that I'm not going to work.

So: what to do? One option would be to get a membership at Lifeplex, which is within sight of our house... but it's not exactly a great value. And I have a hard time paying for a gym membership when I have free access to a pretty decent gym (even if it's 15 minutes away). So I'm thinking along different lines: for the next two months, I'm planning to forgo the gym entirely. Which is tough, because I love lifting weights. Seriously: love it.

But I'm also usually up for something new. I drew some inspiration from this article on Bodybuilding.com suggesting bodyweight alternatives to weightlifting standards. So I put together the exercises into a workout. Normally I would do a workout that combines a couple muscle groups and hits them hard, in different ways. Like, say, 3 different chest exercises, then three more tricep exercises, plus some ab work; and then on another day, I'd do a bunch of back exercises and then a bunch of bicep exercises. Etc. But while I do think that these bodyweight exercises can be good substitutes, I don't get the sense that I can get that kind of variety. So what I'm thinking is doing a full-body workout three days a week, with something else in between. So far, with a sample size of one, that's been running.

 Day 1
 So what am I doing? Monday, it was Handstand Push-ups (modified), Clapping Push-ups, Diamond Push-ups, 1-legged Pistol Squats, Wheels, Pull-ups, and Australian Pull-ups. Three sets of each, and between each set I did a minute of cardio, per Jim Stoppani's Shortcut to Shred on Bodybuilding.com. Cause, you know, who needs actual rest between sets? One problem: while I have a pull-up bar, and pull-ups are great, our beautiful old farm house has no doorways that will accommodate a pull-up bar, even if I did want to ruin the gorgeous moldings on our door frames. But hey, we've got a rusty old clothesline post in the back yard, so that's good. I'm pretty sure my tetanus shots are up to date.

Day 2
Up bright and early, but our oldest daughter was up right after me. Crap. She'll freak out if I leave to go for a run. Fortunately, a little chocolate milk and Dora put her right back to sleep. That's my favorite part, Dora. That.

I pulled up my running mix on my iPod and set off down our street, which resembles nothing so much as an industrial wasteland. But hey, it's home, and the shoulders are nice and broad. My plan was to run 40 minutes and see where that got me--or, more precisely, to run 20 minutes and then see if I could get back home in another 20. The good: I did, in fact, get back in 20 minutes, so my pace didn't slow in the second half. The less-good: I was really hoping when I mapped out my run that I would have gone 5 miles or more, since that would have translated into 8-minute miles; instead, it was just 4.66, which put my miles just slower than 8:30. Still, for the first day out running, I was happy enough just to be there.

Day 3
Got out of bed and could hardly walk down the hall. I guess I forgot to mention in Day 2 that I did  the run in my Vibrams. I ran a 5k less than a month ago, but that was in tennis shoes. It's been months since I pulled on these babies:

These shoes, by the way, are very good at encouraging you to strike the ground with the balls of your feet rather than your heels. Which is to say, a run with these is a great way to shred your calves, as every step I took this morning reminded me.

But I took our oldest to peewee tennis and spent 20 minutes serving, then came home and pushed through my workout: chin-ups, close-grip overhand pull-ups, Australian pull-ups, pistol squats, clapping push-ups, inclined push-ups, and--what the hell--diamond push-ups. So it was a back and chest day, with nods to biceps and triceps, and legs thrown in for good measure. And I did the whole "cardio acceleration" thing between sets.

And I almost died.

I thought, at the end, that I should really be doing some ab work. But no. I was out of gas. And given how I woke up, just psyched that I still managed a great workout.

Day 4
Day 4 is still an open book. I was leaning toward another run, because there's a part of me that wants to make running a bigger part of my training. But given the severe thunderstorms we're having tonight, I don't know what to expect. There's another weather to consider: whether or not I'll be able to walk in the morning. So... maybe yoga. Because that will be easy when I can barely walk.