8/29/2025 Friday
What a morning.
Up at 3:30 for a potential 4:00 AM meeting, the meeting ended up being at 5:30 so I guess I could have run at 4:00 but whatever.
Ended up with just a few free minutes between meetings later in the morning, so:
2 mile hill run. 18:49.
That may not sound fast but if you could see these hills… it’s pretty solid.
What I wanted to do was my 2.4 mile route with a long walk back, but it just wasn’t in the cards - no time.
So… I saw my top few abs again today (2 or maybe 4 lol). That’s cool.
No real goals in that area but a nice side effect of the running and, this week, no snacking at night. Unsure how long that’ll last though as we’re leaving wednesday for a 10-day family trip.
9/1/2025 Monday, Labor day - a holiday here.
Up at 4:30 for a 5:00 run:
2.4 miles to end of road. Wanted to walk back but ended up running quite a bit of it, to finish the whole trip in 48 minutes, not as a training goal but to get back on time for a 6:00 commitment.
Dropping a quick update in.
Last few days have included PLENTY of walking - about as much as the kids can handle physically/mentally, and much of it with a 40lb kid on my shoulders.
And a decent amount of running, in boots and jeans!
I’ll put pictures up here when possible. It’s been amazing and will continue to be. If you’ve seen LoTR, and who hasn’t, I’m currently staying around many of their filming locations. Think steep snow-capped mountains, gorgeous blue glacial lakes, etc.
It’s good to be in good shape so I can do this stuff without feeling miserable.
I’m eating everything I can, which includes enough decent food that I’m doing OK and plenty of junk as well. Not worried about it at all.
Plan for tomorrow.
A lite version of something I did a couple weeks ago - plus the shoulder throws, which may not fit in the intended work time.
I’m hoping for 30-60 sec of rest per round, as this is easing back into things.
9/15/2025 Monday, back to work!
This was meant to be a “lite” session but in fact it was not. Adding the bag-over-shoulder throws is what tipped the scales.
I had to drop from what I wrote in the previous post because I’d have had zero rest, so I dropped from 8 to 4 throws after the first round.
Even so, on the very last round I finished exactly as the beep was going off for the interval.
5 rounds:
6 minutes per round.
-Half-mile run
-300ft 100lb bag carry (bearhug x 2, left sh, right sh, bearhug)
-Bag-over-shoulder throws (8, 4,4,4,4)
-“rest” (lol) until the beep
Exactly a 30-minute session. The rest periods were about enough for one sip of water.
@T3hPwnisher I’m liking the fixed distance of the carry, so that every round is repeatable and the session can be scaled up or down - more or fewer rounds, or more time between rounds. Adding the throws was awesome; maybe a quarter-mile run, with a 200ft carry, and 8 throws in an appropriate round-time (or AMRAP within 30 min!) would be even cooler. Depends what the focus area is, I guess. Figured you’d like watching this evolve.
I love it! You got a great bit of brutality in there with the “rest until over”. You end up having to make a choice: do you slow down a little in the workout to make it suck a little less, knowing you’ll get less rest, or do you bust your ass so you get more rest time, only to NEED all that rest time since you worked so hard.
That “choice” was diabolical!
And as I stated, wasn’t the intent for this particular day, because I was going to ease back into things after a couple weeks away. But glad I stuck it out regardless.
9/17/2025 Wednesday
MURPH.
Wasting absolutely zero time with half-measures, going straight to being a badass. Not gonna lie, I’m thrilled with the fact that I can do this at 37 with 4 kids and 3 jobs and no supplements.
1 mile valley run to park.
100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, broken out into 33 rounds EMOM of 3/6/9 with the remainder added to the final round.
1 mile valley run home.
Total time: 56 minutes door-to-door.
Right elbow was pretty cranky during the first hundred pushups, but actually stopped bothering me toward the end. The uphill half of the valley run home was absolutely horrible as always.
OK, holy crap, this soreness was insane.
I went for my run - 2.4 miles out, then walk 2.4 miles home.
As soon as my feet hit the pavement my pecs were being tortured with every footfall, I had to hold my chest like a bra-less girl. It kept hurting the whole run. The soreness is just so deep! LOL.
All good. was not trying to push myself, just maintenance/therapy.
9/22/2025
I guess my bad-assery of 5 days ago was a little too aggressive, after all.
Friday’s run was a sad and painful excuse to check the training box without hurting myself any more, as I was in pain pretty much head to toe. Then for the rest of Friday and the first 2/3 of saturday I continued to feel flu-like and worthless.
Maybe it was all from the Murph, or maybe I was fighting off a sickness or something.
Either way, though I’m pretty much back to normal today, I decided not to push too hard.
-1 mile run to park.
-Pullups, pushups, squats:
1/2/3
2/4/6
3/6/9
4/8/12
5/10/15
10/20/30
(total of 25, 50, 75 respectively - 1/4 murph)
-1 mile walk back home.
Next time I do something like last week, I’ll do so from a baseline of having done SOME relevant training in the preceeding few weeks so the grooves are greased and I don’t get wiped out by DOMs again.
Of note, on the last set I observed pushups to be more limiting than squats or pullups in that ratio. Worth exploring, as maybe I could break the Murph up into different sized rounds and maybe gain a little speed.
9/24/2025 Wednesday
Trained yesterday afternoon at the actual gym (first time in there for a month or so?), in lieu of training from home this morning.
Squat:
5x bar
4x5x135
Would have done a 5th set but my left hamstring started to cramp again. This is a recurring problem now - recently during sex as well as during squat sessions a few weeks or months ago. Weird.
SLDL, several sets, super light.
Bench press. Several sets of 8-10. Felt good. Worked up to 135lbs. ROFL at how different it is now from the days of being serious about squat-bench-deadlift.
Chest-supported rows.
Bicep curls and arnold shoulder press, several sets.
Couple sets of shoulders with the empty barbell, too.
All in all: It was good to go back to a real gym. It’s so different from the way I train anymore. I think it would be healthy for me to do some occasional BB sessions in addition to the athletic stuff I normally do. But I also love Oly lifting, which isn’t very great if you only do one session per month. I’m not going to chase squat/bench/deadlift again, maybe ever, but it would be fun occasionally do just do some basic strength stuff…
These days it just doesn’t make a ton of sense to go to the actual gym very often though. And I’ve been doing pretty good without it…
Followup to the 9/24 Wednesday entry - took most of the day off work (after the early morning) and took a 2-hour hike with my wife and 4yo. Twas fun, and a lot of elevation change.
9/26/2025
3.8 mile hill run. 1 mile walk back.
This is the same route I usually do on Fridays, but this time, after the turn at mile 2.4, I kept running until I reached the Murph park 1 mile from home.
Some pretty gruelling uphill slogs in the last part of that.
This is a distance PR for me on that route.
