I thought I would be running in the snow, but the storm came in slow and it was barely a drizzle. I’ll take it. Going to try and run outside all winter. My gym is a little too far away to pull off going to a treadmill in the early mornings.
Monday 11/18
Weight-In
140.2, -3.4lbs from last week
That is quite the whoosh. I even ate a bit more the last couple of days, as my average shows.
Hubby and I went to REI over the weekend. Out of curiosity, I decided to try on some size 6 pants. My usual 8’s are all loose enough to look like a Weight Watchers commercial. Well, the size 6 went on great. So great I tried on 3 different brands to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. So great that… well, even the 6 wasn’t tight. Still a little room around the hips. I haven’t been a size 6 since high school folks, I was buzzing the rest of the day. No wonder my belt has been working OT. I have one of those infinitely adjustable belts, and it’s folded 1/3 over to keep my pants up.
And I am still going. The 130’s are so close I can almost taste them. Makes me wonder… Could I be a jacked size 4? Alright, that might be getting greedy.
The 5/2 diet experiment starts this week too. Though this weigh in has been wondering if I am tinkering with something that isn’t broken.
@T3hPwnisher Thank you! It’s been awesome having you in my corner, so many great tips.
If it’s not broken, right? The high and low days do appeal to me. The thought of some days having good sized meals sounds amazing. I’ll still give it a shot this week end next, because I think it will go well with the trip I have on the docket. But as @QuadQueen always says, if it sucks and/or doesn’t work for me, I can hop right off that train. Who knows? It could fit great. I won’t know without the experience.
@SvenG Challenge accepted! Nice of you to stop by and encourage moving goal posts, this community just gets it.
Leg Press (Narrow Stance, knees over toes, quad focus)
10 x 200, 10 x 245, 10, 10 x 290
Slight Incline DB Press
6, 6 x 50, 10 x 45
Lat Pulldown
12, 11 x 100, 10 x 90
SS
OH Machine tricep ext
3 x 15 x 40
Machine Lat Raise
3 x 15 x 20
Preacher Curl
10, 10, 8 x 35
Cable Hip Abductor
3 x 15 x 20
10 minutes spin bike
Swapped the Bulgarian Split Squats for leg Press. I just didn’t have the soul to give to the last night. Leg press felt awesome though. Really hit the quads hard without the grip intensity. I feel like I can control the weight more too.
Incline Press is still creeping up on reps. My pecs are actually visible on these now, according to hubby.
It occurred to me during this workout that this is week 7 without a deload. Good timing for a trip next week. I don’t need to stress about finding hotels with decent gyms. Just ride the shiny new bikes. I won’t be skipping leg day at least!
Tuesday 11/19
Running - Intervals (or Fartlek, for those that care about the funny running term)
Oh two minutes was a long time. Covered .25 miles each time, total distance was 2 miles. The last two minutes had me feeling like last night’s dinner was coming up for an encore. I guess that means I went “hard” enough.
I ran with a deer for a quarter mile. I was just a few minutes in when I saw two sets of floating eyes reflected in my headlamp light. I kept on going toward it, hoping it was just deer. It was, they let me get close before they scampered into someone’s yard. One of them ran in front of me for a few feet, stopped, turned and stared at me and waited for me to catch up. Then he did his little deer hop into the next yard, waited for me, and so on. This went on for a few minutes. So apparently I took a deer for a run this morning.
Day 1 of the low calorie 5/2 wasn’t great. I was nauseous hungry after lunch until dinner. With dinner I was hungry enough that my microwaved, frozen Normandy Blend veggies and chicken was freaking amazing. I forgot to season the veg and it didn’t matter.
Day one of experiment, so far, it’s not better than steady calorie restriction.
Machine Squat (Pendulum style)
6, 6 x M+115, 10w/5llps x M+90
Machine Incline Press
8, 9, 9 x 60
Leg Ext
10, 10, 10 x 105
SS
Laying Ham Curl
10 x 65 10, 10 x 45
Cable Row
11, 10 x 110, 10 x 105
Cable Bi Curl
3 x 12 x 60
SS
Cable Tri Pushdown
3 x 12 x 70
10 minute recumbent bike
Pretty good day. Work caused a late lunch so ate about 90 minutes before this. It was nice not going into it hungry and that showed in reps and poundage.
That squat machine is the closest I have found to replicating the load and forces under a barbell, that allows my disc to stay happy. I may lean into that and absolutely butcher a 5/3/1 program with it for my next bulk. I’d like to use more compound movements for it, I have gone way off the deep end on accessories.
Woke up 5 minutes before my alarm from a nightmare about getting chased by wolves while running. My headlamp died right when I woke up. Just what you want before running in the dark by yourself!
Luckily, the only thing I had to worry about was the usual cars.
I have decided what I want to train for. I’d like to run 31 for 31 = 31 miles before I turn 32. Which happens to be the entry level Ultra Marathon distance, 50k. Because why aim for a Marathon when you can overshoot and do an Ultra?
I don’t have a specific race picked out yet, but I want to try and get it as close to my birthday as possible, end of July. There are a couple in Nevada and Oregon that intrigue me. I just need to pick one and sign up.
I am so excited to be training for something specific again! The endurance athlete in me is coming back around full force.
I LOVE this! I ran a 27.3 mile trail race in Colorado on my 27th birthday. It was definitely one of the top 3 races of my running career. It was super hard, but so awesome. Do this thing!! You will not regret it!
Around 12 miles. Did 7 trails. At sea level. It’s so weird to take one deep breath and be caught up on breathing while climbing. Ended up soaking wet and cold by the end of this, but had and absolute blast. The new bikes are no longer clean.
Cardio shape was good, biking muscles are waking up.
The last two days were lots of driving. Got 8k steps in each day during drive stops. Ended up going to Bellingham, Wa instead of further south down the coast. We knew we could ride there, even in the rain. Driving to the next bike location today!
About 6 miles. Lots of laps at an awesome bike park on the Coast.
Wednesday 11/27
Interval Run
8 x 1 min @ 8:30/mi
1 min jog between
This was done on the beach. Even in sand, a few intervals were well under a 8:00/ mi pace for the same effort as the intended 8:30. Yay for normally running at 4,000ft+!
About 14 miles total. Many awesome trails. Driving back through one of my favorite towns outside of Utah and I thought it would be snowed in. Luckily, the lower altitude trails were dry.
Ended up staying two unexpected nights.
Saturday 11/30
Long Run, easy, 6 miles. 1:09
The Christmas lights were out, I was running through an amazing town. Fantastic morning. Headed home today and I am not super happy about that.
