Exercise Goals for 2008

hold onto yer hat -- it's gustier n' hell out thayuh today...

Yeah, but 62. 62!
It was even warm enough to get Two-Mile Mike out there.

they've issued wind advisories.
i think i'll hold off on the fertilizer...

Good advice.
I wish our management staff had taken it before this morning's meeting.

Sucks about the anemia, Noddy. (Seems like there's a vampire joke in there but if so I can't find it.) Spring's coming soon...

Sozlet had an out-of-nowhere pair of ear infections, complete with perforated eardrums, so no gymming for me this week yet. Hopefully tomorrow. (Will update the "I'm not cold thread" re: the latest drama... sigh. She's fine tho.)

Poor Sozlet! Ear infections are the pits.

Have re-started the exercise routine, doing-just-half but doing them.

I've always had a sorta-semi-demi-kinda rule about exercise - that my target would be half of the most I did the week before.

So if I swam 40 - 64 lengths each night - the following week, the minimum I should do each night the following week was 32 lengths.

It usually (usually) keeps things from getting too far off-track.

Of course, you can cheat the system by decreasing your effort week by week by week ... but it does make it easy to step it back up again gradually.

March recap.
Bad month. One week lost due to toothache. Another week I ran with a common cold.

February breakdown:

45.3 k
(27% behind the required pace to meet the 2008 goal)

43.5 points

20 points speed
19 points stamina
4.5 points distance

Year breakdown:

182 K. (counting 9 K in april)
(4% behind the required yearly pace, and this means the february cushion is gone)

Thinking of possibly upping my weights. Sometimes I drag (like yesterday), other days I cruise through the workout (today). So I think I'm coming up close on the heels of a need to step up the weights or the reps or both. Hmm.

Fbaezer--

Better luck this month. At least you had the February cushion.

Jes--

Upward, onward.

Ambition comes in strange forms.

*********

I'm hoping to do another day of half-counts. I'm a mistress of modest beginnings.

Once you get used to a certain weight, it's time to go up.
You want to be struggling to complete those last reps.

What's the goal - lean muscle or bulk?

Exercise? What's that?

Excellent job, jes. You're doing great. Yes, I'd up the weights once the current ones are too easy.

Hey, thanks Noddy, for the cheers.
Up with that energy!



I said I would talk a bit about the people I run with (or should I say "I run into while jogging")

Yesterday, it was The Physicist.
He, of course, is a physicist, about 40 (he was student to a friend of mine who died too young). And he works at the "Casa de Moneda", who prints the bills and coins the coins.
What has a physicist to do with printing bills?
We talked a little about it, yesterday, while running. He's on nanotechnology, and has to do with the many locks put into currency. He was telling me about the security thread and the holographic "ehecatls" (Aztec wind gods) on the new 1000 peso bill. If you move the bill up and down, the holograms will move sideways, and viceversa...
(I of course started the conversation on a subject of his interest, so he'd keep on talking and, after a mile or so, I'd start going "mhumm", "oh!", "cool" instead of real talk, as my breathing lets me)
... so after a lesson on holograms, I finish my 4 K, he goes on to finish his 8K, and then we have a few sprints together. He now has moved closer to downtown (following my advice, he says) and is much happier not having to drive an hour to and from work.
Running is not his thing, he says, as if 10K in less than 50 minutes were bad. Swimming and Cycling are. He's a triathlete.
When we are over, I say to myself: "Today I was this guy's Two-Mile Mike".

Weight loss, mainly, but I know I should build some muscle to pull up the metabolism. Plus it's a time constraint thing, more reps means the whole thing takes even longer and I have just about zero time as it is.

So today I did an experiment and did about 1/3 of my set with the heavier weights and 2/3 with what I use now. I think I'll continue that way, and ease into things.

i painstakingly achieved my yardwork goal yesterday.
put in 5 hrs of hodd labor in the chilly drizzle.

mr. sanitation worker will hate me long time when he tries to lift all those lawn n' leaf bags into his truck...

I am becoming sort of distressed when I can't walk into work (if I need to have my car get to meetings and whatnot).

Obsession works for me!!!! So, I am happy to see it kick in a bit.

I walked both ways the other day (about 90 - 95 minutes in all) and was not tired the next day, so not pushing too much is working out. (I know it's just walking, but in the past, I tended to go like a bull at a gate, and get injuries like shin splints and such, I suppose because I am forced to do a lot of it on hard pavement.)


I have to be careful with weights, because I have injured shoulders, but I am thinking it is time to go up to five kilo ones (I just use mine at home, not on machines.)


And my trusty stick with resistance bands is working out! Gymstick...that's what it's called.


It is really doing a lot for tummy muscles, (different from the ab-roller) because it gets you working at full stretch, which feels great, and is obviously doing different stuff to my muscles.

Good going, dlowan!

I did the yardwork-as-exercise thing on Sat and hope to do a bunch more today. Definitely had post-workout pain Sunday morning (the good kind).

back in the saddle again...