Sunday I did a large training “brick” with my wife who is training for an upcoming olympic distance triathlon. We did a 90 minute bike ride followed by a 60 minute run followed by a mile swim (in a lap pool). I was quite spent by the 3+ hours of cardio activity.
The biking is the most annoying of the three disciplines for me. Sitting on a road bike for that long is just uncomfortable as hell.
My body weight work hasn’t been as consistent as I would like recently due to several factors. I have been busy with some other projects around the house, felt a little off physically after running the half marathon and also suffering in the midst of a general mental malaise (a regular occurrence) that has cut into my normally high motivation levels.
I have not yet tried a signal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge nor have I given the March 20by12 challenge a shot. With the time change I will have considerably more daylight available after work. Hopefully that translates into more time on the bars.
Yesterday at the gym my legs actually felt decent enough to do some squats. Considering I almost needed a walker on Monday I was quite happy the rebound my body has made after running the half marathon.
Last night after work I shot a video documenting where I am at with my form on muscle ups, slow muscle ups and static one handed chin up holds. With the muscle ups my focus has been using less swing, less kip and keeping my legs together and in control. In the video it looked like I succeeded on two of the three items. My swing is about as small as I can make it and my legs did stay together. However even though it felt like I didn’t use my legs much for lift in the video, it’s obvious I have a powerful knee raise going on.
My slow muscle up was pretty clean. I made sure I was fully extended below the bar before pulling up and I did not use any appreciable kip to get over the bar. I find the keys to the slow muscle up are of course a false grip (or wrists resting on top of the bar in my case) and trying to really pull hard during the transition phase so your shoulders get up and over the bar to a point where your center of balance is on top of the bar.
My static one handed chin holds documented the large discrepancy in holding power between my right and left sides. I held on with my right arm for almost a full 10 seconds. On my left side I barely could hold a second which actually is a slight improvement where as normally I will drop almost immediately on the left.
I need to keep working to narrow that gap in strength as it will affect any pulling body weight movement.
On Sunday I knocked off one of my physical goals of 2012, crushing my 2 hour half marathon goal, finishing in 1:55:17. That time was in spite of some very unfavorable race conditions including a 20 minute downpour and high winds.
I was very pumped as you can guess.
My past year or so of body weight training was a big contributor to my race result. Not only has my body weight training allowed me to make my body more efficient with a much better weight to muscle mass ratio it also has helped train my mind. Running 13 miles requires mental toughness, knowing I have knocked out a number of body weight exercise goals in the past year definitely helped push me along.
It felt great to set and eclipse what for me was a pretty daunting goal.
If you would like to read my full recap of the race you can do so on my regular blog, here.
Last night I filmed an intro video for the March Bar-barian forum challenge, “Maximum Fatigue”. The challenge involves pre-fatiguing your muscles before trying a max rep set of several exercises.
I was surprised how much of a difference it made doing a brief 20 second hold before repping out, it was uncomfortable.
I also dedicated a lot of time in the video demonstrating acceptable versus questionable form as this is an issue that is always present with these challenges. We have had some issues with guys cranking some high rep upper body exercise sets but utilizing lower body momentum to help their numbers.
Many times guys don’t even realize they are not using great form as they are concentrating on just getting as many reps as possible. Most of the time once we point it out to them they clean it up on subsequent attempts.
I still catch myself from time to time not concentrating on form like I should. When you are in the midst of the pain of high level anaerobic activities it is easy to forget.
This Sunday I will be running the second half marathon of my life. After I ran this same race last year I was in no rush to repeat the experience. Even though running 13.1 miles is very tough physically, it is your mental endurance that is tested even more. As the race progresses you develop lots of internal arguments in your head between the reasonable person who says “this is really uncomfortable now, just stop” and the tough guy that says “run and then when you feel tired, run faster”.
This back and forth dialogue can get to be a bit maddening. That is why I wish I had a designated running partner for the race, I think it would make the experience a lot more bearable. Anyway I have set my target at breaking the two hour mark for the race. I have done that pace for a 10 mile run several times but never for 13.1.
I was happy to see that right now the forecast for Sunday morning includes temperatures in the mid to upper 50’s. Running in cooler weather will be a big help. It will be even better if it is overcast.
I plan to resume my juicing routine next week, it got side tracked when my family was in town. I plan to supplement my dinner juices with some plant proteins. We have a tub of hemp protein that has been sitting around unused. Ali has bought a lot of these type of supplements with the hopes of including them in her normal diet. However the implementation of that plan always seems to get derailed. If I start handling it you can be assured it will be included on a consistent basis.
Dan Kalosthenos, a fellow 40+ year old bar enthusiast (much more advanced than I am), is a vegan. He uses a number of these plant based supplements in his nutrition plan as well. If it is good enough for him it is good enough for me. It is because of Dan that I have started drinking more and more almond milk and less of the dairy variety.
I plan to use today’s Leap Day as a tool to get in one more attempt at this month’s 5150 Bar-barian challenge. I plan to try a slightly different strategy that I have seen several guys use successfully. It is basically go with a decent number first set and from there on out bounce back and forth between the exercises with mini-sets using next to no rest. They basically stop repping each exercise at the point where they would have to pause to continue. Those pauses waste precious time.
I plan to bypass my scheduled GUTS routine at the gym today so I am fresh as possible for the challenge after work.
I bit the bullet and signed up for a half marathon that goes off Sunday. It is the same half marathon I ran last year in about 2:11. My goal this year is to run it in less than two hours. My training this year has not been very good for the race due to some injuries and other time sinks.
I generally don’t look all that forward to doing races. When I am in a race I see it as a situation where I absolutely need to push myself to the point where there is not an ounce of gas in the tank. Obviously it is not very comfortable to do so. I don’t look forward to the discomfort but if I manage to hit my goal it will be a source of pride, especially considering the circumstances.
Despite my outer, workout obsessed appearance I too can suffer from the normal ebbs and flows of motivation. My last two GUTS efforts were sub-par, I mentally just was not that into it. I also have found it tough to get excited about doing the half marathon in early March.
It may be some degree of burn out. After all, my 5 day a week lunch work outs paired with my after work sessions with various endurance activities and contest challenges wedged in there makes for a pretty full exercise plate.
My head hasn’t felt positively focused for a few days and when that happens everything suffers.
On a side note, I still have been doing juicing primarily for dinner 4 or 5 days a week. We also found a decent alternative for those looking for some of the benefits of juicing without buying a juicer and investing the time required to make juice.
The brand is called Naked. They have a variety of juice combinations and they are basically just pure juice with no bullshit added although the product is pasteurized for shelf life. I’ve tried 4 or 5 varieties and all of them were fine.
We have been using these instead of our crack of dawn juicing sessions that were becoming a large pain in the ass.
The bottles aren’t cheap, Ali reports they are roughly $2.50 a pop. However if you compare that to the time/effort and cost of the raw materials used in juicing it will be pretty much a wash.
If you see them at the grocery store grab a bottle or two and try it out.
As I mentioned last week, my current endurance goal is to break 2 hours in an upcoming half marathon in early March. I ran this same event last year and turned in a time of 2:11 and change. In the past when I have been training for endurance events like runs and triathlons I have totally abandoned any leg weight work exercises completely and just focused on doing the cardio.
Well I have been squatting pretty regularly for around 4-5 months. I am by no means strong in squats but the motion is just very beneficial to overall body strength. Any of you that have squatted before and then taken a break from squatting know that when you go back you will be in for some major muscle pain.
Well to hit my endurance goal I will need to do more than one long run a week on a Saturday. What I normally would do is add on a treadmill session at the gym on a Wednesday as well.
This time around I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. I started my work out off today with a squat session and then jumped on the treadmill and put in two miles at an 8:34 pace (7 MPH) which is faster than I would need to go to break the two hour half marathon mark which requires a pace somewhere around 9:10.
When I run on the treadmill I always make sure the incline is set at 1 percent. Doing so supposedly will bring the effort level more on par with what you would experience running outdoors.
Running after squatting is obviously tougher than running without squatting. I’m not sure what exercise experts would say about my odd training couple. I guess I will see how it works for me as my training proceeds.
Dufisthenics 