Looking for Motivation

I'm pretty sure that cat does not have the upper body strength to remedy this situation and it will inevitably fall. Is that the message I'm supposed to learn? Resistance is futile. You will fail.

As the earlier posts in this blog point out, I struggle with motivation. I seem to be able to stick to a workout program for around 60-90 days, then life catches up with me, throws me a curve ball, and while I wait for the dust to settle, I end up off track and unmotivated to work out (there were about a brazillion cliché’s in that sentence, my apologies.)

Earlier this month, I spent beginning of the month traveling for work. I managed to stick to my workouts and keep up with my running. Last week was full of poor planning and other obstacles that could have been avoided, but weren’t. And this week I don’t really have any excuses. I ran all my runs, but only did one body weight workout.  I guess it’s not that big of a deal that I ran three days and worked out one day, but my goal is always three days weight training, three days running.

So I’m heading into May with the hopes of shaking off the dust and starting over. I’ve outlined a list of goals for May:

1. Lift heavy things 2-3x a week.
2. Run 20+ miles a week.
3. Eat 80% whole foods. (foods in their original state, e.g. vegetables, fruit, meat, rice)
4. Eat 20% processed foods. (foods that require manipulation, e.g. bread, cheese, sausage)
5. Avoid sugar and fried food.

Mulligan

Now with "natural" labrador flavor.

So last week was a bit rough. First, as I mentioned earlier, my foot was giving me a bit of trouble. I’ve been taking care of it as best I can, and I’m happy to say, there’s been no pain all week, so hopefully it was just a sprain, and not something more serious.

Monday my wife and I went for a run, but it was cut short due to my wife experiencing some symptoms of a recurring back injury. Choosing to play it safe, we decided to walk after about three miles and recoup. I’m pretty sure we prevented further injury to both of us as it was probably unwise of me to run on my hurt foot the day after a 14-mile run. When I got back to the loft, I squeezed in a Chest & Back workout, which turned out to b e my last lifting day of the week. Not great.

Tuesday was Stone Week in Kansas City. Meaning the Stone Brewery finally started distributing to our state and all my favorite bars were celebrating with tons of Stone on tap. Instead of responsibly coming home and working out that evening, I stuck around half the night and used the release party as an excuse to get together with friends and celebrate.

Wednesday and Thursday I had family in town and little time to squeeze in a workout. Friday my wife and I attempted a trail run, though we cut it short again to play it safe.

Saturday we drove to St. Louis to visit family and friends for Easter weekend. Knowing we would have to do this week over again, we went on a leisure run. We ran from my parent’s house to an old presidential home, then ran on to a trail that runs past the famous Budweiser Clydesdale’s. After stopping to pet a newborn, we ran down a trail that used to be a railroad, through a nearby park with some great back trails, and then looped back to see the horses again. We rarely run just to run, with no set distance or time, it was definitely one of the most fun runs we’ve ever gone on.

This week it’s back to the grind. I ran a bunch of intervals last night and earlier today I did another Chest & Back routine. It’s easy for me to fall off track when I miss some workouts like I did last week, so the real challenge begins now.

I ran 14 miles today and boy are my legs tired.

It also hurt when I fell from heaven.

I got up this morning at 6 a.m., made breakfast – eggs, sausage & beans – and went to the races. My wife and I ran the Trolley Run, one of our favorite runs in Kansas City. It’s a 4 mile jaunt that never loops back. Usually we take the shuttles from the finish to the start, but we were scheduled to run 14 miles today, so we parked the car at the start of the race, ran to the finish, grabbed some water and a few snacks, turned around and headed back.

The run went pretty well, we beat our old time by about 30 seconds, which is great, considering we both took most of last year off from running. When we got back to the car, we unloaded our race bibs, slathered on some sunscreen, grabbed the water bottle and turned around to run the last six miles. Everything was going great until around the 9.5 mile mark, when we started to sprint across a street to avoid an oncoming car. Something in my foot gave, and I started to feel a sharp pain inside my foot.

This wasn’t a huge surprise, my left foot has been hurting all week. I did some research online and determined it was either tendinitis – a relatively simple problem, or it was a stress fracture – a relatively huge problem. I’m starting to think it’s the latter.

With only five more miles to go I favored my right foot and ran on the outside of my left foot. This worked ok, but it put an incredible stress on my knees. We finished the run, and I immediately put some ice on it, and so far it hasn’t hurt, but I’m pretty worried about it. I plan to wait until my next run on Tuesday to see if there’s any more pain, but I might push that run to later in the week, or do it on a bike instead.

I’m really hoping this thing heals, or isn’t as serious as I’m afraid it might be. Last week, the wife and I decided to run a marathon later this year. Yesterday, we decided to run a 100 mile ultra-marathon next year. Someone needs to tell my foot to fix itself, because I’ve got some running to do!

The other weird thing about today is my wife and I are both incredibly tired. We’re not quite sure why, we’ve both run this distance before, albeit, not for about two or three years, but we’ve run 13 miles a few times since then and this is only one more mile. We’re both a bit nauseous, and I feel like it takes about 10x as much effort to breathe.

It really sucks to burn yourself out on a training run, there’s no glory, only pain. Then again, I guess that can be said about most races as well. At least we had a beautiful spring morning to enjoy for our two hour foot powered tour of Kansas City.

We’ve spent the last few hours recuperating on the couch, and this evening we’re going to a beer dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. So I predict we’ll be feeling pretty relaxed by the end of the day, and we’ll also sleep like the dead tonight, which is exactly what I need.

Running through the City

These are my trails.

To quote the great Lee Ving, “I love living in the city.” I love my one mile commute to work. I love that it takes me just as long to drive to work and find a parking spot as it does to ride my bike there. And I love running through the city.

Monday night, my wife and I ran 7 x 1000 meter intervals. As we ran past cars and construction and tall buildings and vacant lots, we could see trees budding, smell lilac, hear dogs playfully barking, and best of all, we can smell Boulevard brewing up some great beers.

Our typical run starts outside our loft, crosses a bridge over railroad tracks that connect to one of the busiest rail yards in the country, then we run through a park and around the Liberty Memorial, a giant monument to World War I. From the memorial, we get a great vantage point of the city and the rest of our run. Then we wind back down through the park and head through Crown Center, the outside of which contains a large fountain that children play in, an outdoor ice skating rink, and thousands of twinkling lights. Then we head up to the downtown Power & Light District and loop back down to our loft.

It’s a mini tour of some of the most beautiful parts of the city. And now that my wife has a GPS watch, we change it up whenever we feel like it. Sometimes we head downtown, sometimes we head south in search of more parks.

One night we were out running and saw a bunch of police cars gathering down the block,

This actually happened.

we ran to the intersection and saw they were blocking traffic so a herd of a dozen circus elephants could walk from the event center back to their rail cars. We  followed the elephants the rest of the way, it like our own private parade. Had we stayed in and used the treadmill, we never would have known what we were missing.

I’m sure running through parks along dirt trails is nice, but honestly, I wouldn’t know. I know I love seeing what people are up to as their exploring downtown while we’re running by. And I love watching the progress as workers build new buildings and renovate old ones. There’s always something new going on, sometimes there are even elephants.

Review: P90X One on One Vol. 3 Upper Body X

Workout this part of your body (and your arms*).

I came home from work today and this disk was in my mailbox. I’ve just been juggling workouts for the past few weeks, so I figured I’d give this one a shot.

Upper Body X is really just Chest, Shoulders & Triceps part 2. I’m not really sure why they called it “Upper Body X” it’s certainly not a complete upper body workout like Upper Plus.

This is another workout that utilizes medicine balls, something I don’t own, and don’t care to spend the money on right now. I did recently by a BOSU ball, so I modified some moves to incorporate the ball = there’s even a move where Tony “recommends” the BOSU, but can’t demonstrate it because Beachbody doesn’t sell it. Lame. He has two hanging on the wall of his gym in the video, and he sings the BOSU ball’s praises in his book. The workout also has a band exercise, but Tony shows you a modified move.

So let’s break it down:

Chest: The chest moves are pretty solid. The first one is called “2 Dog Push-up” and you do a push-up, then downward dog, then a push-up, then upward dog. It’s a nice warm up into the workout and you can crank out a lot of them since you’re not using any balance balls. My favorite chest exercise is the “Caturocker Push-up” where you do a push-up, then go down on your elbows while you slide your feet on some cardboard. It’s a little hard to explain but it takes a lot of core stability and balance to pull off.

Shoulders: The shoulder moves are the hardest out of all the moves in this workout. There are a set of strip presses, similar to the strip curls from Back & Biceps. The toughest are the “Bent Over Circle Flys” which don’t look particularly difficult but even Tony is using the smallest weights I’ve seen him lift and he’s struggling through the whole thing.

Triceps: I love tricep exercises, but I don’t find many of them challenging. This workout was hit-and-miss. “One-arm Bench Dips” were almost impossible, and really hurt my left arm for some reason. High Bar Band Extensions were probably my favorite workout of the day, they use the bands and attach them to a bar or a door frame. The resistance from the band was incredible – though I was a little afraid the band would snap again, and this time hit me in the back of the head.

Overall I wasn’t a huge fan of this workout. I know they are trying out some moves for P90X:MC2, so hopefully they keep the good ones and throw out the weaker or more awkward moves. While I was happy to use my BOSU, I found that I was working much harder to balance myself than I was on the muscle I was supposed to be working. I think they might be trying to squeeze in a little too much core work this time. Also, Tony takes a lot of breaks during this workout, and I eventually found myself fast-forwarding through his breaks.

Surviving the Conference

I spent the last five days at a work conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. At first, I was pretty committed to eating clean and following the Slow-Carb Diet. I avoided eating any junk during the 10-hour drive and even managed to get my 3 co-travelers to stop at Panera for some healthier fare – I had the Black Bean Soup and  a delicious Thai-Chopped Chicken Salad.

The next morning I made myself a protein shake, ate a few almonds, and went to the first day of the conference. Most of our meals were provided – breakfast was an assortment of muffin-tops, juice and coffee. I just had the coffee. I skipped a session just before lunch and headed to the gym, where I ran 25 minutes hard, with one mile warm up and cool down. I was feeling pretty good about my progress so far – I even made it back in time for the mandatory lunch session. Lunch was a pre-bagged deal, containing a roast beef sandwich or vegetable wrap, an apple, chips, and a cookie. I took the vegetable wrap and ate just the veggies out of it. But it wasn’t really enough – so I ate the apple… then I ate the chips, and finally the cookie.

At that point I was essentially asking myself if it was worth avoiding everything they were providing me, and spending a lot of extra time tracking down foods I could eat. I decided to just eat whatever was around. Over the next four days, I ate waffles, french fries, hamburgers, sandwiches, cupcakes, cookies, pizza, dinner rolls, scones, candy, jalapeno Cheetos and whatever else was around. And honestly, I didn’t feel that bad about it.

I followed all my workouts and the day I made it home I went back to following the Slow-Carb Diet. I did jump up about five pounds from my last weigh-in, but I’m interested to see how quickly I’ll get back to my progress.

Could I have kept up the diet? Sure. But it wouldn’t have been as much fun. And now that I’m back it’s business as usual.

Running and Running and Running (and Running!)

 

Artists rendition of the wife and I running in front of a screen that looks like a beach at sunset.

Last Saturday, I ran a half-marathon for the first time in two years. The very next day, I organized and ran in a 44 mile relay race. I spent all weekend preparing for running, talking about running, and running (and running).

 

My wife and I have been running together since October 2006, when we started training for a marathon. We run 3-4 days a week and are currently running around 20-25 miles each week. Despite all of this running, I still don’t really think of us as “runners.” This opinion is starting to change.

I ran the half-marathon on Saturday with a few friends who were running their first race. I showed up a little late had to park a long way from the start line, I barely made it to the back of the pack when the race started. I nearly spent the entire race trying to get to the 1:55:00 pace setter. I found them as I ran past mile 12 and passed them about a half-mile before the finish. During the first 12 miles, I found my friends, chatted with them for a minute or two, and then ran on. I did finish my race 4 seconds faster than my last half-marathon – which is great, considering the last race was the one I was training for, and this race just happened to be the right distance in the middle of my training to speed up my half-marathon.

The next day I assembled a team of friends for a 44 mile relay race. A few of us were runners, but the majority weren’t. It was a brutally hot 95 degrees, and one of the windiest days I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. This was also the first really hot day of the year, and no one was really expecting it. I had assigned people legs of the race to run a few weeks earlier, and was delighted to hear people were going out and running a few training runs to prepare. The entire race was inspiring, everyone pushed themselves harder than ever before. Non-runners ran miles farther than ever, and everyone really gave it their all. It was so much fun for my wife and I to watch all of our friends work so hard and push themselves and have fun doing what we do every other day.

Two days of running pretty much knocked me out, but when I woke up Monday morning I found myself wanting to get up and run again. My wife did too (she didn’t run the half-marathon, but did run 2 extra legs of the relay with friends). We’re looking to do a half-marathon together in another month and a half, and in the meantime have three or four additional shorter races in between. And after the half-marathon we’ve decided it’s time for another full marathon.

So I guess we really are runners. We look forward to every run, whether it’s a training run, a long run through the city, or a race. We run all the time and we wouldn’t give it up for anything.

Progress Report: Week 9

 

9 weeks of beans for breakfast...

It’s hard to believe I’ve been following the Slow-carb diet for nine weeks. To be honest, I followed it religiously for the first four weeks, and now I’d say I’m somewhere between 80-95% compliant. My biggest problem is on Saturdays, when I’m more likely to eat out. Also I’ve been traveling a bit, and while it may be easy to stick to a diet when you go from one city to another, it’s a bit more difficult when you’re traveling to very small towns, and you’re in charge of a large group of people who aren’t avoiding dairy, fruit and grains. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it presents a challenge.

 

I’ve plateaued the past few weeks and leveled out around 176 lbs., when I started this diet, I was hoping to get down from 195 to 185 – which was what I was weighing when I finished P90X the first time. Somehow I shot down to under 180 in five weeks. I’m not really looking to lose much more weight, and that’s part of the reason I haven’t been as strict as I was the first month.

I’m trying to find a balance now that allows me to have a cheat day – which I love, and eat a wider variety of food. I’ll probably be trying that out this week – I’m traveling to Cincinnati, OH for the rest of the week and I plan on eating healthy, while eating whatever I want, just to see how it impacts my progress.  But I also find it hard to let go and eat non-slow-carb foods on non-cheat days. Last Friday, my wife and I went to Gordon Biersch – it was the day before I ran a half-marathon, and the idea was to eat some grains before the race. I did split some garlic fries, but in the end, I ordered some chicken and veggies, with a side of garlic spinach. After the marathon was a different story – there I ate a double cheeseburger and a side of fries from Five Guys, and it was glorious.

While I didn’t really gain or lose weight this week, it was my second month of the diet and training program, so I took some 60 day progress photos and the progress shows. I am leaner and more fit than ever before!

I think this is going to be my last official weekly “Progress Report,” I’ll pick them up again if I start a new diet or exercise plan. Until then, you can check my previous weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

Review: P90X+ Upper Plus

 

Upper Plus (more upper)

 

As I think I mentioned before, I may be one of the few strong supporters of P90X+. Upper Plus is one of my favorite workouts. Since I did two workouts in a hotel room using just the bands, I wanted to do a workout that utilized weights and included curls, push-ups and pull-ups. Upper Plus includes all those plus tricep and shoulder exercises.

Upper Plus, as the name implies, works your upper body, chest, shoulders, back and arms. It’s a short workout, around 45 minutes. Tony doesn’t waste any time, you barely have time to write down your progress before the next workout begins. This is one of the greatest things about P90X Plus – I think they realized that you only need to learn the exercises once, after that, all the time spent explaining how to do them is wasted, you can always rewind after you figure it out the first time. The movements are based on time instead of reps, so you use lower weights and push through the whole time period. I love it because when I mix them with traditional P90X workouts, I’m alternating rep days with duration days.

My favorite exercises come at the end, the first is Shoulder Everything. Basically you do six different shoulder moves over and over again. I use 5 pound weights and I’m still struggling at the end. The next is Bicep Everything, here you blast your biceps with four different moves for 90 seconds, it doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it’s incredibly tough to keep it up the whole time.

Upper Body also has two great tricep moves, and I think these are better than the ones found in Shoulder & Arms and Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. I think the two weighted tricep moves isolate the triceps better – unfortunately I can’t say the same thing about the bodyweight tricep moves – but I don’t have pushup stands, so maybe that’s why.

The pull-up sequences are the best of any P90X or X+ videos I’ve seen. The best are the L chin-ups, which utilize your abs to keep your legs rigid to form an “L.” I also love the 7 grip pull-ups, where you cycle through 7 different hand grips, and the negative pull-ups where you focus on slowly letting yourself down.

Overall this is a great video if you’re short on time and want to cover a lot of muscle groups. I wouldn’t recommend it as often as they want you do it in the P90X+ program (2x a week) but I love doing it at the end of the week when I typically want to get my last workout over with.

Progress Report: Week 8

 

Live the movie, visit Missouri.

 

This post is a bit late, and that’s because I had to leave early Sunday afternoon to drive out to rural Missouri for work.

Last week flew by, it was another work-related-stress filled week, punctuated by cold weather, a few runs an impromptu whisky tasting and a massage.

I didn’t officially lose any weight this week but I did spend half of it at a lower weight, which is the lowest I’ve recorded so far.

Rural Missouri is a less than ideal place to try and stick to a diet and fitness plan. I ran at home before I drove out, then packed a brand new exercise band and some P90X DVD’s. I also packed some almonds and protein powder. Since I’m not here on my own, but in charge of 7 students, it’s really hard to eat wherever I want and workout whenever I want.

I’ve been able to do some workout band exercises in my hotel room (Shoulders & Arms and Chest, Shoulders & Triceps). The workout band provides a new challenge and work my muscles in a different way – there is a lot of negative resistance, and it encourages me to slow down on the negative reps. I have to say, doing the old videos with different equipment does breath some life into them, they were as fun as they were challenging.

I’ve been trying to stick to my diet, and I’ve done admirably. Each morning I drink a protein shake. Today I tried the free breakfast at my Holiday Inn Express, and was happy to find some bacon and some weird eggs that were in the shape of pancakes. Lunch and Dinner have been out, so far I’ve eaten at the Pasta House, Applebee’s, a mexican restaurant and a local “upscale” bar and grill. I did eat some potatoes, cheese and a roll, but otherwise I’ve been able to stick to the plan. I haven’t had a chance to weigh in, but I’m really curious if I’ve strayed too far from my progress. Personally, I think I’ve had worse non-cheat days at home.

This weekend I’m running a half-marathon and about six miles the following day in a relay. I’m debating whether or not I want to eat carbs the night before. The farthest I’ve run so far has been 10 miles, and I didn’t think I needed any then, but I don’t want to hit the wall. Right now I’m thinking of trying it without carbs, but we’ll see how I feel on Friday night.

I’m headed home tomorrow, and I can’t wait for my egg, sausage and bean breakfast Thursday morning.

Previous weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7