Tough Mudder Training

Since Arwen is kicking my butt dedication-wise, I need to start updating this blog regularly with my Tough Mudder training. I have indeed been working out, but I just haven't had the time to really be diligent in updating this blog. No more! This is now serious.

Last week I did lots of lifting and sprinting workouts at the station gym. It was nice getting back to lifting. I love bodyweight workouts and all, but sometimes you just want to lift big heavy pieces of metal over your head, you know? However, I sort of went too gung-ho and exhausted myself. This week I'm taking it a bit easier, doing shorter, more intense workouts and keeping the treadmill intervals to just a couple days.

Another thing about the past couple weeks is that I'm in the throes of EMT testing for the county and state and am still stuck out of the house almost every night until 10-11 doing that. I will be SOOOOOO HAPPY when this class is over and I have my nights back--which is actually basically now, because Tuesday was our last real class and tonight is final state testing. Good gravy it will be good to have my bedtime back to normal. Doing this class basically completely robbed me of the ability to get up early in the mornings, which meant that my workout always got pushed, which meant that sometimes it didn't happen. Now I can start going to bed early, getting up early, and getting serious about TM training.

Over at Bodyrock, things are certainly different, but still good. They have a bunch of new trainers in the videos, and they're all really good. I miss Z a ton, but it's not lime the workouts aren't still great. Yesterday I didn't have much time to work out so I did "The Workout That Got Away", which Kyla and Sean created when they were hung over. It was really short, just a single tabata of split lunges and mountain climbers, but it was intense (obviously, it was a tabata), and I was definitely sweating at the end. Then I tacked on Lisa-Marie's 3-minute Abs workout, which was basically 10:50 sec intervals of bicycles, balancing v-ups (HARD), and weighted situps. I chose to do Abmat situps (I don't have an Abmat at home; I just use a pillow) for the last interval, and really pushed it, so my abs were burning bad by the end.

Day before yesterday I did the step-up sumo squat challenge from a while back on Bodyrock. You set a chair next to you, then do a squat, step in and up onto the chair, lift the opposite knee to your chest, then step back down and do another squat. You do this 100 times on each leg. I only did 50 on each because by 40 I could tell that if I did 100 I'd be hobbled the next day with soreness. 50 each took me about 8 minutes (just for reference, Jess from Bodyrock did 100 each in 11:27, which is just absurd and I don't know how she did it). Then I did a circuit of pushups, situps, and dips for another 10 minutes. It was a good workout.

Today I plan to mix some jump rope, hill sprints, kettlebell, and box jumps, and also take a 2-mile run. I have to get back into the running groove so I think I'll do a short run as a warmup from here on out.