AND SHE'S BACK

WOW it's been a long time. Not that my last workout was way back in April, or anything. I just haven't been updating this blog for life reasons. But I figure it's time to get serous about things and get back into it.

Life/workout updates:

1. I went to Canada for yoga teacher training and had an amazing, life-changing experience. Truly incredible. However, that month was so physically exhausting on the yoga/brain end of things that side workouts I had planned, like keeping up my marathon training and doing a weekly Bodyrock on my day off, did not happen. I was just a zombie, physically. It was basically 4:45am - 11pm, every day but Saturday, nonstop for a month, and each of those days had 4 hours of hot yoga asana. My body literally rebelled when I tried to toss in a run here and there so I just stuck to a weekly 3-miler to at least keep my body used to the CONCEPT of running and left it at that.
2. Upon return, I got immediately back into marathon training because I'd missed a whole month. Then I promptly broke my right pinky toe. Holy shit it took forever to heal (and actually still tweaks on longer runs). I was effectively benched running-wise for another month.
3. Cue August and me starting to panic about marathon training. I put together a revised training schedule and if I stick to it EXACTLY then I might just make it through the marathon without collapsing/dying/barfing/any of the above.
4. Last week or so: right knee has decided to put up a fight about all this running. It feels both stiff and loose at the same time and snaps ominously every time I go up stairs or do a squat. There's no pain as of yet, and I have a little knee support sleeve for running now, but I am basically walking around in terror that it's going to blow at any moment. We'll see what happens.
5. Thanks to all the running and a long car trip up to Canada and back, I've made it through books 1-3 of A Song of Ice and Fire, and am now on A Feast of Crows. It's a different guy reading it all of the sudden, but he doesn't pronounce Brienne's name correctly, either (he does say Petyr right, though, that's a plus).

So, where am I at, workout-wise? Pretty bad, actually. In an effort not to completely exhaust myself, I've been running and doing yoga and that's pretty much it. I feel like I'm gaining weight, though--which makes sense, due to the increased steady state cardio and necessary carb intake that goes with it--so I've decided to start throwing in some Bodyrocks and other stuff occasionally.

No run this morning, so I took River to the dog park and came back to do a Bodyrock. Holy shit I'm out of shape. Not a month ago, I was saying on the 14 Day Challenge blog that Bodyrocks were getting easier. No more! Shit it was hard. It was 20 minutes of 10/50 second intervals, with 10 exercises in a circuit done twice. I knew I only had time to do the circuit once, and even that one time through was really fricking hard. I just felt like I had no energy. Also, there was a lot of squatting and lunging involved in this one, and all I could think about was that it was going to make my five-mile hill workout tomorrow brutal and that was going to be awful and oh god why am I putting myself through this marathon nonsense? Couple that with the terrifying snapping of my knee on each squat and it was a pretty bad workout, all told.

I followed up my workout with a shake of whey protein, a fig, frozen blueberries and strawberries, coconut milk, and an egg. In my lunchbox I packed two burgers, some romaine leaves for buns, some cheese, 3 hardboiled eggs, some baby carrots, and some greek yogurt with more berries. In case you didn't notice, my fruit intake has increased a bit form the usual. Just me trying to pack in the carbs for running in the healthiest way I can. I've also become a Cream of Rice convert. I kind of can't wait till this marathon is over and I never have to eat a carbohydrate ever again.

Crossfit: Death by Tabata

I was indeed able to fit in the Crossfit WOD before my EMS shift, and I'm really glad I did, even though it was brutally hard. The workout was four tabatas back to back: pullups, situps, pushups, squats. My heart rate was sky-high and my muscles were screaming doing this workout; especially hard were the pushups, and I wasn't even doing full pushups because I knew I wouldn't be able to sustain that over 8 sets at max effort. So even with knee pushups, my reps dipped from 22 initially to about 8 or 9 by the last sets. I could only manage two or three at a time, my arms were so fatigued. The situps, which I thought would be the easiest, were also hard to the point of failure, and I switched to bicycles halfway through. Woof. HARD workout. But I felt awesome and all those squats are just money in the ass bank, baby.

In other news, I'm inordinately excited about going to Dick's tomorrow for summer running gear.

Lotsa running

This past weekend was very busy with friends, errands, and enjoying the outdoors, so I didn't get a lot of focused working out in. I did, however, do a quick 21-15-9 workout of pullups, pushups, and air squats on Saturday before I went to dinner and a movie, then a 3-mile trail run along the Potomac yesterday just before the thunderstorm. Actually, partly during the thunderstorm. It was pretty funny; the sky goes from clear blue and shining hot sun to black in a matter of minutes, and just as I come back out at the trailhead by the river (still about a mile from my house), thunder and lightning occur maybe five miles away. I start sprinting toward home. All of a sudden, the relatively clear road becomes a traffic jam of runners converging from trailheads at all sides of the park, sprinting for the hills. I had just made it to the last block before my street when the wind suddenly went crazy and pouring rain started pelting me sideways. So, I almost made it in before the storm. It was a pretty fun run.

We had an amazing Easter dinner of buffalo burgers on lettuce "buns" with bacon, tomato, and red onions. I also added thinly-sliced jalapeno that I fried in the bacon fat, plenty of sriracha chili sauce, and sliced mango. It was DELICIOUS, although it could have been even spicier. I was going for four-alarm spice and it was only at about a medium. We had mango, banana, and strawberries in coconut milk for dessert.

This morning I was up bright and early to take River to the park. Then I got back, hydrated, caffeinated, and did another 3 miles, on the park roads instead of trails this time (my shoes got really muddy yesterday). It was HOT, but that's about a billion times better than cold, so I'm not complaining.

Today's Crossfit looks awesome and the Bodyrock still isn't up, so I'll probably do Crossfit later before my rescue shift. (If I can get all my work done--I have a ton to do.) Will update later.

Workout weirdness

So today, indeed, I did not do the Bodyrock workout because it was another butt-focused one and I didn't want to tax my already-sore sweet cheeks. Instead I decided to repeat the workout I created a few weeks back, the one I could only do 2 rounds of, except doing jump rope intervals before and after. Also I was going to take a run.

However, for some reason, the fates/Force/Lords of Kobol/Lady Gaga conspired to prevent this from happening. Cue an evening of severe frustration. Work went too late to take River to the dog park, so I figured, okay, I'll take her on my run for her evening exercise instead. River is unfortunately in a phase where she just WILL NOT RUN NICELY. She yanks the WHOLE time. She walks on the leash just fine, but running she is HOPELESS. She's just too excited to be out and about running with mommy, and she goes insane, as only a cooped-up border collie can. So about five minutes into our run, I said a great big "well fuck THAYIS" and just walked her two miles for her exercise. I was really, really annoyed that I therefore could not get my run in, because my legs felt really fresh and I was anticipating a good, fast run.

Then I got back to my place, fed River, and started the workout I had created. Only to have my jumprope break about thirty seconds into the first interval. GAH. I spent about twenty minutes trying fruitlessly to fix it, failed, and by then it was 8:30 and we still had not had dinner. With great noises of frustration I went ahead and made dinner, promising myself that since I had to stay up late to work anyway, I might as well break up the work with an exercise break later on, after my dinner digested.

This plan was well-conceived but a little sketchy on the execution. We had a nice dinner of grassfed sirloin steaks with broccoli, and berries and coconut milk for dessert. This took longer than I had anticipated to digest. I was also nursing some slight stomach upset left over from yesterday. So I waited patiently, watching Thursday night TV and doing my work, until I felt like I could work out. At 1:30am.

Yes, indeed, I just did a workout--outside, no less!--at 1:30 in the morning. I just couldn't let the day go without working out. Just couldn't. I feel good about it. No guesses as to how my sleep will be (as of now, I'm wired).

Here's what I did:

For time:
400 meter run
21 KB swings, pushups, chair dips
400 meter run
15 KB swings, pushups, chair dips
400 meter run
9 KB swings, pushups, chair dips

My time: 16:48

I could have done this much faster, and really didn't push this workout--it was definitely taxing, and my HR was nice and high, but I made my way through it at sort of a medium pace rather than balls-out. Also I had Born This Way blasting on my ipod and I was taking lots of dance breaks. Whatever, it was 1 in the morning, no one was watching.

Tomorrow will certainly be a run in the morning, some yoga, and Bodyrock.

Bodyrock: My Buns Hurt

Whoops, have forgotten to update the blog in several days. I think it's because I've been doing a lot of running, and while I like it, it's not really a scintillating workout deserving of all kind of blog space. Anyway, yeah, I ran Saturday and Monday. Monday I also did a super-fast interval workout: 5 rounds of 10 pushups, 10 seconds on, 10 seconds rest. I had to squeeze it in after my run and before showering quick and running to my EMS shift.

Yesterday I did nothing because I felt like I was coming down with a cold, and my mom is sick, so I just rested. I did take River for a long walk, though. Mostly because I didn't feel like driving to the dog park. I was bushed.

Today I did Bodyrock's My Buns Hurt workout. It was hard in a cardio sort of way, and my legs really burned during the workout, but I didn't feel wrecked after or really sore hours later. Maybe I'm actually--gasp--improving my fitness? NO WAY

Here is the link to the workout. It was in four parts:

Part 1 - Sandbag lunge back and press up & squat leg lift
Jesus that's a long title. Anyway, this involved starting in a half-squat, lunging back on one leg while lifting your sandbag above your head, returning to the start position, and then lifting the lunging leg to the side 90 degrees. That's one rep. Do 40 reps for time, alternating legs.
My time: 4:48

Part 2 - Rocket launchers
This was fun. Basically you're in a squat the whole time and you jump your feet together, then back out, then back in, and after the third jump you jump up into the air, straight body. Then on the next rep it's out, in, out. Keep alternating thusly. This was intervals, 15 seconds on/5 seconds rest. Sweat was really starting to pour by the end of this.
Reps: 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6

Part 3 - Kick ups
I love/hate these. This particular workout had us doing the weird turny crawl thing that Zuzana's been incorporating lately, and I did it at first but then stopped because I just didn't have the room to do it properly. So I just stayed in the crab position and took couple seconds of rest between each set of 5 kick ups. I actually felt like it was harder that way. My arms were killing me, holding me up that long. This was 20 sets for time.
My time: 3:51

Part 4 - Holy eff OW (...I mean, Jump Lunges/Mountain Climbers)
As Zuzana promised, this was total burnout. If you watch the video of her doing the workout, she stops many times and whimpers, "Ow ow ow!" It's ROUGH. It's 10/10 second intervals back to back, no rest, going from jump lunges to mountain climbers. I wanted to die. Also I had no way of keeping track of my reps without a rest period but suffice it to say, I was pouring sweat and my heart rate was through the roof by the end of this. And it was only 4 minutes (12 intervals)!

Food this whole week has been great. With my mom on Whole30, I've been cooking awesome dinners for us, and haven't had any real trouble sticking to it. Tonight I didn't even have dinner, I just had an omelette early in the day and then a shake after my workout.

Tomorrow I may do Crossfit because the Bodyrock workout looks like more glutes stuff and I don't want to overtax the bum.

Bodyrock: Hot in Here

It's definitely warming up in the nation's capital, thank goodness. Although we are supposed to get rain tonight and tomorrow morning... but that's okay, because I've had a couple nice days of sunshine and running.

Today I took River to the dog park for a good two hours in the morning. I just sat on the bench and read (I'm in the middle of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, which is fascinating) while she romped around with the dogs. Then when we got back in the car, I realized that the sun is strong enough already to wreak havoc on my skin. I have really weird skin that freckles only on my face and tans like crazy on the rest of my body. After sitting in the mid-morning sun for two hours my skin was cray-cray freckled. Thankfully they fade pretty fast, but I immediately hightailed it to the Whole Foods for a) the week's meat shopping and b) a good all-natural face sunscreen, for those days when I don't wear makeup (my makeup has SPF but since I work from home a lot I rarely wear it). I grabbed a Kiss My Face sunscreen with SPF 50 and called it a day. I don't know how much I believe that SPF 50 is any better than your typical SPF 15 or 30, but whatever, it smells nice and it didn't wear off when I went running later. I'm super picky about what I put on my face, so all in all, a good buy.

My run was nice. Two miles in bright afternoon sunshine. For some reason, my calves were really tight and tired, but it was still a relatively easy run. However, my new Nike sport watch is just not working out. I initially had a different one that worked perfectly, but I exchanged it for a different color, and now this one is just a lemon. The distance is NEVER right, no matter how many times I calibrate it. And the distance being wrong throws off all the other measurements. It's essentially useless. I'm returning it and just using the Nike + on my ipod as a stopgap until the Nike GPS watch finally comes out (SERIOUSLY, when will this be available to purchase?! It's been forever since it was announced, and now it's only available in the UK--WTF?!).

In more tech news, my ipod shuffle finally died. It just won't hold a charge anymore. Two years, people, two years. I think that's pretty damn good for a device the size of my thumb that cost me 50 bucks, and that I have put through ridiculous amounts of rain, sweat, heat, and freezing cold. Tomorrow will see me at the Apple store purchasing one of those new touchscreen nanos, which I'm ambivalent about because the tiny touchscreen is annoying to use while running, but I really want the radio, pedometer, and Nike + integration that it offers. Also, I have to admit that now that I'm more into listening to podcasts and books on tape while I run, having a way to actually access my song listings, rather than just the shuffle button, is key. It is dang hard to tell where you are in a book when the shuffle starts up.

Hanyway. When I got back from my run, I did today's awesome workout courtesy of Bodyrock.tv. Here's the link to the workout so you can look at it. Explaining her moves is hard sometimes.

Part 1: Sandbag Step Ups Combo
Take your sandbag, hoist it onto your right shoulder. Step onto the chair next to you and back down the other side. Complete three of these step ups. Then, when you've stepped down the third time, extend your right leg behind you into a lunge, sink down, then bring your knee to your chest. Do that three times. Switch the sandbag to your other shoulder. That's one set. The workout was 20 sets for time, switching shoulders and active legs on each set.
My time: 6:42
Z's time: 7:59
I absolutely do not count this as a win because I'm pretty sure her sandbag is 5x heavier than mine. Mine is totally makeshift right now, as I have not yet procured the rice I'll fill my bag with, and instead just wrapped my two 5lb dumbbells in a couple towels and stuffed them inside the bag. So it's only like 12 lb, tops. This round was basically not that hard, and I could definitely have done a lot more weight. I'll be visiting the international food store tomorrow for some giant bags of rice.

Part 2: Pike Jumps & Pushups Combo
Start in sort of a loose down dog with your hands on your mat and your feet together beside one edge of the mat. Jump and kick your legs to the other side of the mat, back and forth three times. Then do two traveling pushups. That's one set. This is hard to explain so just go watch her do it on Bodyrock. The round was 6 30:10 second intervals, doing as many sets as possible in the 30 seconds and resting the 10 seconds. This was fricking hard and I had to switch to knee pushups halfway through because my arms were just burning too much.
My sets per interval: 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2
Z's sets per interval: 5, 3.5, 3, 3, 2.5, 2.5. Yeah, she's a beast. I have no earthly clue how she squeezed 5 sets into a measly 30 seconds. And I'm certain she didn't take any rests mid-interval like I did.

Part 3: Crab Toe Touches
Start in a crab-walking position. Reach one leg up to the sky while reaching the opposite arm to touch the toe. Alternate back and forth. This round was 50 reps for time. It was hard. My arms literally gave out and sent me crashing to the ground twice.
My time: 2:09
Z's time: 1:36

Another really fun, hard, great workout! Thanks, Bodyrock.

For dinner I made trouts baked with ghee, herbs, and lemon, with bacon-wrapped asparagus on the side. I also had a protein shake post-workout.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. I might do Bodyrock, might do Crossfit, probably won't run. We shall see.

Bodyrock: Yeah!

Oh Zuzana. Ow.

Like I said last night, it was heartening to see that even Zuzana's perfect little self had to take gasping rests during this insane workout. I sure had to take rests, too. But I didn't skip a single interval, didn't shorten any reps. I did the whole workout. Whoo! This is what it was:

Part 1:

Pushup and Monkey Kick, 30 reps for time

This was a one-two set of basically a burpee followed by spinning your crouched body around and kicking the opposite leg in an arc behind you. Go here to watch the video and see what I'm talking about, because it's hard to explain. The 30 reps were actually less difficult than I was anticipating, but still really hard.

My time: 4:48

Z's time: 3:42

Part 2:

Cartwheel and Mountain Climber, 5:10 second intervals, 24 sets

You do a full cartwheel (that takes up the 5 seconds) and then do 10 seconds of Mountain Climbers. This was REALLY BRUTAL. Thankfully, due to childhood gymnastics, I've always been able to do a perfect cartwheel, but around... oh... set 15-ish of the mountain climbers, my arms were shaking so hard that when I lifted up into the cartwheel I was worried I was going to crash back down and break my neck. Thankfully this didn't happen, but on the last five or so sets, I definitely only did about 7 of the 10 seconds, gasping the last three seconds until the next cartwheel.

24 sets = 6 minutes.

Part 3:

3x Jump Lunge and Front Kick, 50 reps for time

ABUH THIS WAS SO HARD! You start in a lunge and jump, switching legs to a lunge on the other side, repeat two more times. Then with the leg that's behind you, you kick forward and up into a high kick. 50 REPS! Dear Christ. I took a ten-second breather every 10 reps, and nearly cried when I finished, I was so happy to be done.
My time: 6:14
Z's time: 7:43 YYYEAAAAHHH I BEAT ZUZANA! Nevermind that she was probably going twice as deep in her lunges and twice as high in her kick. I'm still calling that a win.

All in all, the Yeah! workout was really difficult, I sweated my ass off, and I feel awesome now. Time for the dog park with River!

In food news, my mom really wants to do Whole30. Any interest she has in eating better/exercising is something I want to cultivate, so I told her I'd do Whole30 again with her. We're starting tomorrow (I have to go grocery shopping). I had no real problem doing it the first time around and really appreciated the benefits; I definitely enjoyed this past week of cheats like chocolate and cheese, but all in all, I'm glad to get back to super-clean eating.