Last workout at this location

As I move tomorrow, I took today off from work to manage the details of the move. I nearly talked myself out of the workout again today, but did it anyway. I headed out to the fitness center and did a 30 minute elliptical cross train aerobic workout at level 7, then did a 30 minute jaunt on the stationary bike at level 7 and did some HIIT as well.

For my last workout at this place, I was pretty happy with it.

I also awoke with a pleasant surprise. I am down to 205 pounds this morning.

Paul

Moving Day Approaches

I am nearly packed and ready for my move. One of the last things I am packing, however, is my exercise clothing. I move on Saturday, and have been doing the "two more workouts until I move" game. Of course, I am a little bit spoiled at my current apartments fitness center, as it has several pieces of decent exercise machines that add a bit of variety to my daily grind, where the new apartment only has 4 machines, making my working out there limited. Granted I do have a nearly unused gym membership that I continue to pay for "just in case" I decided to do something different. Actually one of the primary excuses I have used to date for not using the gym I belong to is that it is about a 45 minute drive to get to the nearest one from my current apartment. It will thankfully be much closer at the new place, so I will have to come up with a different excuse I guess :)

Today was a pretty standard run/bike day. I ran 2.55 miles in 35 minutes, and then hopped on the stationary bike and rode the standard 10.8 miles at level 7 for 30 minutes. I plan on getting my butt back to some strength training. It will be a focus soon as my surgery and goal weight approach. I will likely go ahead and invest in a personal trainer to help me be a bit consistent and progress better than I have been, but I have to afford it first, and this move is financially draining me.

Paul

Cross Training

I didn't perform my best this morning. I woke up with a sliver of glass in my foot, and spent the first 10 minutes of my morning trying to figure out how to remove it. After that I hit the elliptical machine and did a cross-train aerobic workout for 30 minutes at level 7. Then I hit the stationary bike for another 30 minutes at level 7. No HIIT today though, just a moderate-intensity workout.

Paul

Dreams can inspire...or anger

I had a pretty weird dream last night. Without going into details, I awoke quite pissed off. I really hate starting my morning pissed off, but if nothing else, I didn't argue with myself, and instead wanted to go work out to burn off the remnants of my late night vision. So, I headed on the treadmill and did a 2.75 mile run a little slower than I have been doing lately, to see what the effect on my heart rate was. I ran for 35 minutes at only 5.0 miles per hour and that kept my heart rate under 160 the entire run. At 5.2 miles per hour, it has been hitting 175.

I then hopped on the stationary bike and did a 10.8 mile ride using HIIT techniques on level 7 for 30 minutes.

I guess being angry at a dream in the morning is a good motivator as well. After the workout I felt much better, and was quite happy at my intensity and duration.

Paul

Longish run

After my normal mental battle with myself, I once again won and headed out to work out. I decided to try and do a long run today. I set the machine and ran about 4.3 miles, which wasn't exactly my long distance record, but felt VERY long indeed. I ran 55 minutes walking a little bit towards the end. Not too bad a workout, although I really want to build back up to 6 miles again.

Paul

Arguing with myself

Getting up in the morning at 5am is sure difficult at times. Today, for example, I woke up, stumbled around the room a bit trying to stagger in a general direction towards the bathroom scale, all the time trying mentally to convince myself that it is too damn early and to go back to bed. I must have stood at my mirror for a good 5 minutes trying to come up with a variety of justifications not to do my workout today. I ended up then just saying "screw it" and went over to put on my gym clothes.

I believe most of the difficulty in working out every day is not the actual exercise, but somehow its related to motivating myself to just get dressed to go work out. Because once I am dressed, I stop arguing with myself and just head out the door. Go figure.

Today, after the mental battle, I did a 30 minute level 7 cross-training aerobic elliptical machine workout which tallied up 3.3 miles, and then did a HIIT-based 30 minute stationary bike workout at level 8 for 10.8 miles. Generally it was a pretty good workout, and I only needed to put on my magic gym clothes to motivate my butt out the door to go do it.

I am still weighing at about 208 pounds.

Paul

Easy does it

It was a good day to take it easy a bit. I woke up really cranky, discovering that my cats had torn open a bag of cat food and decorated my kitchen with the contents. Suffice it to say, I wasn't in the best of moods for my workout. I ended up hitting the treadmill for 2.25 miles in 28 minutes and felt that that was enough for the day.

Paul

Elliptical Machine and HIIT Bike

I spent another day working on the HIIT workout I had planned for this week. So far so good. I did an intense workout for 30 minutes on the Elliptical machine at level 6 for 3.25 miles, and then did an HIIT focused bike ride for another 30 minutes (L6 10.8 miles) using the same style as yesterday's workout. It was tougher today to do the high intensity parts than yesterday, but I guess that was expected. I do hope this helps to advance me a bit in my training, where I have been stuck at this level for too long.

At least my weight continues to drop at a regular pace. Today it was 207 pounds.

Paul

Run and HIIT Bike

I ran this morning. 3.26 miles in 41 minutes. Then hopped on the bike and did 30 minutes on a hilly course at level 7. On the hills, I increased my speed to as fast as I could go (~110-120 rpm) for a minute and then rested (80 rpm) for a minute for the next minute. I did this 9 times, and then cooled down. I would say today's workout was pretty good. I definitely kept my heart rate at the upper end of my zone, like I do when I run.

I didn't work out this weekend, as I spent most of it packing getting ready for a move in 2 weeks.

I weighed in this morning at 209 as well.

Paul

Interval Training and a long run

This workout was all about trying to get my speed up a bit and get my body shocked a bit in to improving. I didn't quite do the HIIT that I mentioned yesterday, but did combine an interval training workout with a long run. I ran 4.9 miles in 1:05:00 doing 2 minute intervals at 3.5 mph flat to 5.5-6 mph at 3% grade. HIIT would have been more like one minute on two minute rest at probably 8-10mph for the one minute. I will try that on my next short run.

In either case, I felt that this workout was pretty intense, and very effective. The proof will be on the scale and in my training however.

Just for the heck of it, I ordered a book the other day called "Treadmill Training for Runners" by Rick Morris. Supposedly it has some good techniques that will assist me in breaking the training plateau I have been on for my runs.

On top of all that I weighed in at 209 lbs today. Cool huh!

Paul