R7D36/7 – Warriors Part Deux

I had my heart rate monitor on but the incessant pounding in my ears was enough to tell me that I was hovering above the 160 mark pretty much the whole way around the 5K course. After we extracted ourselves from the darkness (including bumps on the head) we climbed and descended, jogged and walked our way to the spider obstacle, so called because it resembles getting stuck in a spider web. Unfortunately I was particularly out of sorts when we got there and kind of bulldozed my way through tripping and tying up my fellow runners as I went.

That really outlines my one frustration with the day, I was really looking forward to the obstacles but there was so much damn running that when you got there you were too tired to really enjoy the challenge. I guess being a “better” runner would help but I am so unwilling to go down that training path I would rather find another way.

So far, it was great, we were pretty much completely in the forest, out of the hot sun and still having fun. When we got past the spider webs it was a long run up and down and around to get to the wall climb (I’m pretty sure that was next) which was really a simple 10 foot wall with foot holds and ropes, making it ridiculously easy to traverse. After that came the first really tricky obstacle which was the rope cross. It was a matrix of ropes strung across a frame that you had to navigate and although it was made easier by hanging onto the frame, it was by no means a piece of cake. I would have liked it better had it been a closer mesh that you could actually run across with some spring to it, those are deceptively hard to cross and far more fun. Especially since there was another rope based obstacle later in the race, something slightly different would have been cool.

By this time we were all silent, breathing hard, there were people standing around before and after each obstacle getting their breath back and the race was well and truly taking it’s toll. As we exited the rope nets the really tough climbs began, out in the sun, running up very steep ski hills, the fun part was definitely over. I admit I had to stop halfway up one of the hills, my heart felt like it was about to explode but more than that, I was starting to overheat. Fortunately, at the top of that hill was the water station, where they gleefully told us we were HALF WAY ROUND!!! Excited by the news and the added information that it was “all downhill” from there (a blatant lie!) we barrelled across the top of the hill and towards the first really big descent. Usually this would be a piece of cake, but with the distance already covered, going down a steep hill is just as painful as going up. Quads on fire, pulse racing and feet occasionally giving up their grip it was a harrowing and challenging change of pace. Of course, what goes down must once again go up and the long climb that lay ahead was almost too much to bear. There were participants littering the steep slope, the barely available shadows on the hillside crammed with exhausted and overheated victims. I was soon one of them! Nicole and her friends were racing ahead of me now, of course, Nicole didn’t leave me to suffer, she held herself back to keep me company. If not for me, I am sure she would have finished a good 10 minutes ahead such is her athletic prowess! At the top, we were welcomed by more obstacles, which for me was a welcome change from the monotony of running.

The next few obstacles were a great part of the course, a set of tires, (thanks to Tony for practice with this one!), a mountain of hay bales which was a hoot and a couple of old cars that we got to run across. It was pretty funny watching the boot of one of the cars come open as someone landed witha  thud on the roof, her heart almost jumped out of her chest and she screamed like a kid hearing the ice cream truck! We could sense we were coming to the end, a short gully followed by a sandy hill climb assisted by ropes and wooden footholds once again and we were at the slip and slide, usually a happy and fun activity, this one was more of a plastic covered rock garden where I got multiple contusions and abrasions on my back and butt from the ground under the tarp. Both Nicole and I narrowly missed getting taken out by large out of control individuals whose battle with gravity was obvioulsy completely one sided! Had we made contact, there would no doubt have been copious amounts of bloodshed. Nevertheless it was bringing us closer to the end, which was almost in sight! The end of the slip and slide led us to the rope wall, which to me seemed like it would pose the biggest challenge for most people. Not only the fatigue, but also the fact rope ladders are notoriously hard to navigate. We managed to make it across without issue and were greeted by the sight of hundreds of spectators, two lines of fire blocking our path and the innocuous looking mud pit. We flew across the fire, but on entering the “mud” pit found that much like the rest of the course it was not mud but a muddy mix of gravel and sand which by that time felt like glass shards. The mud was thick, so thick in fact that it took all our strength to make it through. By the time we exited the pit, my shoulders were screaming, my knees were ripped apart but we knew, just by the raising of our tired eyes that we had made it!

58 minutes. About 45 of which was reasonable and the last 15 of which were a complete nightmare. Would I recommend the race? Absolutely! Would I do it again, HELL YEAH! But next time, I’ll be wearing knee protection!

 

R7D30-35 – Warriors In Sickness And In Health

The week leading up to the Warrior Dash was not great. I coached Wednesday despite having a fever and after spiking over 40 degrees I was off work on Thursday and Friday with only some gentle walking on the treadmill and outside to count as exercise on Friday. My throat was extremely sore, and to me that is a serious issue, but Nicole apparently thought I meant I had a “tickle” in my throat because when she finally saw the white lesions back there she immediately suggested I go to the clinic. It’s been so bad that I can hardly eat, because swallowing anything is like inserting a stick blender into my throat. The clinic doc tells me it’s not Strep but it is a viral infection and it is both contagious and incurable. Great. Despite being weak from fever and feeling like my head is connected to my shoulders by a lit sparkler I wasn’t about to miss the Warrior Dash due to start 930am Saturday. Oh and one more thing that I neglected to mention, I burned the roof of my mouth on Friday so badly that I can’t actually bite into anything because the roof of my mouth HAS NO SKIN LEFT!

Of course I can’t sleep, so by the time 5am rolled around on Saturday I didn’t feel like I had rested at all in preparation for what was billed as “The Craziest Day Of Your Life” by the Warrior Dash peeps. We dropped off the baby and drove up to Horseshoe Resort in Barrie. The fact that this race was set to be hosted at a ski resort should have been my first indicator that it was going to take more than a couple of days running “hills” to train properly for this. It was too late for regret, and I would have to lean on my every day training to get me through. In reality, the course ran up and down ski hills with alarming regularity, and for at least 2 of the ascents we were on black diamonds I am sure (at least it felt, and looked that way). We were all pretty excited to get started, the feeling of the park was not unlike being a soph in university, all of the enjoyment, none of the drunken froshness. The place was flooded with participants even though we were some of the earliest waves to go (I would suggest doing that!) and even as we lined up to drop off our gear, there were plenty of people already finishing, caked in mud with a banana and a huge smile. I have to say that there were all kinds of people participating. It wasn’t just a bunch of crossfit and bootcamp knuckleheads, it was basically the same kind of crowd you would see at a 5 or 10k fun run, most look like they belong, some look lost and some look like they maybe should have thought this through a little better but kudos to everyone for coming out and giving it a shot!

We dropped our gear, took one last drink and headed to the start line and with the crowd buzzing, and cracking jokes it felt lke we were in line for a concert, not about to have our asses handed to us by a mean spirited and ugly 5k of hell. But we were blissfully unaware and as the countdown finally came and the flames leaped from the start gantry we were off! Naturally, the first few hundred yards were a laugh, everybody was talking and having fun, jumping over a small creek thinking that was a measure of what was to come. Funny thing is, there were people trying to get around the little creek not realizing that the first obstacle is knee deep mud from which there is no escape. By the time we got through the mud, there was a definite air of annoyance mixed with frustration and more than a couple of lost shoes. The fun run continued and for me that was the tough part, not being a runner, and also having a lingering malady to carry with me. Nevertheless I carried on with the hills getting steeper and longer (through woods at the start) and the pace being fairly respectable for an old guy! Second came the dark crawl, basically like going through someone’s tent at night, being too drunk to see and crawling out the other end. There were beams inside so you had to stay on your knees and since the ground was mostly gravel and rock it was a wonderfully refreshing experience! With knees smarting and heart screaming we continued on.

More to come…

What Sits In Your Colon And Rots? (Hint: it’s not meat!)

I hear this a lot from ill informed vegetarian wannabes. Meat rots in your colon for days, some even claim months and some, the really whacky ones who won’t even eat dairy and claim tofu will cure cancer tell us it sits there FOREVER!! Well, I just wanted to share this fact with you. What rots in your body is beans, grains and vegetables, not meat. In fact, the meat is long gone before any issues with undigested matter pass into your intestines and start to decompose.

It’s a good read, maybe not lunchtime fodder though.

(Also take a look at this: Paleo in 6 easy steps)

R7D30 – Pulling My Weight

It is phase 2 week 1 and that means chest, shoulders and triceps workout with Tony. I felt like I had been taking it a little easy and so after a conversation with a coworker the other day decided to break out the Mir Weighted Vest I bought recently and see how painful it would be to do P90X wearing the thing. Well, I lived to tell about it but only just. I went from cranking out 30-40 pushups each minute to about 15! The worst thing was that I had only put 20lbs into the vest!! I was amazed at  how much more difficult it was doing the most basic things with the vest on. I know I have lost 60lbs but putting 20 back was torture. I don’t know how I had the energy to carry around all that extra weight.

Even without the weight, that workout is tough for me, not because of the movements but because I get increasingly frustrated with the lack of tricep work and feel that of all the P90X workouts, this may be one of the weakest. The problem is exactly what I fear P90X:MC2 will suffer from, an attempt to make things “interesting” leads to ineffective movements, overly complex and time consuming motions that waste valuable time setting up or mastering when you could and should be doing basic, slightly modified moves. A great example are the amount of overhead tricep extensions in this workout. That movement is never going to do much for size and has a high risk of injury. It would be far better to use close grip push ups or bodyweight dips on 2 chairs than to keep trying to isolate the muscle that way. Anyway, it’s nitpicking a bit, I find I sub my own dips on my dip station instead and I am happy.

Happy until I put on a 20lb weight vest that is…

Come to think of it, just wearing the thing with 50lbs in it would be a workout in itself, walking up that hill I ran last week with an extra 50lbs sounds pretty evil and just the kind of thing I would do.

I must be getting tired, I just edited the word “just” out of that last sentence 5 times! Who uses just 5 times in one sentence!?

R7D28-29 – I’m Still Standing.

It’s my 9th day of standing at work. I sometimes feel like I am doing a charity event or something, seeing how long I can go and letting people bet on the outcome. Most people think it’s a bit odd but given my history of having had back surgery I use the “sitting is uncomfortable” line as a standard reply to “why?”. It’s not about my back though, it’s about my health.

I have been more tired due to spending days on my feet but I remember well the days of working summers in a chocolate factory, even the night shift polishing smarties and the fact that most of my school career my summer jobs were active or at the very least upright. Those days taught me the value of hard physical days and the rewards they brought. In fact, I remember the first summer job I got that wasn’t active, it was an auditing job at an investment firm and I hated it. I went out for lunches every day, gained a ton of weight and was the fattest I had been since moving to Canada. It was over about 2 months later and I was glad to see the back of it. Ever since then, I worked construction jobs, chocolate packing, shipping and receiving and other physically active occupations. It makes sense then that I should try to find a way to remain out of my chair since even the most ardent sloth would have to agree that 8 hours in one sitting position just can’t be good.

It’s hard to know what makes a big difference to me nowadays, I am on a constantly changing workout schedule, a couple of extremely long days coaching and of course I am always changing my food to stay interesting. However, I expected my feet to be very sore, my back to ache and my shoulders to cry out for nightly massage but it seems that those things are only part of the initial learning curve. By now my feet are OK, I am used to moving while I work, and standing up makes it far more easy for me to wander off to do other things. It sounds crazy but when you are sitting for a while, the idea of getting up just seems like too much work!

My legs don’t ache any more, and if they do it’s more likely due to the hills and sprints or the WODs I am doing with the girls at gym. Speaking of which, I am trying to get some working out done with them during conditioning. I am expecting high standards of work from them and it makes sense that my participation, even partial would serve as motivation for them. On Monday I did 5 rounds of Chelsea during their workout, it helped me since something beats nothing every time but I think it also helped them to see me sharing their pain.

 

R7D25-7 – End Of Rest Week. Bring The Pain.

Probably since it was rest week and the pressure to perform was off I managed to do some satisfactory workouts this weekend. Friday I was able to crank out a 30 minute RKC workout with 5 ladders (34543) and some swings, one arm swings, clean and press and some snatches. Not having to worry about the ceiling made a huge difference as did being able to drop the KB if I needed to on the grass. Working out in the outdoors really does rock! Saturday we had poutine again from Larry’s Chip Truck and I have to say they were not as good as the ones I had at RIV the day before. With all those carbs in my system I decided it was best to get somthing done so I did the following:

100 pullups
100 box jumps (24″)
100 Push Ups

In addition to being active all day and out in the fresh air, this made for a perfect weekend from a physical perspective. Sunday was the 5 hour drive back home and that was always going to be the day off!

This week it’s the start of phase 2 of my mashup as follows:

4×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Chest, Shoulders & Tris, Ab Ripper X
4×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Speed and Agility
Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
Plyometric Cardio Circuit
FOY Yoga With Tony

5×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Chest, Shoulders & Tris, Ab Ripper X
5×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Pure Cardio & Cardio Abs
Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
Vertical Plyo
FOY Yoga With Tony

5×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Chest, Shoulders & Tris, Ab Ripper X
5×4 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Speed and Agility
Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
Pure Cardio
Yoga X

3×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Core Synergistics
3×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Cardio Recovery
Core Synergistics
Cardio Core and Balance
Yoga X

I also realized this morning that I didn’t post the workout sheets online so here they are, the log sheets for P90X.

 

R7D24 – ARX Plus Weekend Ahead

Last night I did most of ARX with the girls at gym, they said they wanted to work on abs so I was happy to oblige. Today I need to get something major done regardless of it being rest week because it is starting to look like I won’t be working out much this weekend. I guess rest week is the time to break a little but with Warrior Dash looming and my running in sad shape I am getting nervous. I may actually go and get a pair of KSO Trek this weekend since they have a better sole for trek and trail running, but that will mean cashing in the change from the water bottle at home to scrape together some funds.

3rd day on my feet. My knees ache, my feet hurt, my back is sore but I am getting over it. My sense of humour may not recover. But I am not alone in my standing.

 

R7D23 – The Hills

Standing all day yesterday at my new upright desk made my legs tired. I knew when I got home that I was going to have to go and run somewhere to get my running muscles back into shape before Warrior Dash. So after a quick rest on the couch and once the baby was in bed I ventured out to the large hill just by my house and beat the snot out of myself for half an hour. I haven’t run in a long time and as anyone who knows me can attest I hate running more than anything. Sprints and hills are different though, it’s more of a test of will and courage than the dishonour of jogging. So I blasted up and down this large grassy hill for what seemed like an eternity making sure my heart rate was at least as high as when I do Insanity workouts. I have to admit, as far as “running” goes it was OK, at least it’s something I can see myself doing again. It was a sub for chest and back, but realistically it was actually a rest week workout. I will maybe squeeze some of the original workouts in here too, transforming a rest week into a cardio week. I can count running as a bona fide skill since Crossfit requires some short distance (usually 100-400m) runs as part of certain WODs.

The plan, as it was, looked like this:

3×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Core Synergistics
3×3 Clean and Press Ladders Plus Dice Roll Snatches
Cardio Recovery
Core Synergistics
Cardio Core and Balance
Yoga X

I think the revised plan will look like:

Monday: Off, coaching
Tuesday: Hills and Sprints
Wednesday: WOD with gymnastics girls
Thursday: Cardio Recovery
Friday: Core Synergistics
Saturday: RKC
Sunday: RKC

I have also FINALLY updated the links on the right to reflect the P90X content page which outlines all the exercises in all the P90X DVDs. There are not really any explanations of the moves, those are found all over the internet but just the names. Check it out!

 

R7D22 – Stand

July 19 2011 – The day the desk died.

So it’s not the first time I have tried this epic movement away from my desk chair. Once again it was a post by Fitbomb that encouraged me to get my ass out of my chair and convert my work space to a standing space. The health benefits are immense, but the learning curve is just as massive.

Fact is however, that as much as my couch is trying to kill me, I spend most of my time at work and therefore on my butt. So I have a temporary solution while I wait for the inspiration to build something more permanent.

It’s certainly not pretty and for the 3 hours that I had the setup yesterday it was almost torture. Hopefully today I will be a little more used to it however it’s a long 8 hours on my feet that I am nervous about. I suppose just like anything, once you get over the initial pain, awkwardness and difficulty it turns out fine. The issue currently is that the space for the mouse isn’t really big enough and because it is an empty box, the surface itself is a little wobbly when I type quickly (which thankfully is not often!). Once I manage to get a proper solid surface, I think it will be much better.

The big question is why? Well, the statistics that caught my eye were related to people like myself who believe that working out each day is enough to lengthen their life. Unfortunately, if you have a sedentary job, you may not be doing the kind of good you were hoping for.

Those who sit 3 hours or more (and that time goes like a rocket) per day watching TV (or whatever) are 64% more likely to die from heart disease.
Of those who sit on front of the TV 3 hours per day, those who exercise (and believe they are staying “fit”) are JUST AS FAT as those who don’t. Each hour of watching TV = 11% higher death risk.

Not only that, but obese people sit for an average of 2.5 hours more per day than the rest.

Scary stuff. Enough to scare me onto my feet, at least to see what the difference is.

R7D18-21 – On Track.

 

This weekend saw my daughter with another fever. We had been out at a birthday party for my wife’s cousin’s daughter and once we got back it was furnace city for the little one. Luckily I had planned a day of rest so as she went to bed I did a little Fountain of Youth Yoga, tweaking my back in the process. I think my ITB was too tight yet again and I had been experiencing unusual back spasms all day. Anyway, I broke off the yoga after about 30 minutes and took some advil since during a reverse half moon my back disagreed with the whole philosophy and decided to act out.

Since my Pure Cardio on Thursday, I took Friday off and ended my week with Arms and Shoulders on Saturday. I had planned to take Sunday off but thought a bit of yoga may help my aching back. It did not. However, that brings me to week 4, a planned rest week that I can ill afford with Warrior Dash just 13 days away. I think I need to do some running for the next 2 weeks, since the Warrior Dash is 4km long and there will be running involved. I guess today’s job will be to convert my rest week into a cardio / running skill week to improve  and condition my running.

Did I mention that I HATE running.

This is also the last week of 2010 gymnastics. 2011 season starts on Monday and with it a new round of conditioning for the girls to endure. I have a feeling that we will be working on strength this season, the weak point of almost all of the girls seems to be arm and back strength. Not only that, but the cardio endurance to go through 3 hours of training is lacking somewhat, definitely another area to work on.

I will likely be taking Monday and Wednesday off this week, with coaching and today’s sore back. However, I’m committed to the running thing. I want to try and get 25km done in the next 13 days. (I’m actually giggling out loud thinking of ever coming close to doing that!).