(well, I left this blank all week... so there's that)
Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength
 |
| so many numbers |
I found a site where I'm going to work on tracking my strength (wish I'd done this years ago, but I guess I'm only now into a really good routine).
StrengthLevel.com
It's pretty cool for a data nerd like me... you enter your workouts (weight, reps, sets) and it ranks you based on the rest of the population from whatever data it has amassed. It'll put you in categories of beginner/novice/intermediate/advanced/elite/etc. based on your strength relative to others of your age & sex. It definitely shows me where I'm "ahead of the curve" vs. not so much, so I know where to focus on building strength.
I also found this article and this article to be interesting - both talk about how much weight + how many reps you should do based on your goals (hypertrophy, strength, or endurance). Since I have different goals for different muscle groups, seems like I should be taking different approaches to different lifts instead of my "3 sets of 8-10 reps of everything!" approach. Now that I've read that, duh, it makes sense and seems quite obvious...
To summarize a few of the key take-aways of those articles:
| Goal: | Reps | Weight* | |
| Hypertrophy (aka bigger muscles) | 1-6 | 85+ | |
| Strength | 8-12 | 75 | |
| Endurance | 15+ | <60 |
*Weight = percentage of your one-rep max. weight for that given lift
The site I linked above is pretty neat in that it will calculate a one-rep max. for your lifting based on any input of weight/reps. So far, here's where I stand (number of stars = relative level of strength for that lift vs. rest of population):
A few of my lifts I had to lower the weight or reduce reps because I've decided that:
> Squats will go at least to (if not below) parallel (thighs parallel to floor or lower)
> Curls need to be done with good form, so no heaving up with lower body. Controlled lift, or lower the weight.
> Really, everything needs to focus on form because if not, I'm just increasing weight for no reason.
> also gauged the weight of the free barbell (finally) to be 12#
Tuesday
Planned: tempo + intervals
10 min WU
2x5 min tempo / 3 min rest
6x30s speed / 90s rest
15 min CD
Did: as-planned + extra to finish 6.21 mi @ 9:23/mi avg
Did this early in the morning around the neighborhood, and as usual, my thoughts of "nnnnoooooooo" when my alarm went off were silenced after the run was done because YAY finished and ready for the day ahead. Since I'm in week 7 of a 6-week plan, I picked a speedwork from last week that looked reasonable for a 10k. Legs were sore to start off after the hard lifting yesterday, so the warmup was much appreciated.
Tempos felt challenging but not super tough, and pace showed that I wasn't really pushing that hard (7:29, 7:27 paces for each).
Worked my way towards a flat-ish place for the 30s repeats and was amazed how easy they felt... I kept trying to push faster since they were over before I really felt the fatigue set in.
There were definitely a few slow ones (above 6:00/mi) so perhaps the muscle fatigue was holding me back.
Did the cooldown and had to add another half mile at the end to get to 10k.
Wednesday
Planned: Red, White, & Blue Shoes 5k
Did: 5k race, plus 3mi bike to and from the race
Read the race report here.
Thursday
Planned: ?
Did: 14.4 mi bike ride @ 16.5 mph
Solo Sherman College loop at lunch today. Wasn't feeling the ride going into it, but turned out to be a decent ride (usually does) with pretty good speed - 16.5 mph average! Warm but not too warm, and legs finally weren't sore haha.
Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: rest
Saturday
Planned: long run (Paris Mtn?)
Did: 6x400m race mile pace
Had some time constraints, so I decided to take the advice of a neighbor who is a former high school track coach and work on my pacing for the track. My goal was simply to do each of the 400s at my goal mile pace (i.e finish them all close to 1:30).
One exciting thing: my watch measures distance around the track pretty well! It gave me a 0.01 mi bonus on a couple of places but overall, pretty spot-on. I was happy that after checking my watch at every 100m for the first couple of laps, I felt good enough to stop looking and just run by feel. Even on that first lap, I didn't have to make any major pace adjustments faster or slower to make my time goal. I pushed harder on the last 2 repeats and was pretty excited by the 1:23 on the fifth repeat.
I'm not all that hopeful of breaking a 6-minute mile on Tuesday, but I think I should come close. The fact that these 400s felt like all-out efforts was a little discouraging, but hey, we'll see what happens. (It also helped that it was a beautiful and breezy 70F when I did this run... )
Sunday
Planned: mountain bike
Did: 15.9 mi @ Dupont
Rode with Waylon (one of my 12 Hours of Tsali teammates) at Dupont this morning, and even though we'd expected a half dozen others to join us, nobody else showed up, so we had a nice duo ride. Got to do a few trails I'd never been on, which was fun, and felt really good for doing a 15+ mile ride with almost 2000ft of climbing. Plusalso, it was 60F when we started riding. SIXTY. In JULY. o_o
Week-ending thoughts: While I'm not all that hopeful about meeting my goal at the race on Tuesday (and I'm hella nervous about running in a track meet for the first time in about 20 years) I've enjoyed this training cycle. It's brought back the bit of focus that I needed in my workouts while still giving me some time to "play".
The site I linked above is pretty neat in that it will calculate a one-rep max. for your lifting based on any input of weight/reps. So far, here's where I stand (number of stars = relative level of strength for that lift vs. rest of population):
A few of my lifts I had to lower the weight or reduce reps because I've decided that:
> Squats will go at least to (if not below) parallel (thighs parallel to floor or lower)
> Curls need to be done with good form, so no heaving up with lower body. Controlled lift, or lower the weight.
> Really, everything needs to focus on form because if not, I'm just increasing weight for no reason.
> also gauged the weight of the free barbell (finally) to be 12#
Tuesday
Planned: tempo + intervals
10 min WU
2x5 min tempo / 3 min rest
6x30s speed / 90s rest
15 min CD
Did: as-planned + extra to finish 6.21 mi @ 9:23/mi avg
Did this early in the morning around the neighborhood, and as usual, my thoughts of "nnnnoooooooo" when my alarm went off were silenced after the run was done because YAY finished and ready for the day ahead. Since I'm in week 7 of a 6-week plan, I picked a speedwork from last week that looked reasonable for a 10k. Legs were sore to start off after the hard lifting yesterday, so the warmup was much appreciated.
Tempos felt challenging but not super tough, and pace showed that I wasn't really pushing that hard (7:29, 7:27 paces for each).
Worked my way towards a flat-ish place for the 30s repeats and was amazed how easy they felt... I kept trying to push faster since they were over before I really felt the fatigue set in.
 |
| Avg Pace vs. Avg Moving Pace... ??? |
Did the cooldown and had to add another half mile at the end to get to 10k.
Wednesday
Planned: Red, White, & Blue Shoes 5k
Did: 5k race, plus 3mi bike to and from the race
Read the race report here.
Thursday
Planned: ?
Did: 14.4 mi bike ride @ 16.5 mph
Solo Sherman College loop at lunch today. Wasn't feeling the ride going into it, but turned out to be a decent ride (usually does) with pretty good speed - 16.5 mph average! Warm but not too warm, and legs finally weren't sore haha.
Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: rest
Saturday
Planned: long run (Paris Mtn?)
Did: 6x400m race mile pace
Had some time constraints, so I decided to take the advice of a neighbor who is a former high school track coach and work on my pacing for the track. My goal was simply to do each of the 400s at my goal mile pace (i.e finish them all close to 1:30).
 |
| Done and done. |
 |
| Track runnin' |
 |
| Track workout complete! |
Planned: mountain bike
Did: 15.9 mi @ Dupont
Rode with Waylon (one of my 12 Hours of Tsali teammates) at Dupont this morning, and even though we'd expected a half dozen others to join us, nobody else showed up, so we had a nice duo ride. Got to do a few trails I'd never been on, which was fun, and felt really good for doing a 15+ mile ride with almost 2000ft of climbing. Plusalso, it was 60F when we started riding. SIXTY. In JULY. o_o
Week-ending thoughts: While I'm not all that hopeful about meeting my goal at the race on Tuesday (and I'm hella nervous about running in a track meet for the first time in about 20 years) I've enjoyed this training cycle. It's brought back the bit of focus that I needed in my workouts while still giving me some time to "play".
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