Monday - All workouts - Check!

The Megaplan said I was to do a 4K run and go swimming. My personal trainer is away for 2 weeks so I did his 'homework' (which was not in the megaplan), ran 4K in the neighborhood (pretty slow) and then hauled myself to the pool for a 30 minute swim. That swim really dragged on. I don't enjoy swimming laps. Maybe I need to challenge myself in the pool. Right now I just swim really easy and never really breathe hard whatsoever...

This Week's Schedule

Click on the image to enlarge it unless you have really good eyes :)

I'm a little bit afraid of my right knee...

So, the first time I went to the gym on my holiday I think I may have injured my knee.

Trainer gave me a workout routine to follow and I think the culprit was either one of two things

Suspect #1) Hop up and land on both feet wide appart on a step then do a squat. Well since I was not at home I used a Reebok step that they use in step aerobics, but instead of using just one step I used two steps on top of each other... Dumb but I somehow thought that one of them did not look as high as my steps at home.

Suspect #2) Standing lunges with a knee drive. These suckers have hurt me before but not quite like this.

So, my 'inner quad' muscle hurt to touch for about 3 days and now it feels weird when I bend my knee (like getting down on my daughter's matress on the floor.

Hopefully I am just being paranoid and this will disappear quickly. I did not run at all on my trip. I am scared because I really can't afford to screw up if I want to run a half marathon in September.

Things to know about me: I worry a lot. I am Chicken Little.

It is 4:30 and I have not worked out yet. Shame on me since I did not work today.

Day 8 away from home

Flying home tomorrow. Have been away from home visiting parents and assorted friends and relatives. This is the first day that my dad's high speed has been working. Oh the joys of living in the country :) Actually I would not mind living in the country as long as I had working high speed hahaha.

I've been to the gym twice with Dad. Did weights and tiny Elliptical warmup. I've been eating like its going out of style and my pants are fitting tight. Ooopps!

Triathlon in 2 weeks. Um, ya. Yay me!

Weights and Core Homework

Pair 1
Press on the ball - 12 pounds - 2 sets of 15
Stand up Lunge (drive knee up) - 2 sets of 10 per leg

Pair 2
Bent over row - 12 pounds - 2 sets of 15
Squat jumps on stairs - 2 sets of 15

Pair 3
Arnold press on ball - 8 pounds - 2 sets of 15
Wall Squats with Ball - 15 pounds - 2 sets of 15

Core:
30 crunches on ball.
20 crunches with oblique twist (knee over other leg, elbow towards bent knee, small twist, not too much elbow movement)
20 toe touches - legs straight up, raise hands up towards legs (if too hard, keep hands under head, same movement)
30 second plank

Pair 4
Standing Bicep Curls - 12 pounds - 2 sets of 15
Tricep Dip on chair - 2 sets of 15

Core:
Lateral Side Leg Lift - 20 per leg
Reverse crunch - 15

Note: These photos are to help me to remember how to do these things. I realize they are unflattering :)


Arnold - start


Arnold - top


Oblique Twist

Slacking

OK, So I did not work out Wednesday or Thursday. The horror! Thursday was a scheduled day off to pack for my trip. Have I packed? No! Should I be packing now? Yes! Am I procrastinating further still by writing this blog? Yes!

I have a personal training session this morning though so I will get in excercise today. Then I'm off for 10 days to visit family. It will be interesting to see how much excercising I get in. I have emailed my dad about going to his gym so I do have good intentions but you know what they say about the road to Hell and its pavement. Hahahaha.

Tuesday - Bike

Did the stationary bike with the real life video (Milan-SanRemo). I worked at it to keep my heart rate above 130 but not really hard. My calories were about 560 for an hour (normally they are around 400 when I do it 'easy')

Monday - Swimming & other stuff

Yes oh yes, I dragged myself to the pool tonight. I has been close to 2 months since I've been there. And I went at 9pm no less. I managed to extract myself from the sleeping clutches of my 2 year old's bed (the lair of doom, many a morning I wake up there....)

It was not fun per se... but I got it done. It is only 4 weeks until my first triathlon. I am not exactly excited about said triathlon. I was more or less peer pressured into signing up by my trainer and my dear friend who has done Ironman. They thought I should do one and here I am signed up to do it.

Funny thing is that I am considering signing up for another one since my other dear friend expressed interest in doing her first one (and the one I am doing is already closed for registration).

Husband and I worked on my workout schedule from now until September 22nd. Yes, you read that right, I said September 22nd. Between now and then I have 3 scheduled days off. OK that is a tiny exaggeration but not much of one. It is an ambitious plan to say the least. Half marathon here I come!

Monday - Trainer Workout - He killed me!

Workout included me saying (at least 2 times): "OK, you can leave now"

Cardio was 'Threshold' on the bike. 2K warmup, 1 minutes as hard as I could go in reall hard gear (got to 482 watts), 1 minute recovery (not enough), another 1 minute all out, recovery, another 1 minute all out, and some more stuff. It killed me. I am not great at pushing myself and spend pretty much all of my workouts (when not with someone else) doing easy long slow things. So having the trainer kick me to do it hard is well worth the money.

After the cardio, 10 times up and down the stairs, then 20 kneeling pushups (15 in the second set), then hop squats on the stairs (15, 2 sets), flies (5 pounds), another one that I don't know what it is called- hold weights against your body - elbows pointed up towards ceiling - keeping weights against your body raise them up to chest level(8 pounds, 15 reps, 2 sets), ball sits with one foot off floor (10 reps, 2 sets, start sitting on the ball, one foot off floor, stand up, sit back down).

Ab Stuff: arms and legs in the air holding ball, alternate lowering opposite legs, 15, 20 crunches with knees up and feet in air, v-sit with only heels touching - rotate from side to side with 5 pound weight.

I never really recovered from the cardio and I was breathing hard through everything. We did not do biceps or triceps.

Comments

I did not notice that I had to blog set that only people with Google accounts could comment. Hopefully that is all fixed now and anyone can comment.

We did it! - 5K March 2008

It was cold. It was slushy and icy but I smiled the whole way and was so happy to be running this 5K. I could have run faster but I was just in it to finish. Dinograd ran a Personal Best... my previous 5K Personal Best remains intact. Next stop, sprint Triathlon in April. Yikes! I better get hitting that pool!


Before the race


After the race - A little Pinker in the face :)

Saturday - Pre 5K leg warming

Just did half hour on the Elliptical in anticipation of running the 5K race tomorrow. I say race but I am thinking of as more of a run. I think it will get me pumped up about running and I am really happy that I am going with one of my dear friends. Its going to rock!!!

Wed, Thurs, Friday

Hmmm... why do I not remember what I did on Wednesday? Could it be that I did not do anything? My memory sucks!

Thursday I did an hour and a half elliptical for 800 or so calories. I love working out watching the Biggest Loser. I really wish they had previous seasons on DVD. I was supposed to run but skipped it because my knee was sore. I whacked it a good one falling on it after tripping on some concrete stairs in a parkade. Ow!

Friday was trainer day. Cardio was on the bike trainer. 2K warmup, then 5K of hills from 1% grade to 5% I think. Again with the failing memory. I should have done extra cardio after that but hubsband decided to so his 3hour Saturday workout on Friday night so we had more family time on Saturday.

And today is Saturday. I don't have a workout plan yet. I have my first Post 2nd kid 5K tomorrow. Mostly looking forward to that. Part of me is not looking forward to it because I know I am going to be slow. Stupid vanity!

Tuesday Run

I got in a run after work. I ran in the neighborhood (not my favourite). I ran out for 16 minutes and came back in 15:33. I was pretty happy to have a negative split but I think it was more uphill on the way out (went across the bridge to the B neighborhood).

I had intended to do extra cardio after putting little-girl to bed but alas I succombed to sleeping instead. Grrrrrrrr. I really must quit lying with that kid to put her to sleep. I need my evenings!

Monday Cross Training

Was woken up by small human #2 at 4am. At 5am I was still not back asleep so puttered around a bit then hopped on the Elliptical for 65 minutes until calls of "Mommy!" started coming from 2 different (but happy) voices. 660 calories.

Worked out with Personal trainer. Did 10K time trial on the bike plus core and free weights.

Weekend Excercise

Spent the weekend at the Scrapbooking retreat. Usually it is a junk food fest with lots of comfort food food type homemade meals from the B&B. This time they had changed up the menu to healthier fare and I also was really good at limiting my portion size.

I got two runs in when I was there (one with Amber). Saturday we ran for 31 minutes and it was really nice to run with Amber. We had not run together for literally years (since before I got pregnant with my nearly 3 year old).

Sunday Spring Forward and late night scrapbooking screwed us up and we did not get up at 7am as planned. However, I chose to skip the B&B breakfast and borrowed Amber's iPod and went for a run in the town. It was a really great run and I did 6 sets of 10&1s which is my longest ever run this year. Yay! It was great and the scenery down there was so beautiful.

Friday Excercise

No running on Friday. Did a workout with the personal trainer but asked to skip the cardio since I was leaving right at the end of the workout for a weekend away at the Scrapbooking retreat.

Thursday Run

I ran for 25 minutes. I should have gone longer but I was a little bored running in my neighborhood. I need to get better music for my MP3 player. I also did 60 minutes on the Elliptical for 620 calories.

Wednesday Cross Training

No run today. Turns out Kyle (trainer) was right... I can actually run the day after our training session with sore legs without doing harm. Legs are fine today.

Did long slow cardio to go towards my 4000 calorie extra excercise challenge.

Easy Bike on trainer: 1 hour 27 minutes - 678 calories
Easy Elliptical: 40 minutes - 410 calories.

Tuesday Run

Went 'around the block' 4 times because I was short on time. Total distance is 3.3kms. Time was 27:21. 290 cals. Max HR 167 (90%), Avg HR 151 (82%). That pace is 8.5 min kms. Yikes! (again, remind myself it is good to be running and not to worry about my speed). Hopefully I will be able to look back at this in 6 months and say "Wow! Look how far I've come"

I was trying to take it easy because PT session yesterday left me with glute and hamstring soreness. Last Tuesday I did not run because of sore legs after lunges but that time my quads were sore to touch :) Trainer says I could have run so this week I gave it a go.

Cross Training Monday

No scheduled running today.

Workout with personal trainer. Cardio was on the bike. 2K warmup. Change to 3% grade, every 500m go up 1% grade for 2K, then a 2K cooldown. About 14 minutes. Core & Strength: Pushups. 10 from knee then 5 from toes. I still suck at the full pushups, rows with 15 pounds, on hand on ball, hammer curls with 15s, forearms on wall, contract shoulder, lateral arm raises with 5s, lateral leg raises, skull crushers with 10s (barely made it to 10 on second set), curls with knee bent and crossed over other leg, regular crunches, plank.

Still working on my challeng eof doing 4000 extra calories in a week. Today did Elliptical twice. First time 40 minutes for 410 calories. Second time 60 minutes for 606 calories. Doing it very easy at level 5 to try not to aggravate leg muscles. Want to keep them fresh for running. After discussion with hubbie decided to use the calories from the Elliptical machine because I do enter in my weight. Hubbie figures HRM calories are lower because the algorithm it uses is for running and my HR is much lower on the Elliptical and would represent less calories burned if it were that low while running.

Plan to run tomorrow. Will have to do it right after work since have to get hubbie at airport in the evening.

Sunday - Extra Excercise Part2

So, there I am going Elliptical while wearing my heart rate monitor and I am reminded that oh ya, the heart rate monitor does not report nearly as many calories as the Elliptical machine. What does that mean? Maybe I did not really burn 1001 calories a couple of days ago like the Elliptical said... *sigh*

Anyways, I marched along watching a really bad movie on the movie channel and then another one for a total of 1 hour and 41 minutes. My HRM said I did 600 calories. I forget what the Elliptical said mostly because I stopped for a little bit in the middle and it was a little too long because when I went back my stats were gone... stupid machine.

Anyways... why the heck am I still awake and typing on this damn machine? Off to bed. It is never good when the kids are well rested and I am not!

Sunday - Extra Excercise Part 1

I went for a walk pushing the stroller with 1-2 kids in it depending on who felt like walking at the time. I went on the exact route that I ran this morning which was kind of interesting. We printed off the map from mapmyrun for the 4 year old to monitor our progress with.

Anyways... the 5.3km walk took 1 hour and 19 minutes (running was 45:23) and burned 464 calories according to the Heart Rate monitor. Max was 152 (82%) and Avg was 111 (60%).

I am going to have to do more extra excercise after the kiddies bedtime to make it towards my 4000 calorie weekly goal. Hopefully C will not be such a pain in the ass to put to bed and I won't get sucked into falling asleep with her.

Sunday Run

So according to mapmyrun I ran 5.3 kms. It took me 45 minutes and 23 seconds (took 3 walk breaks). I was doing 10 & 1s but just kept going on the last 10 and it turned into 12 minutes and 23 seconds.

Again, I have to tell myself not to fret about my slow speed and to just be happy that I am running :)

Heart Rate Monitor says: 510 calories, max HR 174 (94%), average HR 156 (84%). So clearly I was working hard here :)

Cross Training Saturday

Well,

I got in about an hour on the bike for a total of 400 calories. I wanted to do more after the kids went to bed but C had too long of a nap (I tried waking her up but no go, she slept until almost 5) and as a result she would not go to sleep at bedtime (I even tried pushing back bedtime until 8:30). Anyways, I woke up in her bed at 6am. Grrrr. I guess I should be happy that I got the 400 calories in. So far I have done 1400 extra towards my 4000 extra calorie goal and I have 5 days to go. I should make it no problem although the work days will be harder because I'll be more tired.

Saturday Run - Another 25 minutes

Again I ran just over 3K. Heart Rate Monitor said I burned 298 calories which is sweet. Max HR was 169, average HR was 159 so clearly I was working, I just am a slow runner right now (not that I have ever been fast). I am really looking forward to getting stronger.

The route was a little hillier than my neighborhood one. I started at the lights at GR, went up the hill, hung a right into SGP, went a little bit on the pathway and turned around at the first building on the left. MapMyRun says my turnaround point was 1.55km.

Tonight I pan on doing extra long slow Ellipticalling. I am doing a week long experiment with trying to add 4000 more excercise calories on top of my normal running and personal training. Hopefully I will see some weight loss results.