Treadmill intervals again

There's just not enough daylight these days, so the treadmill is becoming my friend again. Last night, I did a small pyramid on the treadmill - repeats of 400, 800, 1200, 800, and 400, with an easy 400 between each. I changed the pace a bit for each distance, running between 7:15 and 8:00 pace for each repeat.

If I'm not going to run often, I'm going to run hard when I do run. Last night, the hamstring bothered me more than it did last Saturday.

Tonight is upper body lifting, and then tomorrow, I'll do lower body lifting before I head out of town for the weekend.

Right now, it's back to software testing.

Powerlifts

After the weekend, I was beat, but I knew that today (Tuesday) was going to be a rest day, so I needed a good workout yesterday. But, my legs were tired a bit from the race and my arms were tired from stacking firewood. So, I just made up my own workout - something with a minimal number of repeats that would focus on strength:

Squats
Bench Presses
Deadlifts

5x5 of each with 3:00 rest between each set.

This was a good workout for me, and as I loosened up, I was able to add weight to each lift as I progressed through the sets. I ended up at 210 for squats, 135 for bench presses, and 245 for deads. Those numbers are pretty pathetic, but they will change over the next few months.

A week ago, I did a single dead rep at 305. A few weeks ago, I hit 165 on the bench and then failed at 170. I've been doing high rep squats, but no heavy squats for a while.

My current single-rep bests are 265 for the squat, 165 for the bench press and 325 for the deadlift. By the end of the calendar year, I'm confident that I'll exceed all of those numbers. The squat will be the toughest to beat, most likely.

My current program ends this weekend, and after this weekend, I move into a couple months of pure strength work - work designed to push up my PRs in all three of the powerlifts.

Lately, I've been "playing around" with creatine monohydrate, and I see some good and bad effects from it. First of all, it's tough on my stomach and I have to make sure I take it right before I eat dinner. And, it has caused me to have some muscle cramping, mostly when I stretch out in bed at night.

At the same time, I've found that it seems to help me with heavier lifts or high reps in the gym. I didn't do any loading protocol (20g/day is recommended) so that I could avoid the water bloat that often goes with that. I've simply been taking 5g per day to see what would happen. I think I'm going to stick with this through at least my next four weeks of lifting and see what happens with my powerlifts. It's a cheap supplement and by most indications, very safe, and effective for most people, so I'm going to keep taking it for a few more weeks. If it negatively affects my skiing or running, I'll stop, but for right now, while trying to get stronger, I'm going to give it a chance.

Tough weekend

Friday night, I did an upper body lifting workout, figuring it wouldn't affect my race on Saturday morning. I got to bed early and got up early Saturday for the race. I really had no idea what to expect in the race. I'd done some recent quarters at 7:30 pace, but no more than 8 per workout, and no long runs. I thought I could go under 25:00, but I wasn't positive, and I wasn't sure whether I could simply sneak under that time or perhaps run in the 23s.

I had felt a little bit sick on Friday, but by Saturday morning, I was feeling fine, except for the anxiety of racing a 5K. The race was small and started with two laps on a dirt track. As we left the track, I was in 11th place overall, and even though this was a small race, there were many more runners behind me than in front of me. Regretfully, I would not pass one runner the rest of the race, but others would pass me.

According to my Forerunner, my first 3 miles were 7:34 (OK), 8:01 (not so good), and 8:14 (clearly a lack of fitness), and then just over a minute to the finish. My Forerunner measured the course at 3.14 miles, which explains the slow time after the 3rd mile split. I did notice on the course that I hit the 1 mile marker at 1.03 on the Forerunner and the 2 mile marker at 2.03. So, I may have meandered a bit in the first mile or perhaps the Forerunner was wrong, or perhaps the course was a bit long.

I ended up at 24:52, basically right at an 8:00 pace for the race. And, it was really hard. My stride wasn't perfect, but it was better than it's been recently. One good sign, as far as I'm concerned, is that the hamstring tendon attachment point was just fine. The belly of the hamstring muscle was sore after the race, but not the injury point.

The results aren't posted yet, but I know the overall winner was in my age group.

I headed home after getting some breakfast, ready to watch the Penn State vs. Ohio State game. Ohio State simply killed Penn State, making the race only the second most painful part of my day.

On Sunday, given the beautiful weather, we moved firewood into the garage for the winter - more than 3 cords of wood. We have a little bit more to move, but after almost 3 hours, we'd had enough and called it a day.

After moving the wood, I practiced my guitar for a while, but it was really difficult. My hands and forearms were so beat from the wood stacking that I was really struggling with the song I'm learning right now - the Grateful Dead's Round and Round, which uses all barre chords, which require precision and some strength. I'll work on it again tonight.

Tonight is a full-body lifting workout, although given our weather forecast, I wonder if I should just run instead. Today might be the last day of the year where I could run in shorts.

How can a leg workout trash me for an arm night?

Wednesday night was lower body stuff and I lifted hard. Last night was upper body, and my legs were looking forward to the break. Yet, on the second lift, I found myself struggling. I think the heavy deadlifts on Wednesday trashed my arms a bit for last night. So, I backed off the weight on one lift, and got through the rest of the workout OK.

Today, I'll do an easy run after work just to work out any soreness from Wednesday's workout.

Tomorrow morning, I'll "try" to race a 5K. I'm afraid it will be my slowest 5K in years, but I have to start from where I am. I'm anxious to see how my hamstring will tolerate the race, although it will probably be no different than my Tuesday interval workout, since I probably can't maintain the interval pace for 5K.

Then, I'll recover from the race by watching the Penn State-Ohio State football game on Saturday afternoon.

Sunday afternoon, we have a lot of firewood to stack, so that will be my workout that day.

I wish I was racing the Stonecat marathon in MA tomorrow, but we were too slow mailing our apps. So, I'll stay at home, save some money (tomorrow's race fee is $5), and get some work done. Plus, I need some guitar practice sometime this weekend. I've been so busy with work that I've been slacking on the guitar.

Lifting night

Squats - lots of them

6 x (3 front squats, 15 back squats, all at 145) = 108 squats
28 Bulgarian split squats per leg
28 Romanian deadlifts at 185

Deadlifts:
5x185
3x225
1x245
1x265
1x275
1x285
1x295
1x305

The last dead was my best since a 325 last winter. I'm beat today after intervals two nights ago and legs last night. Tonight is an arm night in the gym.

Saturday is a race day, something I've done very little this year.

Any predictions on how fast I can run a fairly flat 5K? I'm guessing 23:30, but sub-23 isn't impossible. I guess that 25+ is also possible.

Treadmill intervals

The doctor wants me to stress the hamstring by running faster. So last night, I hopped on the treadmill for 8 quarter mile repeats. Last week was the first time I'd tried anything remotely resembling speedwork since April, so I took it really easy - six quarters at 8:00 mpm pace. Those repeats felt pretty easy, so I sped up to 7:30 pace this week for 8 repeats. On the last one, I sped up to a 7:00 pace.

Overall, the hamstring felt pretty good. My stride still isn't quite right, but my left leg is extending better week by week. I think that is part of why the doc wants me to push the pace. As I run faster, my stride at slower speeds seems to be getting better and better.

But, racing a 5K on Saturday is just plain going to hurt, because I'll do it all out, with no real running base or speed right now.

Tonight is my "100 squats" workout, so my legs will really be beat tomorrow.

PRP update

I saw the doctor yesterday, just short of 8 weeks after the PRP.

He's very happy with my progress and has suggested two things. First, he thinks I should return to my chiropractor, which was off-limits for a while. He was afraid a quick adjustment might cause a problem in the injured area, but now thinks it would be beneficial so that my running stride is as even as possible.

And secondly, he wants me to run a race - any race at all, and push hard. Given that I haven't raced for a while, I think I'm just going to try a local 5K this coming weekend. Tonight, I'm going to do 8 quarters on the treadmill, and I hope to average 7:30 pace for the quarters. If I do that, it would be my fastest running since the injury.

I had some decent running and lifting workouts over the weekend, and we wrapped up the weekend with a nice dinner to celebrate my father-in-law's 81st birthday. We drank some very nice wines, including 1993 Bryant Family, a California "cult" wine that is worth a fortune right now, especially considering what I paid for it. Surprisingly, the wine was still very youthful and I think I'll save the other bottle we have for at least 5 years. Or maybe I should just sell the bottle, considering what it's worth. We also had a fantastic Vincent Girardin red Burgundy from 2005 - Pommard 1er Cru Les Grands Epenots Vieilles Vignes. I served that wine with cream of chanterelle soup, and included a little bit of bacon in the soup and topped it with puff pastry. It was a great match.

For dessert, we had apple crisp and I opened my last bottle of 77 Port - Warre's. Like many of the 77's, it was nowhere close to starting its downhill slide, but it was still amazingly good right now.

Thinking about that dinner, I probably didn't work out enough this weekend.