Up and Down Workouts

Wednesday evening, my workout was tough. Thursday morning was even tougher. Skipping dinner the night before during a power outage probably wasn't a good idea. Then, last night, I went to the gym for my second run of the day. I felt great and turned up the speed on the treadmill a little bit. After feeling so tired early in the day, I was shocked (and happy) to feel so good that evening.

Last night, I went home and ate a healthy dinner and then got enough sleep. I was looking forward to weights this morning. And then, at the gym, I felt beat again. I did increase the amount of weight I lifted for inclined DB presses, deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts, but each was a struggle. I don't like the workouts where I do 3 sets of 15 reps. I'd rather do 5-10 reps with more sets and higher weights, but I have a schedule/progression that I'm following.

For today, I was happy to go to 165 on the deadlifts. I did a 1-rep max of 255 a few weeks ago, but I failed a few days later at 275. Soon, I'll try that weight again. I did the incline DB presses with 2x40# DBs today, vs. 35s last time. Next week, I cut down to 3x12s, but increase weights on all of my lifts.

But, the whole workout today was a struggle. Tonight, I'll run easily for an hour or so, which will put me just over 40 miles since Monday. The next two days, I'll be teaching skiing, but with the conditions being poor, I doubt that we'll ski hard. I'll probably use it more as a teaching weekend on groomed terrain, probably with a racing focus.

If I end up skiing hard, I'll take Monday as a rest day. If the skiing is easy, I'll get back to running or lifting or both on Monday.

On Monday, I am doing a push-up test and a pull-up test. I've been doing a challenge with some people from Precision Nutrition, where we focus on push-ups and pull-ups for a month or two at a time. In the first challenge, I went from a max of 15 push-ups to 27. I took my pull-ups from 2 to 3. I'm hoping to get close to 40 push-ups on Monday and 5 pull-ups would be nice, but I may only be able to do 4.

I heard from my former running club teammate Cecil today. He is running Western States and Vermont this year. He asked me to pace him at Vermont, which I agreed to do. But, I remember the last time I paced at VT only 3 weeks after Western States. It was painful. I don't know how the slammers do it.