Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Back at it

I lifted last night, as planned. Last night was a 3x12 upper body workout. The first lift was supposed to be close-grip chin-ups, but I can't do 12 of them in a row, so I used heavy weights on the lat pull-down machine for that one. Next was barbell overhead presses, which were brutally hard. Then, wide grip lat pulldowns, Chek presses, and towel biceps curls. After that, I did some core work. My shoulders are feeling a little bit beat up today.

This morning, I was scheduled for an 8:00 a.m. presentation to the medical staff of the hospital where I work. I decided that I'd run tonight, rather than running this morning, and hoping I'd finish in time to get showered and make it to the presentation. It took me over 6 months to get on the medical staff agenda to make this presentation, so I didn't want to screw up the opportunity.

Tonight, I'll run easily for an hour or so to see how my legs are recovering from the weekend. If my legs feel good, I'll do some marathon pace miles tomorrow. If I'm still beat, I'll plan on running easy until my next race, which is this coming Saturday. I won't be going all out in Saturday's 30K, but I don't want to be dragging because I didn't rest enough after 25 race-effort miles this past weekend.

I'll do one more day of upper body lifting this week, but I think I'm going to skip the lower body lifting until next week.

I need to get my application in for WS-2009 in the next two weeks. We got an e-mail yesterday that included a "secret code" that I need to enter the race automatically. I've heard that the price was reduced by $100 for the returning runners, which is a very nice gesture from the race.

2 comments:

Speed Racer said...

How often do you do two-a-days? My goodness! You should buy stock in Tide.

Is the upper body work you do for performance or so that you'll have a bitchin' ripped upper body when you pose for the swimsuit issue?

Good luck with the presentation.

Damon said...

At my peak of training for an ultra, I'll work out twice from Monday through Thursday every week. Then, Friday will either be an easy run or an upper body lifting day. Saturday will be a long run, and then Sunday will be rest or an easy day. So, I often work out twice 4x per week. I rarely run 2x per day more than twice per week though. The other doubles are lifting and running.

The upper body work is part of an overall weight program that I do. I think that endurance work is catabolic enough that I'll never have to worry about getting too huge. Overall, I find that I lose body fat more easily when I'm lifting hard, doing interval work, and not drinking alcohol. I know you have that third one covered, but I don't yet. So, I focus a lot of my time on the first two.

There will be no swimsuit issue for me. Trust me on that.