Back to the gym

Regretfully, I seem to be coming down with my typical post-marathon cold. Almost every big race I run, I end up getting sick within a couple weeks of the race. My wife has been fighting a cold and now it seems to be my turn. I'll see how the day goes before I decide if I'm up to running tonight. After 6" of snow last night, I might be able to snowshoe run after work, but the forecast is calling for extremely high winds later in the day.

Last night was a lifting workout. I'm still using workouts from the New Rules of Lifting book. I'm in a series now called Strength 1. There are three different workouts in Strength 1, and each starts with wave loading sets of one of the three powerlifts - squats, bench presses, or deadlifts. Last week, I nearly killed myself with squats. Last night was the bench press night.

In most of the workouts in this book, bench presses aren't used, so it's a lift that I rarely do. There are lots of incline presses, with either dumbbells or barbells, but not many flat bench presses. Prior to last night, my best BP ever was 135#. The sets last night were 6-1-6-1-12. After warming up, I did 115# for the six reps. Then, I tied my PR with a single rep at 135. Then, six reps at 125. Then, I asked a friend to spot me and I tried a single rep at 155. I made it pretty easily. I did the final set at 115.

After that, I moved on to the rest of the workout and then did some short running intervals on the treadmill to wrap up the workout.

In the past, we've had some Presidents and Vice-Presidents who've run marathons. None of them have ever run a faster marathon than my best marathon. None have really been close.

But, our current President-elect can allegedly bench press 200 pounds. He's less than a year older than I am, so I've decided that I need to work up to that weight as well. I'm not ready to have a President who's more fit than I am, even though I'm sure he could take me 1-on-1 in basketball.