The dream, or at least what I remember of it, starts with me, in some strange, very large bedroom. I am setting it up for what is clearly a nuit d'amour, although I have no recollection of whom the amoureux was. (Drat. Although I suppose it's nice to have room to add fantasy to a dream...) When I'm in the last stages of the prep, a party breaks out. Family and friends are there, as is Don Drysdale. Yes, Don Drysdale. I guess he got an invite to the dream because we were discussing pitchers at a Memorial Day picnic yesterday, a conversation sparked by Roy Halladay's perfect game this past Saturday. My little nephew, Matthew, asked me who the strange man was, and I said, "Oh, that's Don Drysdale. Go up to him and call him Dandy Don." Which, little nephew did, promptly. Later in the party my father told me Don wasn't so up on the Dandy Don thing, so I go up to him and apologize, and we have a good laugh.
I leave the party, and find myself in what appears to be an academic building crossed with a shopping mall. I meet up with a couple of old co-workers, and we set about looking for my missing lover. They vanish, and I find myself NOW walking out of the mall and onto a baseball field, then into a trailer. And who is there, but Tyra Banks. Apparently, I am a contestant on America's Next Top Model, and we just had a lingerie photoshoot. Instead of handing out copies of photos, she's handing out boxes of chocolates, and if your box of chocolates has lingerie in it, you move on to the next round. I get the most massive box of chocolates, which does not contain lingerie. Tyra informs me that I'm just a bit too old to be America's Next Top Model (ya think?) but she likes me and suggests I could become a cameraman for the show.
I take that all as a bit of a massive win, and return to my bedroom to find the party has broken up, and my mystery man is still nowhere in sight. The dream dissolves there. I'm not big on dream interpretation, and all I can say about that one is, it was entertaining.
Back later to post on workouts.
OK, here we go:
The Fitness Stuff
Two things of note from last week: First, I finished Stage 6 of NROL/W, and I also put in a 20 mile running week. The second was a landmark I had hoped to hit this week, but we didn’t have karate this past Saturday due to the holiday weekend, so I too advantage and went for what for me constitutes a long run right now, over 7 miles, bringing the weekly total comfortably over 20+.
As it happens I’m glad I was able to build so much during Stage 6, because Stage 7 is a whole new ball game. Stage 6 was supposedly about building strength in relation to body weight, hence there was an emphasis on working toward chin-ups and working on push-ups. I believe I prattled on about this in the past so I won’t do it again. The workouts tended to be short, and while they were generally challenging enough during the work, they didn’t leave me feeling all that taxed. Hence, I started adding short runs (2 – 3 miles) after a couple of them per week. That helped me get the weekly mileage up. It was also good, I thought, to try out lifting and running on the same day, something that’s on tap for the half training.
So, mission accomplished for the month of May. Special bonus: I lost a total of four pounds on the month, bringing the total to 15#. All with embarrassingly little effort on my part. Two more pounds lost, and I’ll be at the top what I always considered my comfort range. Four more will put me square in the middle. I don’t plan to change a thing I’m doing. Frankly I think this has gone so easily so far is because it was a bit of an artificial gain, all tied in one way or another to my illness – lack of activity when I was ill and a need to prioritize food basically without restrictions when I was getting well. That’s how the weight went on; resuming normal activities and normal eating is how it’s come off.
Too bad that’s not something marketable.
As mentioned I started Stage 7 yesterday. The workouts are different from the previous workouts in that they start with one or two “big” exercises (squat, deadlift, or a superset of bench press plus cable rows – and why cable rows instead of barbell rows, I’m not quite sure, but whatever) followed by a giant set of four exercises. These include two upper body exercises and two lower body exercises, all done for 15 – 20 reps, four sets of all exercises total. So it’s lower, upper, lower, upper, rinse, repeat – 30 seconds rest between all exercises. Heh, it was fun trying to dial in a weight for that many reps – I had no clue where to start and started too heavy for some things and too light for others. Oh well. Got it all figured out within two rounds and that IS why we keep logs, eh?
It made for a sweaty, partially aerobic workout that I definitely feel today, especially in the butt/hamstrings, although I’m sure my glute work played into that. I’m still really impressed by the results I’ve been getting from my glute activation exercises. Dare I say, baby’s actually got back? (Well, SOME back, but for me, this is a minor miracle.)
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