Hi

Remember me? 

I guess it's kind of obvious that blogging hasn't been a priority for me lately, but that's how it goes sometimes.  School finally is feeling like school again; I've had more than a full cycle of exams, and of those I've had graded, my lowest grade was just shy of a 98%, (whatever 47 out of 48 works out to be) so I have no reason to complain.  Except, it annoys me when I gets stuff wrong, so...   I had my second psych test yesterday and as usual I came out of it uncertain about some questions - she has a very odd way of asking test questions that doesn't reflect either her teaching style or the book's teaching style.  I suppose that's good, in that you have to think, but that tends to make me OVERthink some questions, which is where I can run into trouble.  But whatever; I've never NOT gotten a good grade on one of her tests, so I must do something right, eh?  

Today I finished my hypertrophy rotation.  I'm feeling good, but tired and a bit beat up, which from what I gather is about the way one is expected to feel about now.  I plan to do a good long run on Sunday and then take an easy week before starting the next rotation - I was even thinking of taking Monday totally off. I'll get to the "results" and next rotation stuff in a moment, but first, speaking of long runs...  I've gone over to the dark side.  

Or something.  One thing I've said numerous times IRL and on forums is that I don't think it's particularly wise to run with headphones on.  And you know, I don't know that I've changed my mind about that, BUT - I have started doing it, and I LOVE it.  Holy shit.  I just do it for long runs, since I do them Sunday mornings when there's practically no traffic.  But I've been digging out stuff I really haven't had a chance to listen to in a long time, and have been very pleasantly surprised to find a good number of favorites that just groove with my natural running stride.  Those that don't, I just happily ride along with, but when one just hits it, wow.  It's made me a very happy camper, and those long runs just seem to fly by.  

And now, on to, results, or something.  I think it's kind of hard for me to truly evaluate a program for what it is when I more or less violate one of the cardinal rules of doing a type of program - that is, doing a program designed to build muscle, and combining that with endurance training.  Granted, it's not SUPER endurance training, but I don't think Robert dos Remedios - or anyone else - for that matter presumes someone doing a muscle (or strength) building program is going to run 25+ miles a week while they're at it.    In fact most people recommend very little cardio with those types of programs, which is all well and good if you're not a runner, but if you are... well, you run, and, I guess, accept the consequences.  

Which, in this case, IMO weren't all that dire.  LOL.  While I'm sure one thing affected the other, I am running as much as I was at the start of the program, only a bit faster, overall, and I also clearly have done a bit of remodeling in the physique department.   My weight hasn't changed significantly - I might be up 2#, but won't really know for a few days; I tend to hold a bit of water when I'm working hard, plus I've been taking creatine, which I stopped today.  Even if it doesn't come right off it's no big deal, although I'd love to know if I actually DID put on muscle.  I doubt that's something I could figure out on my own, but if my arms and legs tell the story, I may actually have.  Either way, I'm happy with my over all strength gains, that I feel more solid and balanced, and - yes - with what I see in the mirror, and I can't argue with that.

So, what next?  My original plan, and quite possibly the one I will come back to, is to do another RDR plan, this one for what he calls total fitness, but using a functional split instead of total body format, meaning each weight workout would be a bit shorter than the ones I've been doing.  The plan would be to add some cardio, specifically hills or interval work, on two of those days each week.  I've also toyed with the idea of doing Maximum Strength (which, frankly, looks like a cake walk after this rota, although I'm sure it's not!), either as written (four days a week) or on a three day a week schedule.  

And then, there's New Rules of Lifting for Abs.  I JUST got this book late last night, and haven't had a chance to look at it, but to my utter surprise, I've heard good things about it.  Frankly, when I first saw the title, I rolled my eyes.  NROL for ABS??  Seriously?  Couldn't have interested me less had it been NROL for biceps.  But from all I've read, it's actually core and athletic-performance oriented, which is right up my alley.  I have to look at the thing, though, and decide if it will fit reasonably well with the rest of the year's running plans, or if it's something that might better wait until after running season.  Anyway, I have a good week, 10 days to sort this all out, and in the mean time - well, after Sunday - I'm definitely going to be up for a bit of a vacation.

Quickie

Of late it seems that whenever I have the desire to write something here, I either don't have the time or am nowhere near a computer, and when I don't, well, I don't.  Heh. Anyway, I figure something's better than a while lot of nothing, so:

I'm entering the last stage of my hypertrophy rotation.  The workouts have been hard, and probably have been taking me longer than they should to complete them.   They'd probably go faster overall if I were able to do more supersetting, but it hasn't been as simple as I'd like to set that up every time out.  However, otherwise, I'm frankly enjoying putting in the work, and will probably miss these longer, more challenging workouts when I switch to four day split mode (which I'll still do on a three day a week schedule) next.   That will be around the beginning of March - after this stage and a week's worth of takin git a bit easy - and the overall plan will be to switch into a more run oriented mode, and decreasing the load of the weight workouts.  I want to add hill or step (i.e., stair climber or stadium steps) on one of the weight days, and maybe a short interval run on the other.   I'll also switch from hypertrophy to more general fitness mode with the weights, which basically just means a different rep scheme. 

In terms of what I've seen so far in this phase - I've gained maybe a pound, pound and a half, and with that sort of change I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to whether it's fat, muscle, water, or some combination thereof.  One of these days, I promise, promise, promise myself I WILL do a true hypertrophy rotation, meaning I'll do the weight work and lay off the cardio.  Of course, theoretically, I was going to do something like that this winter, but wanted to keep running....  geez.  I'm wondering if maybe getting an ultra or two out of my system will calm the running bug to the point where I'll be able to stand cutting back enough to see what I can see in the weight room.

Heh, and THEN I talk myself out of that, because - hell, I enjoy running, and I'll probably wind up just going back to it and working off whatever measurable mass I would manage to add.  Oh well; that arguement's a long way off, I think.  I keep getting flyers for races and wanting to add things to my schedule, so for the foreseeable future, it'll be a matter of keeping a working balance between road, gym, and dojo. 

Ice. Lovely.

People are calling the rather impressive storm that seems to be affecting a large chunk of the country the Blizzard of 2011.  As a huge fan of snow, I'm displeased that most of what we're getting out of this will be rain.  Oh yay.  Rain in January.  Puhleeze. 

But this morning, and probably tomorrow morning as well, we have to contend with ice.  This morning was a real gem, too; I set out to walk to the train for school and my most fervent wish was that I would get to the station without landing on my ass.  (I did.)  When I got to the city my next most fervent wish would be that I'd get to the campus - which as it turned out was an OASIS of salted sidewalk - without landing on my ass.  And that, apparently, was the warm-up act for tomorrow morning. 

Needless to say it was a no-run day, as expected.  I did get the bike dusted off, and pumped up the tires, changed out the pedals (I am now clipless), and installed a bike computer, and did my first ride since, I believe, my last tri, a virgin Spinerval called Suffer-O-Rama.  It's an interval workout that, with warm-up and cool-down, clocks in at a little under an hour.  It seemed a little tedious at first but once you got rolling it was challenging enough that one was too busy breathing hard to be bored.  Beat the crap out of trying to get a workout out of a floor or step cardio DVD, too.  I have a couple of other Spinerval DVDs that I've picked up here and there, and I think between them I should have a nice alternative for days when running seems unwise.  A very, very good thing!

I'm restarting the workout calendar sidebar; hopefully I'll manage to keep it somewhat up to date this month!