One week plus

So, I finally hit the mother of all leg workouts (well, so far!) last Friday.  I mean, holy shit.  The lifts included front squats - always torture, pin deadlifts (meaning, short range dead lifts that start at knee height), Bulgarian split squats - another perennial form of torture, and some ab/core work.  Because the pin deadlifts are such short range, you can really crank up the weight, so I was lifting my conventional DL 1 rep max, plus, for reps.   Between that, the front squats, and the warmup sets for both, I lifted a LOT of weight, and I was really leg sore on Saturday.  Saturday's workout, in turn, was upper body and plenty tough in and of itself.  I think I'm starting to get in tune with this program! 

Sunday I went for a run with the dojo running club.  Yeah, I'm not supposed to be running, but I am making this compromised of my own volition to keep my sanity.  My plan is to keep the club runs under five miles (and I did) and to keep the pace tame (which it was by my standards, although not as tame as I think Cressey would like).  But, there you have it.

Today I started the second week, which is an "easier" week than last week, meaning we do one less set of a couple of exercises.  Next week is a very hard week, and looks brutal.  Yay.

School daze

So I officially started the last semester of my undergraduate career today.  Yes, grad school is making me take TWO physics labs, because my college physics courses did not include a lab.  I don't know why not - we had bio and chem labs, as well as labs for non-traditional science courses - but that's the way it was, and now my acceptance into grad school is contingent on my passing these courses.

Make no mistake - I WILL pass these courses, hopefully with excellent grades.  But we did a practise pre-test today in one of the labs and it is clear to me that I remember very little from my past course work.  It's only been 25 years (shit, did I just type that?) so you'd think I'd recall SOMETHING, but - well, this is going to be interesting.  Challenging, I meant challenging!

----

Yesterday was an interval cardio day;  I opted to run (I will in all likelihood always opt to run, barring complete shit weather) and did HiiT as prescribed.  Today was an upper body workout at the gym.  These upper and lower body workouts conclude with 10 minutes of steady state cardio, which for now I will be doing on cardio machines because it's a lot easier than changing and hitting the road.  Today I ran on the treadmill for the first time (Monday I walked on a steep incline) - also ran in five fingers for the first time, as they're the "shoes" I wear in the gym.  I imagine it's different running in them on real ground; however I could feel a difference in my stride even on the mill.  Could be a good thing?

MS - Day One

Things got off to a good start to day with the first leg workout of Phase One.  It took a little longer that I'd have liked, but I think things will go a bit faster as I learn the routines (soft tissue work, meaning foam and tennis ball rolling; warm-up; strength; then short cardio).  There weren't that many exercises in the workout and I don't think I had the weight dialed in perfectly for the first one (box squats), but the learning curve should be a short one and for all I know, come tomorrow I'll think I made the prefect weight selection.  I even STRETCHED after the workout, so yay, me!

Went to work today not sure what, if anything, I'd be saying about getting in to school, as one of my co-workers applied to the same school.  Turns out he was accepted as well, so I will go in knowing one of my classmates!  About mid morning, he said to me, "Hey, just think, four, five months from now, we'll be cutting up dead bodies!"  And you know, he's right.  (One of the first semester courses is human anatomy, and you do corpse dissection.)  Something to look forward to?

Maximum Strength

Yep, it's time for a change of pace.  Since I last posted, I've completed another ultra, a 33 or so mile trail run in North Jersey.  It wasn't supposed to be that long, but I went seriously off course near the end and added about a mile to my total distance.  Oops.  I was slow, slow, slow and found the race a real mental challenge.  My hamstrings were very tight and my stride was annoyingly short; my guess is my complete disregard for that stretching thing has finally caught up with me.  I'm naturally pretty bendy and I've always taken that for granted, but either age or mileage or some combination thereof has most definitely bitten back, and hard.  Hence, my lone resolution: stretch after every run.  (I've already broken it once, but the fact that it's ONLY been once is actually quite good, I think.) 

So... on to my winter project, which is to finally make a go of Eric Cressey's Maximum Strength.  Yes, something completely different!  I've put this off several times as Cressey recommends against doing any serious cardio when doing the program, and it's hard to train for distance runs without doing serious cardio.  I'm finally willing to take that step back and stick to his recommended cardio guidelines, specifically, limited cardio that includes up to two HiiT sessions a week and short (by my standards) steady state sessions at 60 - 70% of max heart rate.  Most of those steady state sessions are 10 minutes and take place immediately after strength training.  I'll add one more on Sundays that will probably be a bit longer; that will be done with the running club I'm trying to start at the dojo (we've already had our inaugural run). 

In other news, I am going to be offered a place in the Physical Therapy grad school program of my choice!!!!  I expect to get the written offer this coming week.  There are a few hoops left to jump through, including vaccinations, a background check, and some additional coursework (specifically, two physics labs), plus who knows what else - but the big hurdle is done and assuming all goes well between now and the end of May, I'll be starting school around Memorial day.  Holy shit.