Less bang, more whimper!

Ah, I had grand plans for run 100 especially when I was still miscounting and thought I would be doing it TOMORROW morning - but even after a nap and some rehydration and an energy bar, it seemed clear I'd better be moderate in my conclusion!  Just did :30 easy in Riverside Park - right knee/hamstring and lower back are quite tender and tight, so I am going to take Coach Dave's advice and take tomorrow off from running!  That's it for the summer - 100 runs in 100 days, VERY slow and some of them very short, but I am really hoping I'm going to look back and say "That's the summer I made myself into a daily runner!"

Bike/squats/run

Hahahaha, may have SLIGHTLY overdone it given that I still need to do proper run later!  Rode bike down to Chelsea Piers for a lovely session with Josh, at the end of which my legs were trembling with fatigue but I did make myself get out for run #99 (:15 at a gait and speed that probably resembled walking more than jogging!).  Then refueled and rode bike home. Thinking about going back to bed now - slept very poorly due to cats pestering me for attention!

Main squat work set: 4 x 10 @ 65, working on technique.  Did a deadlift set with bands over the bar (we now have real deadlift platforms!) concentrating on pushing chest up initially before surging up with the bar - would have been 4 x 10 but we split the second 2 tens into 5s as my back was very tight.  Ended with 3 x 20 goblet squats with 12-pound kettlebell.

1hr bike
1hr lower body
:15 run

Short run/upper body!

Incredibly happy to be back at home with my lovely powerlifting team!  It was a workout of much chat and catch-up, took a lot longer than it should have and as I needed to be at G.'s for dinner at 6:45 I left before completing the whole thing.  What I did:

main bench set: 4 x 6 @ 95
dumbbell press on bench: 3 x 8 @ 22.25
hammer curls: 3 x 15 @ 12.5
band lat pulldown x 100

:15 run, 1hr upper body

Run!

Tired and slightly melancholy as a result, but VERY happy to be back in NYC!  :30 easy in beautiful Riverside Park.

Run/yoga!

Ah, that's an early start for a Monday.  My flight leaves early afternoon, will get a move on now, get sweaty things in the washer, etc. and prepare to reenter real life in NYC...

:23 run, 1hr yoga

(Catch-up post)

(I see I forgot to log a yoga-run yesterday - 1hr flow yoga, :10 jog home which I am taking the liberty of counting!)

Short run

Just :20 easy.  Day 97, run 95 - 3 more days, 5 more runs, eminently doable though with travel tomorrow knocking out the second run possibility....

Long run!

Feel good about getting that one done.  2:05 easy - was out the door by shortly after 5am.  The trouble is I am just not a good sleeper - knowing I have to get up for something I consider important pretty much kills my ability to sleep soundly, I woke up to pee around 3 and I just didn't properly sleep again after that, I was popping my head up to check the time every ten minutes.  I do better in climes and times where I can get up when I get up and run in the middle of the day!

Run!

Alas, total failure of willpower - I had alarm set for 5:10 and meant to do my 2hr run this morning before it gets too hot, but I hardly slept on Thursday night and when I was briefly awake around 4am I thought - I JUST CANNOT BEAR THE IDEA THAT I HAVE TO GET UP IN ONLY ONE MORE HOUR - and reset alarm for 6:30, which seemed more reasonable.  So I have just done :40 easy and WILL do my long one tomorrow....

Run/yoga!

Day 95, run 91 - gotta put in some doubles to catch up!  Had mistakenly counted Thursday next week as final day but really it's Wednesday, that's actually a better day for me to do a longer one in the evening (hoping to put in 100 minutes as celebration of 100 in 100).  Never did make it to the gym yesterday afternoon for a treadmill run - will try again for that today.  Anyway :23 easy, then POWER YOGA!  It makes me feel a bit clumsy, the vinyasa will jump very quickly into warrior 1 and then back to chattaranga and I am always a second behind, but it is a very good and very enjoyable class, with helpful adjustments from the teacher.  I had a very sleepless night but it was so much so that I figured I might as well get on with exercise things - might see if I can take a nap now once I've showered....

:23 run
1hr power yoga!

Run/yoga!

Very good way to start the day, though I cannot seem to get out the door quite early enough to do a full thirty minutes before 6am yoga.  Anyway :23 easy and 1hr very challenging yoga!  (Mark was teaching, that is a very good class - I will hope to get it it again tomorrow....)

Run/yoga!

Timed that slightly wrong, just :23 run and then 1hr power yoga.  I think it is wiser after I've been running in a warm climate not to do hot yoga!

Run/yoga

Not sure I hydrated sufficiently yesterday and this morning - run was fine, but I felt pretty queasy at a very early point in the standing sequence at hot yoga, had to sit quite a bit of it out.

:30 easy
1hr hot yoga

Run!

I felt slightly eccentric, but I went out for my second run after B. went to bed, then stopped at the grocery store and walked home - fridge very bare.

:25 easy

Run/yoga!

I had ambitious plans for early early morning run and yoga, but was having an utterly sleepless night - at 1 I finally reset the alarm from 5:10 to 7:45.  Did get adequate sleep I suppose in the end, the run was hot but the yoga was superb!

:22 hot run
1hr flow yoga

Run-swim!

That was nice - Brent picked me up after, but really I should jog home, it's only half an hour even if it's hot (for swim safety it really needs to be fully light IMO).  Gonna try and do that a couple days this week - I am registered for this crazy open-water swim thing in September and have told myself I only am allowed to do it if I can swim 3+/week between now and then!

:30 easy run, :40 easy swim (about 1.5K)

PM run

:20 easy.  Day 88, run 84.

Hot yoga!

Very good too.

1hr hot yoga

Run!

This climate is too warm for me - every day I snooze the alarm a little bit longer and then regret it when I'm out in blazing sun.  Anyway, got it done, holding out hope that I am going to have some lovely cool running in October and November in Oxford as a reward for heat slog now!  B. will be home tomorrow which is also helpful, he is on a very early schedule and doesn't mind "tipping" me if my night-before self requests it with appropriate specificity and conditions....

:30 easy (day 88, run 83)

Run!

Can't say I was feeling the love for that one, either beforehand or indeed during.  The heat and humidity here are unrelenting!  But it had to be done....

:30 easy

Yoga!

1hr "yin" yoga.  Very enjoyable.  Rented a mat because my own is so heavy and hot to carry, but also discovered that they have mat storage space upstairs - I will take advantage of that.

DL/bench!

Good start to the day.  I didn't run - I had psychological need of a day starting without an alarm, meant to do :30 treadmill after my strength workout but forgot to bring running shoes, which is fine - I can fit it in at the end of the day before sociable dinner with G. and E.

(Tend to default here to yoga rather than strength - it is less fun working out without teammates - but in fact I am about 2 minutes walk away from an excellent weightlifting gym, and Josh has sent me the week's workouts, so there is no good excuse!  Having usual Davidsonian difficulty of "too many good things" - I really should be swimming also as I have signed up for a [current-assisted] 5K in September....)

Deadlift work set: 5 x 6 @ 165 with 4-second ascent, descent (Josh requested mini-bands but I didn't have wherewithal for that)

Bench: 3 x 8 tempo (6-second descending) @ 85; dumbbell floor press, 3 x 10 @ 30; 4 x 10 lat pulldowns; 4 x 12 front raise, lateral raise @ 5

1hr strength

Run!

Just :20 easy.  Didn't go to the Stroke and Stride after all - logistics/transportation were always a bit offputting, but I also got an upsetting piece of news this morning that made me not want to be sociable with strangers!  Day 86, run 81.

Hot yoga!

Either my spot was cooler or the room was cooler, maybe a bit of both: also the 1hr class is significantly more manageable than the 1.25hr.  Do rather wish I'd brought some short shorts - I avoid them because I don't want to walk to and from yoga in the world in them, but they really are more suitable for that particular climate and context!  Sweat evaporates better off the bare legs....

1hr hot yoga

AM run

:30 easy.  Was a little later out the door and it was noticeably hotter - it's been overcast the last couple days too which really helps.  Day 86, run 80.  I am thoroughly enjoying this - it's sort of like the feeling of coming to the end of a long first draft of a book manuscript!

Evening run

:30 easy.  Day 85, run 79.

Hot yoga!

As always after a layoff, hot yoga was - VERY HOT!  Good, though.  And not absolutely overwhelmingly too hot, just queasily occasionally too hot...

1.25hr hot yoga

Run!

I woke up in a timely fashion and had my morning run before the sun was too high in the sky.  Good way to start the day!

Day 85, run 78.

PROJECT PARITY!

:30 easy.  David and I are conspiring to get me back on track with numbers for "100 in 100" - week will have a lot of 30/20 doubles!  Day 84, run 77.

Non-run

but I'm going to log it as one - I need to take a few liberties here to catch back up!  Often I am lazy in Cayman about getting to the grocery store.  It is a hot exposed one-mile walk each way and I can just about squeeze by with, say, the mixed berry protein shake at the cafe for breakfast, spinach and cheese omelet at Cimboca for lunch, dinner at one of the places nearby - but really I am determined to have good nutrition this week.  So - $200 later (island prices + healthy eating =  devastating combination!) - 2 warm miles grocery trip.

Yoga!

Sunday was a wash exercise-wise - I was up at 5:45am, flight slightly delayed but not horribly so, got to Brent's around 3pm without having had real lunch or proper meals on Saturday either and fell into bed for a nap - when I got up a few hours later, it was clear that dinner was a much higher priority than a run.  Now I am even further behind!!! And since Brent isn't home till this coming Saturday, I don't get the early-morning boost/tipping that usually help me run early here - that's gonna have to wait for next week.  Anyway, will see what can be done....

1hr flow yoga

Saturday long run!

Writing later afternoon from slightly sordid airport hotel - I made it here safely! Did manage to complete my 2hr "time on feet" run earlier - it was excessively hot, and I should have gone out earlier for logistical as well as climatological reasons - I like to do out-and-back if I'm on the west side, but the path is so much more exposed to sun after 59th St. that I turned back around :40 and had the horrible challenge of being AT HOME, basically, but still with 40 minutes to eke out.  Anyway, I managed it, I wasn't physically in extremis - just having escalating stress about having time to get apartment ready for arriving family of five Germans, who did indeed get to NYC earlier than planned!

2hr very warm very slow run

Run!

I let heat psych me out yesterday, and then by later in the day I really had been affected by heat enough that it was no longer feasible - but I was determined to get the workout done properly this morning.  Didn't get out early, and it was pretty darn hot, but I did the best I could - in these conditions, it's less like "fast" and more like "trying to keep cadence and knees higher than they are during the default shuffle."

12:00 warmup

12 x :40 faster, 1:20 easy

4:00 jog regroup for purpose of convenient counting

5 x 2:00 faster, 3:00 easy

cooldown

1:20 total

Run!

Just :30 easy.  I was kinda waiting for it to cool down; then I looked at the hour-by-hour forecast and realized it was a doomed enterprise!  It's going to be disgusting again tomorrow, I am considering doing my longer/intervals run on the track at Chelsea Piers....

Squats!

Very good workout with Josh.  New squat PR at 145, I can do better than that!  Got drenched on ride home.

1hr lower body
1hr bike

Bench!

I note that despite sinus infection I am currently at PEAK FITNESS!  Very enjoyable albeit purposeless - enjoyable for its own sake I think.

(1) circuit x 5: (a) 20 face pulls (b) 10 front raise with band  (c) 10 rows @ 37.5
(2) 8 x 3 bench @ 80 with six-second eccentric descending
(3) circuit x 5: (a) 20 mini-band triceps (b) 20 triceps pulldown (c) 15 lateral raise (5lb plates) (d) 20 abs with band

10mi bike
1hr upper body

Run!

Ended up modifying (assigned as 10 + 8 x 1:00 + 10) as I am really feeling sub-par.  Minor complaints but cumulatively irksome - mostly it's just that the minor sinus infection after spreading from right to left side of face has now turned into a cold with raw-ish lungs and postnasal drip, which has a tendency esp. in heat and humidity to make me feel queasy while exerting myself outdoors.  Did about 12:00 easy, then gave first one-minute hill a try and felt sickly.  Jogged easy back to the start and instead did 8 x :30 strikes on a gentler hill in shade.  About 40min total.

Deadlifts!

Best day of the lifting week IMO.  Started with a warmup circuit x 4 (10 x hamstring DB curl @ 37.5, 20 x shrugs @ 52.5, back-leg hyperextension), then 3 x 3 @ 206.  Very nice too.  4 x 10 goblet squat @ 27.5 (sub for front squat with bar), 100 abs with band.

1hr lower body
10mi bike

Long run, better late than never edition

Blessing and curse of flexible schedule: easy to procrastinate as you still CAN do the long run on Monday.  Should have gotten up and out the door earlier, it was pretty warm (not terribly humid, but it's a sunny route), but mostly enjoyable.

Jogged over to Central Park, entered through the 7th Avenue path and did the upper five, then left the park, ran across on 108th St. and down Riverside Drive and into the park at 96th, then home along my usual last bit of park.

2hr time-on-feet run

Morning of bliss!

About 100x better than yesterday, not least because though it's hot, the humidity is more normal and less extreme - phew!  Also when I woke up this morning I found that though the minor sinus infection is still in evidence it has NOT turned into a full-blown cold.

Rode to Chelsea Piers where I met Joanna for a lovely run!  Hot but very nice - ran down the west side and then back up, finishing near Chelsea Market where we had a post-run snack.  Rode bike home - underhydrated now but in a very good mood.

10mi bike
:40 run

Run!

I was in a terrible mood all day - slept poorly last night, woke up to realization that stuffed-up nose was not allergies but an incoming sinus infection, the weather is very humid and NYC at its worst.  Got home mid-afternoon utterly overheated and miserable, just lay in bed in air-conditioning feeling sorry for myself!  I was hoping the temperature would have gone down by the evening, but it's still disgusting - however, though the 2hr run on the schedule seemed by that point impractical, it was clear that SOME kind of a run could only improve my mood.  Running with Joanna tomorrow morning in Chelsea so not sure about when the long one will fit in, tomorrow evening perhaps if I can get it to happen?

:40 easy

Run!

Just a short one this morning (yesterday's missed :30, not today's :40 with strides) as the water is off at the mains from 10-5 and I wanted to make sure I got a shower....

:30 easy

Bench!

Very nice workout.  Main set 10 x 3 @ 95, making sure to hold 1-2 seconds at the bottom - very good workout this way.  Also 100 shrugs @ 52.5, 100 triceps band, 100 abs band.

Still need to do my run for the day, not feeling very motivated!  (Didn't quite have time/vim in the morning.)

1hr upper body

Run!

The verdict: very slow but very fit.  Beautiful evening.  Felt slightly broken for the first twenty minutes or so but back didn't hurt at all once I was warmed up, and I got the thing done without any drama, though it must be said that the outside observer might not have been able to tell the difference between the "faster" and the "easy"....

1:10 as 10:00 easy, 10 x (:30 faster, 1:30 easy), 10 x (1:00 faster, 2:00 easy), 10:00 easy

Squats!

This lift continues to be a thorn in my side, but we are working on it.  Had a good long sleep and back felt much better when I got up, to my relief.  Rode bike downtown (most beautiful weather, almost like a fall day!) and had a useful workout with Josh.  Note to self: wall squats, with hands lightly resting on the wall and with PVC "bar."

10mi bike
1hr lower body

Bench!

My back was really sore all day, and I almost bailed on going downtown, but really bench day is easy and I thought I would regret it if I didn't go.  It was a very nice workout (I really, really miss it when I'm not in town!).  We were just pressing heavy singles.  I failed at 125, did 3 singles at 110 and then 2 more at 120.  To some extent I just need to get used to the feel of it being heavy and going up slowly.  Then floor press: 5 x 8 @ 32.5.  Skipped the circuit as needed to rest back more than I needed additional fitness stuff.  10mi RT bike.  Have taken advil and am about to go to bed with heat pack (hot water in shower already made it feel quite a bit better).

Day 71, run 65.  Very nice too.  Back is really sore, worse though when twisting/turning/walking than when running so I'll keep at it.  Busy day with meetings and a dissertation defense in the afternoon, better get on with things...

:30 easy

Deadlifts!

Very happy to be back in normal life!  Minor complaint: week mostly away from computer/desk really relieved my normal right-side back soreness/tightness, but a tweak on the lower left-hand side has emerged and is really twinging uncomfortably - I noticed it in the last few days at Disney, and it was definitely an issue during my workout today such that I curtailed the circuit and called it a day. Advil and heat pad tonight I think....

Heavy singles!  I felt slight remorse (but not really) about having done my long run earlier.  Got in a good one at 251 and figured that was the place to stop.  Circuit was notionally 6 x (RT farmer's walk, 10 x medicine-ball slam, 10 x goblet squat, 10 weighted lunges) but I only did twice through.  Twingey!

1hr lower body
1hr bike

Long run!

I did do one more short one at Disney (Thursday morning I think), but really it was a disaster the rest of the week!  I was at the airport for seven hours on Saturday and only got home close to 11pm.  Family obligation downtown Sunday morning, then came home and basically slept the whole rest of the day and again from mid-evening.  Happy to be more like back on track now: did yesterday's long run midday today after taking care of a few pressing work things.  It's not pleasant but not excessively hot either, really just pleased to have gotten it done...

2hr (flat/easy) (that's run 64/day 70 - got some catching up to do over the next couple weeks...)