Spin!

One of the things I miss most when I'm not in NYC is Joanna's spin class.  Very happy to be back!  (If you are NYC-based but don't have a Chelsea Piers membership, she teaches a lot of good stuff in Brooklyn - if I lived near there, I'd go to the Prospect Park bootcamp and kettlebell classes).

10mi round trip to CP (my NYC bike is nicer than the bike I ride in Cayman!)
45min spin

Spin!

Skype workout with L. We are racing next weekend!

1hr (6 x 6min work [3@90, 2@95, 1@100], 2min recovery)

EPC

Evil Pool Closure - Chelsea Piers pool closed for maintenance till Monday, arghhh!  Good thing I realized before riding my bike downtown for a swim... might have to check out the Riverbank schedule if I want to swim before then...

Best run EVER!

For all sorts of reasons September is my favorite month of the year (school starts!), but the cooling off of the weather is hugely beneficial for running, and I got a nice taste of it this morning.  It's sixty-eight degrees and breezy!  I hadn't had anything in particular in mind, other than perhaps an hour easy but less if I didn't feel like it; instead, though, I figured I'd do a nice easy longish one (the distance of the longest leg of my race next weekend, though as that's hilly trail running, it'll be considerably slower).  It was beautiful out there...

1:25, c. 8 miles

Days off

are not really what I like, but have been advisable!  Saturday was just very busy (won't go into detail, but it did include a delightful interlude where we went and ordered a huge sheet cake at the Captain's Bakery to take to the residents as we visited a friend convalescing at the Pines - didn't get to eat any of this one myself, but I did have a very good piece of key lime pie after dinner later on at Hemingway's), Sunday I was traveling, Monday I had an appointment with the endodontist for what I hope is the final session of the root canal retreatment and today I went to my regular dentist to get the temporary filling replaced.  Feeling rather weary now and figuring I'd better take the rest of the evening off - hoping to run tomorrow morning, though.  Main goal right now is to get to the start line of my race on the 9th without anything untoward happening in the meantime!

Yoga!

These classes are very warm, I wasn't sorry it was only an hour...

1hr yoga

Combat!

Yesterday's class was very demoralizing, I was so hopeless at it.  Didn't want to leave on that note, and thought I'd better get back in there today in spite of the fact that I've been avoiding trying the "combat fitness" class - figured it would be full of things I don't really know how to do.  However I was so thoroughly confused yesterday that I thought this couldn't be worse, and in fact it was an addictively good workout!  Very enjoyable.  Elapsed time close to one hour, 30 minutes of very hard work.

.5hr nauseatingly strenuous workout punching and kicking things

Spin!

Another great Skype trainer session with Lauren.  We are going to keep on doing this once a week once I'm back in NY; it's been highly worthwhile.  (We will hope to get the other Loren in on it too...)

Work: 4 x 8min (alternating 2min seated, standing), 2min recovery

1hr total

Commando

Ugh, today's workout was too confusing for me - I think if you have more of a martial-arts background (or just a very good physical memory for exercise sequences - i.e. dance), you'd be able to follow this, and it was explained clearly, but it was too much for me to take in and I spent bits of the workout unenjoyably blank with no clear sense of what I should be doing.  Three columns, four rows each; doing the four components separately for 15 seconds each to get a handle on them, then putting the sequence of four together gradually into a single fluid movement that adds up to some form of defense against attack, then moving through the three compound exercises in various rounds.  I probably could have handled one column/exercise, but having three just made it too much of a brain-twister!

40 mins. vague exercises

Stroke and stride!

Very happy to race this week.  It is fun - a nice little event.  Run is only 2 miles, but very warm!

600m swim, 2mi run

Spin!

Another great Skype workout with Lauren.  I unleashed my inner spin teacher as timekeeper!

2 x 18min. work with splits as 3 x 6min (4min hard, 1min high-cadence, 1min recovery)

1hr total

Boot camp!

This class is really good - I like it that there is always some meta-structure and pacing goal as well as just the exercises themselves.  We had four exercises - went through the circuit a few times, then did 20 x 1min (clock running continuously), scaling up depending on how little rest you could tolerate.  Dive-bomb push-ups (I think I know this as A-frame push-ups), side plank push-up (i.e. start on back, then come up onto straight-arm plank first on one side then the other), a bridge with arm cross-over and some jump lunges, with 2x as basic scaled up to 4 or 6 for ambition.

.5hr very strenuous!

Run!

Hmmm, I am not one of life's natural-born early risers, and I was running at the pace of a snail that's decided to concentrate on zone 1 training, but it was good to get out there, even if I had no vim in legs or heart for higher-intensity efforts!

.75hr easy run (c 3.8mi.?)

'Long' ride!

It is the off-season for tourism in Cayman, and the staycation is accordingly a thing here - B. had the very good idea that we should go for a Saturday night to the Reef, out on the bucolic east end of the island, so that I could do my bike ride early Sunday morning entirely on the nearly traffic-free East End loop (19 miles)!  It was beautiful - I had sociable chat with a few other cyclists, but the roads are incredibly quiet, which is obviously desirable.  Had thought of doing 3 hours but didn't stop to refill my Camelbak such that I had immediate supplies for the extra 40 minutes; heat also becomes more intense as the day progresses, so I think it really just made sense to stop at 2 loops...

38 miles, 2:19 (16.5mph - very flat, so that is not as good as it sounds!)

'Long' run!

It was good, though very easy in pace (top of zone 1); I clearly have hugely better heat acclimation than I usually do, it is the one upside of this summer's horrible heat and humidity in NYC...

(Took yesterday as a rest day - legs very sore from Thursday's lunges!  I have about 15 mins. of physical therapy exercises to do every day for back stuff, and am also shooting for 30-45 mins. daily of some kind of mindfulness meditation, sometimes including light yoga, so that 45-60 mins. is the priority.  Might even go to a real yoga class tomorrow afternoon if scheduling works out...)

1:10, c. 5.8mi.