What Was Your Work Out Today?

Thursday is my cardio day, so an hour on the elliptical, my own version of "hill work," alternating 2 minutes at 160 steps/min pace at ever increasing resistance, 1 minute at 80 steps/min at a consistently low resistance.

As a teen I was a cross-country runner with a resting HR in the 50's. Fast forward a few decades, my stamina is nothing like it was, but I could turn that skinny young-me into a pretzel! (Though actually I think my stamina itself is fine...I proved a couple weeks ago while camping I can still hike for hours without end, just not at speed.)

mtaratoot wrote: »

I threw a Callahan in our Ultimate game tonight. My first ever. I haven't seen one thrown in over a decade.

Not very happy about that, but the game was fun aside from that.

By the way, in Ultimate, a Callahan is NOT a good thing. Well, it's a great thing for the team catching the disc. They catch it in their end zone and score a point. It's not a good thing for the team that was otherwise on offense because they just threw the disc to an opposing player... in their end zone.

Other team had flubbed a throw and it went out of bounds by the end zone. I picked up the disc and walked it up to the corner. The defense was pretty good, and I wasn't getting good cuts down field. Another handler was in the end zone and was open. I threw a flick (forehand), but it didn't fly right and ended up in a point for the other team.

We still had a fun game anyway, and I wrote a fun cheer for the other team like I usually do. That's another Ultimate tradition; you cheer the other team after the game.

I had a list minute scuba dive last night. We booked it last night. It was 8.30 ropes off, from Portland, Dorset. So I left mine at 4.30 a.m.; standard faffing meant I got home at 9.30 p.m. I am getting old; I found this hard work.

The dives were lovely. We did a 30m wreck first dive. I've wanted to do it for years; I've done the seabed near it 3 times. (All of these were on our club rib. So the issue was with our shot line incompetence.) It is a massive wreck; we had a 48 minute dive on her

The second dice meant my dinner was fresh scallops. Nice!

Busy weekend with quite a bit of activity. Did a short easy lake swim early yesterday then packed up the kayaks to join a dozen friends for a scenic paddle then an ocean front happy hour to celebrate a few birthdays in the group. It was a fun way to spend a hot humid day.

Today, I kept a promise to several friends to join them for long rides as they prepare for fall races, specifically, Challenge Mallorca and Ironman Chattanooga. This means they need both significant climbing and heat acclimation work. So, today five of us signed up for the "Tour of the Litchfield Hills" ride in support of cancer research. There were 30, 55, 75 and 100 mile route options. We signed up for the 75 mile ride.

This was one of the toughest days I've had on the bike in a long time. The air was VERY humid, dew point around 70 degrees at the 8am start. We had some clouds at first, then it cleared and temps rose rapidly into the mid 90's by 1pm. The course is beautiful, but very tough: 4500ft of elevation gain over 74 miles. Despite a modest pace and stops at every aid station for fluids and electrolytes, there was no keeping up with the fluid losses. This caused one of the guys in our group to quit at miIe 30 and hitch a ride back to his car. I went through roughly 9 bottles during the ride, plus two more dumped on my head to cool off, and I still could not fend off the heat.

I reached a point at mile 55 during a long ascent in full sun where I thought I was not going to be able to reach the top of the hill. I was showing signs of heat exhaustion- flushed face, chills, etc. Luckily there was a popup aid station at the top where I was given a bag of ice, which I dumped in my helmet, down my shirt, in my mouth and in both bottles. After two minutes spent in the shade, drinking a Coke (an instant shot of sugar, carbs, salt and stomach soothing bubbles!) and distributing the ice, I was ok to continue. The jumpstart gave me 4-5miles of relief, enough to get me over the near "bonk". We finished the ride in just under six hours, but it took all I had in the tank today.

Hot humid weather forecasted for tomorrow, so an easy swim will be the recovery session.

A 14 mile walk, followed by some lifting:
Hangboarding 10 second repeaters on my littlest ledge
Bench 3 sets of 7, 50 kgs
Deadlift 2 sets of 6, 110 kgs.

In a moment of insanity I decided to double up in my workouts tonight and then some misplaced sense of duty or loyalty or whatever made me stick to my original plan. I am beyond tired.

I did 30 high kipping knee raises, 4K on the assault bike (7:29 was my time), 30 ring rows and another 4K on the assault bike (8:48 time) for time. It took me 25:40.

Then I did the gymnastics class, which was a 16 min emom. 4 rounds of 1 min 3-5 beat swings into kipping pull, 1 min what was supposed to be dragonflys but ended up as alternating V-ups for me, 1 min of bent over row and 1 min of rest.
Then the strength work was a ton of banded lat pull downs on our knees and L-sit holds.
I didn't know how to physically do a dragonfly and due to that disaster my confidence was kinda down so I had no expectations for the L-sit hold but somehow I succeeded at doing 7 seconds of them. Just being able to hold my whole body in the air with just my arms is surreal to me and on par with how I felt when I first hung off the pull up bar.

Nada today. I was camping in the Santa Fe National Forest over the weekend and had a pretty gnarly hike on Saturday with about 1800 feet of accent over two miles and lots of clamoring and then a more gentle but longer hike on Sunday. My legs are jello today so I'm planning on just playing in the pool this evening with the kids provided the rain and lighting hold off.