What Was Your Work Out Today?

Wednesday
Climbing.
Good fun, I was in decent form. It turns out that I can't do upside down crack; I may go back for more pain and misery. 3 hours.

Thursday
Swimming, 1km

Saturday
Caving. We did Swildon's Hole. We aimed to get to the first symp. But it was very, very damp. Bits of the cave which ared normally dry had medium sized waterfalls. The 8 foot climb down a waterfall wouldn't have been safe, so we bimbled around the top instead.

Sunday
Caving.
We did Eastwater. Much of this cave is a bedding plane, where you are sandwiched between two bits of rock. You need to wedge yourself in to avoid falling to the bottom. It had virtually no standing passage in the bits we did; not being able to move my head due to the narrowness was common.


Good fun; I will go again.

Monday
Workout: 8 mile crosstrainer
Weigh In: 108.7 lbs
Nutrition: seven fishoil. GABA. Unacceptable (good, acceptable, unacceptable, or terrible)

Goals:
1. Reach 104.0 lbs by 3/8/24
2. Punch in 30 minutes early every day (be an Outstanding employee).
3. Read entire Bible in order (Old and New Testaments). min 1 chapter/day. (Today Mark 12)
4. Prioritize relationships above all else (relationship with God and relationship with others)

Whatever my focus for the day is I always keep it simple, get the minimum affective dose, and focus on my post workout nutrition and recovery so that I can do it again the next day/coming days.

Stacking up mistakes: Managed my schedule so I only had time for 10k+3' stationary bike, then forgot to start Garmin. Another easy Z2 workout, about 29 minutes sticking with 120bpm +/-3 approximately once I got there, 93W average.

Better day, had time for 60'+3' stationary bike, and remembered to start the Garmin. Still sticking with Z2, get to 120bpm reasonably quickly, try to stay very close to that throughout. (Average HR 120, peak 125, 99% of the duration was Z2 so this was pretty effective. This will obviously be lower average power to stay around 120bpm for an hour vs. half an hour without conditioning improvement, so this time 85W.)

Yes, at this pace I don't need the 3' as CD, I just keep going at 120bpm, but I'm just hitting "reride" on the bike rather than setting up a new workout for minor variations.

I'm not rowing for a while because I have trouble staying Z2 on the rowing machine through some combination of technical issues and ego. (Technical: I don't like to reduce meters per stroke - i.e., immediate power - by much because it's a bad habit, and there's only so far I'm capable of reducing spm without losing smoothness/continuousness.)

Wednesday: Five K run on muddy trails through the nearby park. I was surprised how much my pace picked up after a rest and from being well-fueled.

Thursday: Hiking with a friend. We did most of the same loop we did a couple weeks ago. For some reason, even though he could see snow from his house, he thought the road might be melted off. Well... Nope. By the time we got to the highest part of the hike, we were hiking in eight to ten inches of snow. I wished I had gaiters, but my boots kept most of it out... until it got really deep. Slow going too. So he decided to shorten up the loop a bit from 8.3 miles to 7.6 miles. That also meant the last parts of the hike were in the glorious sun instead of under the canopy in the cool shade. I brought home some duck eggs.

Today: I wanted to do a trail run with some hills, so I went to an area nearby that I hike from time to time. My plan was 5K. Well, as soon as I got started I remembered that this route is actually 10K. I wanted to take in the view from the top, so I just went for it. I did walk up some of the hills. I still made pretty good time, and I stayed mostly in Zone 2 and 3 which also surprised me. I was only a few miles from my gym, so I drove around to have a couple sessions in the sauna and get a shower & shave. Great way to spend Friday afternoon - out in the forest in the sun, just a little snow, then a quick visit to a very hot room.

I am missing my time doing strength training, but when we have weather like this, I have a hard time going inside the gym for that long. Don't worry - our normal rain is on the way back. I do plan to go back out to Silver Falls some weekday in the rain to have the place more to myself and enjoy all those falls again. I also miss swimming. I will get back to that as well when the rain comes. I still find it a little hard to believe I am enjoying running just for running's sake.

Since tomorrow is a planned rest day, I decided to machine row, doing so at a somewhat higher intensity than the recent Z2 stationary bike workouts.

It was 3 x 2k, with 2' interval between (row out 5 strokes, drink and wipe sweat, row easy for usually a little over 1' until next 2k piece starts), finish up with 3' CD. Ended up with 7059m total, 2:28.7 at 18spm average for the timed pieces.

About 37' from first stroke to last, 41% Z4, 45% Z3, remainder below. Average heart rate 141bpm (about 78% HRmax), peak 159bpm (88%); most of the final 2k was above 220 minus age.

I have missed a bunch of logging.

Tuesday
Climbing. I was terrible. 3.5 hours.

Wednesday
Climbing. I was decent. 2 hours.

Thursday
Swimming, 750m.

Friday
Climbing, 2 hours. My best session in ages

Saturday
Climbing, 3.5 hours.
Odd session; I was terrible for the first two hours. I then sent a project and went on a sending spree.

Sunday
Walk, 24 miles-ish with many hills. It rained all day; I didn't see any blue sky all day. It was very muddy. I did the Three Peaks of Surrey (Box Hill, Holmbury Hill and Leith Hill).

Here is the tower on top of Leith Hill:

It had been a few weeks since I'd been to the gym. The weather was just too nice. So I went. I had a reasonably good session and made improvements on some movements, but there were also a couple I had to dial back just a bit.

While doing squats, I could see more musculature in my legs. That was fun.

What I've noticed recently and that doesn't make sense (and that might be coincidence) is that the day after a strength workout, the scale is down. That is counter to what I assume is normal as strength training works by causing damage and inflammation that should temporarily increase scale weight. I stay plenty hydrated. I'm eating right around calorie goal.

The only thing I can figure is that time in the sauna helps my body eliminate excess salt and thus water. In this week's case, my weight had been drifting up a bit. Garmin tells me I'm only expending an average of 2.7 calories per minute over about 80 minutes. Only a third of that was actually lifting; the remainder was resting between sets. I expect I burn as much or more during my warm-up and cool-down.

Does anyone else notice scale weight DROP after a strength training session? More important perhaps, if so, why do you reckon that's happening?

An actual real bike ride out in the actual real outdoors.

It was probably around 15-16 miles, but I don't have an exact number because my Garmin didn't pick up the GPS satellite for the first few miles. Average moving speed for the recorded part was 10.7mph, pretty casual (though the li'l ol' lady rarely averages higher on the heavy hybrid bike . . . ). I can't really control heart rate on real-bike rides (hills!) but it ended up with about 16' of Z3 in the recorded part, remainder below.

We've been whip-lashing from Winter to Summer and everything between here: Snow on the ground yesterday and temps in the 30s F (just above freezing), a sunny but windy day today with temps in the 50s F (around 13 C).

So, bike riding weather today, though the wind made the ride easier in one direction than the other. It felt good.