September 16th: Back on My Grind -- Gym Day

Gym day today.

I always do my strength training first, basically because if I start with cardio, I’ll skip the weights. One of my challenges is that I really have just an hour in the gym, because I don’t like to leave before my daughter is on the school bus, which is around 6:25. (Apparently a Planet Fitness is opening closer to my house. I’ll have to take a long look at that. As much as I like Work Out World, it’s a 13-minute drive each way.) So after my warmup (five minutes on the elliptical, because it moves both arms and legs), I did just two rotations: core and upper body.

• Vertical knee raises: 3 sets of 12
• Ab coaster: 6 sets of 12, 3 turned in each direction
• Bicycle crunches: 3 sets of 12
• Lying knee raise: 1 set of 12 (I don’t know what this is actually called, but I lie on the floor and extend my legs out straight, then pull them in, never allowing them to touch the floor.)
• Sitting bench press: 3 drop-weight sets, 130-110-90. Got it up 9 times, so I’m making progress there.
• Butterfly: 3 drop-weight sets, 90-80-70. Did 9s of each weight.
• Back extension: 2 sets of 230

Then onto the treadmill. As I mentioned, time constraints are a big factor here. So to challenge myself, I usually do incline work on the treadmill. Today I cranked it up to about a 9:00/mile pace and varied the incline, 2, 2.5 and 3 percent. I did a 5K that way and was moderately worn out by the end -- especially the last quarter-mile, which I did at 3 percent incline.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m really focusing on running upright -- as I read in a book recently, running with your gut. That’s especially challenging on the incline, but I think that kind of work will pay strength dividends down the road.

One other thing that will help my training regimen is that after this Saturday’s game, I don’t have any tailgates for a month. Gatorade is usually winning, but beer is still derailing things a bit too frequently.

Tomorrow, I’m thinking pace run. Maybe I’ll take the dog.

Total mileage since starting this blog: 30.5.