Wake up

I have gotten into the habit of exercising at night after the kids go to bed, which works out fine now, especially since my running and lifting only take 30-45 minutes. My running will soon take longer then that and I don’t have time to cycle in the evening so I need to make the switch back to the morning. The other reason I need to make the shift is that baby number 3 is only about 6 weeks away and our evenings will probably be much more hectic.

Getting up is a huge obstacle for me and it seems like every time I finally master it and manage to get up every morning when the alarm goes off I end up injured. Hopefully the variety of my workouts will help this time. This morning I got up after one snooze of the alarm and put in the 4 miles on my training schedule. Tomorrow morning I plan to ride my bike to work so I have to get up about an hour earlier then normal to pull that off.

Circuit Training

I am kind of all over the place right now with my training. I am really enjoying lifting, running, and cycling, which is a really good thing since I have a tendency to over run. Though I am far from the best running shape I have ever been in I am probably pretty close to the best overall shape I have ever been in.

My lifting, until yesterday, has been completely upper body. This has been very intentional because I started lifting to get some exercise while giving my legs, i.e. my knee, a break. However, I really think that to get my knee back to one 100% and to keep this from happening again I really need to strengthen my legs all around more. I started looking for a really good circuit weight training exercise and I came across one on the Men’s Health website.

I gave it a try last night and instantly gained some respect for it. It is 10 exercises done for 60 seconds, with 15 sec rest between each. This then is repeated 3 times resting only 2 minutes between circuits. I did one circuit and stopped after becoming nervous about how my knee was going to take it. Almost every exercise involves a squat or lounge like movement coupled with upper body work. It really felt like a great mix of cardio and weight training and it definitely targeted parts of my legs that are not worked while cycling or running.

The only things you need to perform this workout are some dumbbells. Ideally I would do it with several different sets. Probably like 15 lbs, 30 lbs, 45 lbs, and 60 lbs. I however only have 30 lbs., so I will be getting creative. I hope to incorporate this into my workouts once a week.

Back??

Well, it has certainly been a very long time since I have written a post. My endurance endeavors have been plagued with setbacks, failures, and disappointment. Something I know a lot of you can relate to. The crazy thing is, I keep coming back for more. I can't allow a 4:13 marathon to be my best time ever, but more then that I just can't stay off the road. Running truly is a part of who I am and when I can't run it is just not the same.

This last injury has been demoralizing. It completed deflated my efforts and passion to accomplish something big. Every time I got back out on the road thinking surly I was going to be healthy my knee would start to hurt again. I went weeks without running at all, only to start back slowly and experience pain again. It seem as though I may finally have that behind me, and I hope to get back to Columbus for the marathon again this year. I am building the miles very slowly and am trying to contain my desire to run everyday by lifting weights and riding my bike. I have been following a set plan for 4 weeks now and it is going well. Compared to the miles I was running it is pretty sad but I have been putting in a lot of miles on the bike.

My plan is to keep updating this, and as long as things keep going smoothly I would imagine I will be happy to share. It is when things are not going well that I pull back and keep it to myself.