Tag: fitness center

Thursday: 2×30′ fitness center

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Wednesday:  First teleconference at 7am. Then another at 8.  Then off to the airport to fly to LAX, then more meetings and dinner with the team from our facility there.  No time to train.

Thursday:  It was going to be another long day.  First teleconference at 6am, which lasted until 8.  I had a bit of time before I needed to drive to San Diego, so I went to the hotel gym.  This session was more about stress management than training.  I just wanted to do something.

I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike (rollings hills, level 15).  Then 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer (rolling hills, level 15).  It turns out that rolling hills are easier on the elliptical.

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After that, I showered, hopped in my car and drove down to San Diego.  Straight in to a prep meeting for 3 hours, then a meeting with our customer from 6pm until 8:30.  That left me just enough time to drive to the airport and catch the redeye home.  Well not quite home, I am now in Charlotte waiting for my connection and writing a journal entry.

After I get home, I think I’ll take a nap, and maybe do an easy erg session.

Wednesday: 60′ of fitness center purgatory

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I really shouldn’t complain…but I will anyway.

I finished up my last meeting today around 4 and was dropped off at the Movenpick hotel at the Stuttgart airport.  I thought it would be a great thing to go work out.  I had noticed when I checked in that the fitness center had a Model D rower, and I was itching to do some long slow meters.

So, I suit myself up, put on some nice podcasts, sit down on the rower, adjust the foot height, and pull on the chain.  It was bad.  Really bad.  The clutch was going on the erg, so it would lurch and grind on the pull.  I thought it might calm down over a few pulls, but no, it was entirely unusable.

If there had been no erg, I would have contentedly toddle over to the bike and just gotten going, but my shuffle to the bike after failing on the erg was quite depressing.  I hopped on the bike and watched the minutes pass glacially toward 30.  At 30 minutes, I had had more than enough pedalling, so I moved over to the treadmill.  Here I cranked up  the incline all the way to 15% and walked briskly (at 5km/h) for another 30 minutes.

By this point, I was tired, sweaty and bored, so I decided to call it a day.

Tomorrow morning I have a 7:10am flight out of Stuttgart through London back home to Boston.  It will be good to get back to a working erg!

Wednesday: 40′ endurance and a little strength training

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In Agoura Hills, California.  At the Sheraton fitness center.

Seemed like today was as good a day as any to start doing a little bit of strength training.

Plan:

  • 20 minutes inclined march (15% grade, 3.5mph)
  • 20 minute jog (3% grade, 4.5 mph)
  • HR cap at 157
  • Easy start to strength training
    • Dumbell deadlifts (2x50lbs) – 3 sets of 10 reps
    • Lat pull down (110lbs) – 2 sets of 6 reps plus one set of 8
    • Push ups – 3 sets of 10 reps

Another bad workout after another bad night’s sleep.  The election debacle kept me tossing and turning even after I turned off the TV.

Tomorrow:  No workout.  Flying back home.

 

Wednesday: 2 x 30′ Fitness Center

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In San Diego.  Hotel Fitness Center

  • 30 minutes treadmill, 3.1 mph, 15% incline
  • 30 minutes elliptical, level 15, “rolling hills”

As boring as it sounds.

Tonight: back on the red eye.

Tomorrow:  I should do something higher intensity.  Maybe I’ll do the 15×3’/1′ with an easy-ish pace target like 1:52.

Tuesday: 2 x 30′ fitness center

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I was planning a 3 x 30′ session this morning, but I just got bored and tired and then I stopped.

  • 30′ inclined march (15% grade, 5 km/h)
  • 30′ on some weird version of an cross trainer.

I walked over to a stationary bike, and got on and started pedaling.  But my thighs hurt a bit, and I was feeling pretty unmotivated.  I decided 60 minutes was enough for today.

Now, my whole body hurts with DOMS from the puny weights I was lifting.  I imagine it will hurt even worse tomorrow.

Tomorrow:  Threshold run on the treadmill – 4 x 10′

I have a couple more meetings tomorrow and then fly out of Korea in the early evening.  I am so tired of being on the road.  I can’t wait to get home.

 

Monday: 40′ elliptical, a little strength training

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Back in the fitness center at the JW Marriott in Seoul.  I slept well, and a long time too, maybe 8 hours.  But I woke up sore and tired.  Looking back over the past week, I’m not too surprised.  My volume is a lot higher than normal.  I think it’s OK to push a bit past normal for these two weeks to try to get a little bit of supercompensation when I taper back for the HOCR.  I’ll be forced into a rest day when I travel back over Wednesday/Thursday.

Today, I thought it would be good to do a little strength work, especially for rowing related moves.  But I wanted to do a little aerobic work first.*  So, here is the plan

Plan:

  • 40′ elliptical (easy intervals)
  • Front Squats
  • seated rows

The work on the elliptical felt pretty damn hard, but my HR was pretty low.  I guess that is accumulated fatigue.

As for strength, I had no idea what to expect.  The fitness center was admirably equipped.  There was not one, but two, squat racks.  Not Smith machines, but actual squat racks.  So, I decided that doing some front squats would be a good idea.  Why Front Squats?  Well since I haven’t done any lifting for the longest time, I didn’t want to do back squats and be tempted to go too heavy and mess myself up.  By doing front squats, I was much more limited in what I could lift.

I warmed up with 12 reps of just the bar (20kg).  I was surprised that I was feeling it in my thighs just from the warm up set.  Then I loaded two 10kg plates and embarked on my first set.  I managed 8 reps with good form, but my thighs were complaining.  Wow!  I think I need to do some remedial strength work!  I did 2 more sets of 8 reps.

Then I went over to a cable pull station and got myself set up to be able to do seated rows.  I set it up so that I got tension with the bard over my toes, and I essentially did the body/arms part of the stroke with as much acceleration as I could.  I loaded the full stack (45kg) and managed 2 sets of 20 and 1 set of 15.

After that I thought about doing some more, but I was pretty torched, so I had a drik of water, and called it a day.

Tomorrow:  The fitness center triathlon (again).

Saturday: Fitness Center Drudgery

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Well, it’s Saturday morning now.  I’ve been on the road for 5 full days and I am getting tired of it.  Yesterday was another day of customer and internal meetings and I finished off with a dinner with the guy who is responsible for sales in this region.  After that, it was back to my hotel to join a couple of conference calls.  This lasted until after 2AM.

I slept from around 3 to around 7, and then headed down the the gym.  On tap for today, another fitness center triathlon.  Today, I was determined to keep it nice and easy so that I would have no excuses in another threshold session tomorrow.

Plan:

  • 30 minutes inclined march (15% grade, 3mph)
  • 30 minutes bike (“foothills” program, level 14)
  • 30 minutes elliptical (“around the world” program, level 17)

I was working out a bit later and its pretty obvious that they turn off the AC at night because it was much cooler and dryer in the fitness center at 8am than it is at 5am.  This was reflected in much lower HR and RPE for all three chunks of the workout.

For example, both yesterday and today started with a 30′ inclined march at 15% grade and 3mph.  Yesterday, my HR at 30 minutes was 151bpm.  Today, 143 bpm.

This afternoon, I am heading to the airport for a shortish flight to Korea.  I hang out there on Sunday, and then have 3 days of internal and customer meetings before I fly out on Wednesday afternoon.  It can’t come soon enough.

Tomorrow:  I think a 20 x 2 minutes on/1 minute off interval session on the treadmill.

 

Friday: 3 x 30’Sweatfest

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I remain in Taiwan.  I’m in the city of Hsinchu, which was a pretty grimy place, but is rapidly changing into a pretty cosmopolitan, energtic place.  There is ton of public art in Taiwan, and many public buildings have sculptures outside.  The featured image is probably my favorite.  It’s a sculpture outside the Hsinchu cultural center.  To give you an idea of scale, the magnifying glass is probably about 6 feet in diameter.  You can walk right through it.

Plan:

  • 30′ Inclined march on the treadmill (15% grade, 3mph)
  • 30′ run (1% grade, 5.7mph)
  • 30′ Elliptical (“Cascades”, level 14)

That wasn’t too bad.  The time seemed to pass a bit faster today.  During the first 30 minutes I listened to the NPR Politics Podcast.  They were talking about the Vice Presidential Debate.  After that I listened to the Original Cast Album of the musical Hamilton, which was great.

My biggest issue was that my shorts got so heavy with sweat that they started falling down during my run.  I needed to hoist them up every minute or so to keep from losing the around my ankles.

My HR monitor seemed to be acting up.  Popping up to higher heart rates and then dropping back down.  In general, my HR seemed to be running a bit hot today, but in terms of RPE, the workout was solidly aerobic.  I think I will change the battery in the strap just in case that’s the problem.

Here’s a measure of the humidity.

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That’s the elliptical machine after finished using it.  And, yep, that is a genuine puddle in front of the pedal.  That is sweat that ran down my leg, through my sneaker and collected there in last 30 minutes of my workout.  I think that rates an “ewww!”

 

Thursday: 30′ Threshold Run

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Yesterday I went up to Taipei for a meeting.  One of the best developments in Taiwan was the construction of a High Speed Rail line from the north end of the island to the south along the west coast.  Most of the population of Taiwan is along the western coast, the east coast is rural and wild.  It used to be miserable to get from one city to another on the clogged highways, now it is a modern marvel.  We hopped on a train in Hsinchu and we were in Taipei in less than 30 minutes.  Fantastic!

I had a couple of other meetings in the afternoon, and then I begged off of dinner with the local team.  Since I had woken up before 4AM, I was tired, and frankly, I was also weary of being with people.  I needed a little time by myself to think and recharge.

I guess I was pretty tired because I fell asleep before 8 and woke up around 4AM.  I had time for a hella long workout if I wanted, but I decided to stick to my plan for a hard threshold session.

Plan:

  • 10′ warmup on the treadmill.  Gradually speeding up.  Last 2 minutes faster than target pace.
  • 30′ Threshold run on the treadmill.  2% incline, 10km/h
  • Adjust speed as necessary to push HR well into TR through second half of the run.
  • cool down

I actually kind of enjoyed that.  I cranked up my sprinting playlist on Spotify, and generally ran to the beat.  I held 10km/hr until I had 5 minutes left.  Then I sped up just a little bit, about 0.2km/h and held that until I had 2 minutes left.  OK, 500m left, time for a last push.  I pushed the speed up another 0.4km/h and finished strong.

Not to make excuses for myself, but just an acknowledgement of reality.  I know that my running speed is slow (damn slow).  I will never win a road race, nor do I aspire to.  I enjoy a run ever now and then, and it is a hell of good way to exercise.

Today, I have a full day of internal and customer meetings, and a big team dinner.  Tomorrow morning, I’m planning another fitness center triathlon.

3×30′ HR cap at 150.

 

Wednesday: 3 x 30′ Fitness Center Triathlon

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Still in Hsinchu.  Woke up at 4am (jetlag).  Gave up trying to sleep at 5am and headed to the gym.  (pictured above)

Plan:

  • 30′ ellipitcal (“around the world” hill profile, level 17…too easy)
  • 30′ stationary bike (“classic hill profile”, basically 1′ intervals, level 18)
  • 30′ treadmill (inclined walk, 3mph, incline 11 to 12%, keeping HR just below 150)

Well, that was pretty boring.

Tomorrow:  Threshold session on treadmill.  Probably interval format.