Today was Shoulders & Arms, plus Ab Ripper X. The first video is a shoulder exercise, a bicep exercise, and a tricep exercise, you repeat those three, and move on to another one. You follow that pattern 5 times, for 30 different sets over a little under an hour (inlcuding warmup and cooldown). Then when you're just about spent, you work your abs for 16 minutes.

I can tell I'm starting to get better at the Ab Ripper DVD already, so I'm looking forward to seeing the next couple of weeks of the other workouts.

Tomorrow is Yoga X, which is really long (90+ minutes), but supposed to be pretty tough for yoga. I'm looking at maybe swapping Kenpo (Day 6) with a running day down the line, but I'll at least do it once to get a feel for whether I like it or not.

-Matt

Today was Day 2 of my P90X program - Plyometrics. It's basically jump training, with lots of jump squats, tire runs, quick jumps, etc. It was four sets of four workouts, all either 30 or 60 seconds, repeated. So you do workouts 1, 2, 3, 4, then to 1, 2, 3, 4 again, then go on to 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. It lasts about an hour including warmup and cooldown, and is a great cardio workout, but also really works your legs. I'm lucky to have a decent cardio base to make it through without too much trouble, I feel sorry for more beginner people attempting it for the first time.

Tomorrow is "Shoulders & Arms" and "Ab Ripper X" again. Things will get interesting then, since I'll have to use my sore upper body again.

-Matt

I did Day 1 of P90X this morning, and it was definitely tough. It was "Chest & Back" followed by "Ab Ripper X". Chest & Back is almost all pushups and pullups, with a few other exercises thrown in, doing each twice. I made it through the first time OK, but had some difficulty toward the end of the second time through. I was much more tired for Ab Ripper X than I was doing it on its own, but it felt like a good workout. Tomorrow is Plyometrics, which I hope I can do quietly early in the morning since it usually is a lot of jumping. My arms are pretty tired right now, can't wait to see how they feel tomorrow.

-Matt

The final results are in from the Oak Brook Half Marathon, and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. The course was nice, with mostly rolling hills, and a few pretty big hills to make it a bit tougher. I was able to stick to my pacing strategy of 7:30 for the first 10, and I picked it up for the last 5K to average 7:20/mi (1:36:01). My splits were:

Mile 1 - 7:14
Mile 2 - 7:24
Mile 3 - 7:24
Mile 4 - 7:31
Mile 5 - 7:36
Mile 6 - 7:29
Mile 7 - 7:30
Mile 8 - 7:24
Mile 9 - 7:30
Mile 10 - 7:15
Mile 11 - 7:10
Mile 12 - 7:06
Mile 13 - 6:55
Final 0.1 - 0:26

I finished 101st overall, and 5th in my age division. Full results are available here.

-Matt

I'll be running the Oak Brook Half Marathon on Labor Day, my first stand-alone half marathon. After running slower than I've done in training for the run portion of the Half Ironman, I'm looking to redeem myself in this, and actually try to race it. I felt good during my run today, and I tried to simulate the race to some extent.

I went 10 miles, planning on running the first 8 at 7:45 pace, and the last 2 at 7:30, which is the pace I hope to run next Monday. I was able to run the 7:45 pace for the first 8, and ran 7:10 for mile 9, and 7:07 for mile 10! I'm hoping to be able to run 7:30 for the first 10 miles in the race, and see what I can do for the last 5K. If all I can do is hold 7:30, or even drop to 8:00, I'd be OK with that. If I can pick it up like I did today, I'd be even happier.

-Matt

Well, I've got one more week left of the hundred pushups challenge, and I see some real progress. There's no way I could have done 40 pushups in a row, let alone come back and do four more sets after that. Plus, I think there's a bit more size and definition in my biceps and triceps. Now just to see if I can actually do 100 pushups consecutively by the end of next week.

Now that that's over, we're going to start P90X. It's a 90-day workout program that's gotten some great results. We'll be taking the Fit Test on September 3rd, and starting the program on the 9th, so I hope to post semi-regularly about how it's going, and maybe even post some progress pictures.

-Matt

I found an interesting website the other day - hundredpushups.com. It's a program to get you from any fitness level to being able to do 100 consecutive pushups. Since my Half Ironman is this weekend, I need something else to challenge myself, so I've recruited some coworkers to the challenge, and we'll be starting next week.

I'm working on a website to track our progress, it will be available at hundredpushups.mattjcon.net. It's blank now, but should be available soon.

-Matt

-Matt

I've got a local 5K race tomorrow morning. It's still early in the season for me, and it's not a super important race, so I'm "training through" the race. I finished third overall at this race last year, despite getting lost on the course, so hopefully I can still do relatively well in the condition I'm in. I'd be real happy going under 20:00 (6:25/mile pace), but really anything close to a 6:30 pace would be good this early on in my training. I'll post the results after the race.

-Matt

I picked up my new bike last night. I rode it home from the bike shop, but hopefully I'll be able to ride it a bit this weekend. It's a 2007 Trek 1000. I'll still probably be doing most of my weekday rides in side for a while, until it gets light out a bit sooner. I was just able to start running outside in the morning (it gets light around 6:15 AM now). But at least the longer rides on the weekend will be outside now. I've still gotta get some new pedals for it, and a new saddle, but neither of those is urgent.

-Matt

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