P90X - Day Two: Polymetrics

Polymetrics is ridiculous! I don't think I've done polymetrics since I was in high-school and for good reason. It was a bunch of squats, lunges and jumping around. I almost had a heart attack. I definitely had to pause the tape and take a few extra breaks during the workout. If I thought I wouldn't be able to raise my arms after yesterday's workout then I might not be able to walk after tonight's.

On the nutrition front, I need to figure out something better. I followed what I thought was correct but according to the guidelines I am supposed to only have 20% carbs and I was more around 50%. I already have my meals planned out for this week so I'm not going to make any major changes. Next week I will put the proposed meals into calorie king and play around with the choices until I come up with the right mix.

Now I just need to find a protein bar that doesn't make me want to barf.

P90X - Day One

You can tell by the title of this post that I decided to go ahead with the plan of doing the P90X workout series. I thought about it for a few weeks and decided that based on my personal goals this is something that I want to do. I just having been seeing the results body wise that I wanted and I'm hoping that this will give me that extra push I need.

I planned on writing a pre-P90X post but I was too busy being pissed off by watching the BET Awards last night to write the post. I plan on following the nutrition plan too so yesterday I went to the grocery store and bought all of the things that I need for the week. Nutrition is always my biggest hurdle so I am going to try really hard to keep on track.

Today's workout was  Chest and Back. This involved a lot of push-ups, pull-ups and other arm work. So umm yeah, my arms are pretty weak. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to lift my arms in the morning but it was a great workout. After the Chest and Back series I did the Ab Ripper video. I didn't not EVEN complete that entire thing. It was extremely difficult. I'll be able to finish it soon though! 

I plan on posting everyday, we'll see how that goes......

What Inspires You to Run?

I received a comment(from Sian) on my last post asking "Do you really just get into it." I'm assuming the question is around the desire to just get out and run. Does one just really get into it to the point where they just love and can't wait for their next run.

There is no concrete answer to this. As I've previously posted, I've been running since I was young so it has always been a part of my life. I go through periods where I absolutely LOVE running. I just have the desire to bust out of my office space and run down the street. When I feel this way I can't get enough, running clears my mind and energizes my life. 

I would be lying if I said that I always felt this way about running. Sometimes (like for the past couple of weeks) I just don't feel like running. I don't know why but I go through these periods where I just don't have the desire to run. 

I think it all comes down to why you are running. I have lots of friends that run and they have a variety of reasons as to why they run (companionship, health reasons, sanity, etc.) I think that if you stick with it for a while you will start to love it. And if you don't love it then don't do it. I am a big advocate of running and I think everyone that can should do at least some running but life is too precious to waste time on doing something you REALLY don't enjoy. 

There is always cycling....

So fellow runners; do you have any advice for Sian? When you started running did you automatically love it or did it have to grow on you? If so, how long did it take?

Where's Elvis?

I apologize for leaving so abruptly and not letting you all know. I've been in Memphis since Sunday for work and have been super busy. I promise to get back on top of my blogging when I get back in town this weekend. I shouldn't even be up right now because I have my last session in the morning and without some sleep those things aren't the easiest to stay awake through.

I hope everyone is doing well and is on track with whatever your individual fitness goals are. Free food and no time to exercise means I'm going to have a lot of work to do when I get back. I might need to go ahead and call Paul about that 100 mile bike ride he wants to do.

P90X Question

Has anyone tried the P90X series? From what I can tell it has been out for a while so it isn't something new that people are doing. I've read a few reviews and like reviews for anything of this nature people either like it or love it. It is clearly not for beginners but I took the "fitness test" that they recommend before purchase and I passed (with flying colors). 

I am enjoying cycling and running, the swimming not so much but it is getting better. I still want to do triathlons but I feel like I'm not seeing the changes body-wise that I am looking for. A few people that I've talked to that actually did the program said that it was "life changing" for them and that they finally saw the results they had been trying to get for a long time.

What do you all think about the program?? I do have my 10 year high-school reunion coming up soon....

Operation No Dairy Results

I somewhat made it through the entire two weeks without eating any dairy. I had a slip-up the day of my trip up the mountain but how could I turn down pizza after that? All-in-all I definitely learned some things during the two weeks. I'm not sure if two weeks is truly long enough to really make a fair analysis but that's the time I set and here is what I learned.

1. I need to stop eating dairy. Just taking two weeks off from dairy improved the way I felt. I was less bloated and less gassy. I don't know if there could have been something else that added to this but I didn't change anything else so I will attribute my improvement to not eating dairy.

2. There is no way I can stop eating dairy, LOL. There are too many things I love that have dairy in them for me to just cut it out completely. I am going to try to limit my dairy to only occasionally instead of eating it every day.

3. I eat dairy everyday! Before doing this if you asked me how many servings of dairy I ate in a day I would have said maybe 1 and sometimes none. WRONG! By really paying attention to what I eat I realized that there are a lot of things that I was eating that contained dairy and I wasn't even aware of.

4. My favorite coffee drink at work has dairy in it, hot chocolate has dairy in it, my new favorite salad dressing has dairy in it, my favorite chips have dairy in them. I mean WTF! Does everything have dairy in it???

5. Tofutti sour cream does NOT taste better than real sour cream. It looks like it might but trust me, it doesn't. I love sour cream and I was REALLY hoping this would be an acceptable substitute, it isn't.

Bottom Line: I am going to save my dairy servings for special occasions but I'm not going to cut it out of my diet completely just yet. There is a popular saying that goes "Change will come when the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of change." so I guess until it gets worse I won't be changing completely.

Mountain Climber

A couple of weeks ago my coworker Paul asked me if I wanted to go with him, his wife and our coworker Bryan for a ride in the nearby mountains. He made it sound like it would be a leisurely ride through beautiful scenery. It was only a 22 mile ride. I had gone 50 so I figured this wouldn't be too bad.

WRONG!

This 22 mile ride up TWO mountains was anything but easy. Yes the scenery was extremely beautiful (when I was able to see it through the pain I was feeling). This definitely ranks at the top of the list of most difficult things I've done physically.

We started off at the top of Hanging Rock (I think that is a picture of it above, lol) then went down and towards Sauratown Mountain. It took us about 8 miles to get to the actual climb up the mountain. When we get there Paul says "okay now this is where it starts getting steep." STARTS!!?? It has already BEEN steep to me and I was already feeling the burn in my thighs. I just kept in mind that it was just a 3 mile climb so I could do that with no problems. Well I wouldn't say that I did it with NO problems but I made it up although I wasn't so sure I was going to make it at one point. I was zig zagging all the way across the road trying to get up that hill. Luckily on that part of the ride there wasn't any traffic so I didn't have to worry about watching for cars. I finally made it to the top and got to take a short break before we started back to the car.

The ride down was fun. It is kind of annoying that it took about 45 minutes to get up the hill and then only 10 to come back down. My forearms hurt from pumping my brakes so much going down the hill. I was afraid to go TOO fast although I did get up to 36 mph. I also didn't want my brakes to melt so I was careful not to ride them too much.

The last climb...since we parked at the top of Hanging Rock we had to ride back up to get to the car (whose idea was it to park at the top??). This was the worst part of the ride for me. The hill was shorter, about 2 miles, but it felt so much more difficult. I guess because there was more traffic and because I was pretty tired at this point. When I had a little over half a mile left I really wanted to give up. I almost started crying and if I would have been able to get my foot unclipped (I didn't even have enough energy to do that) then I would have stopped for sure. I'm kinda glad that I wasn't able to get my foot loose because it made me keep going and at this point Paul had come back to make sure I wasn't dead ride the rest of the way with me so that definitely helped a lot.

All in all I'm glad that I did it and that I now know I CAN do it. I'm glad that I had some great people to ride with because that definitely helped me make it through the ride. This will make the hills on our regular route seem like nothing. I don't know if I'll ever get to the point where I want to do the 3 mountain madness (this adds on another mountain and about 40 more miles) but maybe.....