1.5 weeks away....

from the tough mudder. My team started out as 4 people. One has a tear in his medial collateral ligament so he is out of the event, but he's still going down to cheerlead. The second one is now 50/50 on it because he's got some other stuff that he's involved with, and he can't afford to get hurt. And the third no longer works here, says that he was back on for running it two weeks ago, but I haven't heard from him after sending an email a couple of days ago. So it's possible that it just might be me running it, which is ok. I'll hook up with people as I need to to get through anything.

On the workout front, I have found a kid out of California on youtube, thef0rtress (Pavel), who has some really good videos on body weight workouts. Specifically related around bar workouts. I soooooo want to be able to do a muscle up that I am looking at every "How To" video i can find. I went through one of Pavel's workouts the other night and didn't do too bad even though I had to substitute a thing or two.

Original workout:

5 muscle ups

45 dips

25 pull ups

55 push ups

5 muscle ups

I had to change the muscle ups to jumping muscle ups since I can't do them yet, and he uses parallel bars for the dips. I had to use a low balance beam type thing with my feet on the ground. His time was a little under 6 minutes. I finished in 12 minutes 15 seconds. The longest part of it by far for me was the pull ups. 

Back on the Wagon

Last week I started running again. 3 times for a total of 8.3 miles. I'm also doing 250 push-ups a day in blocks of 50. A couple of times a week I will do pull-ups or just try an overhand pull-up hold with my chin above the bar. Last week I was able to get 8 pull-ups in one set, and did a 34 second hold. We are 3 months out from the tough mudder in Austin, and one of my team has had to drop due to some nerve and neck issues.

GOAL!

I hit my 6 mile run goal on Sunday night. It was supposed to be a 5.75 mile run, but I was feeling good and decided to just finish it off. I am going to continue running three times a week, but I'm going to have two short runs (2 miles-ish) and then one longer run (4-6 miles).

The pull-ups are still continuing at work. I've gotten up to 7 for a max. During the day I max out the first one and then go back throughout the day taking off one pull-up every time until I get down to 1. Today should have 28 pull-ups total. Next week I will work on the push-ups again since I won't be up at work.

Back to the grind

I ran for the first time in a week last night. I was shooting for 5.25 miles since I last did a little over 5. Before I walked out the door, I was thinking that I would be happy if I made it 3 miles before walking. I was pretty sure that my lungs would give out somewhere in there.

So I stepped out the door in the 37 degree night with Live at Wembley by Queen in my ears and proceeded to run my 5.25 miles in about an hour and 4 minutes. It went much better than I had expected, and the cold didn't bother me all that much. It was 35 when I got home. I jumped in the shower with some lukewarm water that really stung my hands and was feeling nice and warm after about 10 minutes.

One of the guys at work padded the cable ladder at work so we can do pull-ups on it. I have managed to do 20 on Monday and Tuesday and then about 10 today.

Still moving ahead

Between having to travel for work and working 12+ hour days when out of town, it's been hard to keep up with the running. But I'm doing it. Today I did my 3.25 mile run. I stopped once for pull ups (maxing at 5 now), and then at the end of the run I did a few more. Walked back to the house and did 50 incline push ups.

weekly update

This last week has been pretty jacked up with the work schedule. I've been working over night maintenance windows and trying to get some sleep during the day. Despite that I was able to get my runs in and this afternoon finished up this week getting a 2.75 mile run in with one of my daughters on her bike. I had to walk for about a quarter mile toward the 2 mile mark, and I think that was due to the blood donation on Thursday. I had pushed that run off as long as I could, but the last time I tried to exercise after giving blood, I did it too soon.

I tried another push-up max today and got to 75. My pull-up max right now is 3.

workouts

So I've started the first workouts after deciding to go for the tough mudder. There are now 4 guys committed to running this. Even if the other two guys don't join, I think our team will be pretty solid.

I've been doing a crapload of push-ups trying to get to being able to run through 100 at a time. I am currently maxing out at 70. So I've started doing some incline push-ups at half of my max number. So I'm doing at least 200 regular push-ups or 100 incline every other day at the least.

Sunday I ran 1.58 miles. I stopped at the playground in the neighborhood twice during that run to try and do some pull ups. I did two at the first stop, and two at the second stop.

On Tuesday I walked 1.65 miles at work, and I dusted off the bowflex and ran through some arm, chest, ab, and back exercises.

Wednesday was just push-ups.

Thursday was another run. I am trying to add a quarter mile onto each run. So this one was 1.82 miles with another couple of stops at the playground. I did one pull up and held it as long as I could (10-15 seconds) in an overhand and underhand grip in the first set. The second set was 4 pull ups to the back of my neck.

A co-worker showed me that in our game room, we can do pull ups on one of the power racks that is attached at the ceiling. I've done a couple of sets of two on that. The grip is not the most comfortable at all, but hopefully I will get used to it. Some push-ups today as well.

This weekend will be another run up to at least 2 miles. I also really need to get our pull up bar at home installed.