Went to the beach and boogyboarded. All of the guys (read: husbands) in our group were 30+ years old. Each of us had a wipe out that screwed up something. For me it was my legs going the wrong way over my head and my lower back was like “eep”. So these stretches really helped. You have to be careful with back pain, but for me the stretches took away the soreness instantly.

Edgar is running every day (slacking is every other day). *sigh* I’m trying to run every other day and slacking for me is two times a week. I do about 2mi and it includes up and downhill in a loop. It’s pretty brutal actually, about 1/3 is uphill slowly and then 2/3 is downhill quick and flat. My nike+ shoes say it’s burning about 300 calories. That’s not a lot. Running doesn’t burn that much but your core gets in shape and your VO2 max starts coming around in 4-8 weeks (watch NOVA’s marathon challenge on Hulu).

I don’t know exactly what my goals are. I guess I want to play soccer or tennis again. In the short term, I wanted to feel better and have more energy. I think that has already happened just in 3 months of running and barbells (I’ll get to the weights in a second). There’s a few pickup leagues around here but I think I’ll really get a reality check when running around with 20 somethings on a soccer field. My longer term goal was posted a while back (beating 6:05 mile time). Right now my easy jog pace is 2.06 miles @ 9:05 per mile. If I rest and book it, I can do about 8:15 per mile. This is far and away from where I need to be but it’s been improving even in 3 months when a 10 minute pace was medium difficulty.

Today I went for a run down to a local high school (1.6mi) and then did a fast 1/2 mi (7min pace) followed by 4 100m sprints. I was dying on the 7min pace, I had to stop. I did the 1st 100m in 12.75sec (but this is with an ipod clock), my fastest since I can remember (because I never timed in college or H.S.). I’d love to get this time way, way down but I was really hurting after all this activity. I jogged back home really slowly and my calf was threatening to ball up on me (I’ve had that happen in soccer … wow ouch). So I think I pushed my muscle limit with the speed burst crap.

So reading on youtube and forums, I need to set a goddamn goal. I can’t do long distance jogging and expect to get better at sprinting (fast vs slow twitch muscle). So I’m going to try eating more carbs during the day and do interval running. It goes like this:

5min warmup run
30sec sprint
2.5min slow jog
30sec sprint
2.5min slow jog
Until about 20minutes.

There’s also a video of resistance training called the “300 routine” (because you do 10 sets of 30 reps), maybe it’s related to the movie .. I dunno. It goes like this:

30x elevated pushups
30x one arm dumbbell swing
30x lat bell
30x jump squat with DB
30x elevated pushup
30x split squat jump no DB
30x band row
30x shoulder press
30x stationary lunges
30x russian twist

So I ordered some bands and weight lifting gloves. I have a set of dumbbells (it’s crazy how much you can do with those). There’s a lot of those sets that absolutely kill your legs but that’s really what I need to increase my speed. At the gym, I’m going to change it up and do some squats once I figure out good form (so I don’t kill my back). They have a rack assist thing.

Ok, weights. I’ve been doing an upper body thing for about a month or two. I don’t know how I feel about this. Sprinters will use upper body but long distance slow twitch is opposite. I don’t know any soccer or tennis players that are huge. So I dunno what I’m going to do about this. In college, I’d barbell fly 65lbs at 10 reps. My chest was pretty far along considering I weighed about 155lbs @ 5’9″. I wasn’t benching max more than 140 but I wasn’t doing benches that often. So I guess I want to get about 65lbs flies just because it never slowed me down in intramural sports in college. Right now, 40-45 is where I’m at. I got this set of bells from Dick’s sports for like $60 and some extra weight was like another $40. They are kinda annoying to change weights on but the Bowflex bells were too expensive and I read they break easy.

So my routine kinda changes. I drink a protein shake 1 hour before I lift. Then I try to work 2-3 muscle groups hard. I go until failure and then back the weight off and go some more. I don’t know if this is right but it seems to work. When I’m done I have another shake. It’s the Cytosport chocolate stuff. It’s like half a glass of water … doesn’t taste too bad. It helps get rid of soreness (or at least it’s hyped too). I don’t have a control group but I bought it after I was really sore and wanted to not wait 3-4 days before going again.

Bell curls have really increase my triceps and biceps. I’m not huge but my shirts are fitting differently. Crew shirt sleeves aren’t hanging anymore (sometimes they get caught) and everything is filling out a bit. It’s pretty cool. The best part is, many things in the world are lighter. Doors, boxes, “honey move this please” and even the push lawn mower are lighter and easier. I still break a sweat but I’m not out of breath or hurting after lifting stuff. Maybe I’m just getting un-wimped. I don’t know.

Most days I work out at home and watch the daily show and colbert report on Hulu. I can watch and do my routine. But I think I’m going too long because I watch 3 episodes total some days and that’s 1.5 hours. I talked to a guy who’s been lifting for a long time and he said I’m going way too long. So I might be over-training. I’ll see if I can get it down to 45min this week.

For sure I overdid my triceps one day. First time using the pully thing at the gym, I did these overhead tricep things. I did 100 reps and my arms were so swollen that my elbow disappeared. I couldn’t scratch my back for 5 days. That was bad. I’m really a noob actually.

Well I guess that’s about all I have to say about this summer fitness thing that I’m doing. I’m learning a lot and it’s been a lot of fun seeing changes happen so quickly (albeit I’m not some ripped dude) and the best part is thinking that a lot of my free time to work out has come from quitting World of Warcraft. Squarism has less meat-head oriented testaments to that fact perhaps.