Strength Day: Upper Body Lifting

After six days in a row of pounding on my legs, it was time to give the lower body a much needed rest. So that means a day in the weight room lifting upper body.

I like to make sure that I get a hard shoulder and tricep workout so that when I finally get back into the pool I'll at least a little bit prepared.

Workout:

benchpress:

• 2x12 warmup

lat-pulldown:

• 3x12

standing shoulder press:

• 3x12
  

cable crossover fly:

• 3x10
  

tricep pushdown

• 3x12

I struggled a bit with the workout today, only able to do 195lbs on the benchpress. My body was feeling pretty drained and tired from the hard running and biking in the last few days.

Lately, I've been telling myself that upperbody lifting counts as a day off, but that isn't going to fly for very long. I'm definitely looking forward to having an actual day off to just relax and let my body recover.

Aerobic-Threshold Running

The goal for today was to work on my running aerobic-threshold conditioning. The purpose is to get myself used to running at a faster pace, for a sustained amount of time. Heart rate should be about 160-165 for the majority of the workout.

With that in mind, I settled on a workout that would push me to run at a strong pace, getting a limited amount of rest, for a sustained distance and time.

Here was the workout (on the treadmill today):

Warmup: 1.5 miles
Main Set: 12 x 0.4 miles: 3min interval
Cool down: 0.25 miles

My mile pace for each of the intervals was (min / mile):
6:40, 6:40, 6:35, 6:35, 6:35, 6:35, 6:35, 6:35, 6:31, 6:31, 6:18, 6:00

Average pace = 6:30 min / mile

I was pretty happy with the results since I would like to get my 10k pace down to 6:30 or under.

Cycle Climbing Day: Pagemill

I knew I needed to get a good ride in today. More specifically, a good, hard climb. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anybody to join me on the ride, so it was a little difficult mustering up the motivation. I finally shamed myself into getting out there, and once on the road, I was glad to be out on the bike.

Today I decided to climb Pagemill, but using a slightly different route than usual. From the typical starting point, I rode to El Monte and climbed Altamonte to Pagemill. This route is a nice change, and also reduces the amount of time to get to the actual climbing and useful training. Checkout the route map below.

The good news: Pagemill is getting easier! When I got to the top today, I even thought to myself, "wow, that was easy". I have to admit that is a great way to feel after climbing ~2200 ft.

Link to route and data