Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Different workouts

It's easy to get in the routine of doing the same old workouts day after day, or week after week. Even though I follow a definite pattern over the course of the year, with specific rest periods and race prep phases, within each phase, there's a certain level of repetition.

My last two workouts were a bit different though.

The rain over the weekend really solidified the snow base; it's very dense right now. The trails right outside my door (I have a 50K trail network on 1300 acres literally in my backyard, with some of the trails on my property) were groomed during the rain on Saturday, which put a smooth surface on the trails. I took the dogs out running on the trails last night. I ran in snowshoes, although I realized quickly I could have used just Yaktrax and been fine. The dogs were happy to get in a run, I was happy to have the extra daylight at the end of the day, and I got to go up and down some real hills. I did just over 6 miles at about a 12 mpm pace.

This morning, I was headed to the gym. I lifted on Sunday and I'm still a bit sore from that extended workout. So today, I decided to use a different type of gym workout called the Bodyweight 500. Basically, it's 500 total reps of a dozen different bodyweight exercises. Each exercise is done 25 or 50 times. But, the key to the workout is that you do it for time, not just for reps.

So, it's not quite a weight workout, but it's certainly not an aerobic-only workout either. Regretfully, I only did a "bodyweight 475", doing only 15 of the 25 pull-ups and only 10 of the 25 chin-ups. Chin-ups are last and I was reduced to doing single reps by the end of this workout. I need to get stronger or lighter or both to do all 25 of both of those exercises and finish in the same day.

My time was 43:48. I have seen some posts online where people have done all 500 reps in around 24 minutes or so.

I'll do an easy hour-long run tonight and then run twice for a total of 15 miles tomorrow.

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