Monthly Archives: September 2006

Lifting Again

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It really is amazing how fast you can gain and lose strength.  In August I was finishing up my flat bench workout with 6 reps at 245 and a couple reps at 275.  Just 6 weeks later I find myself struggling to finish up with 8 reps at 225.  The rest of my chest workout was horrible.  In fact, the only good part of today’s workout was that I went.

Joe is still claiming that he’s depressed and says the last thing he wants to do is go to the gym.  I’ll keep inviting him until he breaks down and starts coming again.  Right now I’m guessing that will be about 3 weeks.

Alex was ready, though.  It’s been a long time since we went regularly, so we each had a hard time lifting our usual weights, and we both wore out much faster than we usually do.  But still… we were there.  Kyle showed up after we were mostly finished (around 12:55).  I bet he was mostly just surprised to see us there at all.  I think he’s been going regularly this whole time.

Weight: 244.6

Flat Bench
185/12   205/10   225/8

Incline Dumbell Fly
70/12   75/10   75/8

Incline Bench
155/12   185/6   185/7

Bar Dips
8   6

Freedom Chest Fly
65/12   80/10   95/8

42 Degrees

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I want to start adding some weight training to my swim workouts. For a while I was only lifting and not swimming. After a few months I started swimming in the morning (weight lifting was at lunch). I haven’t done any weight training for 5 or 6 weeks now. I think it’s time to add it back in. It was that exact desire that forced me out of bed this morning.

It was really cold when I stepped outside. My car said it was 42 degrees. That’s pretty cold for this time of year. It took my car the whole way to the gym before the heater was very warm.

The usual group of aqua-cows was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the lights in the pool area were turned off. This isn’t something a non-employee can do, so I went back to the front desk to ask if the pool was closed. It was open. The only lights were the lights under water. It reminded me of morning swim practice in the outdoor pool at Cottonwood Heights in my high school days. Of course, I didn’t swim anything like I used to, but it was still fun.

500 Free warm-up
10 x 100 Free @ 2:15 (coming in around 1:15)
250 Free warm-down
———-
1750 yards (about 1 mile)

Mental Barriers

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Saturday. My new goal for Saturdays is to swim at least 3000 yards. Saturdays are good days for a longer workout, because I get a day off before swimming again on Monday. I also want to do sets of longer distances on Saturdays. Today I wanted to do a set of 10 x 200 yards. I ran out of steam after 8, but I’m still pretty happy about it, since it was my first time doing any 200s.

500 Free warm-up
8 x 200 Free @ 3:45 (coming in between 2:35 and 2:40)
100 Free easy
4 x 100 Kick @ 2:30 (coming in at 2:00)
100 Free easy
200 Free
100 Free easy
———-
3000 yards

Boiler Room

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I did get up this morning and go swimming, but it was really hot. The pool area of Gold’s Gym isn’t exactly well ventilated, and it wasn’t a pleasant place to be after the aqua-cows finished their “workout.” I don’t know the exact temperature of the water, but it had to be over 85 degrees. It was horrible.

I didn’t swim well, but I swam. Charmaine came with me this morning, so I couldn’t just bail out. Once again, it’s great to have someone to push you harder.

500 Free warm-up
10 x 100 Free @ 2:05 (coming in between 1:15 and 1:20)
100 Free easy
6 x 50 Kick @ 1:20 (coming in at 1:00)
200 Free warm-down

Thai Chili Gardens

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I got to work pretty early for me… about 7:50. I already had messages from Alex and Joe that they wouldn’t be coming in to work. Alex’s wife was very sick and up all night, so he was staying home to get some rest and continue taking care of her. Joe’s brother-in-law had a heart attack in the middle of the night and was in the hospital. He was helping watch the kids for his brother-in-law while their family was at the hospital. He planned on working from home.

That put me in an interesting position. Would I work out on my own? I knew that Jeff and Steve would be at the gym wanting to work out with us (we had talked previously about them working out with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I figured I would do a back and biceps workout with them.

When 12:00 rolled around, DaveM suggested we all go to lunch together as a team. I guessed (correctly) that he (Bungee Labs) would be paying. So I ended up working out at Thai Chili Gardens. The food was great. We ordered everything with 3 or 4 stars. That wasn’t hot enough for DaveM, so he added a lot of cayenne pepper to his plate.

As we were sitting down for lunch, I saw Kevin Baker walking up front. I called him over and we talked for a minute or two. Things are going well for him. His ACL is getting stronger. He’s even started to do some jogging again to help it out. He has a minor case of Bells Palsy on the right side of his face. He said it really freaked him out when he first noticed it. He was brushing his teeth one Sunday morning and thought he might be having a stroke. He noticed that it was only in his face and not in his hands, so he figured it wasn’t a stroke, but still went to the hospital. It seems to be healing now, so he’s happy about that.

The food and interaction with the dev team alone probably made it worth it to skip my workout, and seeing Kevin made it that much more worth it. I don’t want to miss 2 days in a row, so I’ll probably have to swim tomorrow morning.

Adding IM

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Today I made sure to get Alex before heading to the pool.  He also made sure I got him before leaving.  It worked out pretty well.  As we walked in, we saw Jeff and Steve coming out of the locker room.  They have previously said that they do cardio on Wednesdays.  I asked them if they were going to swim.  They declined.  They are watching episodes of Firefly while they run on the treadmills.  I could never deny someone that experience.

The pool was empty when we got in, but halfway through our warm-up a lady got in the slow lane and started swimming.  She was pretty fast for a girl, but never swam more than a 50 without a taking a break.  She probably only swam 600 yards before getting out.

We decided to mix it up today.  We did some IM instead of the usual freestyle.  That turned out to be pretty fun, but it definitely gets my heartrate up faster than freestyle.  Maybe that means I need to find a way to push myself harder on freestyle?  I’ll have to experiment with that idea one of these days.  Alex kept up fairly well on the IM, but fell behind on kicking.  Kicking was last, so maybe that played into it as well, but I think Alex needs to work on his kick.

500 Free warm-up
5 x 100 IM @ 3:00 (coming in between 1:25 and 1:35)
100 Free easy
5 x 100 Kick @ 3:00 (working from easy to hard per 25, coming in at 2:00)
150 Free warm-down

Short Swim

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I had a meeting at 1:00. It was 12:15 and I heard Joe say he wasn’t going to workout today. I decided I could swim for about 30 minutes if I hurried. In retrospect, I should have grabbed Alex, because he was sort of upset that I didn’t. But there wasn’t much time and I had to make the decision quickly (good rationalization, right?).

There were 2 guys in the pool swimming. Both wearing the new high-tech swim shorts that look a lot like biker shorts to me. They seemed to think they were pretty fast. And they were decently fast, but I was a lot faster.

200 Free warm-up
8 x 100 Free @ 2:05 (coming in at 1:10 x 4, coming in at 1:15 x 4)
100 Free warm-down

Monday afternoon

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I didn’t sleep well last night, which made a convenient excuse to stay in bed and not swim this morning. When I did finally get up, I decided that I better take my gym clothes to work. It was Monday and on Monday we usually do a chest workout during lunch. As unusual as it was, Joe didn’t bring his gym clothes. I saw him in the kitchen around noon, firing up the microwave. I had 3 options. I could go lift with Alex. I could go Swim with Alex. I could blow the whole thing off and work through lunch. I decided to let Alex decide. I asked him if he wanted to go lift, thinking that if he wasn’t going, I wouldn’t go either. I think this is why you get people to go with you regularly. He was ready to go. He even had swimming stuff with him. Swimming sounded better than lifting weights, so we cruised past my apartment and grabbed my swimming stuff.

Alex is a good swimmer, but hasn’t been swimming regularly for a little while. I decided to modify the workout to something he would be able to do it. He pushed himself very hard and did quite well. Hopefully he’ll keep coming back.

500 free: warm-up
10 x 100 free @ 2:05 (coming in at 1:10 x 5, 1:15 x 5)
100 free easy
5 x 50 kick @ 1:20 (coming in at 0:55 x 5)
150 free: warm-down
———-
2000 yards

Swimming Again

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I swam a few years in high school. I never took swimming very seriously, and, as a result, I never became a great swimmer. My coach was more interested in building good people than good swimmers. As a result, we had an amazing record of 8 straight state championships in both boys and girls swimming. I wasn’t much of a swimmer, but I did manage to place at the state championships. After that, I didn’t swim again for many years.

It has been more than 15 years since I graduated from high school. I am quite strong, but also quite over-weight. At some point I decided that I was risking my health by sitting in front of a computer screen all day without getting any kind of exercise. That was about 10 months ago.

I signed up for a membership at Gold’s gym and have been lifting weights at lunch with my brother fairly regularly. I keep all my weight lifting records in a notebook that I carry with me from station to station while lifting. It is easy to look back and see the progress I have made.

I started swimming again about 6 months ago. At first I was going once or twice a week, but soon upgraded to 3 or 4 times per week. At one point I was swimming 6 days a week, riding my mountain bike to and from work, and lifting weights at lunch with my brother and a few friends from work. I finally started losing weight (after more than 4 months with little progress in that area), but it was too much for me.

I broke down and didn’t do anything for a good 2 weeks. I quickly realized that I need to exercise to feel good, so I’ve started swimming again. My wife is nice enough to come to the gym in the morning with me 3 times a week. She doesn’t enjoy swimming as much as I do, so she does a small workout on weights or a treadmill and then swims for 15 or 20 minutes as I finish up.

As fun as it is to look back on the progress I have made doing strength training, I thought it would be nice to be able to do the same thing with my swimming workouts. Of course, a notebook doesn’t hold up to water very well, so I decided to start a blog about it. We’ll see how it turns out.