I finally rejoined the ranks of the 200 club… those who can bench press more than 200 pounds. I first joined the club when I was in high school, so it’s been more than a little pathetic being out of the club these past few years. Now to get back in the 250 club.
Flat Bench:
135 x 12
155 x 10
185 x 8
225 x 2
Skull Crushers:
45 x 12, 12
45 x 10, 10
45 x 8, 8
Incline Dumbbell Fly:
35 x 12
40 x 10
40 x 8
Bar Dips:
5 (+1)
4 (+2)
1
Treadmill:
8:55 to first mile
I have started riding my bike to work once a week. It’s only 10 miles and it’s mostly down hill, so it’s not a tough ride at all. The ride home is considerably tougher, since it’s mostly up hill and it’s much much warmer. It was about 65 degrees when I headed to work this morning, but it will be close to 90 when I head home.
I don’t need a water bottle on my way to work. I always need one on my ride home. Today I won’t have one. I was flying down Canyon Road through Pleasant Grove this morning when I hit a really rough patch of road. It’s not uncommon to hit really rough roads in Pleasant Grove. They seem to go out of their way to make their roads rough. Unfortunately for me, I hit this rough patch as the road went around a corner near 2600 North. The combination of my speed through the corner and the extraordinarily rough road nearly bounced me off my bike.
Just as I was congratulating myself for staying on, I heard my water bottle bounce across the road and into the weeds. I thought briefly about circling back to get it, but decided against it, because I was already a little late for work. Now I’ll have to figure out how to get some liquid on my bike for the ride home. My current thought is to pack my water bottle holders with cans of Mountain Dew. That sounds like a decent plan.
All the big events I was signed up for are now done for the year. We rode our bikes from Seattle to Portland, did the Spudman triathlon, and rode our bikes around Utah Lake in the ULCER. This week we got to watch a couple stages of the Tour of Utah, which was really cool. But now the big events are done and I have to stop using my “I don’t want to underfuel for the next big event” excuse. It’s time to reinstate the restricted calorie diet. That’s going to be tricky now that we have a Blendtec. It’s so easy to whip up a big smoothie in the morning, but those smoothies have hundreds of calories. I guess I just need to put in more vegetables and less fruits. We’ll see.
It’s getting serious again. I haven’t been great at going to the gym every day, in fact, I’ve been pretty terrible. But I’m starting to believe that my strength can come back. I have somehow managed to be there for chest day most weeks. Today I was finally able to push a little harder. It felt really good.
Flat Bench:
12 x 135
10 x 185
4 x 205 (+1 with help)
Incline Bench:
12 x 135
8 x 155
4 x 165 (+1 with help)
Skull Crushers:
8 x 65
5 x 65 (couldn’t hold form on #5)
8 x 45
Incline Dumbbell Press:
12 x 35
10 x 45
5 x 55 (+1 with help)
Bar Dips:
8 x -100 (machine provided 100 pounds of lift)
8 x -100 (machine provided 100 pounds of lift)
Needless to say, my arms feel like Jello. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.
Yesterday we pushed the sled across the parking lot. There wasn’t a lot to say about it, so I didn’t blog it.
Today we were inside. I have a long way to go to get back into shape, but I feel like I may be starting to make some progress. We’re guessing my one-rep max on flat bench is about 225. We based the rest of my weights off that max. We had to cut out a little early today, because someone scheduled a meeting for 1:00.
Flat Bench:
12 x 135 (60% of max)
5 x 170 (75% of max)
5 x 190 (85% of max)
Incline Bench:
12 x 135
5 x 155
5 x 175
Skull Crushers:
6 x 65
6 x 75
6 x 75
Bar Dips:
0 (+6)
1 (+5)
1 (+5)
Upright Fly:
8 x 90
8 x 100
8 x 110
We spent the last week or so in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We drove through the Columbia River Gorge, up the Washington coast, around the Olympic Peninsula, and in to Seattle. Then we rode our bikes 203 miles from Seattle back to Portland with about 10,000 other people in the annual STP classic. It was not without incident, but it was a whole lot of fun. We were 6 of the 72 riders for Crush Kids Cancer, raising money for a study done at Seattle Children’s Hospital.
The good:
We all finished the race. Dave and Rob had never ridden any supported ride before, had never done any drafting, and their longest ride up to this point was less than 50 miles. Brett and Jess have done plenty of other rides, but this was their first STP. We managed to ride 150 miles the first day and 50 the second.
The bad:
Both Dave and I crashed while stopped at different times. He got some nice scratches from his crank, and I got some gravel cuts. In both cases we were not being smart, so we sort of deserved what we got.
The annoying:
I attempted to use my Atrix with RunKeeper as my GPS for the ride. It ran out of batteries just 6 hours in, despite having a full charge at the start. At least I have some data from those first few miles.
The funny:
At one of the stops, Rob accidentally started eating a tube of Chamois Butt’r, thinking it was a GU Energy Gel.
The ride:
We rode the first 150 miles on Saturday, then the last 50 on Sunday, riding through the finish line in Portland as a team. At one point, Dave and Rob dropped off the paceline we had going. We expected to meet up with them at the next stop, but they didn’t show up. They had followed a group of riders heading off to a hotel in a city that wasn’t on the course… and wound up riding a bunch of extra miles to get back on course later.
I think I’m going to get a single-purpose GPS device for my bike. I’m so tired of having my phone run out of batteries part-way through an event, and then have either no data, or only some data recorded. It happened again this week when I tried to use my Motorola Atrix 4G to record the first day of riding the STP.
I am extremely unimpressed with this phone. I spent many hours last month tweaking and optimizing it so that I wouldn’t have to recharge it every single night. I have it set to automatically kill every single app as soon as the screen turns off. I also have JuiceDefender set to disable Wifi, Cellular Data, and GPS when the screen is inactive. This makes for a less-than-desirable experience with the phone, since everything is dead each time I turn off the screen. I never get text messages, email, etc. until I manually turn on the screen. It’s pretty sad, but it’s the only way to get the battery to last more than 2 days. It’s more than a little pathetic. It’s definitely the worst overall phone I have ever had the displeasure of owning. After just 2 months, I don’t think I can keep using it. It’s that bad.
I had to make an exception to allow the RunKeeper app and the GPS to stay active when the screen goes dark. I knew that would mean less time with the phone alive, I just didn’t realize how much less. I charged the phone fully before the start of the STP, then I enabled the GPS and started RunKeeper. The phone died just 6 hours later. I had planned on checking it at the 100 mile point, but it was already dead by that point. I was so upset. I thought about switching back to my iPhone 4, since the battery on it seems to last about 5 times as long on standby (without sacrificing texts, email, etc.), and about twice as long when in use, but I don’t want my GPS to prevent me from making a phone call if I get stranded. I think the real solution is to break down and buy a single-purpose GPS device like the Garmin bike computers you see on so many of the bikes these days.
I had to meet an old friend and landscaper at lunch today, so I asked Sam, Tom, and Micah to go to the gym a little late. I barely made it back in time to jump in on the flat bench. Because we started late, we tried to hurry and didn´t end up doing as many different exercises as usual. At this point, I´m sort of glad that we didn´t, because, once again, I can barely lift my arms.
Flat Bench:
12 x 135
10 x 155
8 x 155
Bar Dips:
2, 3, 3
Incline Bench:
5 x 135
12 x 115
10 x 115
Skull Crushers:
6 x 65
6 x 65
5 x 65
Today was legs day at the gym. I really overdid my first chest workout last week, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t overdo it on legs today. I started off doing it right, keeping the weight light, but at some point I still pushed beyond the capacity of my legs. I think it’s been about 5 years since the last time I did any of these exercises. I guess I’m lucky I can still walk.
Squat:
45 x 12
135 x 12
155 x 10
155 x 8
Leg Press:
12 x 380
10 x 400
10 x 420
Standing Calf Raises:
12 x 240
12 x 300
12 x 300
Hamstring Curl:
12 x 80
12 x 100
12 x 120
Seated Leg Extension:
12 x 120
12 x 120
12 x 120
My troubles with RunKeeper continued today, but this time it was definitely my fault. I finally got upset enough with my iPhone to get rid of it and switched to a Motorola Atrix 4G. The trouble with the new phone is battery life. It doesn’t come close to matching the iPhone. To compensate, I set all applications to “auto kill” as soon as the screen times out. Unfortunately, that means my RunKeeper app was automatically killed just a minute after I started riding. I should have seen that one coming and removed RunKeeper from the “auto kill” list. I think it might actually work the next time I ride… we’ll see. In the mean-time, I used the Google Maps interface to create a RunKeeper map as well as I can remember the ride. The exact roads at the very edge of the ride may be a little off, but you get the gist of it.
Despite the trouble I had with RunKeeper, we had a great ride. Charmaine rode with Kristen and Jess out to the windmills in Spanish Fork, while I rode with Mark and Brett out around West Mountain at the base of Utah Lake. We left Orem just after 7 and returned just before 11. We rode between 71 and 72 miles, depending on which bike computer you look at, making our average speed (including all stoplights and a stop at the gas station) right around 18 miles per hour. We were riding in a paceline, with each of us rotating to the front. It seemed like we got a little faster with each rotation until we were all tired and slowed way down… then the ramp up would start again.
We knew we would be coming back on the same road as the ladies, and we were hoping to catch them on their way home. We had no such luck. They got home about 10 minutes before us, but I think they were still impressed with our time.