Lämmchen's Workout Thread

[Lamb]

I was able to do my 3 mile hike yesterday and it was a little bit over so at the end of the week I'll have more than my 15 mile goal if I can keep getting back out there. It's supposed to rain today and I don't go out there when it's rainy because it's too slippery and dangerous.

 

[tango]

Sprint repeats today. I wasn't sure how my legs would cope with them given the last time I tried to sprint it felt like I'd strained something. But this time it worked out OK, although the one particular time a sprint coincided with an uphill and a headwind I didn't enjoy it all that much.

 

[Lamb]

I've been good at getting my 15 miles a week as well as the minimum 10,000 daily steps. In fact, most days I get 14,000 steps now, so that's good. The bad...well, even though my pants are falling off and my jacket I used to wear to church 10 years ago now fits me, I gained 2 pounds. It's muscle, but I wanted to lose, not gain. So I'm back on my diet.

 

[tango]

I've been good at getting my 15 miles a week as well as the minimum 10,000 daily steps. In fact, most days I get 14,000 steps now, so that's good. The bad...well, even though my pants are falling off and my jacket I used to wear to church 10 years ago now fits me, I gained 2 pounds. It's muscle, but I wanted to lose, not gain. So I'm back on my diet.

I'd tell anyone to focus primarily on your body size rather than weight when you start exercising seriously. When I started exercising years ago everyody told me how much weight I'd lost but the scale said I hadn't moved at all. I'd just shed a lot of fat and gained a lot of muscle.

I honestly don't remember the last time I was able to fit into the size of jeans I'm wearing now, and could even go down a size if I didn't mind wearing pants that stuck to me. But according to my BMI I'm overweight and need to lose 15 pounds or so just to get to the very top end of what's considered "normal weight". To get to the bottom end of "normal weight" I'd need to lose something like 50 pounds. I don't honestly think there's 50 pounds available to lose, unless I quit running and let all the muscle atrophy.

BMI might be useful for people who aren't very active but you don't have to be very active before it becomes mostly meaningless.

 

[Lamb]

I'd tell anyone to focus primarily on your body size rather than weight when you start exercising seriously. When I started exercising years ago everyody told me how much weight I'd lost but the scale said I hadn't moved at all. I'd just shed a lot of fat and gained a lot of muscle.

I honestly don't remember the last time I was able to fit into the size of jeans I'm wearing now, and could even go down a size if I didn't mind wearing pants that stuck to me. But according to my BMI I'm overweight and need to lose 15 pounds or so just to get to the very top end of what's considered "normal weight". To get to the bottom end of "normal weight" I'd need to lose something like 50 pounds. I don't honestly think there's 50 pounds available to lose, unless I quit running and let all the muscle atrophy.

BMI might be useful for people who aren't very active but you don't have to be very active before it becomes mostly meaningless.

It's hard to tell someone who used to have an eating disorder to ignore the numbers. One pound can be a crisis!

Anway, one of those 2 pounds is now gone so I feel a little better.

I am not going to hike today since my hip was sore this morning. I'll just stick around the house and maybe do some loops on my block. I'm at 13 miles anyway for the week for hiking.

 

[tango]

My suggested workout for today is "recovery" - little over half an hour at a 12-minute pace. I hate those suggestions - I struggle to run as slowly as a 12-minute pace. I'm trying to teach myself to run slowly but so far haven't managed to sustain anything lower than about a 10-minute pace. I can do about a 15-minute pace but only for a very short time before I naturally seek out a faster pace. My friend who runs ultramarathons said it's surprisingly hard to learn to run slowly, but for the kind of distances he runs it's not optional.

I'm not sure what I'll do today. Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be grim so I might just do a slightly longer run today while I can. It's supposed to be cooler next week so perhaps I'll do some more anaerobic work when I'm not pouring buckets of sweat.

 

[tango]

Well, so much for my longer run.

I noticed a fatal flaw in my original plan for the room I'm working on and spent some time thinking about how to salvage things. It's doable, just takes a little more work than I hoped to have before I could box in the room and consider it ready for drywalling. Then I figured I needed to get out and run before it got any hotter, but it was already hot enough to cause me problems. So I stuck with my regular 5-mile loop and didn't even add the bit to the end to make it a 10k.

Next week is supposed to be cooler so hopefully I can get some longer runs done then, and get accustomed to the heat more slowly rather than dealing with particularly hot days and hoping for the best.

 

[Lamb]

Well, so much for my longer run.

I noticed a fatal flaw in my original plan for the room I'm working on and spent some time thinking about how to salvage things. It's doable, just takes a little more work than I hoped to have before I could box in the room and consider it ready for drywalling. Then I figured I needed to get out and run before it got any hotter, but it was already hot enough to cause me problems. So I stuck with my regular 5-mile loop and didn't even add the bit to the end to make it a 10k.

Next week is supposed to be cooler so hopefully I can get some longer runs done then, and get accustomed to the heat more slowly rather than dealing with particularly hot days and hoping for the best.

I'm like you, surprised at how the heat comes upon us suddenly when out for a workout. I have been getting really dizzy because of my thyroid hormones and also sensitive to heat now, so it's just not a good time for summer weather in the spring!

 

[tango]

I'm like you, surprised at how the heat comes upon us suddenly when out for a workout. I have been getting really dizzy because of my thyroid hormones and also sensitive to heat now, so it's just not a good time for summer weather in the spring!

For some considerable time now I've routinely run the entirety of all of my loops. The only time I've stopped is if there's traffic at a road crossing, or the occasional time I stop briefly at our church for a comfort break. A week or so back we had a really hot day, and today was really hot, and both days I found myself taking a couple of breaks to cool off from the heat.

 

[Lamb]

We're walking down to the Amish farm to see the cows this morning. A couple of nice hills getting there and back.

 

[tango]

Yesterday's suggested workout was "rest" so I went for a walk with my wife instead of running. Today's suggestion was "tempo" and it was a long enough time to need my 8-mile loop to fit it in, so I did that one again. If it's not sweltering hot I enjoy that loop - I'm not sure why I got out of the habit of using it. Yes, the shorter loop takes less time but by the time I add a bit to the end to get the extra distance and the extra steps it doesn't save all that much time, and it's a less interesting loop because I do it so much more often.

And now I'm sat in my recliner with a cup of coffee. Life is good.

 

[Lamb]

Yesterday it was nice and cool out, so I went to the park to hike my 3 miles and today I'll go back after I get my chores done around the house.

 

[tango]

Sprint repeats today. The suggested workout isn't really demanding enough in many ways - the sprint intervals are faster than is comfortable but sufficiently short that they don't really get my heart rate high, unless they coincide with the hills around the route. Then they give enough time to recover that the next sprint interval doesn't get my heart rate up much before it's over. So I took to gently jogging much of the "recovery" time, which makes the whole thing a bit more demanding.

During the section I tagged on to the end to get my step count over 10,000 I noticed I was surprisingly comfortable running at higher speeds than I thought I could sustain. I think I might set up some manually defined workouts that incorporate speed repeats into a workout designed around the loops I have available. The suggested workouts are all well and good but I only have so many routes I can use around here,

When I was doing the extra section I decided to run a couple of hills faster than I would normally - not a full-on sprint but hard enough to get my heart rate good and high. It indicated that if I allow enough recovery time I can reasonably do speed repeats around my route and not worry if the faster sections coincide with the hills. Maybe doing that I can get my overall pace up higher.

 

[Lamb]

I hiked 3.5 miles yesterday and explored some of the last fire trails until winter because snakes and ticks are out now. These last few had wide enough of a trail with no leaves that I felt safe to go on them.

Now it's going to rain today so no park for me.

 

[tango]

I hiked 3.5 miles yesterday and explored some of the last fire trails until winter because snakes and ticks are out now. These last few had wide enough of a trail with no leaves that I felt safe to go on them.

Now it's going to rain today so no park for me.

Do you get a lot of ticks in your area? The trails I hike are wooded and often have a lot of undergrowth but I very seldom see ticks. I've never seen a single tick on the trail I hike the most, and I've hiked it a lot of times.

I know there are ticks elsewhere in the woods - years ago there was a particular trail I hiked that was horrendous, I was brushing multiple ticks off my pant legs every several steps.

 

[Lamb]

Do you get a lot of ticks in your area? The trails I hike are wooded and often have a lot of undergrowth but I very seldom see ticks. I've never seen a single tick on the trail I hike the most, and I've hiked it a lot of times.

I know there are ticks elsewhere in the woods - years ago there was a particular trail I hiked that was horrendous, I was brushing multiple ticks off my pant legs every several steps.

I never got a tick from being in my yard, but I've gotten them out on the trails before. As long as I don't go near grass, I'm fine.

 

[tango]

Today I ran five miles, then walked another three with my wife. The run was a relatively gentle one, trying to keep my pace down to a 10-minute mile. Not always successfully, but I kept my pulse down which was good.

 

[tango]

Hideous weather today. My tracker says I chalked up 12000 steps today. I'm not sure how since I barely left the house but maybe I racked up more than I thought working on my wall. Or maybe using a hammer drill registered as a load of steps.

 

[Lamb]

I hope there is a break in the rain today so I can at least do some loops in my neighborhood. Walking in the house isn't as fun as being outside on the hills.

 

[tango]

Yesterday the forecast for today was more or less rain all day. Today it's looking like we might get a break from the rain in the afternoon.

Interestingly my suggested workout for today is over an hour for the first time since I've been doing them. In the past I've occasionally done the suggested workout but recently I've done them more often, even if I have extended them to get extra steps in or reach some other target. Often I'll get something like "Recovery - 12 minute pace for 34 minutes" or "Base - 10 minute pace for 43 minutes", which don't fit with any of my loops, so I'll pick a loop that works and accept the workout finishes part of the way round it.

Today's workout is "10 minute pace for 78 minutes" with the goal to improve my running mileage. It's a little odd because I never told the software what my running goals are, and can already run that mileage. But no mater, it's good that it's giving me something a little longer.