Lämmchen's Workout Thread

[Lamb]

It drizzled most of the day, but I was able to do 5 laps around the neighborhood which is about 2.5 miles.

 

[tango]

I had three days of running indoors, which gets tedious. Yesterday the morning was reasonable but I needed to get some lumber, which I don't want to do in the rain. By the time I'd let lunch digest it started raining, so another day of running indoors.

This morning was sunny so I took the chance to get out for an outside run. My badge for a 15k run (9.3 miles) for the month was calling my name so I went around my 10 mile loop, albeit a little more slowly than the last couple of times. I recorded a new number for my lactate threshold, which was marginally slower than the last measurement but the last one was when I was going full tilt on a long gentle decline, and I suspect today's was going less than full tile on a long gentle incline.

It feels good to be able to run the distance and not feel like I need to take an age to recover from the run. Even now, just a few hours after I finished, I don't feel drained the way I once would have done.

I really want to run the half-marathon distance before too long. I only ever did that once.

 

[Lamb]

My husband and I went to the park and hiked our 3 miles. It was cloudy, but that's good because we weren't too hot. Tomorrow he'll probably do his workout on his elliptical and I'll go to the park on my own.

 

[tango]

My husband and I went to the park and hiked our 3 miles. It was cloudy, but that's good because we weren't too hot. Tomorrow he'll probably do his workout on his elliptical and I'll go to the park on my own.

Today was supposed to be nice all day but this afternoon we've had wave after wave after wave of heavy rain. We were supposed to watch a friend's son at a sports match but decided not to stand in a field in the pouring rain.

Apparently the field was a mess because of all the rain.

 

[tango]

A more gentle run today. My suggested workout was a 45 minute base run. I went a bit faster than the suggested pace, although not enough to trigger "too fast" alerts on my watch. When the suggested workout finished I added another mile and a half or so, to get back home while still getting in enough steps for the day.

The two runs combined were a little over 10k.

 

[tango]

I wasn't sure if I'd get a decent run in today because the forecast was a bit iffy. It turned out nice this afternoon, so I figured I'd run while my wife tinkered with her plants. My suggested workout was a warmup followed by a threshold-level run, followed by a cool down. The threshold pace was hard to maintain on the hills but for the most part I managed it. It's handy that the idea is to maintain an average pace over the time, so there's scope to slow a little on the hills as long as I make it up on the flats. Making up on the flats is easy and I finished the threshold section about 15 seconds/mile faster than I needed to be, which was nice.

 

[Lamb]

My sinuses were awful yesterday due to spring allergies and the rain so I stayed inside! My neighbor and I are planning to do some walking today and I hope she goes to the park with me so we can get our 3 miles in.

 

[tango]

Today's suggested workout is building my base. I'm quite OK with that, I was hoping it wasn't going to be as aggressive a pace as yesterday's effort.

 

[tango]

My workout was supposed to be a base-level run but it was far harder than it had any business being.

I'd been working in the basement all day replacing a rotted window frame, and I suspect spending several hours shifting and cutting wood, measuring, cutting, measuring, trimming, nailing etc, just left me more drained than I thought before I even started.

I should sleep well tonight.

 

[Lamb]

Great day for a hike!! Tomorrow will be good too so I'll get out there early to the park before it gets hot.

 

[tango]

Great day for a hike!! Tomorrow will be good too so I'll get out there early to the park before it gets hot.

When I've got my preparation work done for the air conditioning guys I want to get back into the woods. Right now I don't really have the time.

The work I want to do is something they can do, but I know where everything runs in the house and if I can get it done before they arrive it means they don't have to spend extra time doing it, which means my bill goes down. If I can do something it saves me paying guys to find out what I already know.

 

[Lamb]

When I've got my preparation work done for the air conditioning guys I want to get back into the woods. Right now I don't really have the time.

The work I want to do is something they can do, but I know where everything runs in the house and if I can get it done before they arrive it means they don't have to spend extra time doing it, which means my bill goes down. If I can do something it saves me paying guys to find out what I already know.

I wish my husband knew how to do a lot of that stuff!!

 

[tango]

I wish my husband knew how to do a lot of that stuff!!

This particular work is easy, it's just about figuring where I want the ceiling vents to be located and checking the space above for joists, pipes, cables etc. It's not particularly difficult, it's just about figuring where I can cut a wide hole without crossing any joists. Wires and pipes are easy in those parts of the house - there are none.

A lot of the other stuff I do is as much about understanding principles as it is learning specific details. Most of it is stuff I've taught myself and figured out as I go along. Before I start a job I figure if it's something I already know how to do - if it is then I can get on and do it. If it isn't I figure out what my backup plan is if I start and get out of my depth, when the options are either leave it unfinished until I can figure it out, or leave it unfinished until I can pay someone to finish it. If neither option is acceptable I'll pay someone to do it. An example of that is plumbing work - I can do a lot of it myself but if I hitting a problem on a particular job means we don't have a working bathroom that's a risk I'd be wary of taking, so I'd probably pay someone to do that work. Alternatively, if it was an option, I might start the work but make sure I have an extra shut-off valve so I can isolate the section I'm struggling with and turn water back on to the rest of the house.

Then there are the things I consider far enough above my pay grade that I'll just pay someone to do. When I had my new breaker panel put in I don't think I was legally allowed to do the work but even if I was it's a big enough job that needs to be done in a short enough time I just paid a local electrical contractor to do it.

 

[tango]

Sprint repeats today, and it was a bit hotter than I'd prefer for sprint repeats. Today I struggled to maintain the target speed, although for most of the repeats I didn't miss the target by very much. I had to delay a couple of times so I wasn't sprinting all-out downhill, although that meant a modest incline for a couple of them. Thankfully I missed out on the steepest climbs for the sprints, which is always handy. One in particular is quite steep and has a curve and every once in a while some idiot comes round the bend too fast, so that's not an ideal location for a sprint even though the hill is steep enough to make my system work hard.

One good thing about sprint repeats is that the suggested workout gives me longer to recover between them than I really need, so on a hot day it's not as hard as it might be. When I figure my own repeats I don't specifically work based on time as heart rate and terrain. Once my heart rate comes back down I'm ready to sprint again, and I tend to choose the inclines to sprint because the point is that they are hard work so I might as well make them count.

 

[tango]

My chest strap is officially dead.

It stopped responding the other day. I checked the battery and it's still got a good voltage. When I went to put the battery back I noticed a small piece of metal had broken off from somewhere. I couldn't even see where it had broken away from, or I could have soldered it back into place to at least try and salvage it.

So now my chest strap is in the trash and I'm looking for another one. I like the look of Garmin's models with running dynamics built in.

 

[tango]

My suggested workout for today was at a threshold pace, which I didn't feel like doing as my legs felt like they were made of lead. So I went for a walk with the intention of gently jogging the easier sections. In the end I walked for a mile, jogged half a mile, walked half a mile, then jogged most of the next four miles.

My pace was nothing to write home about but today was just about covering the distance.

 

[tango]

Today's suggestion was a threshold pace run. Curiously it only wanted three 8-minute sessions at threshold pace and equally curiously I was able to exceed the suggested pace even with the presence of hills. Parts of it were difficult, not least maintaining the pace up a gentle incline into a 20mph headwind, but the recovery times gave me all I needed for the next section.

I was within a quarter mile of the end of my route before I got to the 10-minute cooldown stage, so added a loop so I had chance to do the cooldown. I really didn't feel very strong during the warmup stage but once I got into the tempo of the faster pace I found it easier than I had expected. It seems I can maintain a faster pace than I think I can, so maybe what I need to do is more speed repeats where I look to hold a fast pace for maybe half a mile at a time.

 

[tango]

My shiny new heart rate chest strap arrived today. My wife wanted to walk so we did our walk around town at her pace. I wanted to test out my new strap - it has a built in Running Dynamics pod, so monitors things like my ground contact time, vertical oscillation ratio etc. I didn't have a lot of time due to other commitments so I went for a run that was much shorter than normal - 2.5 miles - and decided to really push the pace hard.

I was pleasantly surprised at the pace I managed - even going up the hills I was maintaining a pace I didn't think I'd manage to sustain. I got beeped at a couple of times because my pulse went over the alarm level I set, but only at the top of a hill so it came down again quickly. I considered extending slightly because I was easily on track to set a personal best for 5k but the only route options that would have given me 5k involved a couple of extra hills that I didn't really want to deal with, so I stuck with my original plan.

 

[Lamb]

I'll be working on getting my garden going today now that this last frosty morning should be the last threat of frost. It will be a good workout bending down to pick up the plastic I have covering the area, then I need to get the temporary fencing put up before beginning to plant. I have my soaker hoses that I need to lay out as well and get everything hooked up and ready to go.

 

[tango]

I'll be working on getting my garden going today now that this last frosty morning should be the last threat of frost. It will be a good workout bending down to pick up the plastic I have covering the area, then I need to get the temporary fencing put up before beginning to plant. I have my soaker hoses that I need to lay out as well and get everything hooked up and ready to go.

That's harder work than you'd expect, until you actually do it. My wife would often spend time tinkering with her plants and comment how tired she was. I thought it was pretty easy work, until the first time I tried it. Totally different muscle groups to anything I was familiar with exercising. And, as you say, lots of bending and stooping can be more effort than you'd expect without doing anything else at all.