Judebert

Today is strength day, so I hit Wii Fit again. I've reduced my workout considerably: push-up challenge, in-between exercise, jackknife challenge, in-between exercise, second shot at push-up challenge. I need the second round of push-ups to exhaust my muscles. But I figured that if I had to do more than 100 jackknives this time, I wouldn't have the core strength left for a second push-up challenge. So I moved the crunches to the end.

I did two more push-ups than usual, managing 15. And I only had to do 100 crunches.

The trainer admitted I was the champ right off the bat. That was a little ego boost. It didn't last long, though; around 20, I was wondering if I'd even managed to do it the first time. Around 30, I was ready to give up. But at 50, I had fallen into a groove; my body was responding pretty well, my breathing was becoming regular. I was happy to reach 100 and see the trainer quit, but I felt that I could've gone on.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. It hurts whenever I move. Yoga didn't help. I took an ibuprofen; I am so thankful for modern medicine!

Judebert

My abs are a bit sore from yesterday's 100 crunches, but I went running this morning anyway. It was cold -- for Florida. I know folks up North have it a lot harder, but they should be prepared for it.

Monday was cold, too. Then, I wore my sweatshirt and sweatpants to keep warm. By the time I had finished 2K, I was too hot for them. I dropped the sweatshirt off at the house and kept going.

So today I skipped the sweats. I was a little cold, but by the time I hit 1K it wasn't a problem. Then I rounded the corner onto the main road, and the wind hit me. It was like running uphill! And it made me wish I had worn the sweats.

By the time I got home, my shins and calves were really tight and sore. I had an ibuprofen, a banana, and a hot shower; they helped out a lot.

Tomorrow: another 100 crunches? More than 13 push-ups? We'll see!

Judebert

Today my Wii trainer pushed me through ONE HUNDRED CRUNCHES in a row! She does "Jackknives", which have her folding up really far; I don't fold that far, so I lift my feet about 12 inches while I crunch my torso up about the 18 inches. Then I hold it until she lets me release.

It wasn't as difficult as I expected it to be. I called Eri to come look for the last couple of repetitions, and she was suitably impressed. Luckily, I had already finished my 13 pathetic push-ups, and she left before I went back for my second try. I only made seven more, but my arms now feel like wet noodles afterwards. I don't know how I'm going to lift my arms to program today.

I wonder what the Wii trainer is going to try for the next Jackknife Challenge?

Judebert

Well, that wasn't so hard. I used GarageBand to increase the tempo of my running music to 150BPM. It still seems just a tiny little bit slow, but it's definitely runnable. In fact, it kept me going the whole way!

GarageBand also helped me to fade nicely between tracks. Now I know when to walk, when to run, and the music keeps me in stride. The only problem is that I jumped into the Couch to 5K program in week 3 (because the intervals matched mine pretty closely), but it isn't running the whole 5K yet. I had to start over at the beginning, and that's a 5-minute warmup. And of course, Nike + iPod doesn't have any way to fast forward in the current song (it can only skip to the next song).

Now I just need to find more useful music. Jamendo has a lot to look through. I'll also have to check out ccMixter.

Still running around 45 minutes for my 5K!

Judebert

Today I tried out an interval mix I made myself using GarageBand on my Mac Mini. I used freely re-distributable songs at 110 BPM and 145 BPM (because I couldn't find anything at 150 BPM). I figure that way I can podcast my mixes if anyone else is interested; I have a deep-seated belief that my apparently-weird pacing is because I'm over 6 feet tall.

Anyway, it turns out 145 BPM is bearable, but still a smidge too slow. My knees were taking a bit of a beating. But the music was fantastic! I'm going to speed it up rather than replacing it. I'll use Audacity if I have to, but I'd really like to do everything on one machine.

The Couch to 5K program is just a little too tame for me. I'm already doing the full 5K in intervals. Maybe I should turn my one big song into a bunch of little interval songs; that way I could mix up the playlist to include the Couch to 5K intervals, followed by my own.

And it would work beautifully on the Nike + iPod program!