Day 49 - Week 8 Commences

Rest is Best...

This week is going to be a weird one. All of my classes are in the afternoons and evenings, which leads to only mornings being free to train. I will endeavour to make sure I get at least one of my normal daily workouts, and I'm certain I will make up for it at the weekend and into next week....

I clearly needed to recover from my ride yesterday, even though I'm not sore, my body needed to replenish itself...I therefore slept a little longer (through 2 alarms in fact!). I still hauled my butt out of bed, rocked up at the gym at 0745h and trained until 0900h.

Back Day

Monday is "back day", so I pushed through a relatively quiet 60 minutes. This week I have decided to continue with core development, and increase strength work - basically to be an alround strong triathlete, I'm gonna need to train for it, and that includes adding endurance workouts (not just endurance cardio). I'm achieving this a slightly different way. I am increasing the number of sets I perform on each exercise, and trying to maintain 8 reps on each, until I have loaded to a max set of 4 reps. In addition to this, to enable the longer endurance on my muscles I am incrementing the weight increase each time, by a smaller amount. This is allowing me to run around 5 sets of work, ending up at (or close to) my normal finishing weight. I have noticed, however, that this is very hard to do... So, this week should be interesting!

I worked pretty hard in barbell rows, deadliest and lat pull downs. I added some isolation exercises, then did a particularly long set of declined/leaning rows. I completed my back session with high, medium, low single arm rows using the cable crossover. By the time I got to this I was feeling really strong, and managed 3 sets of each side, on each level, using 15kg. After this I closed out using the rope to row and tweak my back using 15kg, but going slow for 3 sets of 8.

As usual, I finished with abdominals. I did hang knee crunches,  and overhead holds interchanging to reduce rest time to zero. I then did a similar activity with leg raises, knee lift crunches, farmers walks and obliques using 20kg disks (for the walks and obliques).

Freestyle Training

After a strange, but interesting day, we were let go at around 1730h - which was pretty cool. As we leaving to go for dinner Mr Peds asks "are you going to dinner, or dya wanna train tonight?"...to which, without thinking, I said that I would prefer to train...after eating lots of snacks (healthy snacks of course) in class today, it felt like a good idea. We decided on a swim, so I quickly grabbed my stuff and we headed to the pool.

After thinking about it for a while, I jumped into the pool (which felt cooler than usual) and so did Mr Peds. He was 'planning' a quick 100m then a 500m swim, initially... I just said that I was going to try and go as far as I could using only freestyle!

I wasn't very warm, so the first 10 laps felt like an eternity on my aching arms and legs, but as I reached the end of 500m I started to drift into a focus-zone (or meditative state) that allowed me to think/mantra: "...1, 2, 3, Breathe.... 1, 2, 3, Breathe...." and before I knew it I was at 20 laps. My first kilometre out of the way and behind me, I decided to push for 2km. At the 1500m mark I decided to make that 3km.... at 50 laps I thought, Nah, I can do 4km and thats the stuff of Ironmen, like IronRay! 

With that as motivation, and trust me IronRay is highly inspiring to me, coupled with the sight of Mr Peds zipping along beside me, pushing just as hard (if not harder) than I was, made me stay focused  to make the 80 laps. I normally get to 2km of pure freestyle and start to keel over. Today, I was driven, inspired by Mr Peds, thoughts of IronRay's recent Ironman success, and the possibility that I might actually make it through this swim. Mr Peds stopped at 3km, good job buddy! He did some laps with the pool buoy, so I hope his shoulders are now burning as much as mine are!

I completed the last 20 laps in the pool, by myself. Yet another relaxing end to a dreary Cerberus day!

80 Laps, 4km in 02:00:57, which is an average pace of around 30 min/km, and a the icing on the cake is the very pleasing 1422 calories burnt! I'm pretty pleased with that effort! Now I need to build swim speed, with more speed sessions, so I can improve upon it! Oh, and this was my first time to 4km with freestyle only! Strangely enough, the only areas I am remotely sore are my abdominals (why is this?) and my shoulders (which is obvious)....

I can never seem to wash the smell away....

With my swim session over, I decided to rinse off and head home. I now plan on relaxing with a yummy bowl of Steaming Quinoa, Raw Spinach and a beautifully Smoked Salmon fillet! I'll also enjoy my Casein shake before bed tonight. I've even earn a glass of 'Nudie' apple juice it! :)

Determination

To me the real thing about this whole process I'm going through, 49 Days in, is that to be consistent, to Just Freaking Do It, to be satisfied (and the rest); I need to have real, focused Determination. In my mind, and really that's why I write this blog (to unload my thoughts each day), determination is the will to keep trying, to set a goal and smash it. Its knowing your limits and pushing yourself, safely beyond them each and every day. 

Rewind to pre 2000, When I used to kick box, remember the good old days Mr Mouldie, I used to say that to deliver a good hit, sometimes you need to take a few to get inside their guard. I took a lot of hits, but I'm not an ice sculpture, not made of glass. If on the first try I got knocked down, I got back up (cue the Rocky soundtrack) and I tried again....and again, and again until I did succeed.

So fast forward now to today, I still live like this. I push, push a little bit more and keep pushing until I get what I want...Soreness is a sign that I'm trying hard, but I'm good with that - I'll sleep easy knowing I woke up with determination, and kept the intensity all day and now I sleep satisfied!

Don't just half-arse it, bloody well do it. Get stuck in and keep going, even if it hurts a little. Break your Personal Bests and keep doing it. Goodnight.