All you can eat Stec

Hitting new PR’s all the time.  Almost every day is a new PR.  Make sure to go to my website, eugenefitnesstraining.com and on the workout of the day it is a sort of journal of people me and people working out with me.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had very few days that weren’t PR days.

Still not down to 10% bodyfat, but thats not as important to me as performance.  Sure it would be really really nice to have an awesome 8 pack without that little bit of fat on my side back, but PR’s are what I want.

It seems like my diet is really dialed in to be seeing so much performance, but not getting the bodyfat lower.  Once I stop seeing gains I’ll have to adjust it some more.

So it’s been quite some time before I posted a blog.  I’ve got some HUGE improvements in my benchmark workouts, so I thought I would post whats going on:

Max pullups - 27 (up from 21)
Fight gone bad - 275 (up from 225)
Cindy - 18 rounds + 9 pushups (up from 17 rounds)
Linda aka 3 bars of death - 42:36 (first time doing it as Rx’d)
L sit hold - 60 seconds (up from 42 seconds)

Improved from:                          Improved to:

15 round cindy 11/12/07                17 round cindy 1/10/08

non-Rx’d Diane                          10:12 Diane 1/2/08

10 Ring Dips                                12 Ring Dips

0 Muscleups                                1 Muscleup 1/17/08

HUGE accomplishment today!  I got my FIRST MUSCLEUP!

One of my major goals for 2008 and I already hit it.  The past two weeks I’ve been going to gymnastics class, and today I pulled a coach aside and asked him to help me get a muscleup.  Sure enough, my grip wasn’t ‘false’ enough.  But it still was hella hard and I could only get one.  I tried many times after that and all I got was blisters on my wrists!

So I’ve decided I’m still going run, bike, lift - and do all that other stuff, but I’m taking it to another direction:  Crossfit.  I’ve been doing some research and this kind of thing is really what I want to do.

Here’s some things that piqued my interest from their website:

" CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning           program for many police academies and tactical operations teams,           military special operations units, champion martial artists,           and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.

"Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general,           and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival,           many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average,           punish the specialist."

And another part that was very interesting from the website:

"CrossFit is in large part derived from several simple observations garnered through hanging out with athletes for thirty years and willingness, if not eagerness, to experiment coupled with a total disregard for conventional wisdom. Let me share some of the more formative of these observations:
1. Gymnasts learn new sports faster than other athletes.
2. Olympic lifters can apply more useful power to more activities than other athletes.
3. Powerlifters are stronger than other athletes.
4. Sprinters can match the cardiovascular performance of endurance athletes even at extended efforts.
5. Endurance athletes are woefully lacking in total physical capacity.
6. With high carb diets you either get fat or weak.
7. Bodybuilders can’t punch, jump, run, or throw like athletes can.
8. Segmenting training efforts delivers a segmented capacity.
9. Optimizing physical capacity requires training at unsustainable intensities.
10. The world’s most successful athletes and coaches rely on exercise science the way deer hunters rely on the accordion."

So I’m going to give it a shot.  It’s like a big wormhole:  There’s so much information and workouts — they do everything different — and I am not nearly the shape to finish the workouts anywhere these guys do, but they say that they have old men doing it so I’m going to give it a stab.  I’m going to learn as much as I can -

This really looks like the direction I want to go.

I’ve got good news and bad news.

Good news is I’m taking Wed, thur, Fri off work for vacation.  Bad news is its going to be difficult to go to Utah with my wife’s extended family and still eat healthy.  I fell off the boat right about our last trip down there two years ago and I’m not going to do the same this time.  I understand that I’m going to have to be semi-flexible about eating unhealthy food but I’m going to have to draw the line, and I’ve had awkward situations in the past with turning down a dessert turning into a personal attack.  Whatever.  I’ll do my best.

So the plan is,
Monday:  Lift Morning, head to medford, exercise bike after work
Tuesday:  Run (Interval Training{4×1200@7:01/mi with 1:30 rest intervals)
Wednesday:  EARLY flight to utah, Lift in the late afternoon with Mark
Thursday:  Run (1 mile warmup, 3 miles@ 7:46/mi, 1 mile cooldown)
Friday:  Lift with Mark + some other type of cardio…  Maybe tennis or something
Saturday:  Run (7 miles @ 8:16/mi pace)

I’m not going to track any food this week (along with the last half of last week), but I’m going to make a stalwart effort to keep my protein/water high, stay away from useless calories, and eat every few hours.  Ugghhhh going to be hard with these folks.  My wife doesn’t think so — I guess we’ll see.

Some numbers from the last two weeks, hopefully people can swing by and leave comments on what they would do to change.  I am cutting slowly as to not lose muscle, 3 lifting days/week, and 5-6 days of cardio/week.
Avg Food Intake:                             Avg Calories:
Cals:  2622                                                 Avg Calories burned: 3,032  (according to fitday)
Fat:  73 (25%)                                         Avg Logged Activies/day:  514
Carb: 293 (42%)
Protein: 206 (32%)

And the result?
No change in weight
2% Change in bodyfat (not always accurate, calipering myself) from 16-14%
1.1" increase in chest size
No change in arm size
-.8" hip size
+.1" thigh size
-2.1" shoulder size
-.3" waist size
Running is improving
See my bodyspace for picture changes…

These aren’t bad results and I’m generally happy about ‘em, just the question is,  is there anything I can do to get the results faster?

I’m really going to step it up a notch this week. I need to be in Bend Monday and Tuesday night, but other than that I should be able to stay home and crank it out.  Since I PR’d with my 10k I am upping my ‘FIRST TO THE FINISH’ 5k training program to run an insanely fast 5k on my birthday (6 weeks away)!

Monday: Lift morning, Exercise bike in bend hotel
Tuesday:  Run morning Riverbend park trail in bend, {20m warmup, 10×400 6:46/mi w/ 1:30 RI, 10m cooldown)
Wednesday:  Exercise bike morning in bend hotel, Lift After work
Thursday:  Run {1 mile warmup, 4 miles @ 7:46/mi, 1 miles easy}
Friday:  Swim morning, Lift After work
Saturday: EARLY RUN : 8 miles @ 8:16 mile pace
Sunday:  REST

Going to be an insane week.  Going to up my calories a beyond 3000 keeping as healthy as I can and drink plenty of water.

Overall not a bad week - didn’t do cardio on Monday to make my rest a bit longer, and I skipped working out alltogether on Friday to get ready for my 10k.  (posted below)

Here are the stats:

Food intake:
Calories/day: 2490
Fat % - 22
Carb % - 45
Protein % - 33

Exercise:
1:20 of lifting (2 sessions)
30 min of stationary biking (1 session)
Nearly 3 hours of running (4 sessions) (Around 18 miles) - Click below for the stats.
http://www.runningahead.com/profiles/3227956200f1439cb3152f66bdbd0773

Today I ran my 10k in Junction City, oregon.  I was pleased to find some old freinds, Mark and Sarah Agsten from Roseburg.  Mark asked if I was going to keep up with Sarah and was like LOL.

Anyways, my shins were a bit sore but found that a mile warmup and stretching helped quite a bit.  At the start I’m usually tempted to run WAY fast - and then the rest of the race turns out awful.  I just had to keep telling myself, "run your own race," and kept a pace of 8:00/mi while everyone flew by.  I finished with a pace of 7:51 so I kept to my goal pace (and a bit faster) the entire time.

One thing that was cool was for the last few miles I ran with this guy and we motivated and pushed each other to the finish.  Its nice to have someone there to push you while feeling the same amount of pain.  At the end of the race some older guy came up to me and thanked me — he was right behind me and said I motivated him through the last mile and a half. Runners are so nice!
Most importantly, I know what I can do for the next race and I’ll be even more prepared.  It was 11 bucks and a Saturday morning well spent!

Stats of the race –
Place: 183
Division:  Age 25-29
Div/Total:  14/26
Time:  48:44
Pace:  7:51

And some Garmin stats:
Avg Heart Rate: 162
Max heart rate: 176
Avg Speed: 7.7mph
Avg Pace: 7:49
Time: 48:37