Wednesday 4th March
I've been slacking on the diary front, which isn't great as I want to keep a semi-record, at least, of my progress! So I'll include Monday to Wednesday in this one...oops!
Monday was an awesome workout: hill running pre-gym - four times up and down this wicked local hill, then some abs and weights (legs) and then 7000m row, pretty good pace. Had an hour session with Kane the gym instructor and we ran through the octathalon (boo did the same time exactly as last time! 15 minutes 50 secs) and also did some killer supersets (shoulder work), lat raises and front raises combined. Also did the arnold presses and they are awesome, really hurt the whole shoulder area. So my shoulders were well worked after all that and I recall my legs really burning at one stage.
Tuesday was a bit of a relaxing session. Shoulders and whole body aching nicely this morning. Did the 9 a.m. workshop with Kane and we did boxing, pressups and squats with weights as a circuit. Ran through three times I think roughly. Then some planks. Did my 5000m row at not as good as I could've pace and then called it a day as pretty tired today...
Wednesday was completely, amazingly, aboslutely freaking fantastic!!! Am still buzzing! Wheee! Did the 9 a.m. workshop with Lewis and we did major ab work (gym ball crunches, side planks, front planks, floor crunches with the ball, etc - 7 different abdominal exercises three times through), then I went straight to spin for 45 mins and then had half an hour's break (to neck some coffee, a protein bar and some energy tablets) before the killer octathalon training session for an hour...It had me tired, endorphinated, sweating, swearing, laughing, enjoying, pushing myself harder than I have before I think and so many other things in one. I have to say I have had killer sessions, but this one was the BEST by far, so far. We did five of the eight sections of the octathalon - bike, row, sit ups, step ups and bench/chest press. There were five of us there and three personal trainers. Nice to see another woman there (Becky the runner was there, but that was to be expected as she does all the challenges with me), so I now officially have competition for the women's cup course, which is the heavier weights and more sit ups than the club course. Whoo!
Warmed up for 2 minutes on the bike at level 3 then 2 minutes on the rower damper level 10 (by warm up I mean sprinting as fast as we could manage) then we did a minute on level 6 as hard as we could go on the bike and an even harder sprint on the rower for a minute also. We then did step ups (two box steps on top of one another) with 6kg dumbells for a minute then sit ups for a minute (as fast as we could go) and we repeated this 3 times. Then we did a minute on the rower then a minute doing bench presses with 20kg three times through. I think we had a two minute break or so to catch out breaths as we did not break between the sections except to change with our partners. Then we ran through the whole thing without the bike section as hard as we could of each of the aforementioned exercises a minute each. We might have done more stuff, but I cannot recall, I just know we were all sweating, breathless and really enjoying it!
And then we did the most amazing stretches, with our partner's body weight pushing our legs and pulling them up for the quads. By the end of it I felt like I was ready to go again, all the lactic acid was gone. The run through and the stretches helped with this.
THEN I did my 7000m row in a really good time (pace was up there all the way through today) and even managed to sprint the last 500m (I had Vito the tough man champion rowing next to me as pacer, he is AWESOME!) Then I managed to run half way home and then decided to walk. The weather was great (sun sun sun) until this avo when it sleeted about 3.30.
I always say if there is energy left to sprint after a long row and to jog home, I have done well.
SMILING big time now. Yes those goals are getting closer. Even looking for 5km runs and 10km (Bristol 10k in May after the octathalon) runs to do between now and the half marathon in September (the main one will be the race for life in July most likely). There are also training workshops every month to prepare for the half marathon...
If I were younger I'd give you a run for your money, nex, heh heh!!
