My trip to the gym

Did in my plan to run this morning.  I went to the Y to do an ActivTrax baseline assessment and I got there early enough that I could do a little cardio to get warmed up, and to make up for the 1/2 mile a bagged on during yesterday's morning run.  Well, I hopped onto the elliptical machine, grabbed one of the programs and bumped the resistance to 5.  They say when running you should hold a stride count of 180 per minute or so, so that was what I went for.  The first few minutes I managed 160, then as things warmed up I pushed to 170.  At the half-way point, I only had 15 minutes plus a 5 cool-down to work with, I was able to hit 180.  I held it there for the remaining 7:30 and my legs were pretty gassed when I was done.  Final stats in the 15 minutes was 1.6 miles, so that makes up for my half mile shortage nicely.  But I still wanted to run this morning.



The assessment was interesting.  They wanted me to pick weights that I thought that I could do 15 reps with, but not more than, so I had to guess.  All I will say is that I am in SERIOUS need of getting up to the gym more often than never.  I had gone on Tuesday and had pushed a bit on all of the upper body machines and this was what they were primarily testing.  I didn't do so well, but at the same time, I am a runner not a weightlifter.

I don't worry about bench-pressing my body weight, or having upper arms that look like I could be a line-backer.  Not my thing.  Ask me to go with you for a nice little 8 miler at a comfy 10 minute pace, and we can chat the whole time about how weird body-building is as a sport.  Ask me to fire up the elliptical for an hour and just crank off some distance, no worries.  Tell me to do butterflies with 40lbs on each arm?  Yeah, not so much my thing.  Like I said, I really need to get up there more often and this little program is like making me my own personal trainer.  It has different workouts every day I go up there, and in addition to the weight work, it always has abs work to do.

I will keep you posted as to how this goes.  My goal is a bit of toning with maybe a little bulking up.  I'm too old to worry about looking like football player anymore, but I wouldn't mind not embarrassing my wife if I take my shirt off.

So, this morning when the alarm went off, my arms hurt, my legs were sore, and I was flat out tired.  I had wanted to go to bed earlier than I did, and that contributed to my blowing off my run this morning.  That's OK, I will run 10 before the kids get up tomorrow morning so that I can be ready for taking too many to see a movie and pizza for Number 2's birthday.