We both agree . . .

Gotta get over some blogging inertia, so here goes . . .

There're actually a number of things I could have been blogging about. We put in a little over 50 miles in one day a couple of weeks ago, so that's worth writing about. It was a tough ride, made tougher by the fact that rain finally hit about 3/4's of the way through. And as fate would have it, the hardest rain, where we got almost completely drenched, started about 5 blocks from home. A very slight amount of consolation was provided by the fact that the new bike at least has fenders: I guess we could have gotten very slightly more soaked had we been riding a bike without them.

Then, we did almost 40 miles about a week later and were also hit by some rain. But the rain was less intense and didn't last too long, so we dried out quite a bit by the time we reached home. That ride was not memorable for either the mileage or the rain, but rather for the intensity.

There was a rider ahead of us that I was determined to catch. It wasn't too hard to catch him, but he decided he didn't want to be passed and overtook us, riding harder to try and stay away. I wasn't about to let him out of our sights, so I kept chasing. We eventually caught and passed him again.

Now, that was an intense ride--it took a lot out of me. I'd say it was several days before I got fully recovered. This year it seems to me age is really catching up in terms of how hard I can ride and how long it takes me to recover. Or it could be that long-standing health problems, not the least of which is insomnia, are taking their toll. But I'm still at it.

But none of that has anything to do with the title of this entry--those are not things we agree about (not that I really checked, but . . .). No, the title of this entry refers to our strength training, and specifically to the alternate modified P90X we're now doing.

We've now completed a full, 4-week cycle and are two rounds into our second cycle. And what we (the wife and I) agree on is that the modified Power 90 routines we do are much more intense than the alternate modified P90X we do.

I've previously blogged about how I don't get nearly as winded when doing the P90X routines we use. That's because there are lots of breaks interspersed, meant, in part, to allow you time to write down reps/weight information. And as you'll note from previous blog entries, we don't record any of that stuff. So we use all these mini breaks for ballistic stretching and recovery.

I'm still sweaty at the end, but not completely winded as I am at the end of the Power 90 routines we use. No, I'm much more wasted after those--they provide much more of an aerobic workout.

I was really, really sore after the very first round of our alternate modified P90X this year, though. I think that was due largely to the fact that I'd not done any pull-ups/chin-ups since last fall. I think those are what got me really sore (I actually do the sissy variety, by the way, meaning assisted). The second cycle of alternate modified P90X did not see me nearly as sore for as long, though.

I'm beginning to miss our twice-weekly strength-training workouts. I'll probably keep up the current, once-weekly, regime throughout the summer, but am already looking forward to when we can go back to the twice-weekly schedule.

Benefits of missing workouts?

It must seem like I sort of dropped off the fitness radar map. Wow, over 2 weeks without posting! And in a sense, I did drop off the fitness radar map--or maybe I just flew under the radar for a time.

Here's the deal. I had to make a trip out east on short notice and, almost immediately on arriving back home, we were slated to take a short vacation out of town.

I knew we'd have to take a bit of a break from our fitness pursuits, but our plan was to minimize the time off. As anyone who's read a few of my blog entires will know, I don't hesitate to take breaks now and then--I think a healthy fitness regime needs to include breaks. Perhaps I differ from fitbomb--who seems quite manic about maintaining his fitness pursuits--in my philosophy on fitness.

But the break I had planned actually got extended by quite a lot. Had everything gone to plan, we'd have done our alternate modified P90X late last week and would have been back at cycling again today. But things didn't go according to plan.

The main hindrance was a canceled flight that was supposed to get me back home in time to start the planned vacation. Instead of getting in on that flight, I ended up having to take another that got me in almost 24 hours late. Thus, we started and ended the planned vacation late. Needless to say, fitness plans needed to change as well.

So, it's now 2 weeks since we did any strength training. Moreover, it will be almost 2 weeks, once we get back to cycling, since I've been on the bike.

I could say that's not good, but that doesn't really capture what I want to convey with this entry. What I want to convey is that we miss doing our fitness pursuits. Because of the increased break, we have a longing to get back to it. And I think that's healthy.

This highlights an important aspect of my own fitness philosophy, namely, that it's good to "hold back" sometimes. There should be times when you feel that longing to get back to fitness pursuits--sort of like the opposite of feeling that it's drudgery, which is a danger, I think, if your training schedule lacks flexibility.

Now, there is, of course, a danger to taking breaks from fitness pursuits. Breaks that are to long can lead to inertia: it can be difficult to restart your regimen after a too-lengthy break. But what is too long a break, and what is an appropriate interval to set aside fitness?

I assume this will vary from person to person. To summarize briefly, I think one must tread a fine line between being regimented and allowing slack in the routine. I am still in the experimental stages of developing my fitness routine, but so far the approach I've taken of allowing some slack has worked pretty well: we've sustained this for a little over two years now, and we show no signs yet of burn-out.

We hope to keep it up. So, the fourth session of our alternate modified P90X will come today, and we'll be back on the bike over the weekend. Officially I'm back on the radar screen.

Satisfaction of the early stages of attaining cycling form

Did another 30 miles or so today. I just want to comment on what a great feeling it is, having gone up a hard hill, or done some acceleration to catch another cyclist--legs burning with lactic acid build-up and breathing going at a good clip--to feel there's still more gas in the tank. In other words, you're putting out hard and it hurts, but at the same time you feel like you can sustain it and maybe even gear it up a notch or two. Compare this to early in the season when, once you reach the top of that same hill, you feel like it's all you can do just to keep your legs moving.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel some of that satisfaction now. Looking for an opportunity to up the mileage again, but it's doubtful we'll be able to do that soon--certainly not tomorrow. We'll be lucky to get in some short on-road mileage, and may even have to resort to the stationary bikes. Well, I try to take comfort in the fact that quite a few weeks of decent cycling weather lie ahead of us.

Second segment of alternate modified P90X (after a year off)

So we did our second round of our alternate modified P90X yesterday. This is DVD 3 from the P90X series. It was a lot easier than DVD 1 and, though I feel sore today, it's nothing like the soreness I felt after we did DVD 1 last week.

Why is that? One reason is undoubtedly the fact that exercises on this particular DVD are much closer to those we've been doing over the last year than are those on DVD 1. Probably most importantly, the pull-ups were absent from yesterday's workout.

Also, I've had some strange soreness in my left shoulder and may have injured something there (torn muscle, perhaps?). So I've been taking it very easy on exercises like shoulder flys and upright rows--which are the exercises that bring on the pain in that shoulder. I'm definitely doing some relaxed intensity in certain parts of these routines.

I also came to an important realization yesterday about the relatively low aerobic intensity of these workouts. They're much less aerobically intense than the shorter variants we've done over the last year or so, in large part because of relatively longer breaks inserted between exercises. These breaks are deliberately included as part of the routine's emphasis on tracking progress: participants are supposed to note down the number of repetitions and/or weight used after every exercise. That break offer a pretty good breather (though, for reasons I've discussed previously, I don't write down any of that stuff).

Anyway, DVD 3 has had a much less pronounced effect in the aftermath than did DVD 1. I'll be blogging next week about how the next DVD we'll do (DVD 9) feels after having had a long break from P90X.

On the cycling front, we could only do stationary bikes for one of our cycling days this week owing to weather conditions. The weekend looks to be nice weather though, so we hope to up the mileage.

Getting cycling-season conditioning back, feeling modified P90X effects

Went for about a 13 mile ride today. I'm finally starting to feel--after a total of probably a couple hundred miles on the road so far this year--like I'm getting my cycling-season conditioning back. By that I mean that I'm recovering much more quickly from short bursts of intense energy output (e.g., on hills) and the burning sensation in the legs that results from lactic acid build-up when I do those bursts is also fading much more quickly. I was very happy to have those sensations of quicker recovery on our ride today--yipee!

And on the alternate modified P90X front (I think it's about time for an acronym here: how about am-P90X?), it's incredible how taxing these exercises are. We did DVD 1 last Thursday and I'm still feeling the effects. In fact, it's only today that I can do normal activities like raising my arms above my head, reaching into the fridge to grab something, or listing myself off the floor or out of bed, without serious discomfort in my lats/chest/triceps. I do still have some pain there, even as I sit and write this. But it's finally lessening.

It was really bothersome on Friday and Saturday and was maybe a little better on Sunday. That tells you how taxing this routine can be. And this is coming from someone who has been doing some fairly intense, twice-weekly upper-body exercise sessions for the last couple of years. I expect full recovery before Thursday--in time for our next am-P90X session.

And, on the weight front I've dropped 3 pounds. Interesting to see, as I've observed previously, whether I'll get down around 200 again this year at the height of cycling season.

Hello again, P90X!

We did the first in a series of alternate modified P90X sessions today--DVD 1, chest and back, to be precise. A pretty grueling workout.

I can understand now why I found the Power 90 and Arm Toner routines we were doing to be a lot more aerobic than the modified P90X routines we were doing earlier: it's because I can actually pretty much keep up with the performers on those videos.

With the video editing they do for these routines, if you are able to pretty much keep pace with the participants, you should be pretty winded throughout much of the routine. See, they're not actually doing all these exercises in such quick succession. Instead, "takes" from various studio sessions are being spliced together to make the full video.

With the P90X videos the same construction obtains, but the difference is that I can't keep up on these. The participants are able to do quite a few more reps on most exercises than I can.*

This is especially true of all types of chin-ups/pull-ups. I'd say that at my best when we were doing our modified P90X more regularly last year I could do 4 unassisted pull-ups/chin-ups. Now, I can only do 1 or 2. So I do what I can, then switch to assisted pull-ups/chin-ups.

I can do a lot more push-ups, but not as many as the P90X participants (probably 25-30 from a "cold start?" - don't know, since I've never tried to "max out" from a cold start). As a result, breaks between exercises are a lot longer for me when doing P90X routines than they are when we do Power 90 or Arm Toner routines. Thus, I have time to catch my breath and the whole thing ends up being less aerobic.

A further question is whether I should be disappointed about not being able to do more push-ups and/or chin-ups/pull-ups--especially given that I've been exercising regularly for a couple of years.

My answer is that, no, I'm not disappointed. I know I'm working hard and I know my muscles ache for some days after these exercises. And I'm gaining muscle tone and perhaps some mass. Those--especially the first--are my primary criteria for determining whether I'm getting the right kinds of benefits from these exercises. Number of reps is a pretty secondary concern for me.

Your thoughts on this matter? Feel free to offer them.

* Later reflection: it's true that the P90X participants can do many more of certain exercises than I can, as I've said. I've also realized on further reflection, however, that breaks between exercises on the P90X DVD's are longer than the breaks taken on the Power 90/Power Half Hour DVD's--deliberately so. Part of what they're so obviously trying to stress on the P90X videos is, after all, the importance of recording progress; so they deliberately take time between each exercise for the participants to write down their results (how man repetitions and/or how much weight they used).

Farewell, arm toner phase

I've been pretty lax about making blog entries lately, but give me a chance to reform my ways.

It all started with a last-minute trip I needed to make out east to get the new bike: obviously, it's difficult more difficult to blog--at least for me--when I'm away from home. Then, I needed to reassmeble to new bike. Plus, I got sidetracked by some other matters.

But I am still here and am still doing fitness. Our cycling mileage has gone down a bit as we get used to riding the new bike: this past weekend, for example, we only put in about 40-45 miles. That should continue to go up steadily, though, with increasingly nice weather.

And we've continued with our twice-weekly arm-toner/strength-training sessions. Even when we had to make runs out of town for one or a few days. We either used equipment we found and made due that way, or brought our own.

And like other routines headed by Tony Horton, we've enjoyed the arm toner phase. In fact, I already look forward to the time when we can go back to it. But, as I've forewarned in previous entries, the arm toner phase has now ended.

Effective starting this week, we'll start our summer routine. This will mean a lot more miles/time on the bike, and correspondingly less emphasis on upper-body strengthening.

We'll begin the new phase this week, and it will involve doing upper-body strengthening only one day (instead of two) per week. But we will be doing a more rigorous upper-body routine on this one day per week: we're going back to the 4 upper-body P90X routines we were using last spring and summer.

I've decided to christen this new phase the alternate modified P90X phase. What we'll end up doing is completing our fourfold P90X upper-body regime about once per month, rather than once every two weeks, as we had done last spring. So, over the course of the cycling season we'll probably do the whole fourfold cycle 4 or perhaps 5 times

I haven't yet worked out how/whether our ab/core routines, which we currently do twice a week, will change. But I'll be posting about that soon. More later on that.

My excuse for a two-week hiatus

A picture's worth a thousand words, as they say, so below is (in part) my explanation for not having blogged for a couple of weeks:

To make a short story long, I had to make an out-of-state run to get this thing. Then there was assembly, test riding, and tweaking--the latter of which is still in process. I'll give a fuller report on the new acquisition later, but will just say for now that I'm mostly pleased with it.

On other fronts, we're slated to go back to our modified P90X routine--though this time with even more modifications--in about a week. More on that later as well.

35 mile day

It was nice yesterday and we had the time, so we put in about 35 miles. There was a strong wind, which made riding in a certain direction tough. And I wasn't exactly taking it easy.

I had the heart monitor on. During most of the ride my heart rate was between 150 and 160. I saw 173 at one point after we'd gone up a tough hill.

As a 51 year old, my maximum heart rate, according to some charts, is supposed to be 170. Well, I blew that one out of the water yesterday. And those who've followed this blog will know that I've seen much higher heart rates than that.

And sustaining a rate in the 150-160 range for the bulk of yesterday's ride--which took a little over two hours--should be impossible for someone my age according to that chart. Well, I survived to tell about it.

Not to say that I don't feel the effects of it today. No, this being the first 35 mile day of the year, I think I overdid it yesterday. I should've taken it a little easier. As a result of the muscle soreness/stiffness and residual exhaustion from yesterday, we did only a short, liesurely ride today.

But yesterday's ride will help me build up fitness. The next 35 mile ride will be easier on the body, even if I push as hard as I did today--at least if fitness in my sixth decade will work as it has throughout my life previous to this.

New upper-body fitness dream

I've wanted to try rowing since I was in my twenties, but never had an opportunity. Now that I'm looking into various ways of strengthening and toning the upper body, I've begun thinking about that again.

Wouldn't it be great to have a form of upper-body strengthening/toning that didn't require standing inside in a room and performing strenuous activity, but that allowed you to be out in nature while doing this exertion--at least sometimes? Well, rowing definitely fills that bill. Ok, so rowing works out your lower body as well; I'm not against doing some extra lower-body aerobics if it's complementary to my cycling, and rowing looks like it would be.

I did a little searching today to see what's available in terms of rowing possibilities where I live. There is a local club, but it seems to be geared mostly toward women, oddly enough. Plus, they use racing sculls and I'd actually prefer using something closer to a row boat or canoe. I also don't like the idea of going in reverse while you're trying to get a good aerobic upper-body workout: seems like a recipe for accidents.

Well, with some further searching I came across this:


There are actually a few different desgins/companies putting out this sort of thing. This design gives you essentially the same workout as you'd get from traditional rowing, but you face the direction of your boat is heading, rather than having your back towards it, as in traditional rowing. Incidentally, these are drop-in units that allow you to covert many types of boats into a forward-facing rowboat

This is exciting. I'd love to try one of these. Heck, I'd love to do something like this as my main form of upper-body fitness for most of the summer. But a few things interfere.

First, these things are not cheap. From what I've seen in my searches, you could easily sink 5 grand into a boat like this for two. With some economizing--like maybe by picking up a decent used canoe--you could spend maybe a grand or two less. That's still a pretty hefty price for yours truly.

But that's not even the main detriment. The main problem for me with this sort of fitness option is that I'm not very near any body of water where I could use it. At least not near enough that I wouldn't have to load the thing onto a trailer and haul it a few miles with my car. If I lived within a few hundred feet of a lake or river something like this would be more realistic. But hitching a trailer and loading an unloading a boat each time I want to go and do some upper-body strengthening? It's a bit impracticable, to say the least.

Then, there's the storage problem. Where do you keep your 15-18 foot canoe when you're not out on the water? For many people that would pose a problem, but for me it's an insurmountable obstacle.

But I'm going to keep dreaming. Who knows, maybe one day I'll live somewhere where owning and using something like this would be more realistic, or maybe I'll find a place where I could rent one on occassions when I wanted to do this?

It's an inspiring idea. I'll file it away in the category of great fintess concepts I'd like to try out.