Sunrise Run

Instead of a cross-train cardio session today (like Insanity), instead I got up and did another run right at sunrise.  It was cool and a little windy, quite a change from our 90's and humid weather we've been having.  I saw one other person out running and about 10 cars - pretty peaceful on the loop around our house. 

I'm trying to be a little run focused for a few weeks because I feel like I'm lacking good run base. From what I've heard, the best way to get better at running is to...run.

Run

Sunrise runs are awesome.

After finishing Upper Plus this morning, I knew I still needed to get in a little cardio, so I left the house for a nice early morning run before church.  I didn't go very hard and I didn't go very far, but I got in a few miles and felt good about it.  Oh and the sky this morning was awesome. 

I think tomorrow we'll probably do some cardio intervals in the morning and then I'll try to run or bike tomorrow evening.  We'll see how that goes.

Upper Plus

Combat iso pushups...they hurt.

I'm pretty focused on cardio work right now getting ready for my next tri in two weeks, but I still need to get some strength work in to keep my muscles working.  Accordingly, I let Mrs. Gias pick the workout today and she wanted to do Upper Body Plus from the P90X+ series. 

It's an interesting workout because it's all time based, that is, you pick a weight that you can finish for the enitre alloted time, not the number of reps you need to do.  Normally, I'd do curls for eight reps and use enough weight so that I would be feeling it on the eighth rep and basically max out right there.  For today's workout, we did bicep blaster (curls) for 90 seconds.  To do 90 seconds of curls I had to significantly lower my weight and it still burned like hell at the end.

60 Minute Swim, 60 Minute Bike

Note fromThe Geek:  Yikes!  I've been gone a while.  Me and the family were out of town for a few days and then I had a monster few days at work in order to catch up and I just haven't had time for blogging.  That's not to say I didn't work out, I did some modified workouts while out of town, mostly CrossFit stuff, but probably not as much as I should have.  The good news is, I didn't gain any weight, the bad news is, I feel like a slacker...


I was back to my old schedule today, up at 4:30am and to the pool.  I spent about an hour swimming doing some ladders for warm up and 500's for my main set and then a cool down.  I swam the 500's on the 7:15, which is an average right around 1:27/500, which I am happy with given my lack of hard swimming practice lately.

My story from the gym today is a similar one that I've told before, but my after talking to my father in law earlier today, he reminded me of a Seinfeld episode that was especially relevant.  Everybody's seen the Yada-yada episode.  In it there is talk of the "Jewish workout" (Seinfeld's term, not mine) where a guy goes to the gym sits in the sauna for 30 minutes and leaves.  The allure is that if you sit in the sauna for a half hour you sweat a bunch and lose 3-5 pounds.

One of those guys was at the gym this morning.  Of course it's all water weight and you could get the same effect by just not drinking anything for a few hours.  Whatever.  There was a guy who got there at 5am and say in the sauna for thrirty minutes and then left.  He literally got up early to sweat out water and then go back to whatever he was going to do this morning.  Weird.  I wonder what would happen if I asked him to jump in the pool with me and do a few laps.

If finished my swim and headed home for a bike ride.  It was hot and humid again, even though it was just a little after 6am.  I rode the course I would be on for my next triathlon which is around Shawnee Mission Park Lake.  The sun was coming up as I was circling the lake, it was beautiful.  It would have been better had I not been sweating like a prostitute in church.

Stretch

My legs are more sore than they have ever been.  More sore than after a triathlon.  More sore than after Bun Shaper.  More sore than after Plyo Legs. 

Straight up...sore.

Crossfit squats yesterday kicked my butt and my legs are not recovered.  Time to stretch.

Note from The Geek: I'm heading out of town with the family for a few days so the blog may be a little slow unless I find a computer to use.

CrossFit and Killer Abs

This is a CrossFit squat...maybe.

Today, I wanted to try something a little different.  As they say, variety is the spice of fitness (or something like that).

Fellow blogger Fitbomb has been talking about CrossFit to add a little functional fitness to his regimen.  I decided that Mrs. Gias and I should try a little something different so we are going to do one of CrossFit's "Workout of the Day" routines.  The one we chose was to do:

5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

Repeat 15 times or twenty minutes, whichever comes first.  The object is to go as fast as you can with good form.  Needless to say at the end, I was totally out of breath and got in a seriously good workout in the 13:11 it took me to complete the 15 rounds.  Mrs. Gias finished right on my heels at 13:20.  I know that we'll probably have to work on our form and try a few more workouts, but I think CrossFit might be a great new tool to add to our workout arsenal.

After we finished our first attempt at CrossFit and took a few minutes to recover, we threw in Killer Abs from Tony's One on One series.  I don't care how many times you done this routine, over 450 reps of ab moves still burns me up everytime. 

The workout today was quick, efficient and hit just about every body part.  I really liked it.

30 Minute Swim & 60 Minute Bike

Ooooh, wood grain laminte lockers...so luxurious.

I haven't been swimming much in the last few weeks, not because I didn't want to (who am I kidding, I've been slacking), but because my health club was renovating and the pool was unavailable.  It's opened back up now and I went in for an early morning (or late night, depending on what time you get up) swim.

I got to the newly renovated club a few minutes before 5am and noticed that everything seemed to have a fresh coat of paint and a few new pictures on the wall, it looks better than it did, but nothing too special.  They re-did the locker room with some wood-grain laminte lockers and refinished the pool deck.  Overall, a nice little renovation.

I hopped in the pool and started doing a little 500 yard ladder warm up.  Almost instantly I noticed that in the renovation process they also must have renovated the chemicals in the pool because the chlorine content was so high it practically made me choke.  Ugh. 

When they renovated the pool deck they either had some chemicals seep into the water or they jumped up the chlorine right after the renovation to make sure the water was clean.  Whatever the reason, it made breathing a bit challenging.  It was kind of like breathing really humid air that burned your lungs a bit.  Wonderful.

At any rate, I got through the workout and did about 1500 yards.  Man, it was hard swimming after not having been in the pool for a while.  I'm sure I'll get my groove back, but today felt like a struggle on every level. 

It was very manatee like, but with less grace.

I finished in the pool, hopped in my car and drove home.  I quickly changed into my cycling clothes and hit the biking trail right as the sun was coming up.  It was pretty cloudy, so I didn't get the full effect of the sunrise ride (which I normally really like) but it was still nice.  A little breeze but probably 60%-70% humidity so i was sweating like crazy.  Otherwise, the ride was pretty uneventful other than I felt pretty slow today.

I got home right at 7am and got to have breakfast with my girls.  Overall, not a bad workout for a Saturday morning.

Rant about Cheerios

I was at the store the other day and learned an interesting fun fact about Cheerios.  Everyone knows that there are different varieties of Cheerios, the two most popular being regular Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios.  The difference between these two cereals is pretty simple, they are exactly the same except that to make Honey Nut Cheerios, you take regular Cheerios and add a layer of sugar. 

To be clear, the only difference between the two is that Honey Nut Cheerios goes through an extra step at the manufacturing process to add an additional ingredient, sugar.  Using an extra ingredient and going through an extra step at manufacturing logically increases the cost of producing Honey Nut Cheerios...right?  So that would mean Honey Nut Cheerios should be more expensive at the store...right?

Wrong. 

For reasons passing understading, Honey Nut Cheerios are actually cheaper than regular Cheerios.  This is problematic for at least two reasons. 

First, regular Cheerios are significantly better for you because there is literally 11 times more sugar (11g vs. 1g) in Honey Nut Cheerios, this is practically a no brainer; 11 times more sugar = worse for you.  Yeah, everything (including sugar) in moderation is OK, but why does anyone need this extra sugar? 

Second, the only logical reason Honey Nut Cheerios are cheaper seems to be so that parents buy the cheaper cereal (which is clearly more expensive to produce) in hopes that their children will get addicted to the sugar content and eat more than they should, forcing the parents to buy more cereal, thus making up for the extra cost in increased volume of sales. 

The business strategy seems to be tricking parents into buying the cheaper product, then using sugar to encourage children to gorge themselves on sweetened cereal so their parents have to buy more.  Is it any wonder that there is a childhood obesity epidemic in this country?

P90X Shoulders and Arms

Oh, you don't know this move, it's called, "Light headed Geek should take a break and know his limits."

It was my turn to choose the workout this morning and I wanted to do a tough upper body workout.  I decided to go old school with P90X's Shoulders and Arms.  This video is right at 60 minutes and it is tough. 

According to my logs, we haven't done this workout since January.  It was every bit as tough as I remember it.  It's 15 exercises repeated (30 total) going back and forth between Shoulders, Biceps and Triceps.  I like this workout because I can lift heavy and always feel spent at the end no matter how many times I do the workout. 

That's the great thing about weights, they can always get heavier.

Today I got through about half the workout and started feeling light headed; which isn't a new experience for me.  It happens when I workout hard.  For whatever reason I start huffing and puffing or muscle up an extra rep and I'll get a little dizzy. 

Only today it came back after every move.  It started to get quite annoying. 

Mrs. Gias: Do you need to pause the video and get a drink?
Geek: Maybe for a minute.
Mrs. Gias: 'Cause it looks like you do. Pansy.
Geek: Love you too.

Nothing better than marital banter at 5 in the morning.

Insanity Core Cardio and Balance

Look ma...I can fly!

Back in the saddle.  It's been a few days since we worked out, but first things first...Mrs. Gias ran in Hospital Hill on Saturday and she did GREAT!  She PR'd on a humid day and on probably one of the toughest half marathon courses around.  B & G, my inlaws and I all cheered her on and had a blast.

As for the workouts, yeah, I've been slacking.  Mrs. Gias was tapering last week and I decided to taper with her even though I didn't have a race...it was basically just an excuse to slack off for four days.  The other problem I've had is that I've been eating like an idiot lately, sneaking a soda, eating pizza, throwing in a hamburger when I took my girls out for lunch.  Was it non-stop junk food?  No.  Was it more than I should have had? Yes.  I desperately need to work out, eat right and get back into a routine.  It's only been four days, but geez, I feel like I'm falling down a hole and worried and can't come back up.

That's why this morning's workout, even though it's not the most intense, still felt great.  We built up a bit of a sweat, I had a sensible breakfast and felt much better about myself today.  We'll workout again tomorrow and the next day and I'll get my rhythm back...I hope.

40 Minute Open Water Swim

At the Kansas City Triathlon I had a terrible open water experience.  I decided that if I was going to do more triathlons I would need as much open water practice as I could get.  Luckily there's a lake about 10 minutes from our house that does open water swims Tuesday and Thursday evenings (after Memorial Day so today was the first one).

It was pretty cool because there were probably 50-100 triathletes that showed up for practice and they had bouys set up a few hundred yards apart and you could just swim.  There were enough people there that you had to do a little swimming in traffic, but not so many that you had to worry about really getting smacked in the face too much, which was great. 

Long story short, today was a great open water experience.  I worked really hard on sighting, swimming straight and keeping an even ryhthm.  I think with a few more practice sessions I'll be in good shape for my next race in July.

Core Cardio and Balance

It's like I'm a more awkward version of Ralph Macchio doing the crane.

T-minus 4 days until Mrs. Gias's Hospital Hill half marathon.  She's in her taper week and wanted to do some low-impact (nothing tricky on her knees or hips) cross training so we settled in for about 40 minutes of Insanity.  It got a nice little sweat going and the minimal amount of jumps we had to do were pretty soft.