Inspiration

This has been discussed previously in this blog, but I do have one very important and defining characteristic: I'm lazy.

This makes for an interesting dichotomy for someone training for marathons and doing P90X.  It's a constant mental struggle to just workout instead of playing video games or run a bit instead of sleeping, when I have to work a lot it certainly doesn't make it any easier.  I still do a reasonable job but I need to do better...and I will.

The only real reason I keep myself doing it is simple: my wife is awesome.  She can wake up, do some P90X, drive to work, work all day and evening and come home.  Then she will go running with me, clean up, fix lunches, hang out real quick and go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.

I don't think I need to break down my day, but I will for the sake of fairness.  Wake up, maybe do Abs, head to work, come home, play video games, consider doing P90x, run if Mel is running with me, few beers, video games (assuming I'm not in classes), go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.

Personally, I like my way better...but those little caveats of me working out during the day wouldn't happen if my wife wasn't so amazing. So thank you Jean-Jacket Woman (tm), you make me a slightly less completely lazy and incrementally better man.....and no one else could.

Story Time

Before I became the road running monster that I am today, there was a time when I didn't exercise much. I know it's hard to believe there was a day when I wasn't mercilessly pounding the pavement, but I had more important things to attend to at the time (I'm sure anyone who reads this blog can guess).

Prior to getting married, I was still in the mode where we actually try to impress our partner, called dating.  My wife was going to run the half-marathon in Nashville and I said to myself...I used to be in shape, how hard can a half marathon possibly be?....so I said, "Sure I'll do it, I'm an idiot" (paraphrasing).  Now, there was still a few months till the race, so I had time to prepare and I swear I had every intention of doing so, but instead I chose to continue to attend to the aforementioned important things and maintained the status quo. I did knock out one solid training run a couple days prior to the race, that was maybe 2 miles.

We get to Nashville the day before the race, head to the Expo and get our race packets, which was an insane madhouse and then hung out with Mel's family, had a nice Spaghetti dinner, etc. etc.  After everyone else settled in, my future wife and I decided we would just go out for a quick beverage and then come back and go to bed.  As I'm sure many of you can relate to, this simple beverage magically multiplied exponentially and we found ourselves back at the hotel around 2:45AM, with a wake-up call at around 5:30.  Solid preparation.

Woke up a few hours later and I was still "feeling the effects" of our late night shenanigans, so I was still happy and felt decent heading into the trip to the race.  This feeling crashed and burned as we jogged to the race start and I knew we were in serious trouble.

I threw up by the sidewalk prior to the race start and people looked at me like I was crazy, but I'm sure they just thought it was nerves.  We found our place in the corral and I just started laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.  When that gun went off I had no idea what I was in for, but I knew I was going to try and approach it as slowly as possible.

Everything started reasonably well, the first couple miles went extremely slowly, but I completed them without too much trouble....then I fell off the proverbial cliff.  I was an absolute mess...my body began shutting down mile by mile.  First it was the side cramps, then the hamstrings, then my calves tightened up like baseballs.  I was eating jelly beans and drinking water, but it was no use.  When we reached mile twelve my wife's father tried to coax me into running again so that we could finish before they shut the race down probably...I slowly started my weird hunchback of Notre Dame herky-jerk run style and shambled my way closer to the finish.

The crowd was roaring as I neared the finish and I spotted my nemesis...an at least 85 year old woman who was ahead of me. I picked up my shamble to a trot despite basically having Lieutenant Dan legs at that point in my last ditch effort to best the near-centenarian.  There is actually photo evidence (I'll see if i can find it and post it) of me doing a sprinters lean across the finish line and still losing to this fossil by a half step.  Adding insult to injury, I injured my side doing when I threw my arms back in the sprinters lean.

Final Time: 3 hours and 59 minutes. Blazing.

Moral of this ridiculously long post:  If you are going to do a race, even if you don't compete, train.  If you are going to do an endurance competition, save the celebration until afterwards, or be prepared for a soul crushing period of time that takes at least twice as long as it should.

Core Synergistics and a Pep Talk

So you think it's an off week.  You really only have two real workouts, both being Core Synergistics.  You start off streching and warming up for an extended period and then think you can take time off and have a relaxing workout.

Wrong.

If you do it right, Core doesn't mess around. It works nearly your entire body in some capacity and is typically one exercise after another. Crazy pushups and stupid banana/supermans.  Bottom line, don't shrug off the rest week.

So, on another topic, some of you that follow this blog supposedly will actually be getting entries via email now, as I added you to the list.  As far as I know, my good friend Mauzy is the only one here doing anything related to P90X anymore, besides him Matt may be the only one actually exercising.  Since I haven't been blogging to motivate you, I blame myself. Now that I am going to be blogging again, you have no choice and no excuse but to get back at it and take care of business.  Partying is a legitimate use of free time, but most of you are probably just throwing your time away doing other worthless activities when you could be getting healthier, feeling better, looking better and getting absolutely shredded like me.

Start doing sprint triathlons or running races to give yourself a goal.  If actual competition isn't your thing think about the sweet, sweet ladies (or guys) that will be far more attracted to you.   Think about how having diabetes would really suck or just keep in mind that if you drink 4 days/nights a week minimum maybe you need something to offset the havoc wrecked upon your body, so you live past 40. (Unless being old doesn't appeal to you, but seriously, if wearing sweatsuits out to dinner at 3:30PM, speaking complete gibberish to children and stealing anything you want doesn't appeal to you, then I'm not sure I want to know you).

Either way, start getting healthier and you'll feel better about everything, I'll see what I can do to help.

Significantly Delayed Post/Review

To say I fell off the blogging wagon is an understatement.  I'm not going to post any excuses, I just didn't feel like writing anything down, but I might just get back at it, so I thought I would provide some information I promised in my last post 7.5 months ago.

Before I get to that I will say that I am still doing P90X and training for marathons.  During my blogging hiatus I ran the Phoenix Rock 'n Roll Marathon, then stopped exercising for a bit, but I'm back at it running and rockin' P90X as well getting ready for the Seattle Rock n' Roll marathon on June 26th. P90X helps a great deal for marathon training and would help even more if I was a workout monster like my awesome wife.

I mentioned in my last post that I had just gotten a pair of the Bowflex Selecttech dumbbells (52.5 lbs variety) and I would give a review shortly.  I told the truth about the dumbbells, but lied about the time frame.  To preface my editorial, no...I do not receive money from any company to endorse any products, but if they saw the pair of cannons I have attached to my shoulders and my sculpted abs, they would probably be lining up.

Not much to say really, these dumbbells have been phenomenal.  They are vastly more effective than using bands, they take up very little space, are easy to adjust and provide a great workout.  I wholeheartedly recommend them...stop paying for a gym membership, get yourself P90X and work out at home with these...unless you made the ridiculous mistake of manufacturing miniature versions of yourself and then maybe work out at the gym to escape the hell that is your life for a few minutes a day (just kidding, Matt).  The only real downfall is they are quite wide, so they can be a bit awkward on a couple exercises where yours hands are close together, but that is a minor nitpick.

Anyway, no promises, but I'll try to actually add meaningful updates here on a regular basis and maybe add some more recipes to the blog in the near future.

Starting Fresh

Now that I have my new dumbbells, I am starting fresh today. I was only 2 weeks from completion of the program, but I'm not really worried about that. This isn't something I am going to do and then just quit, so restarting really doesn't matter. After midweek I'll give a review of the new dumbbells, but so far, I'm loving them....

On another note, yesterday I watched like 13 hours of RescueMe with Mel. Which is completely against the P90X lifestyle, but it is an awesome show.

Resistance Bands with P90X Review

So, as I stated in my last post I purchased the Bowflex Selecttech dumbbells yesterday after using bands for P90X for about 14 weeks. The red one snapped, but that was just a little more motivation along a track I was on anyway, that is to get actual dumbbells.

The bottom line is simple: dumbbells are superior, but bands can certainly serve a purpose. They are far more portable, much, much cheaper and perhaps slightly safer if you don't know what you are doing. Honestly, if you haven't exercised for a while and don't know if you will stick with it, I would recommend definitely dropping 50 bucks on bands before shelling out $400 on a set of dumbbells.

There are certain workouts which are unwieldy with the bands, especially on the second set of workouts and then there are some that are basically impossible (Damn you back-flys). Also, regardless of whether you use bands or weights, you certainly need a dedicated pull up bar.

With the large difference in weight between the beginning and the end of the lift with bands, it can be difficult to get a full workout, because it seems easy at first but becomes very hard to finish reps. The highest end of the lift has all the added resistance and it's just harder to gauge then weights. Also, it's very hard to document exactly how much you lifted from week to week since a slight variation in foot placement can change the resistance significantly. Perhaps you could document more, but I don't want to write a dissertation about my foot placement between every exercise.

To reiterate, the bands are a great starter tool to get you back into exercise and are certainly recommended for those who want to make sure the program is right for them before financially committing themselves heavily. I will continue to use the bands occasionally for certain exercises, but I am excited to get my dumbbells and the prospect of a more complete workout.

The Price of Perfection

In my life there are some costs associated with fitness, but presently there is one cost in particular that is worse than the others: $400.

That is the cost of Bowflex Selecttech 552 dumbbells. Mel, with her Samson-like strength obliterated our red band over the weekend. For a while now I have been considering it, but it just seemed like too much of an investment. Now that I know I'm sticking with it (and my wife has participated as well) it doesn't seem as unreasonable. It will be a better workout and make some impossible exercises much easier to do from a form standpoint.

As far as the workouts, I've been pretty solid. The San Diego trip delayed me a bit, but I'm rockin' out week nine currently and feeling pretty solid about it. I'm much stronger than I was at the beginning of the summer and feel pretty good in general. My running will be increasing, so I will no longer be doing Plyo until the marathon in January. That leaves me with the three strength training workouts a week. Still solid, I might take it down to 2 closer to the marathon and run 4 days a week, cutting out legs & back. Not too much though, legs and back has really helped by muscular endurance while running, something I hope will help me decrease my marathon time significantly this time around.

I'll be updating again from time to time, no promises on regularity, but stay tuned for some new diet and exercise tips from my wife. Oh and a quick shout-out to my sister, who ran her first half-marathon this weekend in Chicago and is still standing....congratz.