Re: Notjake11 Summer Cycle (Part II) - Bring On The Venom
Sorry for the delay in updates. A combination of having a hectic week and a cold that kicked my ass meant a little less motivation to spend time writing as what little energy I had was being channeled into my job and my workouts. However, I've got quite a few cool things to report:
Workouts:
With the cold, I took Wednesday through Friday off from doing any cardio at all. As I mentioned in my last full update I also took Wednesday off from lifting after both giving blood on Tuesday evening and feeling the onset of the cold. However, I still got all five of my workouts in. With this being the last week I am going to do the Easy Strength program I didn't want to ruin my perfect record of getting them all in. Additionally, with it being the end of the program I decided to test my max bench yesterday and see how I would do (more on this below). Even though I am not fully recovered from the cold yet there was no way I was going to miss my weekend run. Saturday is the only day I can usually get out and do a trail run so I went and did one of my regular trails that is about 5.5 miles. I usually finish somewhere betweeen 50-52 minutes and with the cold I was just hoping to break an hour. While the cold did affect my breathing and my wind I was surprised to see that I finished in 54 minutes. After that I went to the gym and did my lifting. Because it is the last workout before moving into a 5x5 program I did it as a transition - same exercises as I have been doing for Easy Strength with pretty light weights but I did each for five sets of five instead of just 2x5.
Diet
As a general rule this is one of the areas I have struggled with, especially the last two weeks. My "cheat night" has turned into cheat weekends the last two weeks. While I have still made substantial and visible progress, I know it could be much better. As a result I have tightened it up quite a bit and have eaten clean all week, including Friday night and so far today. The plan is to just have a small refeed day tomorrow when I'm with my son (he picks where we eat dinner and we're going to a movie so I'll have a reasonable dinner and share a box of candy with him - no other cheats this week) and then no cheats at all until I have him for Father's day. All in all I've averaged out to 2275 calories a day this week with over 295 grams of protein a day.
Cycle
I think the tren is starting to kick in. Each of the last two nights I've woken up at 3:30am and have been unable to get back to sleep for an hour or so. I usually have no issues with getting to sleep or insomnia of any sort so I assume that's where it's coming from.
2013 Goals
At the start of the year I posted a thread here that included my goals for 2013:
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/m...r-life-notjake11-my-2013-journal-1048083.html
More specifically, I listed five goals that I wanted to accomplish by year's end. Given where I started I thought the goals were pretty aggressive. I accomplished one of them pretty early on - to run my first ever half marathon (longest I have run in the last few years before the start of the year was like 3 or 4 miles). I hit that record in late February when I not only ran a half marathon, I did it at a trail race after two and a half days of rain.
Another of the goals was to bench 315 pounds. The last time I was able to put up that much weight was 13 years ago when I was still in law school at the ripe age of 24. At the start of the year I was able to max out at 260. I figured 55 pounds would be a pretty aggressive goal for the year. Oops. As I mentioned above I tested my max on Friday and not only did I put up 315, it went up smooth and steady. I probably could have done 320-325 but didn't want to push it too much. I'm going to be running a 5x5 starting Monday and will test it again mid-July (have a bet with a coworker who just hit 315 for the first time last week to see which of us can put up the most).
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