Break Out the Gloves

Today was a 5 mile run and upper body weights day. It was a great day, even counting the failures.

My legs felt great—I felt great—for the first half of the run. I think incorporating weightlifting has been really, really good. Unfortunately, somewhere around the turnaround point in Crissy Field I started getting gassed. The headwind was pretty stiff on the way out, and while it keeps you nice and cool, it makes things a wee bit tougher. I was looking forward to enjoying a tailwind helper on the way back, but unfortunately it wasn't quite enough to help me finish the whole 5 miles. I ended up walking the last 600 meters or so.

Weaksauce.

Really, I was gassed and I was dragging, but I could have done it. I wasn't sore, I wasn't injured, and my body was able to finish. My mind just gave out. I chickened out. Wussed out. Weak.

This has been a problem for me for the last few months. I just gotta get my head in the game, and I believe the weightlifting is really helping. This stuff doesn't happen over night, and now's when I'm putting my time in to make it happen.

Weights went well, too. Well, sorta.

Bench press is an old buddy of mine, and I took today as an easing-back-in day. I took it light: 1 warm up set with just the bar, then 3 sets of 8 reps @ 95, 115 and 135. Easy peasy.

Pull-ups went as badly as predicted. I'm reasonably strong, it's just that I'm too damn heavy right now to rattle off a bunch. Or, for that matter, one. So after some attempts at the bar, I did 3 sets of cable lat pull-downs at a high-ish weight, and in the process tore the bejesus out of my delicate little hands.

As it turns out, guitar fretboards, laptop keys and Mac trackpads don't build the type of callouses you need to do pull-ups. Next Wednesday I'm breaking out the old weightlifting gloves. In the meantime, @LosBee will be pleased to learn that my wedding ring is now permanently embedded into my ring finger as a result of my workout today.

Pretty much the same thing happened with still dips. I did 3 sets of maybe 4-5 weak little dips, but I didn't go down far enough for it to be a true workout. This will change over time as well.

So, some failures, but all of a very encouraging sort. I now know where I need to work and have a mark to grow from.

As a side note, The Art of Manliness was nice enough to cite Hella Sound today in discussing music for working out. While I didn't necessarily agree with Cameron's selection of music, I think it's a great topic. The comments got pretty brutal, though, and things got a little rough in there. Hats off to Cameron, tho, for putting together the post. His home blog is frequently one of the most insightful and thought-out personal blogs I know of.

We also posted a nice little interview with Steve Speirs on Hella Sound today, the man who brought us the One Hundred Push Ups Challenge that everyone and their brother is doing. He's a super cool guy and it was fun talking to him.

Image courtesy of Georgio on Flickr