August 4:
I'm really glad I took the opportunity to rest over the weekend. I feel like due to the bike riding, I could possibly use a little extra rest for my triceps since they seem to take a lot of the abuse of supporting the weight of my torso on these multi-hour bike rides I've been taking, but I guess it won't hurt too bad if I just start in to the push ups tonight. No sense in putting it off any more. And if I stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine, then I get two whole days of rest on the weekend. Well, resting as well as I can supposing I ride my bike over the weekend. Which supposes I'll find time to get it to a bike shop and have my tires replaced. I wonder... is it like a car where if you replace one, it's safer to go ahead and replace them both? I think with the distinct lack of crumple zones on my bike, I'll opt for playing it safer and replace them both.
Push ups: 30 then 22 then 22 (the last few are getting tough, and) then 20 (wow, I don't think I can pull off the max-out set, but I'll try and) then maxed out at 20. Trying for 21 had me collapse. Rested about 2 minutes between sets, for a total of 114 in about 11 minutes. 114. That's getting up there. I missed the max-out targets for all three of the days in week 3, so I think I'll just repeat it. Days 1 of week 3 is only 99 pushups in about 6 minutes. I'll keep a positive outlook for Wednesday, AKA week 3 day 1 redux. Hopefully with this slight step back, the max-out targets are more within reach.
Chin ups: Exhaustion test. I did 9. Not too shabby. 300% of my original in about 3 weeks. I can live with that, assuming I don't think too much about how far I seem to be from what I used to be able to do, much less the current goal of being able to do 100. Doing 9 consecutive chin ups qualifies me to start from column 2 in week 1. Column 2 of week one looks fairly tougher than column 1 of week 2. I hope the rest between sets allows for enough short term recovery to hit all the targets. I'm not fond of repeating weeks.
August 5:
Kettlebell. 3 circuits from Kettlebells the Iron Core Way. No ab stuff. It's important to note that I'm not skipping the ab work because I can't do it. I just don't want to. Not only have I done enough ab work in the past, but I really, really don't want to smear my sweaty self all over the floor. Once again I forgot to find a towel beforehand. Also, even as recent as a month before Matthew was born, when I was doing my boxing workouts, I used to do several minutes straight of crunches. I first aimed for 3 minutes, but after a while that wasn't a challenge any more and so I tried to see how many minutes of crunches I could do. I think I lost count after 5 minutes.
On a side note, it's too bad that every other week or so there's an exhaustion test. It's also too bad that I need to rest for at least a day after the exhaustion test. Why? Because for the rest of the program, I'll have no way to know what the heck day of stuff I'm supposed to be doing on any given Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. This is due to the fact that I've decided that those are the only days I'll be doing this stuff, and the exhaustion test will get a day of its own. Which will throw the schedule a little out of whack each time the exhaustion test comes up.
It used to be easy - Monday? Sure! Day 1 of whatever week. Friday? You bet! That's obviously day 3. Now I have to search backwards through my training log to figure out what I did the last time, and then cross reference it with the website to see what's supposed to come next. So that's an unexpected benefit of keeping this log - some degree of organization and a reminder (if not at least a way to figure out) what's coming next. But it's a pain.
