Week 3, Day 1 - Arms and The Fat Man

I met Bryan Shelbourne, my personal trainer, for lunch yesterday (now the day before yesterday) to review the training and chew the fat, so to speak.  There was much talk of reps and recovery, schedules and goals.  It's good to have someone keen and interested in your progress.  You've got to be one determined mother funster, with no other distractions in your life, to do something like this on your own, so I'm very glad he's there.

He's training for a half marathon at the moment, and distance running is something he's not done before, so I was glad to turn the tables, as it were, and offer some advice and support.  As an ex professional rugby player he's not the ideal shape for distance running so I was able to draw on my own experience of lugging a hefty body over long distances ( he - hefty muscle | me - hefty blubber ).  The support came in agreeing to go on a 10 mile run the next afternoon.  I prefer to run in the morning and me and d'missus have only just got back up to 8 miles or so, but he said it would be slow and I'm always up for a challenge.

To add to the daily slog, I wanted to tackle the new gym session for week 3.  Press-ups and dips had been replaced with flies and curls and toe touches had given way to heal touches.

I warmed up and stretched as normal; set the timer to 30 seconds and rolled out the ball of torture for 3 reps of 30 secs with 30 sec recoveries of the plank.  My stomach muscles were starting to get warm and trembley as I finished the last rep - 30 seconds on my knees then back into plank position and - roll the ball out in front of you a little, 1, 2 then back - roll out again, 1, 2 then back.  By the 10th rep my upper stomach muscles were burning and trembling again and by the 3rd and last set my lower back muscles were also joining in the arson.

The change of position on the ball, onto my back was brief relief for 30 secs and the first few crunchies, again held for a 2 count, didn't feel too bad, but as I completed the last set of 10 reps I was blowing through gritted teeth - 1, 2, 7 - 1, 2, 8 - 1, 2, 9 - 1, 2, argh!

Heal touches seemed like blessed relief but 3 sets of 50 started to take a toll on my side muscles.

Now for the arm stuff...

As I mentioned above, Bryan had replaced tricep exercises with those that work the bicep and chest.  I also noticed that the recovery time between some of these sets was longer than the usual 30 seconds.

First up were 3 sets of 10 flies done on the ball.  I allowed myself a little more time than the recovery time after the heal touches to sort out how I was going to do this.  I've got quite a big garage but I'd parked the car a bit far forward and I found that trying to balance on my back on the ball whilst waving 9 kilo weights around was endangering the bonnet of my pride and joy.  A bit of careful manoeuvring soon found me slowly flapping between the workbench and the paint tins, a warm ache developing in my pec's.

That done, I sat up and, after the requisite time, moved straight into the shoulder presses.  I must have the ball pumped up quite high as I find I'm wobbling about a fair bit whilst doing all of these things.  That's the point, I suppose.  Like Pilates, you're making small adjustments all the time which gives your core a good all round work out.

The next set of exercises, Bryan had down as 21s.  This, I was told at lunch the day before, is a series of bicep curls done in 3 subsets of 7, hence 21.  The first 7 are from full arm extension (180°) to 90°, the second go from 90° to 0° and the third from 180° to 0°.  This was to be done 3 times and as I had the 9 kilo dumbbells in my hands already, I was ready to go.

"9 kilos may be a bit heavy...", I'd been told.  "...you may want to use the 5 kilo dbs you have.".  WHY DID I NOT LISTEN?  I'm sitting here typing this, unable to straighten my arms fully and having had a bloody awful night's sleep trying to get comfortable because of the pain on the inside of my elbows (is there a name for that part of the body?).  It's amazing how your body allows you to do something that you will sorely regret at a later date.

This stupid act of macho bravado with weights was probably compounded by 10 mile run later that day.

The Run...

It had been raining, on and off, all day.  Brief dry spells were interspersed with showers of fine drizzle and heavy downpours, but the net effect was the same - you got wet.  Very wet.  Add to this the unseasonable temperature of about 20° C and you may understand the kit selection quandary in which I found myself.  Should I go for the Gore-Tex waterproof (or 'boil-in-the-bag' as a friend of mine calls such things) or something thin, shower proof but not too hot, or do I brazen it out in just a technical tee?  I opted for the '...but not too hot' kit and trotted off to meet Bryan in town (we would join my wife en route).

I can't say I'm that keen on running in the afternoon and the 1.5 miles into town were run with leaden legs on cast iron snow shoes.  A quick stretch and Bryan's steady pace soon eased my body into accepting what I was asking it to do and before long I was into a hypnotic rhythm that didn't feel like exercise.  By mile 3 we had all stowed our jackets and at the turning point (this being an out and back route) there was little point in putting them back on.  A combination of sharp showers, sweat and tree shake had contrived to make all 3 of us soaked to the skin but we happily plodded on, swapping horror stories of great sporting injuries we had known.

My wife parted company with us so that she could run straight home to avoid getting too cold on the warm down, if you follow me.  B and I continued on to the point where I'd started measuring the route he'd suggested.  As I feared, it wasn't quite 10 miles but we were both happy with the 9.3 we'd covered in 1:33:20.  My quads were starting to complain a bit but nothing like my arms are now.  That'll teach me.

As you may have guessed, dear reader, I'm taking today as a rest day before I punish myself any more.  Besides, it gives me chance to churn out this drivel so that no one can read it.

Ahh, the catharsis...