Couch2Boston

patience, Patience, PATIENCE, PATIENCE!!! February was interesting, more than anything it has created a renewed focus on trying to grow my patience. What hurts? My butt, err I mean glute and my elbows.   The elbows continue to improve and have been helped a lot from PT exercises suggested by a friend and now also a Theraband Intermediate Flexbar that was suggested by a coworker that has a lot more experience than I do. To find out about my backside, keep reading or run away now :-) Squats In January, I played around with changing how I squat weights.  Instead of increasing the weights, I kept 185 on the bar for every set and worked at getting my depth as low as possible for me.  The experiment, plus a natural inclination to stand up lopsided led to a sore left glute, a literal, pain in the ass.  By the end of the month, I also started to have some mild kneecap pain.  The knee was no big thing, but it was new so when February starte...

I'll get it out of the way right now, I kinda like the treadmill.  It's a useful tool.  It isn't the same as running outside and depending on perspective that is what makes it useful or a horrible abomination. The 1% Rule Just about every article online that compares running on a treadmill to running outside has to then layout the same old, tired position that in order for treadmill and outside to "be the same" you need to set the treadmill incline at 1%.  Seriously, did the authors of the gazillion articles in the last 25 years ever read the original study?   Almost every fitness article that asserts we should all run with a 1% incline misses the main points of the 1996 study that is the source of the 1% rule. Point #1 - The scope of the study was to compare the "energetic cost" of treadmill vs outside running. What does "energetic cost" mean?  They used gas analyzers, similar to a lab VO2Max test to discern how much oxygen was being used to...

Once I had an epic fail at  The Empire State Marathon  I was hooked.  I no longer wanted to go the distance once to check the checkbox and move on.  I wanted to learn everything I could about marathoning from any source that I could find.  I couldn't fail twice.  I needed to be as over prepared for this race as I was under prepared for the last attempt. (Note: This was written in 2021 for posterity, but I've tried to tell the story from a 2013 perspective) The full story can be found here way back in April 2013.

Yoga is part 2 in a 2 step program to try and be a better human .  Part 1 was lifting heavy sh!t and was detailed a couple of months ago .  I've been pretty committed to the swim/bike/run stuff over the years, but the, um, uniqueness of 2020 and 2021 has presented the opportunity to embrace those things that we all know we should do but often never get around to. Yoga is something that my wife Amanda has done forever.  As a matter of fact, way back in 2012 when I got up off the couch and started running?  Amanda had months earlier started getting out of bed early to do yoga.  She was the first one in our family to commit to improving her health with exercise.  At the time she tried to get me to join her and I resisted.  I'd rather stay in bed than get up early to exercise or whatever yoga was.  Amanda repeatedly asked very nicely over the months, but I was intransigent.  I appreciated what she was doing for herself, and I appreciated what sh...