Couch2Boston

  TL;DR I'm much happier than I look here.  lol. That's me trying to smile through the coordination needed to selfie us in public while standing. Note the publish date, better late than never? The beginning of the end Chicago2Boston "Training Plan" What Happened? May vs April 😢 Can we just skip this part and move on? Amount of time training is down 22% (11:22 to 8:51 per week) Training volume is about half of what it should be by now. Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 28 to 16 miles 🚨 I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice, just like April Body Weight?  Who knows. Let's start off with happier things... The Good News The month of May felt like we emerged from a cocoon at the same time as our other butterfly friends, both new and old.  It was wonderful to break out of the bubble and connect with real live people.  The internet is awesome and all, but there really is nothing better than being able to conne...

 TL;DR I give you, my faithful underappreciated reader(s?) a rabbit.  Enjoy. Note the publish date, better late than never? What training log? Got shot (twice) Registered for Boston Marathon 2020 fall edition Still a cranky ass, um I mean glute Be humble, stay healthy continues What Happened? April vs March Amount of time training is down 7.5% (12:17 to 11:22 per week) Includes run, bike, weights and yoga Average weekly run mileage has regressed from 29 to 28 miles I'm still struggling to get my longer runs up, but did make it to 10 miles twice Body Weight is down from 230 pounds to 225 pounds What month is it? This month feels like it had 91 days, and it kinda did.  After the change last month where I took on more responsibility at work, I feel like I've been doing sprints every day while sitting at my desk.  Despite the extra effort, I managed to hold my own and got a lower but similar training volume in during April than I did in March.  However, in the proce...

TL;DR Body still healing, feels better Training more Running longer Optimism stole my credit card Heavy lifting is starting to suffer Day job Warning: Too many puns contained within What Happened? It is hard to believe that another month has gone by already!  It has been a bumpy 31 days, but a good 31 days. At the end of February, I rediscovered that when my glute starts to complain that some easy pedaling on the bike makes it feel better.  I rode that knowledge into a productive March.  Ha!  Rode!  Get it?  Yeah, I'm sorry, please don't give up and stop reading.  No more bad puns. I managed to ride twice in February but have gotten on the bike 18 times in March.  The rides are typically limited to 30 minutes on a dumb trainer (no Zwift) and at an effort just hard enough to work up a sweat.  I'd like to think that I'm getting some more endurance by adding these rides after runs, and I probably am, but the biggest consequence is that they make...

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...

Power Block 50 Problem The Power Block 50's are convenient because they let you adjust the dumbbells from 10 to 50 pounds in 5 pound increments.  That makes for a lot of weight in a small footprint as long as you need a 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 or 50 pound weight.  The problem is that sometimes a 5 pound jump in weight is just too much in a dumbbell.  For example, going from 25 to 30 pounds is a 20% increase in weight.  What do you do when that is too much?  With the right tools, some steel and some magnets you make a way to adjust them by 2 1/2 pounds instead. The Solution - Attach Steel with Magnets

Let's face it, most of us with a running or a triathlon background know that we should spend more time lifting weights or at least doing strength exercises more than we do.  With the horror show that 2020 was it created the perfect circumstances to really throw myself into something new to see what would happen, so in September after Can Lake 50 was cancelled and I no longer found peace with running I stopped in favor of something completely different.  Weight lifting 😱 This shift didn't come out of nowhere.  In November 2019 a friend Jake introduced me to the weight room at the Y.  At the time it was a way to do some preventative maintenance to get my body ready for the stress of trying to tackle  The 444  and during that part time first foray into lifting  I learned a lot from him and saw some nice gains, but with all of the interference from swim/bike/run at the time it was different than the most recent time around. In the 12 weeks from mid Se...

If something is worth doing, then it's worth overdoing, right?  Right?  I like our garage gym setup but I couldn't really see what I was doing.  It might not help me to see what I'm doing, but it would be nice to try.  lol.  With the window directly in front of me and no good place to store a movable mirror it seemed like a good time to try something silly.  There was room for a TV on the wall.   Maybe I could just mount a TV under the window and hook it up to a camera?  I'd have to look down (spoiler: or not), but that wouldn't be too bad.  Hey, what if I hooked it up to 2 cameras (spoiler: or 3)?  Then I could choose between a front or a side view.  That would be cool.  A mirror couldn't do that.  Take that stupid mirror!  A chance to do something ridiculous?  I was sold. The following has me squatting 295 pounds simultaneously recorded from three different perspectives.  I'm far from perfect but bein...

I'm pretty lucky.  I've had a 300 pound set of weights in storage for about 20 years now, so when I finally got around to focus on lifting heavy sh!t I already had a key part of the home gym waiting to be used.  I live in an old house and the basement is really more of a crawl space so finding a place that I could use the weights was going to be a challenge.  Really, the only place that had potential was in the garage but I didn't want to give up any workshop or parking space to weight lifting. After some head scratching and time walking around the garage looking like I was lost, I settled on a spot near the door going into the house.  The spot had been a catchall area for shoes and such so the challenge would be to see if I could build something out of wood that would fit in a 24" x 48" area.  I drew some inspiration from folding racks like the  ETHOS Folding Wall Rack  but with nothing like it in stock anywhere at the time, I was goi...