Monday’s have unofficially been dubbed a “running day”, and after taking both Saturday and Sunday off to heal up after a pretty wicked leg day on Friday, I was ready to get after it.

The plan that was bouncing around in my brain was to do 3-4 miles of steady state running at a decent pace (for me), but my so called friend wanted to join in on the fun and add a little bit of excitement to it: stair runs.

So we settled on a compromise, and after doing a couple miles on the treadmill, we headed over to the beautifully ghetto/majestic (depends on what block you’re on) Church Hill. There, I was greeted by a great view of the city….

Which was quickly followed by a terrible view:

We did a couple rounds up the stairs, which sufficiently winded me, after which I told my buddy I’d see his stair runs and raise him an 80lb sandbag carry…. He was not happy. I’m pleased to report, we both manned up, and made the trek up the stairs with the sandbag across the shoulders. There was absolutely zero running involved. I’m fairly certain if I tried to run up stairs with a sandbag on my back I’d end up with a fraction of the teeth that I currently possess.

Anyway, great workout, and one that I think I’ll bring out of the arsenal more often. On top of the cycling and normal lower body lifting days that I’m now working with, adding this in should kick my quad strength up a few notches… At least that’s the idea.

Good news Team! I think I can officially say that the saddle has been remounted. Last week I lamented a bit about my fitnesshood being all out of whack due to change in workout routine, venue, scheduling, etc. But I think that’s all behind me now as I joined my alma mater’s gym and gave it a shot at my normal time of 5:30ish after work. It was a tad crowded, and I’m not going to say I’ll “never” have to wait for anything, but it was certainly manageable and they have much, much more equipment than my local Golds Gym.

Oh hey... There you are. Let's do this thing.

Which, by the way, is starting to suck pretty hard. I’ve actually been a big fan of Gold’s Gym over the past 4 years or so, but in the past several months I feel like our local franchise isn’t taking care of business like they used to: case in point, it took me 3 tries to finally find a decent treadmill to use the other night. First one had some weird timing issue with the belt; the second one rocked back and forth viciously when I actually tried to run; and the third one was just right… I’m just trying to workout here, not botch a bastardized version of Goldilocks and the 3 bears, so I was less than excited by it.

Anyway, the workouts have been going off without a hitch, I’m making progress with my running, and feeling good about my lifting. And when things are going well in the gym, that means things go well on the blog. So expect some content to start flowing, because endorphins make me want to do awesome things.

I refuse to watch such a blatant chick flick as “How Stell Got Her Groove Back”, but if there’s a lesson to be learned from it, someone please lay it on me.

I think it’s time that I confess that I’m having a little bit of a hard time getting back into high gear. It’s not a matter of not wanting to, but trying to figure out the right routine and schedule. November of last year through August of this year, I’d been working out with a coach for all my workouts. This made my job the following:

1. Pay the man
2. Do what I was told

That’s it.

The man’s full time job is training athletes (with a few slouches like myself on the side), so I let him worry about what he was good at (achieving my fitness goals) and all I had to worry about was showing up.

Man was I spoiled.

So now that I’ve been released back into the wild, I’ll admit that settling upon that oddly comfortable grind or routine has been a challenge. I’m used to going straight from the office to the gym, and getting after it: never waiting for a rack, or equipment.

Now I’m back to the Gold’s Gym thing, and going to that place anytime during the week between 4 and 9pm is an exercise…. in futility (I feel like I could’ve done more with that).

Anyway, so I’ve been doing my running outside to build up the cardio slowly, and then lifting at Gold’s at night time, usually around 9pm. However, my body doesn’t seem real stoked about that schedule, and often times I find myself dragging my ass to Gold’s and not having nearly the workout that I’d had pictured in my head.

So today I joined my alma mater’s gym (nice and cheap) with the hopes of going there for all my triathlon and lifting needs, and am going to give the lunch time lifting thing a try. It’s literally only a mile from my office, so one would think I could pull it off if I dust off my old cutthroat parallel parking skills.

I hope this works out, because the Gold’s Gym thing at 9pm or later is really not working out. I’d like to be in bed about the same time I’m hitting my target heart rate. Not the ideal situation, and I need to find that groove again, to the point where I find myself at the gym at a particular time without even thinking about it.

Let’s make that happen VCU gym. Let’s make. it. happen.

aaaaaand we’re back.

I gave myself last week off. I hope you’re okay with that. We’ll call it a “de-load” week. I ate whatever I wanted, I only worked out once, and I didn’t write a single word for the blog.

So now that I thoroughly feel bad about myself for such a completely unproductive week, it’s time to get back on the horse. Not that I don’t think a week off here and there isn’t a good thing. I think it is, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. But any more than a week, and I start to feel like I’m making what’s supposed to be a healthy break into a bad habit.

So why the break?

Well since last November I’ve focused almost 100% of my physical exercise towards one thing: getting stronger. I hired a coach to train me week in, week out, and I’d say he paid off big time. I hit my deadlift goal in a couple months time, eventually hit my clean goal, and made considerable progress towards my front squat goal. Realized early July that some of my favorite lifting sessions revolved around the strongman style lifts, so went ahead and decided to give the RCSC 2011 a shot and made that happen a little over a week ago….

However, if you’ve read this blog for any extended length of time (probably just a month or two is enough for anybody for a lifetime), you’ve realized by now that variety for me is absolutely the spice of my fitness life.

So what does that mean? It means I’m changing gears again. My next two “events” will be the Tough Mudder (which I had to move from October to the end of February in SoCal, due to my jerk friend deciding to get married on the same day) and a triathlon. So I’m moving from focusing on strength based events to cardiovascular endurance type events. I figure training for a triathlon and a Tough Mudder simultaneously shouldn’t be too difficult, since the most challenging thing in each (for me anyway) will be the cardio.

However. The last thing I’m interested in doing is losing the strength that I’ve worked almost an entire year to build. Endurance sports are notorious for eating away at muscle and making men look Project Runway ready, and I’ve already got a metabolism and body type that shies to the leaner side anyway. So thanks, but no thanks.

What this means is, I’m going to continue to lift, and lift to get stronger. Not just for giggles, but keeping in mind that come next year, when the River City Strongman Competition 2012 comes around, not only will I do it again but I’ll be stronger than I was the first time.

That kicks things up a bit and mean I’m shooting for a pretty lofty target: expand my cardiovascular ability while gaining strength (and hopefully retaining mass).

How am I going to do it?

…I have no idea… yet. I’m pretty sure it’ll involve eating a lot of food, and being extra smart about the length of my cardio training sessions at any one time. But hey, it’s just the next leg of the journey. I look forward to doing the research on how to make this work.

Haven’t picked out the triathlon yet, and I don’t have a bike (which are damned expensive), but I’ll be sure to lay it on you as I figure it out!