Half way through boot camp!
And Coach Lindsay tried to kill us!
After 6 weeks, I finally decided I could do the sidesteppy thing in the dynamic warm-up, though I ended up getting lapped(!) as I tried not tangle up my feet.
After the dynamic warm-up, I paired up with Rahul and we tried to establish the most we weight we could handle. Rahul was pretty good at estimating: 70 lb on the dumbbell deadlift and just barely 110 lb on the bench press.
Me, it was funny. 50 lb on the deadlift. Ok. Let's try 70 lb on the bench press; couldn’t even get the bar out of the hooks. 50 lb? Almost got it out of the hooks. Thirty? Could get it out of the hooks, but now I couldn’t press it! Finally, 20 lb. What’s with me; do I have chicken arms? (Ok, chickens don’t have arms, but you get the idea.) What’s up with that, I wonder.
Then the circuit: a minute of pull-ups, a minute of a variation of chin-ups where you’re more or less horizontal, a minute of one-leg deadlifts with 2x30-lb dumbbells, and a minute of CRAC squats with a 45-lb dumbbell. Hah!
Chin-ups: no way. I haven’t been able to do one chin-up since the first year of high school, forty years ago.
Pull-ups: a little better, but my arms gave out after just a few reps.
Deadlift: ok.
CRAC squat: hm, something hard but feasible. But the rough metal hurt my deskworkher hands. Note to self: bring weight gloves next Saturday!
And again, and again, and again, eventually shortening to 15-second intervals. Ok, that left me barely able to feel my left arm.
Then “some speed work”, what he calls AST, for Ærobic Speed Training: thirty seconds on the treadmill, where he made you work; thirty seconds “standing cycling up hill” on a stationary bike; thirty seconds of jump squats; thirty seconds each of two-foot, left-foot, and right-foot jumps.
I had to bail halfway through the jump squats as it triggers my benign positional vertigo, making the short jumps impossible too. Even the second round on the treadmill was dizzying now, once the BPV starts.
At the end of all this, I was quivering. My ride home on my road bike was kind of like an old man’s. And this nice day brought out a lot of bad drivers; nothing dangerous, just more annoying than usual.
(I will admit, though, that seeing some folks running, and the lack of pain in my left knee, is making me think wistfully of running.)
Next week, he claims, will be harder. Eek!
Now that I’m home, Andrea wants to do something, and I know I should volunteer to take her biking. But all I wanted after my peanut butter & banana sandwich and big cup of coffee: a lie-down!
Tomorrow—when we don’t have Andrea, unfortunately—I “have” to do 120 min of ærobic activity. I expect I’ll bike in the Port Area for most of that; but maybe I’ll jog a mile or so, just to see what happens—before I pack madly for L.A. And write my presentation!
After 6 weeks, I finally decided I could do the sidesteppy thing in the dynamic warm-up, though I ended up getting lapped(!) as I tried not tangle up my feet.
After the dynamic warm-up, I paired up with Rahul and we tried to establish the most we weight we could handle. Rahul was pretty good at estimating: 70 lb on the dumbbell deadlift and just barely 110 lb on the bench press.
Me, it was funny. 50 lb on the deadlift. Ok. Let's try 70 lb on the bench press; couldn’t even get the bar out of the hooks. 50 lb? Almost got it out of the hooks. Thirty? Could get it out of the hooks, but now I couldn’t press it! Finally, 20 lb. What’s with me; do I have chicken arms? (Ok, chickens don’t have arms, but you get the idea.) What’s up with that, I wonder.
Then the circuit: a minute of pull-ups, a minute of a variation of chin-ups where you’re more or less horizontal, a minute of one-leg deadlifts with 2x30-lb dumbbells, and a minute of CRAC squats with a 45-lb dumbbell. Hah!
Chin-ups: no way. I haven’t been able to do one chin-up since the first year of high school, forty years ago.
Pull-ups: a little better, but my arms gave out after just a few reps.
Deadlift: ok.
CRAC squat: hm, something hard but feasible. But the rough metal hurt my deskworkher hands. Note to self: bring weight gloves next Saturday!
And again, and again, and again, eventually shortening to 15-second intervals. Ok, that left me barely able to feel my left arm.
Then “some speed work”, what he calls AST, for Ærobic Speed Training: thirty seconds on the treadmill, where he made you work; thirty seconds “standing cycling up hill” on a stationary bike; thirty seconds of jump squats; thirty seconds each of two-foot, left-foot, and right-foot jumps.
I had to bail halfway through the jump squats as it triggers my benign positional vertigo, making the short jumps impossible too. Even the second round on the treadmill was dizzying now, once the BPV starts.
At the end of all this, I was quivering. My ride home on my road bike was kind of like an old man’s. And this nice day brought out a lot of bad drivers; nothing dangerous, just more annoying than usual.
(I will admit, though, that seeing some folks running, and the lack of pain in my left knee, is making me think wistfully of running.)
Next week, he claims, will be harder. Eek!
Now that I’m home, Andrea wants to do something, and I know I should volunteer to take her biking. But all I wanted after my peanut butter & banana sandwich and big cup of coffee: a lie-down!
Tomorrow—when we don’t have Andrea, unfortunately—I “have” to do 120 min of ærobic activity. I expect I’ll bike in the Port Area for most of that; but maybe I’ll jog a mile or so, just to see what happens—before I pack madly for L.A. And write my presentation!
1 Comments:
Hey Rick. Like your blog and musings on life. Bootcamp? Funny. And sounds tough. Don't know if I could bench press much either.
Thanks for the tip on the distance of the Port Area loop. Next time I am injured (knock on wood that that doesn't happend anytime soon), I'll know where to go to cycle and how far it is :)
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