I was 141.8 this morning, only half a pound down from last week. Emily? Is that what you were too?
This in spite of 6+ hours of exercise, 3593 calories burned (why didn't I burn another 7?), and being careful with my diet all week. But at least my weight is slowly coming down, and this probably means that the loss is actual fat. I'm pretty sure I'm gaining muscle as I go too.
I did my first "brick" on Sunday--10 miles on the bike followed by 2 miles running. I think they call it a brick because that's what your legs feel like afterwards! Actually I felt pretty good during and after that workout, but yesterday, even though I *thought* I felt fine, I was like a slug on the treadmill. I was able to do my usual workout at the usual speed, but it involved two pauses and lots of holding on to the treadmill. My heart rate looked good, but my muscles were toast. I think I'm going to take it easy this week--probably slow down my speed on the interval run and skip the biking to work tomorrow to give my legs time to recouperate a bit before hitting them hard again next week. Then I'l have two hard weeks and one easy week prior to the first triathlon in April.
3 comments:
Doesn't it just piss you off that we need to do SO much exercise just to maintain weight or lose a pound. Drives me nuts.
Also you shouldn't be doing two big cardio workouts two days in a row. It doesn't help you and it only leads to fatigue and injury. You might opt to choose something lighter impact, do some strength training with barbells or just do a really good stretching routine and make sure you're hydrated. Or, don't do anything except go for a long walk and make sure you stretch out those tired muscles.
You might think you're burning calories but your body may disagree and opt to burn muscle.
I applaud your effort and desire but healing is just as important as your workout.
Also, you should make sure you do interval training on the treadmill. Pick your slow, med and fast speeds and do those for one minute in blocks. You can change the incline to make it harder. Burns more calories and will get you ready for the varying speeds you'll face during a tri.
I've got a good sprint routine if you want that ... I've found a sprint routine (short sprints) really helped my endurance in running races. You can do it once a week or so.
I hope I haven't been too BOSSY. But it sounds like you're doing great and you want to continue to give your body all the tools to do better while staying healthy.
I do an interval workout once a week and a tempo workout once a week, then one day of just moderate cardio (usually on the elliptical where it's easier to keep my heartrate down). Monday was my tempo workout, which is normally a not too difficult workout and not at all what I'd call a big cardio workout, and I was coming off of a week where I took Thursday and Friday off entirely, then just 25 minutes of swimming on Saturday and the bike/run on Sunday (which only took a little over an hour), so it surprised me that the tempo workout was difficult. Since I'll be doing these bricks a few more times before the August event, I think I'll switch around my Monday workout and make that the moderate cardio day. You're right that interval training has been fabulous for increasing endurance and speed--you can really see the difference after a few weeks.
It may have also been a sleep thing--Connor is going through one of his manic phases where sleep is optional, which makes me sleep deprived. I'm so used to this now that I hardly notice in my normal daily routine, but I've never tried sleep deprivation while training for a triathlon before. It's not like I have a lot of options there--I can't make him sleep, but I can't stop training entirely either without losing ground, so I'm going to have to find a balance where I'm able to at least maintain fitness while dealing with sleepless nights.
All of my cardio workouts are interval based. Word on the street is that they are just a better way to go. You'll probably want to test our your running/biking/swimming endurance so you know where you stand as far as the tri goes. But you should mostly be able to do interval workouts to train. I've got a boot cap and sprint interval routine that goes for 20 minutes or so but pushes your body differently. I'll send them to you in an email. They'd be nice to do outside when the weather is better.
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