Finally, Back to the Gym!

I didn't intend to stay away from the gym and cross-training so long...but it's been a while. Finally, I got my butt into the gym today after Jake's school awards ceremony this morning (First Honor Roll, Perfect Attendance, Gold Medal National Mythology Test...you'll have to indulge my bragging). Once I got there, I was glad to have done so. I did the full ab/core routine, and some of those exercises that had gotten somewhat easier were tougher today. This is, of course, a sign that I haven't been a good boy in that regard. I did the leg stuff, but only one set of the 4-way hip machine today. I'll get back to full double sets on that next week. On the upper body stuff, I had to make some adjustments for various reasons. They've gotten brand new fixed barbells in both straight bar and curl bar varieties in the Gym, which are nice, but they no longer go up in 5 pound increments. So, on bicep curls, I did a set at 40 lbs and then a set at 50 lbs. 50 lbs seems like a lot more than 45 did...but that may just be the fog of time talking. On bench, I took 5 pounds off, back down to 75 lbs., just for caution's sake. That was a good idea, as I huffed and puffed to get that second set done. By next week, I should get back up to 80 again. On tricep extension and other dumbbell exercises, they no longer have the dumbbells going up in 2.5 lb increments, so I've had to adjust the weights around to suit the various exercises.

The bottom line is that I did pretty well in there today. The bike warmup was nice and relaxed, just enough to get the heart pumping and legs moving around. My legs always feel refreshed after the leg weight work, and that was true today, too. Now, I just need to stay on schedule since I've finally gotten back into the swing of things this week.

Oh, yeah, on somewhat of a whim, I signed up for a 10k trail race in one of the city parks on Sunday morning. I know, I'm already running long tomorrow (10 or 11 miles), and I usually take Sundays off after that, but I promise to just use the trail race as a fun recovery effort, doing the first half at a nice relaxed pace, and then picking it up a bit for the last half, sort of a baby pace run. I'm also looking forward to getting a chance to use my trail running shoes in an actual trail run, and running through creeks and mud and stuff. I'll wear the Garmin just to see if it will hold a signal in the trees and such. They've promised that we won't get totally lost during the race, but the course is called "The Maze," so apparently, it's not exactly a simple thing to navigate. The race website says to print the map of the course, but that it would be useless during the event. Funny guys...