Exercise Log 11.16.13 (Chest & Shoulder Day + Cardio)

Well aside from feeling like I want to just die, I had a very productive workout day today. Got a new pair of shoes (as mentioned before Reebok Crossfit Nano 2.0’s) and wanted to see how they’d hold up on a long run. Which is suitable because the weather was great and I won’t get a lot of days like this before it becomes unbearably cold.

These shoes have flat soles, meant to accommodate for lifting, which gives a more natural barefoot running style. The comfort level is not super high though, so I was speculating how it’d go. Anyways I beat the pavement from Frick park down the Greater Allegheny Passage and back 11.2 miles total. I felt like the shoes gave me a lot of great traction up hills, great stability down hills. On flat straightaways I got good movement but the comfort level wasn’t very high. I will say though by the end of the run, my feet felt fine, and if I can run over 11 miles and not feel overly sore/uncomfortable than any minor discomforts can just be ignored. I felt like my performance was good and it gave me a benchmark to shoot for with next year’s half marathon. As mentioned in the previous update, the shoes were great for my weightlifting, so I think I made the right shoe choice.

Wasn’t a picture run but I still took a handful of snaps

I thought it was really cool I passed the bald eagle sanctuary and actually saw the bald eagle out, which was awesome. I couldn’t get a good shot of it though. The day was absolutely gorgeous, and if anything my only regret was adding too many layers of clothing for the run for fear of awful coldness. Which itself was a good thing to get out and experience because knowing just how I need to dress for upcoming runs in the coldness is important.

Run stats: 11.2 miles in 2 hrs 9 mins, burned 1716 calories, heart rate average 153 bpm max 172 bpm.

That said running that far doesn’t excuse me from having a complete weightlifting workout as well… but it did take a big bite out of my energy level. Today was chest & shoulders, first I did chest warmups then I did bench pressing. Per the usual I hit the declined, inclined and flat bench presses all 3 sets with incrementing weight followed by a 4th burn set afterwards (sometimes 5th if I felt the burn set didn’t get enough reps in). My final set on the flat bench press I was aiming for a sub-optimal press of about 135lbs and failed on rep 5, was aiming for 6 reps. I had to do the roll of shame which honestly was good practice anyways. Kept the intensity pretty high as I swapped between the bench press benches pretty quick. Then I did dumbbell flys, dumbbell chest presses from the floor (4 sets, 55lbs which is pretty heavy for me, reps of 8-7-6-6), declined dumbbell flys, and one armed cable crossover chest flys.

At no point during the chest workout did I really decide to push to an extreme just because the run really drained me, but I felt like I pushed myself hard. I did a light shoulder workout too, a triple set of 10 reps each of side raises, front raises and reverse dumbbell flys with a light set of dumbbells. Then I did trap shrugs (4 sets of 8 reps incremented weight on the last set), what I’d consider heavy military presses (80lb curl bar, 3 sets of 8), then finally 3 sets of my usual innies & outties (10 reps) superset with pushups (12 reps). The pushups are the best test of how shoulder and chest day went, and honestly I failed pushups on set 2 and had to drag myself to get through set 3. So I chalk today up as a win as I go to bed, I only hope I consumed enough food today to adequately replenish my body.

I’m not sure I should do a workout tomorrow after the hard workouts today and yesterday, but we’ll see how I feel tomorrow.