The physical fitness encouragement and accountability thread.

[Giganotosaurus]

I've started weighing myself again and have found that I'm averaging 5 pounds less than I was a month ago. My job has not only been work but also a workout, with an average of 8000+ steps and regularly going over 10-12 thousand.
Great exercise but holy cow can it be exhausting, so much so that I typically do minimal exercise on my 3 day weekends. I've also been packing a big salad for dinner instead of getting the (amazing!!!) Cafeteria food at work, which sucks but is also good for my GI tract.

 

[MoonHunter]

Saturday AM - I did 7 loops before I packed it in. I had a BP of 75/48 after the walk. (My normal these days is around 110/80)

Saturday PM - I pulled 12 loops. I could do more, but given the early BP drop.... not going to risk it.

 

[chuckdee]

Took the day off today. I should have stretched when I got home. I was going to get in the hot tub, but I needed to clean the filter and it was late, so I went to bed. Bad idea... so stiff today and legs are hurting.

 

[bleys21]

That sounds like my legs all week. I started doing much more weight on the leg lifts, and also started reverse leg lifts. So much pain the next day.

And having muscle spasms while I'm sleeping reminded me of growing pains as a kid... Not Cool, Bro!

 

[AsenRG]

I notice that I tend to stick to that which is easy and I find enjoyable. The more I have to force myself into an activity the less likely I am to do it, but I suspect that is likely for many folk.

Definitely!

 

[MoonHunter]

Sunday was a day of obligations. So I did a couple of walk about between things, but nothing to serious. Still BP dropped later in the day

 

[Raleel]

Mountain biking. Like 8 miles today and 14 yesterday. Last week kinda was bad, but so be it. This weekend we are biking quite a lot… probably 30+ miles

 

[AsenRG]

Forgot to post, but I measured my weight last week. I am still below 100 kgs, which is...actually pretty terrible news, because I have gained in volume. Thus I can only conclude that some muscle has turned to fat!

 

[MoonHunter]

Monday I had BPs which were very low. So I did not do any walking. (Did a lab test for an upcoming appt).

Tues, blew off The Morning walk for very low BP. Got a call from the MD and told to be there at 1500. (So that killed afternoon walk).

I have had low blood pressure, which caused kidney dysfunction. The last five weeks I have had low blood pressure and serious fatigue, just under or about where the doctor would like my pressure. Alas, my Kidneys seem to be arguing with the Doctor about what is a good BP. It seems they have won. A slightly panicked MD changed things drastically. I am on much less medication. My BP is back to where I feel really comfortable 130/ 80, instead of the 105/ 70 average I have had for five weeks. So, mostly I have been staring at walls and youtube not doing much, this week. I am feeling pretty good.

Wednesday PM I did six loops just to keep it a habit.

Thursday AM, better BP, but I was lazy.

Thursday PM, I did 10 loops.


Today AM I did 12 loops

Today PM I did 12 loops

 

[chuckdee]

I've been doing well getting in bike rides daily- increasing by the day in distance and confidence. Still walking, though I haven't gotten back into the daily habit yet.

 

[Raleel]

Biked 33 miles along the trail of the Coeur d’Alenes today, mostly with no assist. Pics because it happened.

 

[MoonHunter]

Today, I fairly casually did 15 loops in the PM. (Yes, I blew off the AM, mostly because it was cold and I didn't want too.) I did four minute loops, which is 120% faster than the loops I have been doing for the last six weeks. I also do not get the need for resting pauses and moment of out of breath. I really need to be in this higher BP range rather than were the Doctor wants me (or a bit lower).

 

[chuckdee]

I'm up to 6.5 miles for my longest - I think I'm going to take it out of the neighborhood tomorrow or Monday, depending on the weather. I know a 10 mile course (5 out and back) that's multi-use that I'm going to try.

Also, not wanting to take my bike rack off since it's locked on and I just don't want to deal with it, I found something I wish I'd thought about before - a mobile hand car wash. It's about $5 more than taking it in for a hand wash, and the guy is really good!

 

[bleys21]

Biked 33 miles along the trail of the Coeur d’Alenes today, mostly with no assist. Pics because it happened.
View attachment 61460 View attachment 61461 View attachment 61462 View attachment 61463 View attachment 61464 View attachment 61465

Nice! I love the Coeur d'Alene area. A bunch of my dad's side of the family lived up there, mainly near Hayden Lake, and one uncle who lived up near Sandpoint. Got to spend quite a few summers up there as a kid. Just a great time, so much to do...

 

[Raleel]

I'm up to 6.5 miles for my longest - I think I'm going to take it out of the neighborhood tomorrow or Monday, depending on the weather. I know a 10 mile course (5 out and back) that's multi-use that I'm going to try.

Also, not wanting to take my bike rack off since it's locked on and I just don't want to deal with it, I found something I wish I'd thought about before - a mobile hand car wash. It's about $5 more than taking it in for a hand wash, and the guy is really good!

To be fair, the trail is nearly flat and paved. It’s a rails to trails project (look it up). Probably the last 10 we’re on some form of assist. We are feeling it now. A lot of vitamin I.

 

[E-Rocker]

Was way behind schedule yesterday, but I did eventually make it out to Potawatomi Woods and ran 4.5 miles on the Des Plaines River Trail. And still made it home in time for D&D!

 

[chuckdee]

I didn't get out to the trail I wanted to as the weather was very unpredictable. I did, however, do 7 miles on Sunday and 10 yesterday around the neighborhood. And all of these times I say neighborhood, I guess I should have given context - the neighborhood is around a lake and has 4500 houses, so it's a lot more than your typical neighborhood.

 

[MoonHunter]

Sunday AM 12 loops
Sunday PM 12 loops

Mon AM 15 loops

Tues AM 6 loops in non-looping walk.
Tues PM 12 LOOPS

 

[chuckdee]

Didn't ride today, but did do 3 miles walking at the park

 

[MoonHunter]

Today I had insanely high BP from the morning on. Since exercise raises my BP (before dropping it to counterbalance), I could of had BP into the red zone range.

PM: I did eight loops and think I overdid it.

 

[chuckdee]

Did 10 miles again today, and joined a challenge to do 100km next week- don't know if I'll make it, but it's a good goal.

 

[Imperator]

I didn't know I needed this thread, but I do. Thanks, guys.

 

[E-Rocker]

You're welcome, Imperator . What kind of exercise do you like?

 

[E-Rocker]

Since you wrote this after said half-marathon, it seems you both lived through it. How'd it go? I know you've been preparing for it, was that enough?

Okay, now that I’ve had a few days to recover and my parents have gone back home to WA, I have time to go into a bit more detail about the Chicaoland Spring Half-Marathon that I did on 7th May, 2023. [Ed note: and now it has taken me nearly a month to actually finish writing this, haha, but here it is].

Executive Summary: I’m happy and proud that I did it; I’m not satisfied with my time; training started out strong and then faltered a bit; there were some complications on race day.

This was the second official, in-person half-marathon that I’ve done, the other being Naperville Trails in 2017. I’ve also run half-marathon distance (as measured by RunKeeper) on my own, independent of any organized events, roughly eight times.

The year started out strong, with half-marathon training via the Intermediate 1 plan that’s available for free on the Hal Higdon website. I also kept up with twice-weekly sessions with my personal trainer that focused mostly on strength training, and completely gave up alcohol for all of February. Went back to social drinking from mid-March on, but at drastically reduced consumption levels from 2022, which, frankly, had gotten a bit out of hand.

So that was all going well. Then I went on vacation to Hawaii. That in itself wasn’t a problem. I had planned ahead that the trip would interrupt my training cycle, and I would have a month-plus to get back on track prior to the race.

It also was one of the best vacations of my life. At some point I’ll write more about it in the real-life thread.

The problem was, that while taking surfing lessons in Hawaii, I fell off a surfboard and bruised some ribs on my right side pretty badly. It didn’t affect the trip much, since it happened on the next-to-last day, but the result was that I was so sore for the next two weeks or so that I couldn’t really exercise at all.

Even though I got kind of injured, I don’t regret trying surfing and if I had it all to do over, I would try it again. Surfing is something I’ve wanted to try since I was ~7 years old. So eventually the surfing injury faded enough that I could get back to running and lifting weights, which was great.

But then I got sick. More precisely, I came down with severe allergies.

I’ve suffered from respiratory allergies all my life. As a kid, it was a major problem, with frequent sinus infections, going through ridiculous amounts of Kleenex, etc., but as an adult, those allergies have mostly been relegated to a minor annoyance. Not this time. Thankfully, no sinus infection, but I had so much trouble breathing that it again made exercise unfeasible for 1.5- 2 weeks.

And, once I had made it through the allergy attack, I was in a state of severe Depression. Capital D because I’m talking about the mental illness type of Depression, the “E-Rocker needs to take two psych meds daily to be a functional member of society” kind, not the “I’m sad today because something bad happened” kind.

So, between the bruised ribs, the allergies, and the Depression, there was far less training in the last 4-6 weeks than would have been ideal. I did get fully back on track with the Hal Higdon plan for the final pre-half-marathon week. It helped that, by that point, my dad, who would also be doing the half-marathon, had come to town.

So that last week went fine. The race was set to start at 7:15 am. We planned to leave my place at 5:45 am, but ended up not actually getting out the door until 6:10 am, which meant by the time we made it to the area of the event, found parking, and found the porta-potties which we both needed, it was 7:12 am. In other words, by the time we were done with the porta-potties, the race had started, so we had no time at all to do warm-ups, stretch, etc.

Also, it turned out my dad had hurt his foot in the weeks leading up to the event. In fact, he wasn’t sure he would even be able to do the event at all. But my parents didn’t actually tell me this until after they arrived in Chicago.

So we started out the half-marathon running, but about two miles in, Dad noticed that a woman ahead of us was doing intervals of walking for about a minute, running for about 20 seconds, walking for about a minute, running for 20 seconds, etc., and she was staying ahead of us. So Dad decided that’s what he needed to do because of his hurt foot.

Although I could have kept steadily running at that point, I stayed with Dad and also did the walk/run intervals. We had always planned to do this event together, so I wanted to stay with him. Also, back when we did the Naperville Trails Half Marathon in 2017, I had an injured foot (and really shouldn’t have done the event at all), which meant I had to walk the last 5 miles of the 13.1 miles, and Dad stayed with me the whole time, even though, at that point, he could have easily run the entire thing. So it seemed appropriate to return the favor.

Somewhere around Mile 9, we passed the interval woman, and went back to full-time running. Somewhere around Mile 11, I hit the wall, hard. So then I had to mostly walk with occasional bursts of running. Somewhere towards the end, I managed to pick up speed (relatively) and run the final, I don’t know, half-mile or so. At that point I left Dad in the dust, which he was fine with.

My time ended up being 3 hours, 13 minutes, and some-odd seconds, which was about 14 minutes slower than my goal. I wanted to achieve any time under 3 hours, even if it was 2:59:59. Dad’s time was about 4 minutes slower than mine. My time was at least faster than my other official half-marathon time, which was about 3 hours and 20 minutes.

I plan to do at least one more official half-marathon in my life, with more consistent training, so I can (hopefully!) hit that under-3-hours time. Most likely this October. Meanwhile, Dad is doing another one this weekend, on the Washington state coast.

 

[Imperator]

You're welcome, Imperator . What kind of exercise do you like?

Well, I signed up here when the place started but I've been a bit away of forums for some time (too much time wasted on Twitter, and some real life issues). I'm quitting social media and going back to blogs and messageboards, a much better use of my time.

I've been doing different forms of strength training for several years, usually at home as I don't have any suitable gym close to home (apart from a very expensive Crossfit box). I've done calisthenics, kettlebells and TRX /resistance bands, mostly, though at the beginning I was a barbell guy. These days I'm back into kettlebells as I'm a bit pressed for time and they can be used at my living room, and don't take too much space.

 

[bleys21]

Okay, now that I’ve had a few days to recover and my parents have gone back home to WA, I have time to go into a bit more detail about the Chicaoland Spring Half-Marathon that I did on 7th May, 2023. [Ed note: and now it has taken me nearly a month to actually finish writing this, haha, but here it is].

Executive Summary: I’m happy and proud that I did it; I’m not satisfied with my time; training started out strong and then faltered a bit; there were some complications on race day.

This was the second official, in-person half-marathon that I’ve done, the other being Naperville Trails in 2017. I’ve also run half-marathon distance (as measured by RunKeeper) on my own, independent of any organized events, roughly eight times.

The year started out strong, with half-marathon training via the Intermediate 1 plan that’s available for free on the Hal Higdon website. I also kept up with twice-weekly sessions with my personal trainer that focused mostly on strength training, and completely gave up alcohol for all of February. Went back to social drinking from mid-March on, but at drastically reduced consumption levels from 2022, which, frankly, had gotten a bit out of hand.

So that was all going well. Then I went on vacation to Hawaii. That in itself wasn’t a problem. I had planned ahead that the trip would interrupt my training cycle, and I would have a month-plus to get back on track prior to the race.

It also was one of the best vacations of my life. At some point I’ll write more about it in the real-life thread.

The problem was, that while taking surfing lessons in Hawaii, I fell off a surfboard and bruised some ribs on my right side pretty badly. It didn’t affect the trip much, since it happened on the next-to-last day, but the result was that I was so sore for the next two weeks or so that I couldn’t really exercise at all.

Even though I got kind of injured, I don’t regret trying surfing and if I had it all to do over, I would try it again. Surfing is something I’ve wanted to try since I was ~7 years old. So eventually the surfing injury faded enough that I could get back to running and lifting weights, which was great.

But then I got sick. More precisely, I came down with severe allergies.

I’ve suffered from respiratory allergies all my life. As a kid, it was a major problem, with frequent sinus infections, going through ridiculous amounts of Kleenex, etc., but as an adult, those allergies have mostly been relegated to a minor annoyance. Not this time. Thankfully, no sinus infection, but I had so much trouble breathing that it again made exercise unfeasible for 1.5- 2 weeks.

And, once I had made it through the allergy attack, I was in a state of severe Depression. Capital D because I’m talking about the mental illness type of Depression, the “E-Rocker needs to take two psych meds daily to be a functional member of society” kind, not the “I’m sad today because something bad happened” kind.

So, between the bruised ribs, the allergies, and the Depression, there was far less training in the last 4-6 weeks than would have been ideal. I did get fully back on track with the Hal Higdon plan for the final pre-half-marathon week. It helped that, by that point, my dad, who would also be doing the half-marathon, had come to town.

So that last week went fine. The race was set to start at 7:15 am. We planned to leave my place at 5:45 am, but ended up not actually getting out the door until 6:10 am, which meant by the time we made it to the area of the event, found parking, and found the porta-potties which we both needed, it was 7:12 am. In other words, by the time we were done with the porta-potties, the race had started, so we had no time at all to do warm-ups, stretch, etc.

Also, it turned out my dad had hurt his foot in the weeks leading up to the event. In fact, he wasn’t sure he would even be able to do the event at all. But my parents didn’t actually tell me this until after they arrived in Chicago.

So we started out the half-marathon running, but about two miles in, Dad noticed that a woman ahead of us was doing intervals of walking for about a minute, running for about 20 seconds, walking for about a minute, running for 20 seconds, etc., and she was staying ahead of us. So Dad decided that’s what he needed to do because of his hurt foot.

Although I could have kept steadily running at that point, I stayed with Dad and also did the walk/run intervals. We had always planned to do this event together, so I wanted to stay with him. Also, back when we did the Naperville Trails Half Marathon in 2017, I had an injured foot (and really shouldn’t have done the event at all), which meant I had to walk the last 5 miles of the 13.1 miles, and Dad stayed with me the whole time, even though, at that point, he could have easily run the entire thing. So it seemed appropriate to return the favor.

Somewhere around Mile 9, we passed the interval woman, and went back to full-time running. Somewhere around Mile 11, I hit the wall, hard. So then I had to mostly walk with occasional bursts of running. Somewhere towards the end, I managed to pick up speed (relatively) and run the final, I don’t know, half-mile or so. At that point I left Dad in the dust, which he was fine with.

My time ended up being 3 hours, 13 minutes, and some-odd seconds, which was about 14 minutes slower than my goal. I wanted to achieve any time under 3 hours, even if it was 2:59:59. Dad’s time was about 4 minutes slower than mine. My time was at least faster than my other official half-marathon time, which was about 3 hours and 20 minutes.

I plan to do at least one more official half-marathon in my life, with more consistent training, so I can (hopefully!) hit that under-3-hours time. Most likely this October. Meanwhile, Dad is doing another one this weekend, on the Washington state coast.

Thanks for writing up the whole adventure! I'm glad you were still able to complete the run, even while dealing with the Depression issues. I know most of us (myself included, until recently) don't take depression issues very seriously, but since my son has been dealing with them, I've gotten a rude awakening to how bad they can be. So I'm glad you were able to run and kick up the exercise routine again, and hopefully that has helped with the depression. I know in my son's case, weight lifting and exercise (including ice hockey) are the only reasons he's still with us, so I'm seriously thankful that he found a means to help him fight back against it.

 

[E-Rocker]

Thanks, bleys21 ! And yes, the exercise definitely helps with the depression.

 

[MoonHunter]

Bad MoonHunter, no Bacon. I forgot to post yesterday.

Thursday AM - 15 loops
Thursday PM - 12 loops

 

[AsenRG]

no Bacon.

Eh, no, this rates as "cruel and unusual punishment", I believe...

 

[MoonHunter]

Today I went out after posting (thank you all for responses)

AM. I did 16 loops. Every day I am getting better and better in every way. That is my mantra and I am sticking to it.

PM: I did 10 loops. The shifting in medication got to me some. Still doing better.

 

[MoonHunter]

Today I overslept for my AM walk. This PM I have decided that I have not had a By Day in a while. So. Just some errands and chores.

 

[chuckdee]

Extended my bicycling distance - a bit less than 12 miles this time. By butt is what is limiting me- it goes numb. I have a cushion, but it doesn't seem to help. Need to look for something else.

 

[MoonHunter]

This morning in the AM is hotter than the afternoon was yesterday. (While not record breaking, it was a good 10-15F (5-7C) warmer yesterday than the last couple of days which were warm.) I managed to do 10 loops before starting to sweat a bit too much. Maybe in the later PM (when the sun is heading down), I will try again.

PM: a hour before sundown (two before sunset... I live in the mountains, there is a big difference). It was merely 76 F (24C) - practically the high temp for most of the week (until yesterday) . So I did 12 loops.

Tomorrow I may get up silly early, and walk then.

 

[Toadmaster]

Extended my bicycling distance - a bit less than 12 miles this time. By butt is what is limiting me- it goes numb. I have a cushion, but it doesn't seem to help. Need to look for something else.

Try looking for a wider padded seat. A lot of bikes come with skinny hard seats, and I often have the same issue. Even a fairly short ride of 5 miles or less would leave me feeling bruised for days. A padded seat alone didn't work, but I found a much larger / broader and well padded seat that made a big difference.

Well until somebody stole my bike.

 

[Toadmaster]

I had to order new pants, I've lost enough weight that my current pants would fall down to my ankles if I wasn't wearing a belt. When I started this about 18 months ago, these pants fit fairly snug, and no belt required to stay up.

Oh, and just want to say, the program of 10 squats, 10 lunges, 10 pushups and 1 minute planks 2-5 times a day is already showing results. I started off with squats only to about 45 degrees, and lunges similar, I think I'm in my second week and my squats go all the way down, almost butt to heels, and lunges nearly 90 degrees. The pushups and planks are getting easier, but not as easily measured.

 

[E-Rocker]

Awesome, Toadmaster congratulations!

 

[E-Rocker]

My dad (reminder: age 76) did the North Olympic Discovery Half-Marathon today and clocked in just under three hours. I guess getting there in time to do warm-ups really made a difference for him.

As for myself, I ran 8 miles yesterday, and walked another 4 or so on top of that. I have the day off tomorrow, so I'm thinking of heading up to the north end of the Des Plaines River Trail and running south. Hoping to get 10 miles in.

 

[chuckdee]

Try looking for a wider padded seat. A lot of bikes come with skinny hard seats, and I often have the same issue. Even a fairly short ride of 5 miles or less would leave me feeling bruised for days. A padded seat alone didn't work, but I found a much larger / broader and well padded seat that made a big difference.

Well until somebody stole my bike.

Being a cruiser, the seat isn't one of those narrow ones, and I got a pad for it thinking that would help. I'll try for a wider seat though... thanks!

Didn't start out with a bang on the first day of my challenge week- went walking for 3 miles and didn't feel like riding when I got home.

 

[MoonHunter]

Tomorrow I may get up silly early, and walk then.

So I did. I got up and pretty much went out to walk. I managed to do 10 loops all told, but I should not of gone out before my meds. It was also a drop of 25 degrees F from the High of yesterday. Still it worked.

PM: I managed 15 loops out, even with the new afternoon meds... which had been impairing my PM walk.

Still Getting Better and Better every day in every way. (Despite the medication and my doctor's intervention.)

 

[chuckdee]

Did 10 miles today in my challenge - 50 more to go before Sunday!