My Triathlon Adventure

Last night I did the legs and back workout.  It was a tough workout, just like all the rest of them.  This morning, however, I felt the workout in an area that I really wasn’t expecting.  I have just one question.  Mr. Tony Horton, what have you done to my butt?

I could barely sit down today.  When I did, I struggled to stand up.  Ouchy!  I muddled through the day, but man, that was unexpected!

I then went for a swim tonight.  I realized the last few times that I have been in the pool that I think I am getting winded because I am not fully exhaling underwater.  That is an issue because, if you don’t get all the air out, you can’t get enough fresh air in your lungs to help fuel your muscles.  Before long you are gasping for air.  So, tonight, I threw my form to the wind and focused exclusively on breathing.  I let my body do what it wanted, and just made sure to exhale out and get a good breath in.  I also focused on turning my head just enough.  I tried to make sure that I always left one goggle in the water.  Guess what happened?  Before I knew it I was at the other side of the pool and headed back.  I was trucking along like a well oiled machine.  Breathing like I was on dry land!  I finished the first lap, finished the second lap, and before I knew it I had finished 5 laps.  I didn’t time myself, but I’m pretty sure I was really trucking along!

I do have to make a slight disclaimer here.  When I say I go straight through, that isn’t exactly true.  I do cling to the edge of the pool, and take a few breaths, maybe 5 seconds worth, before heading back.  However, compared to my previous 30-60 seconds of standing stop, this is close enough for me to consider a non-stop lap.  Even with those pauses I am doing sub 1 minute laps.  I think that is fabulous, especially if I can get to the point where I am doing all of them like that.  I could get my 9 laps in 9 minutes which is my goal!!

All in all I’m proud of my progress.  I am hoping to continue concentrating on breathing until it becomes rote, and then go back to working on my form.

I have been progressing through the P90X program.  Not really religiously, I have left out a lot of the aerobics pieces because I get a ton of that in my Tri training, but today was Yoga day.

Tony Horton, the MC on the DVD workouts, (who is absolutely ripped btw) says that the X in P90X is for extreme.  Well I say the X in Yoga X is for excruciating.  It is a 90 minute workout.  I would have to say that for about 60 of those minutes I was in pain.  Don’t take that the wrong way.  The other 30 weren’t a cake walk, those were just minutes spent falling over and taking a break.  At about the 45 minute point I thought, that’s it I’m out, but then he said, ok kids the hard part is over.  I thought, oh good, I’ll keep going.  Just so you know, he said that again about 3 times in the next 45 minutes.  I think I sweat about as much doing Yoga as I had in any of the other workouts.  Brutal!

All in all it was a good workout, however, and my muscles felt really stretched.   I’m pretty happy with the program!

I did 16 miles in my spin class today.  It was incredibly hard…I have no idea why.   I’m not sure if the lack of fans was an issue, most of them were off today, or if I was beat, but I am putting my money on it just being a really tough class.

After spin I jumped in the pool.  My goal was to continue my forward progress on the contiguous laps.  I was hoping to get to 4!  I started out strong.  I felt like I had a groove going, and I got to the end of the 5th length and notice a large group of little girls and a swim instructor at the end of the lane looking down at me disapprovingly.  The instructor then proceeded to kicked me out of the lane so that she could have her swim class.  I had felt so good!!!

I moved over to share a lane with someone, but I just couldn’t get the groove going again.  I was beat from spin class so I just didn’t have it in me.  I gave up and went home.

Later that night, my wife and I decided to do our first P90X workout.  My wife thought it would be a good workout to incorporate into our training.  We haven’t been doing much strength training, and this seemed like a good product for that.  We just received it on Friday, so we thought it would be a good idea to give it a go.  We did the first workout in the plan Chest and Back X and all I have to say is WOW!

I absolutely got my butt kicked.  I had no idea there were so many different kinds of pushups, and had I known that there were that many, I would have had no idea that I could suck at them all.  Of course I did great on the pushups compared to the chin-ups.  I feel like such a wimp!

Once we got through the 1 hour chest and back workout, we had to do the ab workout called Ab Ripper X.  I couldn’t believe that workout.  It took me all of one minute to rename the workout Ab Ripper FU.  Absolutely brutal. I have to say that P90X is the epitome of no pain no gain.