Week 2: Climb for Clean Air – Pain Equal Gain

Week 2 Plan:

Mon:  30 mins Cardio (plus 25lbs weight) + Strength Training

Tues:  Strength Training

Wed: 45 mins Cardio (plus 25lbs weight)

Thu: REST day!

Fri:  Strength Training

Sat:  REST day!

Sun:  3 hour hike with 30lbs weight

Another week that I get to cross of my calendar.  Wow.  16 more weeks to go and I am in a whole world of pain this week.   It’s a good (really?) pain though, the kinda one that make you do ‘ow-ow-ow’ whenever you get up from your chair or going up the stairs (or down!).    You know the ol’ saying about No-Pain-No-Gain?  Well, I better gain a whole’ lot cause this week is about a lot of (muscle) pain.   This week, I also decided to contact my good ol’ trainer that I love and hate.   Weston Williams who train at Outrageously Fit studio is helping me by creating a specific program just for me.

This week is an exhausting week for me and I’m having ‘why in the world that I am doing this again’ moment tonight, but Karen Lopez tweet me this quote that totally lit fire under my behind:

The miracle isn’t that you finished, it’s that you had the courage to start  — John Bingham

Thank you Karen.   I need to hear that.    I’m doing this because I want to help American Lung Association to raise money to find the cure, but most importantly, I’m doing this because life is short, and I need to have a courage to start an adventure.   Any adventure.   I choose this one, because it so close to my heart and challenge me physically.

The actual:

Monday:

I did the same routine as last Tuesday’s strength training.  Check the routine on my Week 1 for Tuesday post here. The only difference this week was I consistently used 10lbs dumbbells on each of the routines and I did pretty somewhat okay (or so I thought) on most of it.  Lunges still made my heart rate jump to the roof and I think it always going to be that way and I always going to love and hate that routine no matter what.   Keep in mind, this was a day after I went to Little Si, so I was feeling the pain.  For cardio,  I put 25lbs in my pack and did elliptical machine for 30 minutes after a 10 minutes warm up.

Tuesday:

Today is my assessment day with Weston.   Note to self:  When your trainer told you that  “today, we’re not really going to work out since I’m going to just do an assessment on you, he lied”  Oh-my-golly.   If this is a no-work-out day, I’m not even sure I want to know what the work-out day look like.   After a 10 minute warm-up, we did cross training on all lower, upper and cores.   Start with, yes, a triple step-up/squat/lunge.   Then we did cores routine that involved some plank, bridges and side oblique crunches (which I suck big time). We ended the day with upper body routine.   I don’t even remember what the routine was, however, I do remember one thing.   I suck.  Again.   Upper body strength is my biggest weak link.    After the “non-work out” day, Weston told me that he wants to to focus on cores and upper body work out for the next 4 weeks as well as hip exercises.   Apparently, my left hip is weaker than my right and it showed from the way I did the squat routine.   My cores, well, do I really have to say anything on this?   You get it, right?  I.have.a.lot.of.work.to.do.  The end.

Wednesday:

Long cardio day.   I put 25lbs weight inside my pack and I did a hill climb program on the elliptical machine for 5o minutes plus 10 minutes warm up.   I walked for total 2.17 miles today and I stayed within my endurance zone (which I’m tellin’ ya – it’s so not easy to do).   Thank you Jes for the tweet during the work out.   For Erin, who made sure I was up and at the gym.  It made me smile and it helps.   This is what I love about my circle of friends.   They pump you up.   They cheer you on.   They made this whole journey easier because they are with you every single way, well in spirit.

Thursday

REST Day!   Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

Friday:

If I have one word to sum up this day.  It would be ‘Disaster’.   Wow.  The new routine kick my behind big time.    I started with an interval training at elliptical machine with 25lbs backpack in me. Since Weston determine my cardio zone heart rate is 163, I did as much as I can to push my heart rate above 163 for one minute straight and slow down for 3 minutes.   I used the interval program on the machine with resistance 8 on the high interval and 4 on the lower for 30 minutes, and that felt like forever!    I also did my new strength training routine as designed by Weston, my new trainer.   I did routine A, as listed here.   Just for the record, whoever invented single legged squat – they were out of their mind since I can’t do that routine for the life of me – so I substituted that with regular squat with 10lbs dumbbell.   The hip abduction cable, I have to lower the weight on my left leg to 10lbs since I couldn’t move it but other than that, I did the whole routine (with a lot of grunting and groaning) somewhat okay.    Note to self:   I did NOT stretch afterwards which gave me a world of pain the next day.   Stretching is important and I tend to skip them afterwards since I just want to be done.

Saturday:

Long Cardio Day.   If you notice on the plan that I listed above, this is NOT listed as the day that I’m doing anything, but my trainer changed my plan around and told me that I need to do long cardio this day, so I dragged my behind off the couch, dropped my girls to the day care for a couple hours and hopped on the treadmill.   I did not put any weight on me since the objective of today is endurance training.   I need to be on my endurance zone based on my heart rate which is 134 and I was VERY VERY hard to keep it on that zone.   I felt like I wasn’t doing anything.  I wasn’t even sweating!  I felt like I want to do more, run a little bit faster, increase the cross-ramp higher, but that made my heart rate jump – so I had to slow down.   After 20 minutes being frustated, I finally got it.   I started sweating and able to keep my heart rate on that zone and really understand what it means to do an endurance cardio training.    I walked on 2% ramp, about 3.7mph speed for an hour.

Sunday:

I choose West Tiger Mountain as today’s training hike. With total elevation gain of 2,042 feet (start at 480 feet, summit at 2522 feet), I know that I would have a good work out for me.   I haven’t been on this trail for 7 years, but this trail was not a strange trail for me.  This was one of my favorite.   We were at the trail head around 6:30am and pretty much the only car on the upper parking lot.   I paced myself really well for the entire hike.   Slow, but steady.   Too slow for what I’m used too – but I kept my heart rate on my endurance zone (or hover around it), and I wasn’t struggling at all.  For those who’s been to this trail know that you are facing with steep trail from the get go for pretty much 2/3 of the way, and get a bit of flat area, and nothing but steep trail.   With 25lbs pack on my back, I thought I did really well.   About half mile from the top, it started snowing!   It’s a combination between hale and snow and I was COLD.   I didn’t want to stop and put my hard shell since I knew the summit is 15 minutes away, so I started to walk faster which totally screw my pace.   I was a bit struggling in the last 5 minutes, but I knew why.  My impatience got the best of me!   We reached the top short of 2 hours (1 hours 54 minutes to be exact) and I made a mistake by taking my glove off so I can tweet from there.   Big no no.  My hand was immediately numb since my gloves was wet from the sweat so when I put my gloves back in, it made it even colder!  Anyway, an hour and 16 minutes later – I was back in the warm car.    Big thank you for those who tweet me during my hike.   You guys made me laugh and it help on the motivation department.   It really did.