[Scratch]

Maybe it wasn't so bad bailing on the workout Thursday morning and doing it this morning. Covered 3 basic movements today, upper body pushing, upper body pulling, and squatting.

Overhead press:
3x85 lbs
3x90 lbs
3x95 lbs
3x100 lbs
3x105 lbs
3x110 lbs
1x115 lbs

110 lbs had been my previous best for this lift, so I felt pretty stoked when I repped it 3x. I thought maybe 120 lbs would be in reach, but at 115 lbs the single I got was barely made and I couldn't get 120.

Weighted pull ups:
3x35 lbs
3x37.5 lbs
3x40 lbs
3x42.5 lbs
3x45 lbs
2x47.5 lbs
2x50 lbs
2x52.5 lbs
1x55 lbs
1x57.5 lbs
1x60 lbs

Took a run at seeing what my max weighted pull up is and got one with 60 lbs on my back.

Then I did 10x2 squats with 125 lbs, every 60 seconds I'd do the 2 reps and focus on doing them fast, trying to explode up out of the bottom.

[Scratch]

All righty.

In the afternoon on Saturday, I went to visit my brother. He's got a big old construction vehicle tire that weighs somewhere up around 450 lbs, I played around some with flipping that sucker and then I also took a run at seeing how fast I could do 50 overhead swings of 20lb sledgehammer into the tire, took me a minute fifty-five to complete those. I slept pretty good that night.

Sunday morning I did a run of about 4.8 miles, legs weren't all there.

Yesterday, seeing how I planned on 20-rep squat set this morning, I thought I'd trying getting the run done then. Legs felt even worse than Sunday, so I only ran a half-mile out and came back. Then I started getting myself psyched up to take on the tabata interval sets of push ups, pull ups and air squats. I started doing these back in late March and it's an interesting way to stress the cardiovascular system as well as gauge progress. For those unfamiliar with the idea of tabata intervals, generally it refers to using a protocol of 20 seconds max effort with 10 second rest intervals. I began doing these after looking at a fascinating thread on the Crossfit discussion boards --

12 week Tabata project - CrossFit Discussion Board

Every 4th week, I've been doing the Murphy hero workout. I did my last Murphy 2 weekends ago, but skipped doing the tabatas last weekend as I lost some motivation and was nervous after my wk6 experience with the pull ups. And this time it took me til Monday to get past the nervousness, but I got these done yesterday. The following is a screen capture of the spreadsheet I'm using to track the tabata progress --



In some ways, I don't think the wk1 numbers are all that good of a baseline -- with many exercises, the first time going through them is kind of like dipping a toe in the water to test things. I think it is more reasonable to look at the wk2 numbers as a measure of baseline fitness, and at this point we can say I've seen a substantial increase in work capacity. Obviously, I haven't gotten all my work capacity increase from doing the tabatas, but it is likely they have contributed some. Tabatas are extremely intense and painful some, the first 2 rounds usually don't feel all that bad but after that it gets uncomfortable. I suppose then it's not only about training physical systems, but it's also about training the mind to keep pushing even when the body is thinking it wants to rest.

Form tends to get a bit sloppy in the later rounds, although I think over the past 2 months my form is becoming more strict in the later rounds than back in March and early April.

So that finally gets me to this morning when I put 160 lbs on the bar and went to do 20 reps of squats. I felt really nervous about this morning's set -- the bad run yesterday and then the fact that I had gutted my way through a tabata set of air squats on Sunday pretty much meant my legs were tired some this morning. I could feel that just walking around.

By the 8th rep today, I was already breathing hard, so that's what it became, a test of will and endurance, accepting the discomfort that never really alleviates while sucking in extra air and accepting that descent and ascent will hurt more each subsequent attempt. But I got them done and I will say that my legs pretty well completely trashed now. I'm not going to run this afternoon, I know that.

I will note that I'm feeling like I might be pushing up a bit against the edge right now as far as cumulative fatigue. I'm greatly inclined to make next week a light recovery week to give my body a chance to mend itself.

[Evermont]

Originally Posted by Scratch

...I will note that I'm feeling like I might be pushing up a bit against the edge right now as far as cumulative fatigue. I'm greatly inclined to make next week a light recovery week to give my body a chance to mend itself.

I was half way through todays post Scratch and thinking about asking you about this very thing - then you closed with it. Now that my bootcamp class is done I think I'll try some of this business too - I'm ready for a new challenge. Thanks for posting your insane exercise adventures, I find it inspiring!

[Scratch]

Originally Posted by Evermont

I was half way through todays post Scratch and thinking about asking you about this very thing - then you closed with it. Now that my bootcamp class is done I think I'll try some of this business too - I'm ready for a new challenge. Thanks for posting your insane exercise adventures, I find it inspiring!

I'm glad you're liking it. One of the basic principles I try to adhere to is keeping it fun for myself, although what's fun for one may not be fun for others. I guess I've just been kind of thinking about that basic principles concept recently and had some cause to think about it the last few days when I found a very good download well worth reading. At least I thought so.

Dan John's From the Ground Up

Originally Posted by Dan John

The heart and soul of this book is the belief...my belief...that the athlete, the fitness enthusiast, or the health seeker is capable of training at level of excellence unmatched by most gyms, spa or training centers all in comfortable surroundings of their home gym. Contrary to popular opinion...and an industry fueling this notion ...you can train at home with a minimal investment of a simple bar.

In some ways, it can be even simpler than that. It's about encountering resistance and using the muscles to overcome resistance. By doing so, the muscles are forced to adapt and a person becomes stronger. This can be done with bodyweight exercises too, but the principle of lifting and moving heavy objects works well too.

Last night, I watched a couple of video clips by Dan John --

Dan John - from the ground up
YouTube - Carried away by Dan john part 1

I particularly love the BFR 2000 in the second video clip. We'd all be a lot stronger if we played around more with BFR 2000s probably.

Or I suppose it's like I know of all the things I've purchased, probably the best thing I ever got was the pull up bar that I put in the doorframe. I've gotten a lot of work out that bar.

Move heavy stuff. Eat a good diet. Get good rest. Have fun. That about covers it I suppose.

[Scratch]

I decided to have some fun last night and played around with ideas from the Carried Away Dan John youtube clip. I also mixed in some overhead squat form practice using a light barbell and a broomstick.

1x5x26 lbs overhead squat (OHS)
1x5xbroomstick OHS
Farmer's walk with two 80 lb DBs
Waiter's walk with 40 lb DB
Suitcase carry with 40 lb DB
Crosswalk carry with 30 lb DB held high and 40 lb DB held low
45 lb BFR sprints

Then I went through and did all of those once again, with the one change being I used 55 lb DBs for the farmer's walk.

I definitely need to work on the OHS form. It's a great exercise, but my flexibility was never good even as a young kid and it's been a lot of work loosening me up some since 2005. The OHS is an exercise that will collapse if the form can't be maintained, if you lose form with a heavy enough weight, it will pitch forward or backwards and will have to be dumped. But from what I've been able to read up on with it, probably the best way to get the flexibility for it is to do the movement with light weights or a broomstick. And you know what? I was able to squat deeper as I did more reps. On the last few broomstick reps, I finally felt like I reached bottom. So I just need to practice with that and as I feel more comfortable with the form, gradually add more weight for the overhead.

Anyhow, last night's workout was definitely a learning type experience. Well, every workout should be, but I mean that since I did a number of things that were new I was kind of feeling it out. The first farmer's walk I had too much weight really, I got some distance covered, but it was probably just a bit too hard really. Some discomfort is okay, but there was a bit too much there. It's a great exercise though, it gets the heart pounding as you move a lot of weight along like that.

The crosswalks were also tough. When I reached the end and dropped the arm held high, shew.

The BFR sprints were a revelation. I've never gotten breathing hard in such a short distance before. Holding a 45 lb rock in front of me and trying to run fast was hard. I'm thinking I should try them an uphill sometime too.

I got on the scale this morning and weighed in at 152 lbs, highest number I've seen for me yet. There was a time back in late summer and early fall last year I was hanging around 140 lbs, so I've definitely put on some weight since then. Good weight too.

[Scratch]

Anyhow, over the weekend I definitely got confirmation that I need to take some cutback time. Ever since the last big workout on Wednesday evening, my body's been giving lots of messages asking me to slow down.

The first message came in the form of not sleeping very well Wednesday night, I woke up around 2:30 Thursday morning and could not get back to sleep. Since then, I've slept better and I've felt a bit better usually upon waking up.

Heart rate when waking up in the morning has been up since Thursday too, up in the mid 60s. I've been usually in the upper 50s when waking up.

I ran 10K/6.2 miles Saturday morning. Kind of. The legs felt better than when I had last run on Monday, but pretty quickly I could tell my whole body wasn't doing all that well. I ended up mixing walk breaks in with the running to complete the distance. I probably wasn't helped any by the sticky humid conditions, but there was still that overall fatigued feel to it. Later on in the morning I went down for a nap.

Yesterday morning I did some lifting.

5x5x55 lbs dumbbell swings
5x3x100 lbs overhead press
5x3x140 lbs bentover barbell rows

I got the lifts done, but it's funny how sometimes you can do some lifting that's hard and you get to feeling powerful with it, even if you're gassed at the end. Yesterday, I just felt like I was squeezing the last bits of juice out of a ragged sponge almost. I napped again in the afternoon.

The fatigue factor is something I seem to butt heads with. I definitely seem to be someone that generally needs more recovery than others and I find that a bit frustrating because like most anyone I tend to see the actual workouts as to what makes a person stronger, faster, etc.

[Scratch]

I went really easy on myself last week. It was frustrating some because at first it felt like my body didn't want to recover and by mid-week I was fretting that maybe something else was affecting the recovery. I didn't even do any running over the weekend, in deference to the sudden onset of heat and humidity here. Did go out, walked and golfed 9 holes Saturday afternoon and that felt brutal. You know it's hot and humid when I can play by my lonesome with no one in front of me and it takes me 2 hours to walk 9 holes. In more reasonable temps I've gotten around 9 holes in around 1 hour 15 minutes. I did walk Sunday afternoon for about an hour to help my body adjust to the heat some more.

Today's going to be another brutally hot day with temps climbing towards 100. I decided that if I was going to run today, I better make it first thing in the morning. So I got up at 5, made a pot of coffee, drank a cup and went out for a run.

Finally. I was able to keep easy pace without my legs turning into cement sacks inside of 10 minutes. I sweated like a pig if pigs could sweat and I also discovery to some misery that some flying insects were most eager to make a feast of my back. Thought running without a shirt would be the most comfortable, seeing what the insects did has called that judgment into question.

At least I feel more confident again that everything is okay and I'll be able to go for another few hard weeks of squatting and deadlifting come next week.

[Scratch]

I didn't sleep so great last night which made me grumpy, but I went out and ran about 4.6 miles this morning. Much less heat and humidity than 2 days ago, that was good. Legs didn't seem quite so lively as Tuesday though, oh well.

[Scratch]

Presently I'm a bit undecided as to what's going to be happening. On Saturday I had a bad 5K race experience where for reasons I can't pin with any reasonable certainty. My legs had nothing to them and it doesn't seem like it should be a cumulative fatigue issue -- I had run okay Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

But then, I did feel rather poorly the whole weekend, my throat was slightly scratchy and for much of Saturday I was having to whack in extra Novolog to get my blood sugars down, even though I wasn't eating any carbohydrates. I ended up injecting around 20 extra units of Novolog on Saturday just to maintain basal control, but subsequently my Lantus has proved to be just fine in potency and I did not miss my shot. So that points to some sort of infection. I have vague unease about the issue I've had with mono. I contracted and had mono in 2004, and there is a small set of individuals who can have the virus become active again intermittently. That happened to me in 2006, the second episode of mono wasn't as bad as the first occurrence, still it led to about 4 to 6 weeks of fatigue issues. In 2006 though, I wasn't nearly so active as I like to be now. I don't know.

[BrianSCohen]

Scratch,

You seem to have clear signals of overtraining. This will also manifest itself as blood sugar problems and may compromise your immune systems. I would recommend that you just declare an immediate deload week. Go see your doctor, ask him to measure your cortisol levels, if elevated, then you just earned a vacation.

Ignore overtraining at your own peril. Push yourself too hard when overtrained and you may lose months of training trying to recover. I hope you feel better.

[Scratch]

I've certainly pondered the possibility it might be overtraining, although I'm not certain that the available evidence is persuasive or that there might not be an alternate explanation.

On the other hand, even if it's not overtraining, it might simply be worth something to me to take a more extended break than I have with prior breaks.

It's just a bit frustrating because I get a lot of enjoyment at pushing myself in a workout.

[kstreeter513]

You know, I wonder if it's not the weather. My runs have been extremely difficult as of late too. I think some of my problem has been both diet and lack of rest. How is your diet lately? I ask because I am concerned you are not eating enough carbohydrates. I only say this b/c I know you are trying to gain more strength and in doing so, upping your protein. This is great, but as a runner, you must still eat carbs too. That, I think is my problem...not enough carbs. I can just feel it when I am running low. My running suffers. I guess I just don't have enough of that high octane fuel.

[Keni]

Why are you pushing yourself as hard as you are? Do you think you would do any of the things you are doing now if you hadn't been diabetic? And how long did it take you to get your A1Cs so perfect?

[Scratch]

Originally Posted by kstreeter513

You know, I wonder if it's not the weather. My runs have been extremely difficult as of late too. I think some of my problem has been both diet and lack of rest. How is your diet lately? I ask because I am concerned you are not eating enough carbohydrates. I only say this b/c I know you are trying to gain more strength and in doing so, upping your protein. This is great, but as a runner, you must still eat carbs too. That, I think is my problem...not enough carbs. I can just feel it when I am running low. My running suffers. I guess I just don't have enough of that high octane fuel.

Don't think it's a lack of carbohydrate issue for me. I still eat somewhere in excess of 200g of carbs every day. Weather might have been a factor some on Saturday, it was warm and humid by 9 that morning. I don't know.

I will say in your case you might want to consider some cutdown time though. I don't know what your schedule has been like, but it might merit some consideration that getting your first marathon run probably put your body through more stress than it has ever gone through. What I've read says that lots of people need a fair amount of recovery after that first marathon. And there might be something to us diabetics tending to need a bit more recovery time than the normal population -- we can do our best to maintain nearly normal glycemic control, but we can't get it perfect.

Originally Posted by Keni

Why are you pushing yourself as hard as you are? Do you think you would do any of the things you are doing now if you hadn't been diabetic? And how long did it take you to get your A1Cs so perfect?

Those are good questions, Keni, ones I sometimes ponder. I have said in conversations with another person that sometimes my will to improve fitness has been driven a bit by anger towards being diabetic. That's not all of it -- I was a small kid growing up and often encountered frustration that because of my size I was often regarded as not being physically capable. So now, while I suppose I'm still not really an athlete or athletic, I feel a sense of being driven to show that it can be done even though I'm a smaller person, even though I'm diabetic.

So there's that, but there's also just the basic discovery that I love the activity and the feelings of it. I really don't feel any more alive than I do when I'm in a good hard workout of some sort, whether it's a long run and stretching out the miles, or it's the brutality of doing the Crossfit Murphy workout and I'm in the middle of doing the 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 air squats, or if it's trying to push a heavy weight up into the air over my head -- it's a sense of being profoundly alive to me. I suppose it's all just endorphins and hormonal signaling and proteins sending messages, but hey, it's good stuff.

Sometimes it feels good to know that I'm doing that in spite of the autoimmune stupidity of my body. Sometimes it's frustrating.

Once I made the decision to take good control of being diabetic in September 2006, it didn't take long for me to see my HbA1c go from 6.6% down to 6.0 or lower. Some of it is just pure luck, I think. I'm lucky that my basal metabolism is fairly flat and matches up well with Lantus. I'm lucky that the Lantus shot seems to absorb consistently for right about 24 hours. I'm lucky my first calculations of what my basal shot should be about and how many units to cover carbohydrate and correction factor worked pretty well from the start of when I switched to MDI. It made my experience of switching over positive from the start and I didn't have to spend any awful long amount of time fiddling with doses and getting a reasonably decent profile of my metabolic situation.

Still, it was work and it always will be work. An easy day of watching the diabetes means I get by with 6 or 7 fingersticks. A more normal day is 9 to 12 times of testing blood sugar. A bad day is 15 times. As best I can without being too obsessive about it, I just try to stay on top of everything, because the metabolism does shift around some.

I feel better than I have in years though, so it's worth it.

[BrianSCohen]

Scratch,

I still have to go with suspected overtraining. You sound a little like me. The wife of my workout partner accused me of trying to hurt her husband last night. Sure some of it was kidding, but I do push it a little, and I am 48 and diabetic. Think about the classic overtraining symptoms:

Washed-out feeling, tired, drained, lack of energy
Mild leg soreness, general aches and pains
Pain in muscles and joints
Sudden drop in performance
Insomnia
Headaches
Decreased immunity (increased number of colds, and sore throats)
Decrease in training capacity / intensity
Moodiness and irritability
Depression
Loss of enthusiasm for the sport
Decreased appetite
Increased incidence of injuries.

Have you had any of these? Just from your posts, I would tick of a couple. You don't get strong from lifting, you get strong by recovering from lifting. Seriously think about cutting back on the overall product of intensity and volume and see if that helps you get back to feeling 100%.