[Scratch]

Incredibly muggy and humid here today as Hanna is moving up towards the mid-Atlantic region. I opted to change the schedule and I'll try to run long tomorrow. Today I ran and walked 5K, fartlek style I guess, it was so warm that my heart rate kept wanting to climb up quickly so I'd take walk breaks while out there.

The hope is for 12 miles tomorrow, then I roll into an easy week with a 5K race on Saturday which I hope will give me a good indication of where I'm at right now.

[Scratch]

12 miles today. Ran the last 2.75 miles harder than the first 9.25, want to work on that feeling of closing strong.

Blood sugar was 115 mg/dL before starting. I had injected 1u of Novolog about 1 hour prior. After 1 hour and 18 minutes, my blood sugar was 103 mg/dL. When I came back in a little over an hour later, blood sugar was 105 mg/dL. The only food I had this morning was 8g of carbs from glucose tablets to get my blood sugar up before starting.

[Robby520]

Good Morning Scratch and congradulations on finding the benefits of exercise and training.

Before I begin let me first state some qualifications. I am 61 years old and high mileage. I did not always follow such healthy habits in my younger years. But, I did always train and train hard. I am a former owner and operator of a Gold's Gym, personal trainer to world class bodybuilders and many not so world class. In addition I am a former NPC (bodybuilding) state qualified judge. And, I am a diabetic for 30+ years.

One thing you will learn is the fact that there is almost nothing that will assist you in your efforts to control you body and your diabetes better than diet and exercise. In so much as your exercise I want to make you and whoever else is reading this is my opinion on some things that I have found important in my 40+ years in the "gym."

Many athletes have sought out my help. Most have come with "book" in hand. That is, prior they had "charted" their results and work outs by daily recording. Here is how it starts. I normally say this: there is one student and one teacher. Which do you think you are going to be? Ok, then shall we agree the student does everything the teacher says from this point forward and is NEVER late for a workout? Then the second item is I take the book (chart) over to the trash can and toss it. The second thing is I ask the student to point out the most important machine in the gym. I have never had this question ansered correctly. It is the second hand on the big **** clock on the wall...... Yes there is a reason for this. First, those who "chart" normally use more and more weight, less and less form and take more and more time between sets in order to use more and more weight. Depending on the physical condition of the athlete, I normallly start the person at about two to three minutes between sets and, of course each set goes to total failure. And, the reps are never less that 8 with each set (to help avoid injury). Progess is achieved by decreasing the time between sets and the increase in weight. It is very grueling! Not many "trainers" today use this method with their students for two reasons: one they don't know what they are doing and two injury. The athletes themself find it much easier to rely on drugs for advancement.

I very much encourage you to continue your efforts, but give some thought to forgetting about the charts and record keeping and reply more on "instinctive" training. Running is a great exercise. But your body will, sooner or later, being to eat your muscle mass and attempt to retain nutrition in the form of body fat. I refer to it as skinny, fat people. Just go to any race over 10K and look at the runners. The good ones are all skinny, but have little pockets of fat giggling as they move. A combination of the weight resistant and aerobic exercise will be the most benefical to you and your good health.

Best of luck to you!

Robby

[Scratch]

Tempo run this morning on a high school track. The daylight has squeezed down in the mornings and I don't have enough time in the mornings to do a longer tempo run unless I get up early and run on the safe area of a track. The run went well, when I started running the tempo paced laps I had a bit of a ramp up period, but after those first couple, the ones following looked decent.

I've begun lifting heavy again. For about a 6 or 7 week period, I tried an experiment. I had heard about this thing called German volume training. Using a lighter weight, you try to do 10 sets of 10 reps with 1 minute rest intervals. If you don't get a full 10x10, you repeat the weight. I saw gains with how many reps I could complete and saw some increase in the weights used, but was disappointed to find out last week my one rep maxes had all dropped. It was good for getting some sarcoplasmic hypertrophy though, I was doing a rotation of standing overhead press, barbell rows, bench press and chin ups, and my arms and shoulders appeared to grow some in size and definition. But the loss of max strength is annoying.

So I'm going back to lifting heavy. 5 sets of 3 reps to get 15 reps of weight that I can feel that it's hard to move. Started that up on Monday and will do again tomorrow. Mondays and Thursdays will be lifting days. I'm going to keep it 2x a week so I don't knacker myself too much in combination with all the running I need to do for the HM.

[BrianSCohen]

Scratch,

If you are working on strength, I have had good experiences with 5x5 techniques. The one I am using now is based on the Madcow template (MadCow version of the Bill Starr 5x5 Template ). This is for intermediate lifts who have worked on linear progressions and have plateaued and are unable to make marked progress even with resets. You can use the same program template for other exercises. The GVT approach, like 20 rep squats will work for a few weeks, but you will be overtrained quickly. You can go for quite a long time on the 5x5 balancing volume and intensity.

[Scratch]

I haven't written anything in here for a while, but I've still been working out, getting my running in for the half-marathon that's coming up in November and lifting Mondays and Thursdays every week.

I hit my highest ever mileage week of running last week -- 33.4 miles. 14 of those were on Saturday and we're done for a long run. I hope to get in 2 or 3 more long runs of about 14 to 15 mile range so as to help me feel comfortable with the distance of 13.1 miles that I'll do in the race. I also put in a tempo run on Tuesday and a set of intervals Thursday morning. I'm feeling quite confident now that if everything goes well, the break 2:10 goal for the HM is pretty much in the bag, and I've got some hopes that maybe I'll see good enough improvements in training paces that 2:05 could be possible. I don't think I'll be able to break 2 hours this year unless I get some amazing leap forward in progress that I don't expect.

Lifting has been going really well since I went back to lifting heavy. For 2 weeks, I would do 5x3s and was able to increase poundages nicely. Then for 2 weeks I used 4x5s with the idea that with the weights backed off and lighter for the 5-rep sets I would be able to do those reps with nice crisp tempo.

Last week I went back to the 5x3 and in the workout last Thursday, after I had done 4x3x110 lbs standing overhead press, I was feeling good, put 5 more lbs on the bar, and did the final set of 3 with 115 lbs. 115 lbs back earlier in the year had been my best single rep of standing overhead press.

Saw my doctor last week. I weighed in at 154 lbs, most I've ever weighed. So I seem to have been putting on some mass again, I'll tell you, even if you can't squat for whatever reason like I am to keep my legs fresh for running, doing stuff like standing overhead press, bench press, barbell rows, power cleans, and weighted chin ups can provoke enough of neuroendocrine response that if you feed yourself enough protein, you will put on some more muscle mass.

Doctor said my numbers and everything look so good right now that if standard protocol didn't say that doctors should see diabetic patients every 3 months, he wouldn't ask to see me for another 6.

Then he wrote me up a lab order to get an HbA1c drawn. I did that last Wednesday and got the results back yesterday.

5.4

I knew it was going to be good.