Weight and Bleed

Well, last week I realized that I'd really let myself go in July. I used to be so super gung-ho, but I was skipping runs because of the heat and laziness. I would let other things get in the way of some of my gym classes. I was eating poorly. I realized that when I ordered in Chinese one night and was like "Oh shit. What the hell am I eating?!"

So I jumped back on board last week for the month of August. I went to all of my classes last week, ran in the mornings. For the weekend, I did slack a little. I ran 6-7 miles and that's it. I didn't go to the gym. I only had that one run on Saturday. I was a big bum on Sunday.

Thus far, I went to intermediate pilates on Monday night, which is always challenging. Tuesday I ran 5k in the morning. At night I went to muscle conditioning and followed it up with my full-body lifting routine. This morning I went to pilates and spent some extra time stretching.

I used 10-lb weights almost exclusively in my muscle conditioning class now, which is brutal on work with delts and lateral raises. I'm proud of myself when I'm done though because I make sure never to compromise my form. A lot of ladies in the class use heavier weights than they should and their form is horrific - they use momentum, in bicep curls their arms swinging at their shoulders rather than anchoring their elbows at their side, same with tricep kickbacks, its just ridiculous. Or they'll only do half the set. Why not just toss your vanity out the window, grab a lighter weight and complete the full set in perfect form? You can make progress *so* quickly and not hurt yourself while doing it! They frustrate me to no end!

Unfortunately my right hamstring is acting up again. My butt hurts like a bitch from the past couple of days also. I've been laying into my glutes hardcore, as I've decided my butt isn't perky and hard enough. The upper hamstring plays into this as well. So its been requiring a lot of extra care and stretching to get it loosening up again.

My pull-ups are coming along. I've been doing a set of negatives without assistance in both the military and inner-elbow style, following by a set of full pull-ups with assistance. Previously my negative set was only 6, and my full set was 12 with 100lb assistance. On Tuesday I pushed my negatives up to 8 per set, and dropped my weight to 90 on the assisted with only 8 per set. I'm going to work back up from there. I probably should have only dropped to 95, but I like starting at the lowest number on the set. I also had just complete a rough free weight upper body workout, so I was a little weaker than if I did it fresh.

I've also been pushing my lifting to 3 sets per exercise rather than the two. Instead of one lighter set and one heavier set, I now do two lighter sets and one heavy, OR three lighter sets, depending on what I'm doing. I actually feel better doing a little bit more. It's not like I'm one of those big beefy men trying to haul up my body weight and grunting (i.e. heavy weight and low reps).

In an attempt to get myself race-motivated again, I signed up for a 5.2 mile road race tomorrow night. It's limited to only 100 participants, ends in an Irish BBQ with band AND its in honor of Michael Collins, which is very cool. My local running club is very Irish.

Alright, I think that's about it for now. I have stepped on the scale for a while. I need to start eating clean again and see some diminishing belly fat before I do that. It sounds silly, I know. I'm sure I'm the same weight as I've always been, but still, I like to motivate myself to get a happy surprise when I jump on.