Training for a century at home

Our gym pass expired and in our attempts to be thrifty we are trying to make it this month just working out at home. The bike is still out of commission but I am not defeated.

30 min of stretching continues
20 squats daily
3 sets of 10 second planks
2 miles of walking
100 crunches
20 knee ups
20 cross foot taps

Day one went awesome
Day two we had a dog follow us home
Day three, still success with the work out and the dog is still in our house. Bath given, food bought, collar on. I might be delving into Animal adoption blogging in the next few weeks. If i leave you hanging this adorable dog is at fault.

Tyler State Park

Continuing to cross train while I await the motivation to fix the brakes on the bike I headed to Tyler state park. Its a smallish state park with a nice selection of trails. I did the loop around the lake, about 3 miles and attempted to find loop C but ended up doing part of loop B. The A,B,C,D trails could use some better markings, however the park is small and you find yourself by the road frequently so no real worries of getting wicked lost. It was a fantastic Texas winter day, lows in the 40's and Highs in the mid 60's

Several of the trails are bike friendly, mountain bikes are a must on the trails. I have also seen many people riding road bike on the driving loop in the park. We are without a bike holder on our car, so I have not had the opportunity to take it out in the park yet.

 The park has an abundance of well maintained campground and cabins for rent. Next time we have friends come down for the weekend I think I will be suggesting that we stay in the cabins and spend the weekend, hiking, fishing, paddle boating and biking.

** on a side note getting photos off of my work blackberry and onto blogger was a huge pain. Blogger is too large of a forum for Blackberry browser to support so I had to load the photos to Facebook, download them on my laptop and than post them on this entry... uggg, I hate technology that can not cross communicate

just keep going

Back at the gym today, still feeling exhausted, but I did a nice
30 min warm up stretch.
9 10 sets leg presses starting at 50 working up to 100 lbs.
3 10 set thigh abductions.
3 10 set leg compression's.
4 10 sets Arnold press lbs.
5 min running machine 10 x 5


A hike is on my mind tomorrow.... i will keep you updated

Bike Under Repair

So the breaks on the bike are not working properly and it needs to get into the shop. I have not had an opportunity to take it yet and was out of town the past two days, however the trend of wanting to keep my training going regardless of obstacles continues.

Today work out was:

30 min of stretching
2 min of jumping
100 crunches
10 windmills
30 toe ups
10 knee to elbows
20 min house cleaning
30 min level 10 on a stationary bike
3 sets of 10 hip abduction
4 sets of 10 leg abduction
1 mile walking

Back to the Parks Recreation Center at the Kilgore College campus today, printer issue still not resolved however wanting to keep the momentum going I did 12 min on the stair stepper, 5 reps of 10 on the leg abduction and 4 sets of 10 with eight pound weights. The gym was VERY busy tonight so that is where I ended and came home.

The results thus far: I was noticing gains in my upper body strength prior to hurting my upper arm over the weekend and it remains sore today (hence the minimal weight lifting). Monday, Tuesday and Today have all been focused on leg strength and I am noticing gains already. My bum remains a bit sore from the ride on Monday ... keeping rides short at this phase is most likely a good thing.

I am going to try to get some photos of the rec center up for everyone to see sometime in the next few weeks.

Training when things do not work

Today I woke up with a strange pain in my upper right arm. After some confusion and thought I realized I most likely strained something when waxing the car yesterday(see below). Arriving home from work I realized that our printer was out of ink and I could not print off my work out plan and my arm was still in pain. Not wanting to be defeated I walked myself over to the Gym and did 10 min on the elliptical, three 10 set leg presses, three 10 sets leg extensions, three 10 sets thigh abductions, a few laps on the track, some very very light arm work outs(nothing that caused pain), 3 ten sets of the work out where you put the balls of your fee on a step and go up on you toes and back down.

Still along way off from my performance markers that I hope to reach but I am being honest and just going on days when things are not working I think is moving in the direction I want to be in.




**On waxing the car. I had a neighbor in ND who would wax his truck almost every week and I got it in my head that waxing a vehicle would be fun, I bough the stuff and yesterday was lovely weather so I waxed the car.... not "fun" however I was able to do 1/2 of it while waiting at the laundrymat for my clothes and my car does look fantastic, but I doubt ill do it again any time soon

century training week 8

Monday: Cross training: Never had to use the names of the equipment before so some of these might be wrong but you will get the general idea

Stretching
free weights 3 reps of 10 with 5 lbs
Sholder Press 20lbs - 3 reps of 10

Incline Chest Press 30lbs - 3 reps of 10

Chest Pull 50lbs - 3 reps of 10
Lat Pull Down 40lbs - 3 reps of 10
.25 mile walk
10 min on the elliptical
stretch 

also while searching these out i found this great site that i might try to use again this winter http://www.beyondstrengthperformance.com/upper-body-pull-exercises


and Monday was the end of my training for the week, life just caught up with me this week, was very busy and truly did not have time to work out. I did however accept a part time job at Any Time Fitness so i see an increase of working out in my future! 

Century Training Week 7

Things are off to a much better start this week. Thought I would share my bike trip maps with you, just in case I have any followers in the area who want to give the trip a go =)

8 Mile trip : https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?authuser=0&ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=205365277646822574271.0004cba564ab050f5ffeb&mid=1349811541 (as a side note this ends up close to 9 but i tell myself its 8)

Monday : 8 Mile ride - trying to improve my speed but only seemed to improve my level if gears biked in. Also making a focused effort to keep peddling when going down hill, not using that as a break time.

Tuesday:  Lazy

Wednesday: Lazy

Thursday: 8 Mile Ride - just about died twice on today's trip. The roads were very busy, the dust was thick and many people were in too much of a hurry to slow down for me. I really wish i had safer places to train.

Friday: 3 Mile Ride - just a perfect day, however my whole self was exhausted and my butt was a bit sore from taking a week off

Sat: Lazy - did pick up some more reflectors today, trying to stay as visible as possible in the dust clouds.

Sunday: Cross training 3 mile walk



And this week I have several reflector advertisers to share with you if you want to increase your viability.

Century Training Week 6

Week 6 of training and these entries are becoming popular, so popular in fact that Google Ads thought I should advertise for bikes in my blog =). This week was close to a failure for century training, WE had a huge weather shift and my motivation hit rock bottom. So here it the weeks re-cap

Trek Wahoo

Monday: Cross training 1 mile walk
Tuesday: Nothing
Wednesday: Snow!
Thursday: Cross training 1 mile walk
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: Cross training 5 mile walk
Sunday: Cross training 1.5 mile walk


This is the Bike that I have been using over the past month, the Trek Wahoo, and at the end of this post are a whole bunch of bikes that Google ads is affiliated with if you want to do a bit of bike shopping =)

enjoy!

Century Training Week 5

Monday: 5 miles, 1.5 to work 1.5 home 3 after work and a 1.5 miles walking to the mall, Wendy's and wal-mart

Tuesday: Cross training and rest, Walked home from the mall and than ate Mexican food and sleeping.

Wednesday: 5 Miles, Trying to use today to push my muscles and time I spent this ride two gears higher than I traditionally do and made a point to keep peddling even when gravity was in my favor. I hit a few snags however and my actual time did not improve. First due to the drought the roads are very dusty and today for whatever reason the oil traffic was out in full force.For a mile + on this ride I could barley see 20 feet in front of me due to the dust clouds and breathing was a horrid experience, needless to say i slowed down significantly as I navigated this oil truck dust storm. The second snag was about 4 block from my house when avoiding construction activity I hit something and popped my tire. The result was having to walk the bike home and not sure what tomorrow will bring.

Thursday: Cross training 2.5 miles walking, With my tire still out of service and not time to repair it and get some exercise I opted to do a 2.5 mile walk. Not the same muscle group but building the legs none the less.

Friday: Cross training, 20 min of P90X yoga feeling excellent and noticing the strength in my legs is improving.


Saturday: 20 Miles, Goal 30 Miles, new tire on and 3.5 miles down the highway I get a flat again, back to the bike shop, second time this morning and with a new tire on I am trying a new route around lake Patterson  2.5 miles from my house to the Patterson lake campground, through the campground, onto the railroad access road to the traps man club on 115th. Lovely path along the south western side of the lake, up past the model airplanes club area and onto to 116th street. This bike trail was a 2006 Boy scout project that is now under management of the Dickinson parks and Recreation Department in collaboration with the badlands bike club. this first 3 miles really made me excited to be using the mountain bike as it was designed and to be off the roads and away from the oil trucks. Everything quickly went down hill the trail was gone, I was chest deep in grasses, and I had plunged a good 45 min in this till i hit a hidden log and realized i was in over my head, another 30 min of walking my bike back to the road and having to climb though a barbwire fence I was very grateful to be back on the road. Not exactly sure where I was I headed towards Dickinson Skyline and 9.2 miles latter I had made it home.

Sunday: 3 miles, cross training 1 mile walking. Walk in the morning to loosen up after yesterdays horrid trip, found a lost dog and returned it during this walk. Biked to and from work.

Training for a century!

Working towards my goal .... nothing too crazy yet, a few bike rides to and from work, making a point to get out walking regularly and hope to get some good riding/ hiking done this weekend. Not being sure if the hike/ walk part of my life really has any impact i did some reading and found this

... provide some variety to your workout. Even more variety can be found in mountain biking or roller riding. This is important, because if training gets boring, it most likely gets less intense and possibly less frequent. So don't be afraid to try something new, even if that means competing in a USCF event or even a triathlon. Cross-training is also a bonus for distance cycling because overall body fitness is the key to fighting fatigue in long events. My weekly schedule includes running, hiking, weight lifting, Tae Kwon Do, racquetball, and ultimate frisbee and I am convinced this is an asset to me on the bike....(http://www.adventurecorps.com/way/dctrain.html)

The person who wrote this has done a double century, I think I can trust this advice =) During the same search I found this, that I think I will implement in September, way more than 10 weeks out, but if I can build up to it sooner why not =)

Century Training Plan
Week	Length of Long Ride	Total Miles/Week
1	25	55
2	30	65
3	35	73
4	40	81
5	45	90
6	50	99
7	57	110
8	65	122
9	50	75
10	Century Ride	Yeah!