Quick Post

Tired, marginally cranky ... and need to write one hell of a blog entry (or two) one of these days.

Anyway, snowshoed today. Did about a mile - half of it was uphill and took FOREVER ... the second half was downhill and took no time at all. All was above 9400 feet in elevation.

Minor setback...mentally

Went snowshoeing yesterday on the golf course, which was fun, but last night due to a few circumstances I was mentally drained and didn't feel like lifting my upper body, so we pushed that to today to do a total body lift.

Financial concerns.

Mrrf.

Snowshoe-d on the golf course near the house for probably about 40 minutes. Found out my pants split, which obviously wasn't a nice surprise.

Was going to do an upper body lift, but am tired, ate dinner late due to the rest of the family (long story) and, to top it off, am now basically depressed due to financial concerns.

So, instead of doing a lower body/core lift tomorrow, am now going to do a total body lift.

Stepping it up a bit

I mentioned in my last workout post about how I've been pushing myself but feel like I could do more. I'm a little concerned about it, because I know how hard I want to work. And yes, I would like to be at a level like I was last year where longer runs and sprint workouts were not that difficult. However, I think that the best course right now is gradually stepping everything up. I think I am kidding myself when I say a 45 minute treadmill series will not be difficult.

In any event, last night we took turns going to the gym from scorekeeping. I went, stretched, warmed up, and hit the treadmill for my standard 2/3 workout. I did however push myself to 20 minutes instead of what has become the standard 15. I also found a method to take away from the monotony that is this workout and stop looking at the time every 20 seconds. I move my towel over the time when I am doing the running and check it about 2 minutes or so into the song I am currently listening to. That way, I don't glance down all the time and get frustrated.

I also steamed after my workout. It felt great to relax in the steam room and sweat a lot.

Snowshoeing today!!!!!

Of Snowshoeing and Running

Okay, I uploaded snowshoeing pictures so I'll toss those in at the end. But, I already did my workout for today, so go me.

Brandon's got a trip later today, so we decided to go to the gym before he left. Did the recumbent bike warmup, stretched ... and cursed the New Years Resolutioners (of which we technicallykindaare) for there were NO good treadmills available - only two of the crappy ones. I managed to snag a good one in the midst of stretching and finished stretching out on said treadmill before doing the 2/3 sprint workout for 15 minutes. I didn't go too crazy ... that's for later this spring. Brandon did about half his workout on a crappy treadmill and half on a good one.

ANYWAY, the fun part of the post - snowshoeing pictures! As mentioned a few times already, we got each other snowshoes for Christmas and yesterday was the first chance we've had to go try them out. So, we headed up to a cold, windy Rocky Mountain National Park, strapped them on and clomped around for a mile or so (again, COLD. so going earlier in the day next time).


Brandon fall down, go boom.


Me messing around.


Brandon trying ... something.


Hooray for snowshoes!

As you can see, we had a TON of fun and plan on going again next week. We hope. *crosses fingers*

Also, I read in some local sports magazine that there are actually snowshoe running races. I tried running a bit in mine - it worked out okay, but I don't think I could go that far right now. Still, something I may have to look into in the future as that would be AWESOME.

For the curious, we have (probably) basic snowshoes - Tubbs Sojourn 25/30s. (i've got the 25s, he's got the 30s). Still, we loves them.

Happy Birthday, ISDreams!

Happy Birthday, blog! In honor of Cranky Fitness, I give you cupcakes!

Yes, I started this here blog exactly ONE YEAR ago today. I was planning on doing a whole retrospective, seeing where I was with resolutions from last year, putting down this year's ... and then today ended up being the best day for Brandon and I to use the snowshoes we got each other for Christmas. So obviously that didn't work out.

Instead, I'll do it tomorrow (along with the official snowshoeing post with pictures!) when I a.) have time and b.) upload pictures off the ol' camera.

HOWEVER, I will talk about today's scheduled workout which was a total body lift. We were talking over dinner about what we wanted to do when I remembered Charlotte's post about her January experiment and thought that the workout would be a fun one to try. So, we did, adding in one from his Men's Health as well.

We did three of the four parts of the MH workout which was a dumbbell total body workout. You didn't count reps - just did as many as you could for 45 seconds, rested for a minute and repeated one or two times. We went through it twice. We did single db woodchops, an "arms out squat" - squat down while holding the db out in front of you ... as you squat, you press in on the ends of the db for resistance - and the "standing press out" - stand, holding ends of db - press db out while pressing in on ends of db.

The last one which looked the easiest was actually the toughest. From there, we moved to the Shape circuit which seriously? Kicked. Our. Asses. We ended up doing it only once and not completely. The squat thrust with a row, once we figured it out, was a bitch, but doable. The dead lift to hip opener ... well, neither of us did the hip opener twist and Brandon struggled hard with it. :( The four count push-ups were fine, the single leg squats with the ball were ridiculously hard (probably because we're both out of our top hockey shapes) and the scissor lunges were okay. The sprinter (basically a variation on a bicycle crunch) killed us and we finished off with the plyo plank (weird). We figured if we hadn't done the squats from the MH wokout, we would have done the Tabata squats, but eh. Our quads were already sorepants by that point.

Still, a good workout for both of us.

LOTS MORE BLOGGING OUT OF ME TOMORROW.

Good workout tonight...and earlier today!

Earlier today, well...like at 2 in the afternoon, we were in Rocky Mountain NP doing a bit of hiking around...in snowshoes! Those were our Christmas presents to each other and we figured we would try them out today. Hiking in snow, even in showshoes = tough. I tell you, I think of it like swimming. The extra force on your body and whatnot. What fun and what a good workout.

Then tonight we went to the gym to do a total body workout. We took a combo from Mens Health and Shape, and we basically crawled out of the gym. I'm not kidding. You can read girlfriend's post for what the workouts were, but the long story short is that we were hurting.

Oh well, it feels good. Snowshoeing is fun!