I am a weak little girl

it's true. You know how much I hate western med doctors anyway. I went to the doctor yesterday, and he basically just said "meh, it could be something", drew some blood and that was it. I was hoping for some antibiotics or some nutrition advice or something. Maybe the bloodwork will show more. But that was just a useless "come see me in 2 more weeks if you're not feeling better by then" kind of thing. If I wanted to take 2 more weeks off from training, I would have waited until then to call him in the first place. oh well, you get what you get I guess.

But really I'm calling myself a weak little girl because I did the Tri Power assessments last night. You are supposed to do these same assessments every 4 weeks to see progress. Let's just say I did not set the bar very high, so progress should be drastic. I'm going to do the same assessments every 4 weeks for the next 8 months on the program, so I am going to post these embarrassing numbers today just so we can all see how far I've gone later. And you can hold my feet to the fire if I wimp out, or don't show enough progress. I love me some trash talk, and I like to take it just as much as I like to give it out.

Pushups (60 seconds): 10
Wall Sit: 30 sec
Flex Arm Hang: 11 sec
Side Plank: 19 sec
Side Plank Bent Knee: 25 sec
Prone Plank: 20 sec
Extensor Chain: 50 sec
Core Strength: 30%

Some of these are pretty obvious. 10 pushups is pitiful. The flex arm hang is supposed to help you if you can't do a chinup. All of the "second" measurements are time to failure. The side plank bent knee is a side plank with your bottom knee bent for stabilization and the top leg raised. The extensor chain was a fun one. It's kind of a superman pose, where your feet are anchored, and you put a swiss ball under your hips and just see how long you can keep your body straight, arms back. it's a measure of lower back strength. The core strength one was really interesting too. A lot of times when we are supposed to be working core, we're actually using the hip flexors instead. Hip flexors are already strong from all the time on the bike. So you lie flat on the floor and put one hand under your back directly below the belly button. there will be an arch in your lower back at that point. Lift your legs straight up in the air, bend your knees 90 degrees, and your lower back will press down on your hand. Lower your legs until your lower back no longer presses down on your hand, and guage the percentage that your legs moved. If your feet hit the floor you have 100% core strength. My legs only moved about 30%. that's a really cool test.

Remember the Tri Power program is all about achieving balance. I've done the same ab excersices for years, and once it gave me a nice 6 pack with smallish love handles on the sides. I think these assessments shows just how out of balance the muscles are. I've got a pretty strong back, and the wall sit is not bad. but my front and side core is certainly weaker. So I'm out of balance. I truly think this program can restore that balance. and that's really cool.

So you see the moves, how do you fare on those assessments? Do you think you're stronger than a little girl? leave me comments with some of your times.

The training plan is finally finished! Ah, glorious. It is really cool, I must admit. I've got a FIRST marathon training plan and the swim/bike numbers for a oly tri plan combined. That phase wraps june 23rd with my hillbilly marathon. Then I'm taking a couple of weeks off, just because I can. Then the half ironman training plan kicks in leading up to the nov 7th Beach 2 Battleship. I pushed it online, you can download my complete plan from this link. It's an excel 2007 spreadsheet, but if you are using an older version of excel, it should convert ok. Email me if you can't open it, and I will get it to you in another format.

I've got three each swim, bike, and run workouts. The FIRST program has speedwork on tuesdays, a tempo run thursdays, and a long run on saturdays. That's the way I like it. The swim team I'm on practices mon, tues, and thurs at 5:30 am. I haven't figured out how or when I'm going to get in the bike rides yet. There's a long ride on sunday's, and I love getting in a long bike ride on sunday afternoon. I think it's the best recovery workout after a long run on saturday. I think there will be a regular group ride I can get into for that. but monday and wednesday rides are shorter, and the Spinners don't have a regular group ride those days. I might do some at the gym, or on the trainer, or find a safe route and fly solo.

The tri power program is my strength training workouts. It has 15 minutes on mon, wed, fri of basic stretching and corrective work. that's not too bad, and I can do it all in the office. Tues and thurs are the main strength days, and it's only 35 mins worth. Not bad. I'm also throwing in 30 minutes of yoga on tuesdays and thursdays. that's not too bad, really.

It's a comprehensive plan, and in the spreadsheet I added columns to track actual completions too. The sheet is preloaded with my races and those distances too. But get a load of these totals: 92.6 miles of swimming, 2,798 miles on the bike, 639.8 miles running, 70 hours of strength work, and 36 hours of yoga. that sounds like a lot. But it's only february, and that's to carry me through the end of the year. how cool!

So I'm feeling better today, but run out of energy really quickly. I did some yoga this morning, it felt pretty good. I have lost some weight being sick, so that's feeling great. I'm going to do a Tri Power workout later on today, and maybe a little bike time if I can squeeze it in. I don't want to rush back until I'm sure I'm over the flu thing, but if I don't get in a good run or decent bike ride soon I may start shooting things.