End of 8 weeks

It's gone pretty quickly, as time does these days; eight weeks of working on strength training. The running has taken a hit with the colder weather and busy schedule - no runs this week. :-(

[Photo: the last 3 leaves on the new tree that I planted this summer - now gone.]

Trainer: I did get the bike on the trainer once this week though - yesterday, for 2:05. I was wanting to watch a movie, so I rode while watching it. According to my Cat Eye it was 32.69 miles, 15.6 mph Avg, 23 mph Max, 80 avg cadence, 150 max cadence, no HR data. I've not ridden for a while, so two hours on the saddle was a little uncomfortable. I found myself sitting up right towards the end of the ride as well as moving around a bit. I've never had nor seen 'saddle sores', but I was wondering if that's what was starting as my bottom was getting quite sore...

Weights: I forgot to do my 1 minute sit up test (again). Today's pull up ladder had a second step of 5 pull ups (1,2,3,4,5,5,4,3,2,1). Last week it was just 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1. On week one it was 1,2,3,4,3,3,2,1. So over the last weeks I'm seeing 11 more pull ups in the ladder work out and have gone from a max of 4 to 8. (This is good improvement for me.)

On the bench I saw 2 more reps @ 155 and maintained the increases from last week: so only a small increase in 'work' over last week. Next week I plan to move the max lift on Th from 215 to 225. All in all I feel stronger now than I did 8 weeks ago - no question.

Weight: not so good; still up. I've been allowing and enjoying to many sweets. I plan on getting a little more serious at some point ... maybe tomorrow (which is saying I'm not ready to really make the commitment yet!). If I say I'll start something tomorrow instead of today - that's a warning flag to be dealt with and it's the thought I have when I hear others putting of starting something until the next day too.

Wed with Wife: she joined me again this week. That's 5 in a row now. And this week she did two cycles with me over the exercises. It was good and fun! She's lost many inches - not just in the last 5 weeks, but since she started this past summer - wearing belts and considering some new clothes... :-) Which is a good reminder: the scale isn't always the best may to measure progress as an increase in lean body weight doesn't always look nice on the scale, but does show up in the wardrobe.

I'm still playing with different ideas on how to quantify strength progress. My latest formulas include body weight to help scale the numbers based on the weight of the one doing the work. So a lighter person doing the same weight is producing more power. It's kind of fun in a few spare moments here and there. My latest formula is : work = reps ^ ((weight/body weight)^3).

My wife tells me these are hard to read ... hmmm, trying to work on that. Unfortunately I've not had any good stories like the gym experience earlier this year. :-)