Points of progress last week...

[Photos: even a giant handful of spinach can't change the color from the 'beat' contents, annual pine wood derby.]

Last week was 14 since starting back at the weights. Since then I've seen much improvements in strength - and even now after 14 weeks I'm still seeing some little improvement every week or two. (I can see the improvements more easily and accurately because I keep a log. Each day's routines have the numbers from the previous time I did it (usually one week prior).)

Last week included some running again. That was very nice. I ran twice with my wife on a new 2 mile route that initially seemed much longer since it was more out and back compared to the previous route that had loops and repeats. I'm trying to encourage her to bump up to 3 times a week together - it's a hard sell when it's cold or grey or wet or not beautiful out. But, I know where she wants to go and am trying to help her see the big goal - and attain it. (And it draws us together.)

I was also able to do a couple runs by myself: two 5 miles and 8 miles on Sat. The goal has been to run with joy and for fun - and that's been nice. Most of my runs are in the 8:30 range.

The last 7 days saw a weight loss of 7 lbs. This wasn't my intent, but with some heavy burdens comes some stress and anxiousness. For me that ended up being several nights of little sleep as well as a completely sleepless night. And a few missed meals didn't help much - even though I was trying to get some of my house drinks in. I did sleep better last night, but still not where I'd like to be yet.

Eating has been better. I normally eat well, but have a tendency to eat to much and also add some sweets - usually in the form of ice cream or something chocolate. I'm trying to cut back on the foods that I eat that give me pleasure rather than nourishment. The underlying idea there is that eating food for pleasure means I'm not getting it from where it should be coming from. It's probably a deeper thing for me that I can explain here right now. Life continues to be challenging - but God continues to provide Hope, direction and purpose. And more importantly He is giving me an ever increasing unselfish Love.

Today was workout one of week 15. And the every other Monday routine is 6@6. That's 6 sets of 6 reps with 120 seconds of rest in between. Two weeks ago it was completed at 195, so today it was bumped up to 200 - and it was difficult but completed as well. In two weeks it will be 205.

Life continues to be challenging - but God continues to provide Hope, direction and purpose. And more importantly He is giving me an ever increasing unselfish Love.

The two improvements in strength last week were doing pull ups and on the bench press. Tuesday I did 9 pull ups - and I only have two years of history in this log, but I don't see an entry of doing 9 before: so I think it was the first time in about 7 years of doing weight training. Then on Thursday on the pull up ladder, I've been doing a ladder up to 6, but this past Th I added a second rep at 6 before coming back down (1,2,3,4,5,6,6,5,4,3,2,1). I think that also is the first time doing that. That ends up being ~42 pull ups in that routine.

On the heavy bench day - Th, I finally got a second rep on my last set. So, in search of progress and continued improvement, I added another set at 10 lbs more and squeezed out 1 rep and 20 partials. So my heavy day now includes sets at (after warming up with the bar and 135) : 175, 195, 215, 235 and now 245. For this routine I allow 90 seconds of recover between sets and have a limit of 8 reps max (only a factor on the first two sets).