It is starting to become routine that Friday night is a P90x night, since the pool closes early. With Legs & Back having been on Wednesday, I usually go for an upper body workout on Friday, to give my legs more recovery time. So this week it was Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. This routine is basically variations on push-ups, tricip extensions and other things to isolate the shoulders. For now I'm just trying to find a routine that works with P90X in terms of what days to do certain workouts, so while I'm tracking numbers and weights and such, I'm a little more laissez faire at the moment, as opposed to what I intend once the weather really gets crappy.
On Saturday I dusted off the plyometrics DVD. Last time I did this workout, I stopped halfway through, because I could tell it was going to make me sore - so I didn't want to do too much. For that reason, I have been holding off on revisiting it, because I didn't want it to impact my training for the marathon - but on this day I decided to revisit it. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed it much better this time around. I still only did half the workout, because I knew this morning I'd be going for a run in hilly terrain, and because the impact of the jumping was starting to aggrevate my toe (damn thing!). But it was really nice to know that I'm more able to keep up with it and not get totally wiped out. So that bodes well for incorporating it into a routine over the winter.
Speaking of which, I've been trying to think how everything would settle out. There are a multitide of factors to consider when doing certain workouts, but I think something like the following will work out best:
Monday - P90X Legs & Back
Tueday - P90X Chest, Shoulders and Tricips
Wednesday - yoga
Thursday - swim
Friday - P90X Chest & Back
Saturday - run or plyo
Sunday - run or plyo (opposite of Saturday)
This gives me rest between back workouts, yoga after the more intense legs workouts of plyo, running and P90X legs, a few days between chest workouts, and swimming on Thursday which, so far, has proven to be a day where there are few people at the pool. It also gives me two chances to run on the weekend, depending on how the weather shakes out.
Finally, today was a 10 mile run to get a sense of the course for the Monson half marathon I intend to run next weekend. I ran this with my dad, as he's done the race a few times in the past, and likes to run the course beforehand. I haven't run much in hilly terrain this year, so it was an opportunity for me to see what it would be like. From what I can tell, there will be a couple primary challenges - the first being the immediate up-hill, so a slow warmup will be essential to prevent burnout before the three mile mark. The second is the steep downhill on the backside of the route - I find a slight gradual downhill is best, but the grade on this particular section is fairly steep. Fortunately, the uphill sections are either short when they are more intense, or fairly gradual on the more extended sections. However, it is one thing to experience them at a pace where the HR is well below 150 - it'll be another thing to feel what they are like during race conditions and trying to maintain a 155-160 HR.
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