Week 9 Day 2.5

Today's Exercise

• walk to work
• walk home (from muddy branch)

Eha! Forgot to call SSgt A! ... must call tomorrow morning!

tomorrow: call SSgt A, then get off work early, then call SSgt A as soon as get home, then do IST, then start weekend early

Week 9 Day 2

Yesterday's Exericse

• walk 2 busstops to work
• run lots of errands around NRL
• jog 1.5 min / walk 3.0 min (4.5 times, meaning 5 runs, 4 walks)
• 1 x morning exercises

Ga ... I gotta bet back into the habit of posting on the same day as I do the exercises ...

Call SSgt A today after I get home ...

Week 9 Day 1.5

Yesterday's Exercise

• walk 2 busstops to work
• 1.5 min jog / 3.25 min walk (extra 15 seconds by accident ... all the time! ... oops ^^)

Yesterday was great! First of all, in the morning, I saw someone else walking that same route in the morning ahead of me, so maybe I'm not crazy ... or maybe just not the only crazy one ^^ ... also, in the afternoon, the bus driver (on home side) not only recognized me, but also said "getting off early to run again today?" ... which means at least someone noticed my exercising efforts! Yay!

so the plan for now for the IST is: don't exercise Thursday after work and call after getting home to double check scheduling, make sure nothing has changed ... get off work early on Friday, call as soon as get home, SSgt A comes to pick me up, we do the IST, he drives me home, then start the weekend early! yay!

Week 9 Day 1

Today's Exercise

• walk 2 busstops to work
  
• 1.5 min run, 0.5 min jog, 4 min walk, 1 min jog / 3 min walk rest of way
• 2 x morning exercises
• 2 x 20 crunches

Oops ... it wasn't until after I came home that I realized I'm supposed to rest this week ... but anyways, it's kind of amazing ... it's like the writers of the exercise program could guage my progress ahead of time ... they manage to step up the pace at just the right time, for just the right amount, and change in an encouraging way just when I'm feeling least optimistic about my progress. If that isn't magic, then I don't know what is! ... or maybe it's just really good knowledge of general human capabilities ... which makes me think: maybe I'm not REALLY AWFUL compared to everyone else, I'm just comparing myself to the wrong people ... ^_^

But back to training guide's amazingness ... it feels like 2 min jog is too much, but 1 min jog is too easy ... and the training guide prescribed 1.5 min jog, just perfect ... now how did they know how I'd feel? It's almost eerie! :)

Oh yeah ... gotta schedule the IST ... how about Thursday (with Friday as alternate day)? Maybe I can get some time off, I've been working overtime all the time for the past 6 weeks ...

Week 8 Weekend 2

Today's Exercise

• 2 x morning exercises

back to work tomorrow ... but only 2 more weeks left ... aaaa I've got so much work left to do!

Week 8 Weekend 1

since SSgtMaj said "PT Everyday!", I'm going to just take it easier on weekends ... that way, stuff won't be as painful on Monday! Yay!

Today's Exercise

• 2 x 20 crunches

I think that shopping should count too, since it takes us 2 hours to go through everything, and there's no sitting at all during the entire 2 hours, but I guess there's not enough "intensity" in the shopping ...

Week 8 Day 3

Oops ... "forgot" to post last night, and also went (window) shopping until late at night so didn't do all exercises ...

Today's Exercise

• walk to work (2 busstops, oh yeah, and walking within lab "campus" of course)
• 1.5 min jog / 3 min walk for 0.7 miles (approximately)

I finally figured out how to measure running distance without making my mom drive all over in weird directions and whatnot ... just count the number of jog / run cycles I can do ... ^_^

Week 8 Day 2.5

Today was horrible! ... which is to be expected, I guess ... it's just that it's so depressing to go "yay I'm doing so well", then suddenly realize you're not doing well at all ... not to mention, it's been a while since my last infusion of embarassment at my performance compared to everyone else ... and on the crunches, it's so hard to make sure you keep your arms crossed or whatever you call it ... it just suddenly adds so much more weight you have to crunch up ... arms are not really heavy, I guess, but they get in the way, and any extra weight is heavy when your poor poor muscles are tired ...

Today's (Pseudo-)Exercise

• walk 2 busstops in morning to work (yay! I love morning weather! So crisp and clear and not hot!)
  
• going from Muddy Branch busstop:
• 3 min walk
• 2 min jog
• 3 min walk
• 1 min jog
• walk rest of way ... :(
• (lots of rest)
• 44 crunches (not timed, only about 10-15 are of pristine quality)
  

Strategies to Improve

So what can I do to get better? Well tonight I'm planning to get a good night's sleep (which means goto sleep right now! no more polishing up this post! edit it tomorrow!!), and tomorrow I will try extra hard on my running (at the very least ... the circuits are kinda easy since they're only 1 x 15). Also, I'm going to give myself a treat tomorrow, a bottle of real Kirkland Sports Drink instead of just water! Oh yeah, and maybe I shouldn't rest so much on the weekends, I should use that "extra" time to work on my "weakest" areas ... maybe when that SSgtMaj guy said "PT EveryDay" he meant 7 days a week, not 5 ...

Actually it's kinda funny, now that I think of this: SSgtMaj said "no soda, just keep chugging on that water or gatorade or whatever you have" ... when I actually cut off my soda, though, I cut off the sports drink as well ... I kinda feel like "if no soda, then definitely no Gatorade", which seems kinda backwards; shouldn't it be "if no Gatorade, then definitely no soda"? Ah well ... maybe it's because all the fun bubbles in soda make me think I'm drinking "less" sugar ^_^

Sigh ... I guess it's just so hard to measure any progress in jogging more than anything else since I have a terrible grasp of both time and distance (in the real world ... on paper, I'm a real know-it-all) ... it seems like since I've started exercising, my distance/time-before-legs-start-to-burn/breath-grows-short has not increased any at all, at least not by a perceptible amount ... whereas on the other hand, crunches and all those other things are measured by number of reps, which is easy to count since there's no such thing as "eh ... approximately 14.3452 crunches ... about ... maybe" ... no, everything in crunches (or whatever) is very definite, the smallest subdivision might be 1/2 if you count not being able to complete a crunch ^_^

Oh no! ... stupid mile thingy ...

Last night, my mom helped me measure (using the car's odometer) the distance from Lakelands Ridge bus-stop to the house ... oops, only 0.8 miles when it's supposed to be 1.5 ... which means I'm going to have to change to getting off at the Muddy Branch - Great Seneca Highway bus-stop ... arrg! and it's so hot too! How am I supposed to run that far! ... but then again, I'm going to have to make the switch some time or another ... switching earlier in training is better than switching later in training, gives my body more time to adjust before the Big Test, right? ^_^

Week 8 Day 2

Today's Exercises

• 2.5 min walk / 2 min jog from Lakelands Ridge (real jogging now, not mincing)
• 1 min (36) crunches (folder used for padding kept slipping, so lost time ... but then again, time spent fixing slippage gave abs time to rest ... )
• 3 real pushups, then 12 knee pushups (all pushups are kinda shallow ... my head keeps getting in the way ... maybe I can figure out some other place to put it ... ^_^)
• 15 squats with medium bottle of water on head
• 15 arm curls (in lieu of assisted pull-up / flex-armed hang) with pair of waters
• 2 x 15 lunges with heads on head (no water), each time start on different foot
• 15 dip-ish arm lifts with pair of waters
• 15 heel raises each leg with small bottle of water
• 15 back extensions (arms by side)
• 15 biceps curls with pair of waters
• 15 situps (pretty close to crunches, actually ... )
• 15 "reverse pull-down" with pair of waters

Hm ... I seem to have invented 3/4 of the exercises on this page ... or at least modified beyond recognition ... ah well ^_^