No idea what to write as I fired up this monthly article... that's where training logs once again come in useful.
Signed up at the nearest Anytime Fitness on 2 Jul.
Finally back in a gym after almost 30 years!
Been there a total of 7 times this month... more than half of the workouts there are calisthenics and running on treadmill. Probably turned a few eyes with my unconventional approach even when using weights in the gym.
Not sure if anyone else had ever held a 110-135lb barbell while lying on the floor and swinging the legs in both directions at the same time since the gym opened for business :)
But not that I care so long it's not obstructing or inconveniencing others. Important thing is getting a good worthy workout.
Running
It's still mostly the usual 6km loops that's been honed these few months to improve on pace while keeping to my usual fetish of maintaining as low a heart rate as possible.
29 Jul was particularly exhausting after a 2hr session at the gym but still manage to run my usual pace with those self-imposed HR numbers, +/- a little.
From this it seems my pace-to-heart rate has reached a steady state even with other bodily fatigue which isn't affecting cardio significantly.
Not expecting much further improvement for a while but have reached my pace target of around 6:00/km set in Apr by now
I bracketed the range where at HR 130-135, my speed would roughly be 10.0-10.2km/hr
The rough breakdown I can observe would be
9.50-9.85 km/h ------ ~HR 126-129
10.0-10.2 km/h ------ ~HR 130-135
>10.2-10.5 km/h ----- ~HR135-140
With one "perfect" run that came in on 23 Jul at the 6:00/km pace (10.0km/h) and an average HR of 126.
I gave up on actual tracking of Zone 2 % as the watch uses the standard 220 minus age metric. But upper end of my actual Z2 HR is probably crossing over into the watch Z3. As long as my HR isn't above 135, I consider myself in Z2 range which works out to MAF+8 (MAF = 180 minus age)
A few more runs is needed to eliminate any potentially anomalous/ erroneous readings for better gauge.
Coming back to overall training...
By numbers, comparing monthly quota, nothing's in the red. As usual, on the last day of the month I had to scrape up a little more on one or two of the staples.. startingthe morning with 30 x 3 pushup before morning coffee in the office.
However exercise intensity has been staggered out differently because of the few visits to sports physio and TCM sessions and taking more easy days afterwards. Taming the mind every Thursday with Yoga lesson.Often also means engaging in less of the usual calisthenic exercises on that day of the week.
All in all, nothing seems too bad and physique wise no "downhilling" detected. But I can't help feel the training now is all over the place... No proper focus.
Maybe its having a gym membership added on which disrupted the daily/ weekly pattern in training in conjunction with the increased running focus and all the other things happening?
Guess its time to initiate a weight training program and start tracking numbers apart from my usual daily logging and see how all of these can be interleaved into an OBFP- One Big Functional Progam.