Workout Capacity 101 Before Breakfast...!

Remember the Natural Balance bars I reviewed, the Nakd and Trek bars? Well the lovely people at Natural Balance have put me on the news part of their website, how exciting :-) go check it out here!

Yesterday I ran intervals (no HR data as Mike was wearing his garmin.. I so want my own!!)

Warm up 1 mile @9.45
1600m (7.53) 7.31
400m RI
1600m (7.53) 7.44
400m RI
800m (3.49) 3.45
Cool Down 400m

Those intervals were tough! My legs felt so heavy in the last 800m, I think it's my own fault, I paced myself too fast for all the repeats, though I got closer each time (the time I was supposed to run is in brackets)! I couldn't believe how much harder they were than my last interval workout when I did 400m repeats. I cut the cool down short as I'm trying to save my legs so I can do all my planned workouts this week. My knees were ok but they felt a bit sore and stiff afterwards. I iced them as planned after the run but they still felt a bit stiff last night, hopefully they will be ok tomorrow for my tempo, I don't think they're injured I think they're just a bit sensitive.

When I got home from my run I had a package from pulsin with a few discs to try. It was too late to try the pre-workout snacks but I had half the protein disc after my lunch. Unfortunately all the discs contained soy so Mike couldn't try any. This was the biggest downside to them, especially as it was just soy lecithin so they could have used sunflower lecithin to allow people with soy allergies to enjoy them too, one of the discs had both in! I noticed cause I got excited thinking Mike could try it but then we saw the dreaded soya! Other than the soy the discs had good ingredients. The protein sport disc had a nice chocolatey taste and a nice texture with protein crispies similar to the trek bars. The disc had 15g of protein and just over 200 calories, not bad!

The discs they sent

We did some bodyweight strength before tea, we did core, push-ups, pull-ups and chin-ups. We did our core moves in our rest periods for the push-ups and pull-ups. I did tempo push-ups, 3 seconds going down and 2 seconds going up. For the pull-ups and chin-ups I did the 3 second hold at the top, middle and bottom. In the rest for the push-ups we did 60s isometric holds which is going to make up the core challenge sample workout 3!
10 wide hand push-ups
ab wheel hold 60s
5 normal hand push-ups
plank 60s
2 diamond push-ups
crunch hold 60s
3 knuckle push-ups
leg raise 60s
7 wide hand push-ups
L side plank 60s
4 normal hand push-ups
R side plank 60s

Then on to the pull-up/chin-up sets

normal grip chin-up
30 crunches
normal grip pull-up
30 crunches
close grip chin-up
30 crunches
close grip pull-up
30 crunches
wide grip chin-up
30 crunches
wide grip pull-up
30 crunches

And done for the day!

Sample Core Workout 3

This is a challenging workout just using isometric holds, I think all the moves are on the core work page except the ab wheel hold which is just a hold as you would be in the lower position of the ab wheel move. Choose how long you hold the exercises for, just under your max so you can finish the workout.

ab wheel hold
rest 30s
plank
rest 30s
crunch hold
rest 30s
leg raise
rest 30s
L side plank
rest 30s
R side plank
rest 2 minutes and repeat the circuit.

How is everyone's core challenge going? Let me know how you're doing :-)

I was going to publish this post last night but I was experiencing some technical difficulties with my photo editor, as in, we had to reformat the computer and lost the program and I couldn't for the life of me get it to reinstall! I asked Mike to try to make sure I wasn't doing something daft but he couldn't get it to work either so I've downloaded picasa now. I've just used it and it seems pretty good, Mike had to help me a bit, I'm pretty rubbish when it comes to figuring out technology!

Oh yeah, check out our set up to get the CD player to work on the laptop... It's not going to last much longer!


We had a mega busy day today so we got up early to get our workout in before breakfast. Let me tell you, workout capacity 101 before breakfast is very unpleasant! I felt so sick and I was a bit dizzy afterwards, tough workouts on a totally empty stomach are not good! The workout went like this (this is a modified version);

5 chair dips
10 band slams
15 burpees
20 star jumps

x 10 rounds

I finished in 16.35 - tough stuff! In hindsight I wish I'd worn the heart rate monitor to see what my heart rate actually was, it felt high!

We were busy today as we were volunteering at the university, we had to get two buses each way so it's almost 2 hours of travel even though it would be about 15-20 minutes in a car... I wish one of us drove! We experienced two bad bus drivers today, we ran for a bus and just as we got there he pulled away not letting us on and leaving us in the cold and rain to get drenched waiting 30 minutes for another bus, they are supposed to be every 10 minutes but that's English public transport for you... Another bus driver wouldn't let a man on because he'd started the engine going, he then proceeded to stay there with the engine going not moving because he couldn't back out of the bay. It would have been no problem at all to let that man get on, the mind boggles, people can be so selfish!

Whew what a long post! Hope everyone's had a great day!