Last Back and Biceps

Yesterday was yet another day of a double. In the morning, I met up with my running partner at 5am and we did a nice easy 3 mile run. This wasn't a run for distance or speed, it was just a nice and easy clean the junk out of the legs from the previous 3 days of effort. Sundays 9.5, Monday's 5.6, and Tuesdays 5.6 had left my legs tired and lackluster. But the key with running is consistency as I've posted before. And sometimes you just need a shorter run to get the blood flowing to the muscles.

After our quick run around the short loop, it was get my butt to work. Once work was over I picked up the boys, made my way home for my most favorite workout of all time.....P90X Back and Biceps. Absolutely LOVE that workout. Biceps are definitely the glamor muscles as Tony calls them. I'd have to agree. In my south end zone craziness, you'll always seem me showin' off the GUNS.....Well, before P90X they were kinda in that small pistol category. Well, after 2 rounds of P90X, and double the weight that I originally started with 170 days ago......I can now put them into the CANNON division. Not quite A-DUB style, but I'm damn proud of them at this point of my workout life. And the sad part of this whole story is that this is the last time I get to do this workout for quite a while. Who knows, maybe in my craziness of P90X+, I'll squeeze in a little Back and Biceps for some nostalgia. What makes it the greatest workout ever....In my opinion its the strip set as your very last exercise. You've just gone through close to an hour of double back, double biceps. You're SHOT. If you brought it, you've got nothing left in the tank already. The final strip set really shows you haw much of a man or woman you really are. Me, I like a good challenge. 4 reps of 8.....it's 32 curls. BRING THE 25s to start with!!! The last 3 were just willing those weights up. Then on to 22.5 with my BowFlex SelecTech Dumbbells. Again, the last three were just BURNING!!!! Then 20s. IT BUUUUUUUUURNS!!!! Finally, finished up with 17.5s. You'd think that 7.5 pounds lighter would be a huge recovery. It's NOT. And that's why I absolutely LOVE that workout. By the end, my arms were THROBBING! My shirt was drenched with sweat. I could barely make the X with the arms.

So when you say to yourself, how did you make yourself better today. Look deep inside your inner self, tell yourself I CAN....Don't say I can't. Remember, DO YOUR BEST AND FORGET THE REST!!!!

And down the stretch we come!!!!!

I am rapidly closing in on the end of my 2nd round of P90X. My journey has been one of resilience and strength. My first 90 days on my journey through P90X plus, there were a LOT of flaws. This round, I looked at the training plan and followed it to a T. I've hit every single planned workout, and replaced a few so that I could incorporate my love of running. As I've seen incredible gains, as I did just this past weekend, I felt a strength that I've never felt while out running. My Sunday long run, I planned a course that included some very serious hills. After the normal 3 mile route, I started making my way up the "Hill". Wade road is a gradual 1.5 mile long hill that peaks just towards the end of the run with a straight up beast of a hill. It's not the Mt. Lemmon marathon, but it's still nice and steep, and has always created a burn. Once at the very top, I get to make the right turn that's a long stretch of roller coaster style hills. Fall and roll down type steep on the down....seemingly steeper on the ups.....Once you've crested through roller coaster alley, I made the right hand turn for the nice easy dirt road decent back into the neighborhoods.

The thing about this course......It's advanced. It's the one that we normally run towards the end of marathon training. It's the one that proves you have the "it" factor. And yesterday I was amazingly STRONG!!! Normally, this is where I'd tell you how my back seized up. Normally I would tell you how I struggled but beat the hill. Yesterday was different. yesterday was 166 days in the making. Yesterday was all about RESOLVE. Resolve that I will NOT fall back into my old self ways. You know, that guy where you make the decision NOT to wake up at 4:15am when you alarm goes off for the morning run. Yah....Definitely not THAT guy. So much NOT that guy that I followed up yesterdays RUN with an AMAZING 6 mile run while my running partner snoozed his way to those old habits that I'm leaving behind.....

Life's all about the choices that you make every single day. Do you want to be STRONGER or do you want to sleep in and be soft. I choose to be stronger each and every day! There's NO WAY I'm going back to that 'old' life!

The Power of X

What is the Power of X. Well, to me, it's building muscle like CRAZY!!! I cannot wait to post pictures of my adventures in X. Yesterday I finished up Shoulders and Back for the last time this round. My push/pull segment is complete. Next week is all push, all pull. I wanted to go through my completed workout logs that I fill out as I go along. To see where I've come is absolutely astonishing. I've gained almost 3" in my arms, 8 pounds of muscle, and an amazing doubling of the weights that I'm lifting. To me, that's absolutely MIND BLOWING! I never in any of my wildest dreams thought that I would have that kind of successes.

And who would have ever thought that I could go out and run for an hour AND then go to work all day long, and then come home and BRING IT TO COMPLETE exhaustion on shoulders and back. Not only that, I set new records on almost every exercise. I'm hoping to take pics very soon. I keep saying that, but I think I'm going to hold out and unleash the pics when my Round 2 90 days are up.

Keep pushing play, and go get your Yoga X on today boys and girls!!

Fall Weather and Coming to the End of Another Phase

Well, as with all goo things, they must come to an end. When I did Chest and Back yesterday for my P90X workout, I realized that I had completely filled out every line on the log sheet. That meant, that I will not see that workout for quite some time. I was officially on Day 162 yesterday. That puts me with 18 days left until I start my phase 3 journey. Most people take the step and do a hybrid of Insanity and P90X. Me....I just thought that was well.....Insane. Although, my next adventure through P90X will be I guess my own version of Insanity. Basically, I'm going to take everything I've learned and employed over the past several months, and create a Marathon Training plan that not only includes miles out the wazoo....But put in there the strength training that my body is gong to need to sustain the level of effort I want to accomplish.

It's said that we learn from our mistakes. Well, if that's true, then I should be a freakin' genius when it comes to making mistakes in any running plan. I've done everything wrong. I've upped my mileage too quickly. I've left out strength training all together. I've over trained for a marathon and came down with bronchitis the week before, and eventually was pulled out by race officials after 14 miles. I've under trained for the marathon and watched in horror and agony as it chewed me up and spit me out. Well, now it's time to take all those life's lessons, along with some amazing marathon workouts, and meld them together with some P90X and doubles. I can truly say that my body IS ready this time. After 180 days of Tony Hortons masterful workouts, my body is strong and ready for my next challenge. And what is that challenge you ask??? Well, the title of my blog says it all.......QUALIFY FOR THE BOSTON MARATHON!!!

As for my running today. Chock up another 6 miles at a nice easy pace. When I first went out there, my mindset was to just get 3.5 miles in. But then, at the turn off point, I made the decision to to the entire big loop. And it was the right decision. Fall is a beautiful time here in the Southern Arizona desert southwest. There as no way I was going to let the opportunity of running in this amazing weather slip away. And that my friends, was me pushing play for the day. Well......Until I get home this afternoon to bang out Shoulders and Arms!!! BOO YAH!

Great week of training!!

This past week I have to say I've made some serious mental and physical gains! For one, becoming a Team BeachBody coach has really pushed me to put forth just that much more effort in every single workout. Bring it to a whole new level that even I didn't think was possible! And so, this past week, I pushed play AND managed to get in quite a few miles of running! Here's a recap....

Monday: 6 mile morning run, Chest and Triceps (push to the ULTIMATE extreme), & AB Ripper X
Tuesday: 6 mile run
Wednesday: Shoulders and Arms (Pull baby PULL) & Ab Ripper X
Thursday: Yoga X
Friday: 3 mile run
Saturday: 6 mile run
Sunday: 7 mile run

For those keeping score, that's a total of 28 miles of running (just under 5 hours of cardio) and 3 hours and 45 minutes of P90X! Total of almost 9 hours of fat shredding, calorie burning workouts! And I'm excited to say that this is only the beginning of great things to come!!!! And as for the P90X workouts. I really enjoy going back and looking over the workout sheets. To see how far I've really come. To see that I started out with 15 pound dumbells for curls, and to see me now doing curls using 30 pound weights is AMAZING. In fact, my goal for next weeks Biceps workout.....Start the strip set with 30 pound dumbells! Think about it....that's DOUBLING your load in just 90 days! Mind blowing if you ask me. And here's the kicker. I'm starting to notice something.......Under that layer of what used to be fat around my belly.....THERE'S ACTUALLY ABS UNDER THERE!!! Just a few weeks ago I tweet'd that I didn't know if I would ever LOVE AB Ripper X. Well....I'm getting closer and closer to actually loving it as my second 90 days comes to a close. I wanted to get some pictures taken yesterday, but life passed me by, and to be honest I just wasn't feeling it. My run yesterday was pretty tough. 4.5 miles into it, I started having acid reflux issues and wicked bad heartburn! New coffee pre-run, way too acidic. But, after this mornings recovery run, I feel great, and I will get them taken either tonight or tomorrow.

Speaking of this mornings recovery run, I already have 6 miles in the books. When I get home, I'm going to bust out Chest and Shoulders. It's push pull week, so there should be a whole lot of muscle confusion goodness going on!

And for those interested, make sure you head over to my Team BeachBody coaching page. You can get there by going to: http://www.beachbodycoach.com/kidstallyn. There you can learn about the P90X training program which includes their full nutrition plan. You can also click on the link to the side of this very blog your reading now! And if you want a complete nutrition solution, click on the product link and learn more about the Results and Recovery formula. It's just what the Dr. ordered for feeding your muscles after the P90X workouts. I know it's helped my in being able to bring it the next day, and it's taste is AMAZING! You can also learn about Shakeology. When you couple Shakeology with P90X.....You're going to see amazing results!!! It's the complete nutritional solution when paired together!!!

Keep pushing play!!

BREAKING NEWS!! The Kid is now a Team Beach Body Coach!

That's right boyz and girlz!! The Kid has taken his next big step in fitness. Let me start off by saying one thing. The past 12 months have been absolutely trying with respect to my training regimen. My running got totally derailed back in December when I fractured 3 ribs in a drunken yet tragic pre-game tailgating accident..... And that's how i literally limed into 2010. My original goal was to set forth on a track to run 2010 miles in 2010. Yet again.....Injury stepped in to slap me around. From there, I spent a couple of months not sleeping and barely being able to walk with a menacing lower back problem. When April rolled around, I decided I'd have had enough. While I was at my yearly physical I talked to my doctor about the back problems that I had been suffering through. He referred me to a physical therapy group who, in my opinion, saved my running career. I will say this, there are doctors out there, who are not in support of running. I've had them. They've told me to stop running all together. That's not advice that I'd wish on anyone. My Dr. knows me and knows that I'm not going to be happy unless I'm out there pounding the pavement running, and enjoying a great football game on Sunday. So he paired me with a Physical Therapy group who was like minded. My physical therapist pair were both runners and tri-athletes. To put it mildly, they got it. And together we figured out the mess that was my lower back situation. To put it in laymen terms, my hips were doing the job that my lower back was supposed to be doing. Totally pulling me out of alignment whole my back checked out and took a vacation. was it as a result of my previous injuries. No. Just a culmination of myself NOT doing what needed to be done. In all my running, I had totally forgotten the most important thing along the journey. Strength and Flexibility. I would just run, and do nothing else. And my back had checked out.

Well, after 6 weeks of intense physical therapy, I had finally graduated. It was then when I was introduced to P90X. Nope, I had never seen the infomercials. It was my physical therapist who recommended that I look into it. At that point, because I hadn't been running I had started the balloon syndrome. The sedentary fat boys dun-laps disease was starting to set in. You know.....Where your stomach dun-laps over your belt. So on May 3rd I started my first journey into P90X. And I've never looked back!!!! The thing I found about P90X is that it's put together in such a way that, as long as you put the DVDs in, push play, and put forth your best efforts, you HAVE to succeed. There is no failure. If you start out only being able to do a couple of push ups, at the end of 90 Days, your going to be able to do close to 100. If you started on your knees, by the end of 90 days, you'll be doing big boy push ups.

That's where my journey started. Today, I'm in my second round of 90 Days. And I'm absolutely and totally addicted. My Arms, Shoulders, and Back have never been stronger. Those lower back problems.....Thing of the past. WHY....because I keep pushing play. Tony Horton's methodology of muscle confusion, is by far the best workouts I've ever seen. Sure I've lifted weights along the way, but NEVER to this degree. Never in such a regimented fashion. You will succeed! GUARANTEED!


And what about that little thing called running. For the record, I'm now doing doubles. I get up at 4am, and head out the door at 5am for a morning run. In the evening, I put the workout clothes on and get bizzay with a little P90X.

If your interested in learning more about P90X, feel free to drop me a line. My lower back is living proof that Tony Horton knows what he's doing!!!

KEEP PRESSING PLAY, and BRING IT!!

Back to the Postings......

So....Since i went on vacation, there's been a whole lot of training going down...Let's look back.....There's last Thursdays mega bonk.....then there's last Saturdays 5 mile Time Trial. Then.....SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!! That was our first official 20 mile run.

The bonk was a little disconcerting. But I will say, it was a direct result of my own poor fluid management. First off....I went into the run somewhat dehydrated. Mistake #1, 2 and 3.....Especially when the temp was during the hottest week of the summer that we've experience yet. At 4am, the outside thermometer read 85 degrees, and it was about 80% humidity. Let's just say.....my body was done at mile 10 and a half....and it was a jog/walk to get back to the comfort of home. I did bring an energy drink, but turns out it was a diet....and had no calories...not a good thing for the conditions.

I spent my off Friday re-hydrating and resting to run fast on sat of the time trial. When I showed up, I realized I was going to have to run naked......errr....without the services of my garmin for mile splits. So I went and ran based on feel. Remarkably....I beat my last on the time by 5 seconds. I'm actually very happy with that. It shows consistency, which is what I need at this point of my marathon training.

Sunday was going to be the first of many mental checks. It was our first of many 20 mile runs. 4 laps of our 5 mile time trial course. Not the most scenic, but a good place to just click off the mileage. My goal was to do it in 3 hours.....and that's EXACTLY what I managed to do. On top of that.....I pulled off my last mile at a 7:40 pace. Mostly because I just wanted to get the darned thing over. I started at 5am.....and finished at 8am. By 8am....it was already 95 degrees, with ridiculous humidity.

Monday and Wednesday were nice easy runs with my buddy Paul! He's back with the group, and we've started meeting each other again! I'm really glad to see him back with the group....even happier to get my running partner back. It's going to make that jump to 5 mile mornings on Mon and Wed that much easier.

Tuesday was a 70 minute Tempo at 90% of our marathon pace. Again, even on the Uber tired legs...I hit EVERY SINGLE TARGET TIME! I love it whe you can do that. And I got 8.7 mile in doing it.

Finally.....was Thursdays 14 miler that mixes in 5x800m. No bonk this week. I finished strong and felt great throughout the entire run. So far this week (including Sunday), I have 54 miles in the books. Tomorrow closes this weeks chapter, and we have a 15x300m hill repeat segment. My targets are 1:24, so look for a report on how I did. We also have another 20 mile run on Sunday, so look for that one too!

Until then.....LIVESTRONG and Train Hard!