February 9th, 2009
I’m in. http://hundredpushups.com
A few folks on the RW forums are doing this and it sounds like the perfect excuse to finally do some upper body work. I hate my flabby upperarms, don’t care for dumbbell workouts (or any non-running workout for that matter), my posture is still in need of a major fix, and at my age especially, I need to do something to increase muscle mass, so this challenge suits me to a T.
One thing I love about it is it’s basically a C25K-type program for your upper body. I don’t even give a crap how many pushups I’ll be able to do at the end, just the fact that I have a schedule to follow is major motivation. And it only takes 10 minutes 3 days a week on a little piece of floor! I’ve no excuse not to do it.
On other news, I’ve been researching headband-wearing tips because they’re such a great way to keep your hair back when running, but they always slide right off my head. Even those Stay-Put bands by Goody with the little gripper things are useless to me. So when I read a tip to put hairspray on your hair where the band goes, then spray the inside of the band to give it some sticking power, I was on that advice like white on rice. I tried it today for my run and it worked! I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t budge one millimeter till I took it off. No more crazy Einstein hair for me, headbands rule!
In actual running news…it’s official, I’ve thrown my hat into the sub 1:40 ring for my Half in May. There’s a great little ongoing thread in the RW forums for just this thing, so I made my introductions and now plan on soaking up whatever knowledge and camaraderie I can get from it. I’m pretty excited at the idea, now to make it a reality.
Towards that end, I have an interval session tomorrow, 5 x 1000 w/2 min. recoveries. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t trust my Garmin for interval work, it’s almost always off by differing amounts, thus my love of the markers in my park. However, they’re at every 1/4 mile, so for the last few months, my intervals have been comprised of multiples of .25 miles. That works up to a point, but in reality, I miss 600s and 1000s, so today I tried to find a landmark that matches up with last night’s Google Earth investigation of that extra 200m, so I’d know where exactly to stop the dang interval. Of course, it’s somewhere between two trees, so no fabulously glaring landmark, but still I suppose it’s better than trusting the Garmin. Yeah, I know…anal. But it’s entertainment.
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Way to go on the 100 push ups. If you really want to push the envelope, do the 200 sit ups too (same guy). I am currently starting week 5 of the push ups and week 4 of the sit ups. The thing I love about these programs is I can print out the “schedule” and stick it with my marathon schedule (so I am basically walking around all day with a folder like a dweeb). I do the two challenges on alternating days and I’m set for the week with strength training. As far as the push ups go, I have already repeated a couple of the weeks that I struggled on. I will repeat as often as I need and just cruise through to the end of marathon training.
Sub 1:40 HM? Dang, you must be feeling speedy with this new weight loss of yours.
I’m so impressed with you doing them both! I can only wrap my mind around one for now (and situps don’t excite me as much). You already had an amazing set of Before/After pictures, I can’t wait to see what you look like after all of this is done.
I’m still feeling out the speed, really just guessing for now. I’ll have a clearer picture tomorrow after my interval session. Kinda nervous to see how it plays…
After your prior post, I thought this would be about something else.
You could run a 1:39 half RIGHT NOW, Flo.
Whoohoo, sub-1:40 here you come! Careful with the pushups. I got a muscle pull doing situps too fast!
Before I had a Garmin, I used Google Earth measurements all the time. I used landmarks like crosswalk markings were easy to see in the satellite view and on the ground. None of the landmarks were exact, So I had a spreadsheet where I could plug in my times and the paces would get calculated. But now I find the Garmin-measured distances close enough, provided there are not too many corners. It’s the current-pace readout that drives me crazy. I find the lap-pace readout (average pace for the lap so far) better for interval work.
Joe, that’s hilarious. I missed the connection. Not much left to push up, anyway.
Andrea, you are an angel. Don’t you ever stop coming here and inflating my ego, ok? I need you. I really, really need you.
Jim, where were you this afternoon with that warning? I’m already stretching out a little crick in my shoulder (lol, that didn’t take long, huh?). Yeah, I gotta be a little careful. As for our silly Garmins, I finally took off “current pace” entirely, it was useless. Avg lap pace is what I always have it set on, next to lap time and a couple other things.
Flo, I think you can totally go sub 1:40. I only wish I could be there to see you do it!
Here’s a tip I got from some renegade bike racers: put a piece of duct tape down on the path where your interval finishes. It’ll stick forever, most people wont notice, and you’ll know where your stopping point is.
Doggie, you.are.brilliant!! I’m doing this today! Have fun at Westminster today, I’m so jealous of all those sweet doggies you get to see!
Good luck with the push-up challenge!!! I did enough push-ups during my 6 year stint in the Army. Now I prefer to do the dumb-bell workouts.
You are so going to rock your next 1/2!!! I am sure you will go sub 1:40. I am doing a 1/2 the first week in April and I am shooting for 2hrs. That would be too cool. So let’s kill these two goals together!
Wow, there’s all this goal setting going on. Go get that sub-2:00 Christi!.