Off Season Day 42 - End of Week 6!

Aug 8   Vikings Games
Aug 9    Rest
Aug 10 Legs / Arms / Core
Aug 11 Run

On August 8 I played two forty minute C grade games of inline hockey at Gawler.  From a fitness and conditioning perspective the night showed my progress to date as I had energy to spare after playing the Wheeler's game early, enough to fill in competently as a reserve for the Bumpers in their game against the Shufflers.

During the first game it took about a minute on the bench after each shift to regain my composure.  Generally, I was right to go from that point and would get to my feet to indicate that I was ready to go out again.  While waiting for my next shift I would try to constantly keep my feet and legs moving on the spot as a means of minimising and delaying the onset of lactate build up.

For the second game I put myself onto pretty short minutes, essentially giving my team mates as much of a run as possible (it was, afterall, their game).  I didn't feel exhausted at all and put on the afterburners a few times on the rink to keep the game locked down for the team I was playing for.

That evening, once the endorphins had worn off, I felt the onset of fatigue.  This evolved into an overall physical tiredness the next day.

Therefore, on August 9, I declared the day to be a 'rest day'.  Which it wasn't really because I spent about five hours moving furniture in the afternoon.  Still, there were no extreme loads and I know my body appreciated it.  If I'd done Interval work as originally planned I'm sure that I'd be done for days.

In the morning of August 10 I realised that I was again at risk of falling behind schedule so spent a bit less than half an hour going through a basic Legs workout, stopping for only bare seconds between sets of the different exercises.

In the evening, due a combination of being delayed for over an hour at work and the passage of a cold front, I decided not to go for my planned run and instead do my arms workout (now two sets of ten reps each for each lift, often a killer effort required for the last lift) interspersed with core exercises in between.

I limited the periods between lifts and core exercises (and vice versa) to between five and fifteen seconds, but was careful to ensure that I didn't work out the same muscle groups on consecutive exercises and so managed to get away with it.  I spent forty minutes on the routine, making it about an hour of high density work for the whole day.  Quite productive.

Not bad for a day that wavered from being limited to a run, to being at risk of washing out in the threatened rising tide of 'rest days' (this despite the frequency of these days decreasing if I look at my activity log).  Afterwards, a general tiredness, particularly in the upper body and arms, less so through the core region (but still noticeable), and below-awareness-level in the legs (though I can feel that they got a workout recently in the weaker muscle groups).

It was a rainy evening on August 11 and again I so nearly decided to call off my limited plans and have another 'rest' day that it's scary in retrospect.  Stubborn pride, however, intervened and saved me from myself and I set off through the wet suburban streets.  I kept to the road mainly, because I could (most people, even in cars, stay inside on nights like tonight) and because it's a more stable and less potentially slippery surface than the varied materials from which our footpaths are constructed.  Didn't see any other pedestrians for the whole trip, and only about four cars in the 21 minutes I was gone.

It's been a while since I last ventured forth so I was careful to pace myself for the sake of both my breathing and my leg muscles.  There was an initial knot in my right calf muscle, not debilitating but enough to be aware of and 'manage' as I worked my way down to the river, where I ducked under a tree during the heaviest shower and did some stretches.  No more knotted muscle.

That initial period of running was probably the most painful, but it was made easier by the fact that within metres from home I was glad I was doing this (I think I actually like running for running's sake, truth be told).  After that, things got a little easier, I didn't drive myself too hard and gave myself short walks on several occasions.  My stretching stop at the school was a lot shorter than usual, and I ran the last kilometre (the hardest, hilliest kilometre) without too much effort except in the legs as I paced myself up the hill.

When I got home, my heartrate didn't seem to be elevated too much, and my breathing was pretty normal within a couple minutes (at no time had I laboured in my breathing, though as the pace picked up over the period it had definitely grown a lot more rhythmic and deeper).

With my run I qualify Week 6 on my schedule (see sidebar) as a 'yellow' pass, pretty good but didn't achieve all I had planned.  I will have to make a real effort to get some interval training underway over the coming week.