Saturday, December 18, 2010

Double the Pleasure, Double the Gym

I decided to add another workout today--I went to the gym and swam a half mile.

I jokingly facebook status updated that I ate too much at dinner and had two desserts so I went to the gym to burn it off, which is a warning sign for exercise bulimia. This is a serious eating disorder and I do not think that I am above having it, but today I did have good reason for doing what I did. Allow me to explain.

To take a step or two back, I asked Devon about increasing my cardio. You see, I need to lose as much weight as possible before my abdomen surgery at the beginning of March to get the biggest benefit from the procedure. Devon has a plan to step it up for the months of January and February in preparation. I *think* I am down to go super hard core. I told Devon I will eat whatever strict diet he gives me and do whatever insane workouts he assigns--this is important to me. So, when I asked about maybe doing crazy cardio weekends, Devon said that there is no benefit to doing cardio for more than one hour at a time because your body will basically think it is starving and not burn calories the way you would want it to. He *did* say that working out twice a day would help--not double the weight loss, but improve it. I asked about lifting then doing an hour of cardio. Devon says that will also be beneficial. So, I am going to start incorporating this in as my schedule allows. Today, my schedule allowed and so I did my assigned cardio in the morning and swam at night.

Also, I met with my triathlon relay team yesterday (where I am the 'swimmer') and it occurred to me that I had not swam in a long time. A quick review of my blog posts shows it has been since April 25th!!!! Yikes! Almost 8 months!!! The good news? I kicked its butt. :) The last time I swam 1/2 mile I did it in 28:12. Here are today's times:

Lap 1: BS, 1:27
Lap 2: BS, 1:44
Lap 3: EB, 1:47
Lap 4: EB, 1:46
Lap 5: BS, 1:34
Lap 6: BS, 1:43
Lap 7: EB, 1:50
Lap 8: EB, 1:51
Lap 9: BS, 1:35
Lap 10: BS, 1:38
Lap 11: EB, 1:53
Lap 12: EB, 1:50
Lap 13: BS, 1:36
Lap 14: BS, 1:41
Lap 15: EB, 1:44
Lap 16: EB, 1:34

Total time: 27:21

51 second improvement after not swimming for 8 months = NICE! I was curious where the improvement came from specifically: breast stroke or elementary backstroke. I computed the average of each from this workout and from my last 1/2 mile on March 14th.

Mar 14th Breast Stroke: 1:37.27
Dec 18th Breast Stroke: 1:37.25

Mar 14th Elementary Backstroke: 2:03.00
Dec 18th Elementary Backstroke: 1:46.88


19 seconds off the elementary backstroke...nice! And let's not leave out the 2 hundreths of a second improvement on the breast stroke. :) I am not sure why I improved so much...must be my hulky man muscles...

Ok. Tomorrow will be a rest day and Monday it's Friend Lifting with Devon!

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