Countdown to 30: 1 Day to Go

4/1: 157.0
4/2: 155.0
4/3: 155.2
4/4: 154.6
4/5: 154.8
4/6: 154.2
4/7: 153.2
4/8: 154.8
4/9: 152.6
4/10: 151.2
4/11: 153.2
4/12: 152.2
4/13: 152.2
4/14: 152.4
4/15: 153.2
4/16: 152.2
4/17: 152.0
4/18: 151.8
4/19: 152.0
4/20: 152.0
4/21: 152.0
4/22: 152.6
4/23: 151.4
4/24: 151.4
4/25: 151.6
4/26: 151.8
4/27: 151.6
4/28: 152.6
4/29: 153.6
4/30: 151.2
5/01: 149.6
5/02: 150.0
5/03: 151.4
5/04: 149.4

Well, tomorrow will be the last day of the 5 Pounds, 5 Weeks Challenge. I was back under 150 this AM and my moving average continues to creep lower. I'm feeling really confident and strong, and I can honestly say it's worked - I am without a doubt in the best shape of my life. But I am also feeling that I am on the last day of my three day on - 1 day rest workout cycle. All through my workout this morning I could feel that I was ready for a break.

Did spin class - regular instructor is back, yeah! - for 60 minutes, then hung out and read until D could join me. Neither of us were totally gung ho to go workout, but we dragged ourselves up to the weight room and committed to an arm/back ish type thing. Normally I don't go for the body-part specific body builder type workout but when you are tired and Crossfit-style intensity just isn't happening, it's a good way to do something. Besides, even if I mostly work out for function, sometimes you want to work on form (your own physique form, I mean) a bit too. And I don't think there's a thing wrong with that.

So D and I did this:

Wood Chop Down with Cable - 4 sets (2 per side), 10 reps, 85#
Wood Chop Up with Cable - 4 sets (2 per side), 10 reps, 65#
Lat Pull Down - 3 sets, 8 reps, 100#
Low Row with Cable - 3 sets, 8 reps, 100# first and second set, 85# on third set
Tricep Dips - on bench, feet elevated, 3 sets, 15 reps, bodyweight
Walking Lunge with Single Arm Press - 2 sets, 20 steps per set, 10# overhead, alternate press side between sets

And then we were done. It wasn't much, but it was what we had.

I have to take a moment and RAVE about a new book I picked up a few days ago. It's called Swimming to Antarctica and it's riveting. A truly amazing autobiography by Lynne Cox, who holds (held? I'm not sure) all the open water distance swimming records worth holding including a two-time world record in the English Channel swim. She also swam in places no one else would even dream: Straight of Magellan, Disko Bay Greenland, Bering Straight, the Straight of Gibraltar, etc. etc. I'm about half way through and every chapter gets more fascinating.

The stories Lynne Cox tells would be unbelievable, if they weren't completely true. I highly recommend this book...it competes with Lance Armstrong's Not About The Bike for best "athlete book" I've read, and in many ways is more compelling for being from an athlete who is, in this country at least, less well known. It's also a wonderful reminder that the best athletes in the entire world come in all shapes and sizes.



Lynne Cox, world record holder (men and women) in multiple endurance open water swimming events. By any reasonable measure, an elite athlete in an unthinkably challenging sport. Basically, she's the Lance Armstrong of swimming. The top picture was taken when she was 16 years old and had just become a 2 Time World Record Holder for the English Channel crossing. The second is more recent, taken I believe, during her Antarctic Swim.