Wednesday 1 September 2010

Pre-Race Chest/Shoulders & Why it Needed to be Light

Location: My House
Day: 6.45am - Tuesday - 31st August

3 x 6 Dumbbell Chest Press (@28kg)
3 x 10 Ab Rollouts (using the wheel)
3 x 10 Upright Rows with barbell (EZ bar - 35kg, 30kg, 30kg)
16 Push Ups (using strict style, fully extending as per this video - except I was not doing them weighted!)

No training partner today, so I took minimal rest between dumbbell sets and alternated the rollouts and upright row.

Total Time: 15 minutes

Nutrition (higher carb, lower fat on workout day, based on my Leangains experiment):

20 minutes before: 10g BCAA
1 hour after: 10g BCAA
3 hours after: 10g BCAA

Lunch (12:00pm) - 2 tins of tuna, 1 tin of sardines, a sweet potato, beetroot, lemon juice

Dinner (7:15pm) - chicken-bone broth, fried cauli+onion, courgette, kale; banana & 4 plums

I took it easy on this session. I have a big mountain race on Saturday, so I want to let my body accumulate stored energy rather than batter it with weights to failure. More to the point, steep uphill racing is made easier by pushing the knees with the hands, something experienced fell runners can often be seen doing. This is like doing hundreds of close-grip push ups. So I stayed away from failure today on chest.

There is also the general sense of 'reserve'. Even if this were not a steep run, my experience has been that having too tough an upper body session does affect how prepared I feel for a run up to a week later.

Lunch was startlingly similar to the lunch on my last high carb day. Otherwise, I think I kept to the Leangains rules pretty well. I have to stop eating those plums. Our bedroom was like Chicago last night.

4 comments:

Lightning said...

Nice work M

I blasted the light side followed by a slow jog.

Friday

Then the Beast

1leone said...

How are you getting your carbs in your lunch and how much do you aim to get?

Tnx,
Leo

4 Winds said...

Have a good Nevis race - what sort of time are you aiming for?

Methuselah said...

Leone - sweet potato, beetroot and banana...

4 Winds - thanks. I'll be happy to get under 3 hours, but am hoping to squeak closer to 2:45. The course record is 1:30-ish, but was apparently set when there was a lot more screen down which to career.

Lightning - looking forward to taming the beast. Let's hope there are drinks mats provided to finishers ;-)