30+ DRC 243

The last couple of weeks haven't really been to interesting in the running aspect of my life. Other than really trying to keep up with the extra exercises after my runs. One of the reasons I actually keep up with it is because of the Fitocracy app on my iPhone.

Fitocracy is a social network for exercise. Only I don't really use it for the social aspect of it much. It's just another log I use to help keep track of what I'm doing. It's another reminder that I gotta keep going so I don't fall back to my former potato-ness. It's a great tool.

The other neat thing about it is that you level up! So it throws in that gaming aspect to your fitness. As of now, I'm at level 23 and I only need 1754 points to reach level 24. If I keep up the effort, I can break through to level 24 in about a week! Ok, I'm not really that excited about it. But sometimes you like to look at your level and appreciate all the work you put into what you've done. You have a hard number to work off of.

Another reason Fitocracy helps is because if you're really motivated, you can set up your exercises for the day and if you don't do them they are a glaring reminder of what you didn't do. It's a whole psychological thing with it. And it's helped me get through my days. You can track your running on it as well as a ton of other exercises they have on there. You can set up routines or follow one of the Quests they have. A LOT of them I cannot do yet. But there are two that I do follow. The Push The Earth Quest and the As Seen On TV Quest.

Push The Earth is as follows:
20 Reps - Body Weight Lunge
30 Reps - Body Weight Squat
20 Reps - Pushups or Kneeling Pushups
10 Reps - Jump Squats (Toyotas)

When I first completed PTE, I followed it exactly except for the pushups. When you select PTE for your quest, it actually posts both the regular pushups and the kneeling pushing for your routine. What I didn't know was that you could edit it out . . . until much later. But by then, I was already incorporating both into my version of PTE. I was doing the 20 kneeling pushups, but  only 5 regular pushups for the quest. And I was happy with that because it was something I wasn't doing before.

For the squats and lunges, I was happy that I'd taken a beginning class for Crossfit a while back. I remembered how to stay on my heels when doing the squats and the lunges were nice and wide without my knee passing my foot. The Toyotas were a bit of a surprise. I forgot how difficult they can be.

Now here's the thing about the quest. It tells you that you are supposed to complete the quest within one day. So you can spread out the quest throughout your day. You don't have to do them all at once. As long as you finish them all within that 24 hour period. But I figure since I go for my run when I get home and I'm all warmed up  . . . might as well just finish it all in one go. Sort of my own modified Crossfit routine.

When you complete the quest, you go to your workout for the day in the app or on your pc and you add in how much you did for each exercise. Now I've been slowly increasing the reps since I've started following PTE. This is what my PTE looked like yesterday:


30 Reps - Body Weight Lunge
15 Reps - Pushups
40 Reps - Body Weight Squat
20 Reps - Kneeling Pushups
20 Reps - Jump Squats (Toyotas)

Fucking Toyotas, man.

I try to complete this quest on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The As Seen On TV quest is a bit more diffcult:

5 Reps - Pushups
100 Reps - Jumping Jacks
30 Reps - Crunches
10 Reps - Body Weight Squat
30 Sec - Plank
15 Rep - Body Weight Lunge
20 Rep - Bicycle (abs)

The first time I did this quest, I only changed the pushups to 10 instead of the 5. I'm trying to build my upper body strength damn it! As with the PTE quest, I've also been increasing the reps on this one, as well as the order in which I do them. The following is what I did on Wednesday:

10 Reps - Pushups
40 Sec - Plank
30 Reps - Squats
40 Reps - Crunches
100 Reps - Jumping Jacks
50 Reps - Bicycles
30 Reps - Lunges

And I used to think planks were easy to do. What a dumbass. What probably makes them even more difficult is that I do the plank right after the pushups so I stop at the top and hold the position for the 30 or more seconds needed to complete the plank.

What trips me out is that I have no problem with all these leg exercises. But when I'm running, my knee is getting all out of whack and I can run further than maybe a mile and a half. It's been slowly getting better, and I think it's because I've been doing these quests. I'm would like to try to run 4 miles on Saturday at the Toro Estates. Hopefully I can.

Again with another long post, but I hope it was somewhat informative.

GD

p.s.
too lazy. run smiley :)