Give me strength...

After getting knocked on my ass (ouch) for over a week by what I've now decided was either food poisoning or the epic migraine from hell, I finally managed to get a workout in. A strength workout, to be more precise.

Since this was my first time in the gym playing with heavy things in...well, longer than I care to try to figure out, I wanted to try to exercise (haha) some restraint and keep the weights low. See, I'd like to be able to walk and move my arms around tomorrow. (Actually, I'd like to be able to workout tomorrow--either a short run/walk or swim--but I'm trying not to get too ambitious too soon.)

Even taking the restraint into consideration, it's obvious that I've lost a ton of strength. I'm downright weak. Bleh. :-/

Anyway, here's the workout deets:

Warmup: 5 min elliptical

Bench Press: 8x45, 8x55, 8x55

Squat: 5x45, 5x75, 5x75

Hang Cleans: 8x30, 8x30, 8x30

Good Mornings: 8x55, 8x55, 8x55

Lat Pulldowns: 8x70, 8x70, 8x70

Crunches: 10, 20, 6, 4, 4, 4, 10

Planks: 4x15s

The only real thing of note was that near the end of the second set of hang cleans, something in my left knee started getting grouchy. It's possible I wasn't paying close enough attention to my foot placement, or my form through the leg drive. This was the first time I've done a strength workout in my Vibram FiveFingers, so maybe I was just being sloppy. I'll pay more attention the next time I do them.

The crunches were actually done with the CrunchFu app on my iPod. I'd downloaded the app for free ages ago during a promo event, but this was the first time I'd actually fired it up. The first set of 10 was a "practice" session while figuring out how the app worked. And the second set of 20 was a "test". The rest were part of the first structured workout the app offered. Personally, I hate core workouts, and I hate crunches in particular. This app made it easy to watch my form, and it took care of all of the counting...including letting me know when my form had gotten sloppy by telling me I'd only done a "half" rep. That was something I equally loathed and appreciated.

After the gym, I stopped into Trader Joe's to pick up food for the next few days. I'm already looking forward to a cold glass of goat milk tomorrow morning. Mmm... (Not to mention curried chicken breast and sweet potatoes for dinner tonight.)

It all starts with a plan.

Plan. Plan. Plan. Got to get a plan.

Despite the loosey-goosey appearance of my lifestyle, I'm actually a pretty good planner. No, really. Stop laughing. I am. I can plan the shit out of just about anything...once I set my mind to it.

So now, I'm planning my athletic goals for the next year. I mean, it's definitely time I get back to working out consistently. I need to get my fitness back. And I need to tell my butt that it can hurt all it wants, but it's not holding me hostage any longer. (Take that, ass!)

In the spirit of all that (and the spirit of my slightly crazy, way-ambitious nature when it comes to these things), I've decided to declare 2011 as The Year of the Half. As in, two of my three goals for the year will be a half-marathon and a half-iron.

The other one? Redeeming my sense of self at the Portland Marathon. (I'm still bummed that I wasn't able to do it this year. So, next year, I'm owning that bitch. And by "owning that bitch," I mean "completing that race." *ahem*)

Right now, I'm targeting the Vancouver Half Marathon on May 1, the Troika in Spokane on August 7, and the Portland Marathon on October 9. And I'm entertaining the notion of doing the STP again on July 9-10...we'll see about that one.

And I haven't really shared this next bit with anyone yet, but I'm getting a vague notion of what 2012 may hold for me, too.