July 25:
Super tired today. Woke up very early, had a pediatrician's appointment, so a slightly fussier than normal baby. Also, I worked from home. I also had a sleepy baby, so I got more work done today than if he hadn't just been shot full of drugs. But I had to get through the push ups and chin ups today, so...
Push ups: 15 then 15 then 12 then 12 then maxed out at 20. Resting about 2 minutes between sets, for a total of 74 within about 11 minutes. The count for that last set is no typo - it's twenty. I have no idea where the gas came from, but I apparently had enough in my tank for 5 more than the goal for today. Since this is the successful completion of week 2, that means I'm due for my next exhaustion test. I'll do it Sunday. If I feel good enough, then I'll start week 3 on Monday, otherwise Tuesday. But if I do Tuesday, I don't think I'll get 2 days off in a row again for a few weeks since I'll certainly want to go back to having day one on Monday as soon as possible. So I'm really going to shoot for Monday :) As far as the exhaustion test goes, I'm almost hoping I can't do more than 25 (even though I know I'll be able to) since the amount of pushups for that level looks really daunting at this point.
Chin ups: 5 then 4 then 4 then 3 then maxed out at 5 (and a half, but again - no halfsies). Resting about 2 minutes between sets for a total of 21 within about 9 minutes or so. But even without the half chin up at the end, I've still hit the minimum for day 3 of week 1. So that means I get to move onto week 2 day 1. Which is only 19. And after 2 rest days (no exhaustion test for chin ups since I haven't made it through week 2 yet) that should be a piece of cake on Monday. Or Tuesday. Nah. I think even if I push the push ups to Tuesday, I'll still do the chin ups on Monday.
No geek updates lately.
As far as a physical update... I doubt I've lost any noticeable fat, or put on any serious pounds of muscle, but I'm pretty sure I'm noticing that the muscles I use for at least the push ups (triceps and pectorals, mostly) seem to look and feel better these days. I wish I had started measuring my body fat before I began any of this. I only estimated it around last week, right as I was finishing up the graphing program. But I'm sure my estimate was way off, as I basically pinched the skinfold sites with my fingers and thought something like "Yeah, that's about 9 millimeters". Highly inaccurate. But even with that, I was at about 24-25% body fat, which equals 40 pounds of fat out of my 180 pounds of total body weight. Given the amount of fat I see around my midsection, I'd say that's probably not too far off. I suppose maybe I'm afraid that if I take the actual measurements, I'll actually be at a fairly higher percentage. Which would be depressing.
I'm still torn with what kind of workout I want to start doing after the hundred pushups challenge. I keep reading up on kettlebells, and would like to give them a serious go. Or there's the P90X program. Or there's my old pyramid workout - though that doesn't seem to be enough of a departure from the hundred push ups challenge to keep me terribly interested. Or I could start up my boxing workouts again, assuming the sounds of me pummeling my punching bag in the basement isn't too loud to carry up to Matthew's room and bother him. Or get back on my bike. Or hey - I could do pretty much all of them :) But not much seems to really strike me as simplistic as what I'm currently doing - hardly any equipment, hardly any setup time, it doesn't last long enough to make me start sweating too much (at least prior to week 5, where instead of 5 sets there are 9(!)), and if need be I can break away and take care of Matthew if he's crying. It's also about all I can do to keep myself from running out and buying a kettlebell. Maybe I'll do that, and start getting familiar with swinging one around, so long as it doesn't interfere with what I'm doing for the hundred push ups program.
