Kelley Bromley

I’d like to say that I’m into fitness… I’m not where I want to be aerobically yet (I wanna get a kickass time in a 10k and I’m honest with the fact that I’m really a jogger, even though I call it running), but I’m satisfied with my upper body tone. I could use some more squats and lunges, but I’m getting there. But seriously, after seeing the movie “300″ about the Spartans, when I left the theater I just wanted to run and run, and then when I couldn’t do any more I wanted to lift boulders and learn to fight with a sword, LOL. Seriously. Watching the movie made me want to get in the zone… when you’re so worn out that you think you can’t do any more, but you push yourself further anyway so all your thoughts and mental energy are going into staying on your feet and giving it all you’ve got.

The actors in that movie did a crazy workout, where every day they did a different exercise, never focusing on single muscle or using machines, but doing things that gained real, usable strength as opposed to just aesthetics - pull ups, push ups, rings, tire flips, box jumps, dead lifts. Always switching up the routine so they wouldn’t adapt. They were trained by Mark Twight of Gym Jones at his exclusive invite-only gym - no air conditioning, no mirrors, just hard work. Crazy.

I have no delusions that I could do such a workout, but it’s very motivating. It really makes me want to push my workouts harder and increase my lift load because I know I don’t go to complete exhaustion. So I’m going to ramp it up! We’ll see how it goes :)

Well, today Lionel and I started week two of the 13 week plan. The worst part is I leave for Quebec for a week next Sunday, and we did week one, then Lionel’s parents visited for two weeks, so our schedule is kind of screwy, lol. We’re going to do week two, and then when I get back redo week two again and continue with the rest of the plan.

So here are the stats:
5 min warm up and stretching
11 sets of run 2 min, walk 2 min (44 min total)
Time: ~50 min, 6.25 km including warm up
Average Speed: 7.5 km/h
5 min cool down

Cardiovascularly I’m really improving I think. I could still have a conversation with full/half sentences, but by the 7th set my legs were jello. Lionel told me to slow down, but I told him even if I slow down my body won’t get any lighter, and it’s the pushing motion with my quads that was giving out, lol. We finished though! Today was the hardest session for this week’s training, but we’re going the uphill route on Monday!

Today was the first session of our 13-week training program which builds you up to run a 10k race. We won’t really be officially starting because we’re going on vacation soon, so we’re just going to repeat the first session over and over when we have the chance until we’re home again. In either case, we ran 1 min, then walked 2 mins, 10 times for a total of 30 minutes, for a distance of 5 km. We were supposed to do 12 laps, but I had to meet with Weihui to play frisbee at 7:30, and I played for about 45 minutes with a bit of running.

Today Lionel and I walked from 10th Avenue to granville at a strolls pace, looking at the shops. Got a nice tan though :)

Lionel and I planned to go running today and play some frisbee after, and when I got home he had a lovely supper ready of ribs, his famous turkey mirepoix gravy, sweet potato, peas, and carrots. Delicious! We were stuffed afterwards of course, so we waited until 8pm to go for a jog. I didn’t really feel like going, but after we were outside it felt good. We jogged 2.5 km, then played frisbee for about 45 minutes. It was really fun! We went in when it was starting to get dark. Our throws are really improving! Lionel enjoyed himself and is going to help me practice on the side in the future :)

Well, we had our first unofficial Ultimate Frisbee practice on Friday at 7pm. It was unofficial because Ke and Ody aren’t back yet. Weihui, Shengcai, Xiulian and I practiced tossing it around for awhile and were starting to get a hang of it, but when we tried increasing the distance I sucked! LOL! Xiulian went home for supper and Bin joined us for a few minutes, then it was just Weihui and Shengcai and me. We ended up playing for about an hour and it was really fun - lots of running and jumping…. afterwards I went on a short, 1.25km run with Lionel.

I had a blast and felt great, but yesterday I was in so much pain! My butt hurt from all the lunging to get the frisbee, and my hamstrings and the back of my shoulder hurt as well…. and then there’s today. Even sneezing hurts, lol. My ribs weren’t bothering me at all yesterday but today… yowza 8O Lionel thinks it was all the twisting, LOL. When we used to do all the twists in aerobic class it never used to affect me and I used to wonder what muscle this was working… well, apparently twisting to catch frisbees and throw them is a bit more intensive, heh. The good news is that if I’m sore everywhere, that means I used lots of muscles, so frisbee is good exercise, hehe. It also remind me how out of shape I am :P

Went jogging with my HRM for the first time today - pretty nifty little device. My heart rate had a max of 187 (yikes! LOL) but was mostly around 160 bpm. I did a 20 minute program on the watch - I think I’ll like this little invention :)

It had trouble actually getting the correct signal at first - for example, it would say I had a 110 bpm heart rate when it was 65, but after a reset it seemed to work much better. It also worked better the more I sweat due to better conduction, so next time I’ll use salt water on the little conductive pads instead of normal water.

Oh yeh, I did a few ab workouts on the ball today, but nothing really worth mentioning, lol.