Got Built?

<blows dust off gym blog>

Well, let’s see. Bit of an update.

I’m training up at the Simon Fraser University gym ’cause it’s 59 bucks a YEAR if you sleep with a staff member (hubby works there). Killer facility, I sort of have access to a glute ham raise, there’s a proper official sprinting track, BRAND freaking new with a granular rubber surface, so springy it’s just to DIE for… treadmills that go to - get this - SIXTEEN MPH, and I’m kinda trying to nudge my way into the Masters sprinting group that meets on Saturdays.

First one for me was last weekend - Saturday the 29th - met up with them at 10 AM Saturday morning and did the drills with them for ooooh about two hours.  There are two groups - the sprinters and the jumpers. I’m with the sprinters, for now anyway, although the jumping coach was kinda romancing my jumping potential when he saw me pull off my sweatshirt after warmups (”You don’t want to sprint - you want to JUMP! ;)” - I asked if I might be able to do both. I surely will try the jumping - it looks fun as hell! So many ways for an old broad to get injured! So little time!)

I noted to the sprint coach  that I have no technique but I’m all hams and abs, and he said “well, all hams and abs is what you need to be.” He was very generous with his time. This is going to be a weird learning curve - sprinting is EXTREMELY technical. I’m not expecting to break any land speed records, but I would LOVE to know what it feels like to really open UP out there, yanno?  My glute tie ins IMMEDIATELY became irritated (knees UP just KILLED me!) so I was a TOTAL slug out there, but still, I WAS able to keep going for all the drills. The coaches seemed pleasantly surprised that I didn’t totally die out there. They BOTH commented on it.

Personally, I’m feeling very smug about the fact that the six years of lifting and that little cardio protocol I wrote up in the spring has worked so well to prepare me to be …okay, well, a complete slug out there, but a non-dead slug! I CAN keep up, barely, with the kids. For a formerly fat 44-year old math geek with injuries, that feels pretty darned cool!

I got ART done on Tuesday and I’ll go again tomorrow (Friday). I’m learning how different treadmill sprints feel from track sprints, particularly when you have a coach beside you saying “get those knees up!” - the movement pattern is very different and I have to condition the insertions into my hamstrings. At Isaac’s suggestion, I did some high-rep hamstring work yesterday (he suggested RDLs, but I was nervous for my back so we settled on SHELC) and I think it kinda helped. I did some 15:30 sprint recover work tonight on the tready, trying to get the knees up a little but kept the speed down to a leisurly 11 MPH so I wouldn’t destroy them (I usually do 11.5 MPH for the 15-second sprints). I think I’m okay. They’re tight, but I think they’re settling down. Hopefully they won’t be completely brittle on Saturday.

Something I’m realizing is how draining these long training sessions are. I will from this point do massive overfeeding from Friday night to Saturday night to allow for this. I can NOT get as drained as I did last week - I was fine for the training, but went home, had a bath and crawled into bed for a nap. This time I go in really, really FED.

Plus we’re celebrating Thanksgiving Saturday night, so there will be plenty of turkey and sweet potato pie to keep me … anabolic, yeah, that’s what we’ll call it! *grins*