Left to My Own Devices

My husband left this morning for Boston where he'll be until late Friday night if all goes well. Last time he wound up staying until Saturday afternoon. That means my son is my "hot date" for Valentine's Day. I've already hidden a tube of Sweet Tart candies for Friday. If there's school, he'll be bringing two bags of popcorn for the class party and tiny Valentine cards with heart-shaped pops attached to them. I'm toying with the idea of running out to Dunkin' Donuts that day just to buy heart-shaped donuts for us to share Friday night. Yep, diet blown. There's no telling how bad Winter Storm Pax will be, but I feel prepared.

Top: 20 min HIIT cardio elliptical
Bottom: 20 min LISS stepmill

 

Today I can do whatever I want at the gym so I decide on a modified HIIT cardio program to start. Instead of 1 minute "run" and 1 minute "walk", I do 45 seconds "run" and 75 seconds (1 min 15 sec) for the resting phase. It's still hard, and I don't make as good mileage, but it gets me warmed up. Well, I don't actually start sweating until minute 15 and my legs are a tiny bit sore from yesterday. Probably because I upped the DBs 5 lbs for those lunges. I do a quick Cage Stretch before I plant myself in front of the Nexersys station. Wrapping my hands is almost like a ritual but I take more care this time to make sure my knuckles are tightly covered. Last week I got knuckle rug-burns because the wraps were sliding inside my gloves.

I don't usually do HIIT cardio before boxing so I wonder how awful or good this is going to feel. Nine rounds of Beginner Follow Me to start. My accuracy gets better as the program progresses, which just validates my belief that I'm slow to warm up. I start to key in 5 rounds for the Intermediate Program when I'm distracted by the old guy on the bike adjacent to the boxing stations. He waves a dime at me and I shrug him off because goddamnit, why are you bothering me over a dime? So the Nexersys goes to 3 rounds and I think, well, I'll just do another 3 rounds after this session.

What's nice is that the machine appears to select from a random range of programs so the first three Intermediate rounds have different combination requests than the next 3-round session. My accuracy actually improves 10% from the first Intermediate session to the next. During round 6 (total Intermediate rounds) I'm very pleased to read that my accuracy is up to 78%, I've hit all my strikes (100%) and my power is 111%. This means I'm starting to get comfortable with this level. I'm really happy! But I don't feel done so I grab my hoodie and clamber onto the Matrix Stepmill for 20 minutes of LISS while I read email and check the online forums.

I need to stretch afterwards so I plop my soggy self onto the Mats, knock out 25 regular-stance Dive Bomber Push Ups, a single 60-second plank and a few leg and lower back stretches. I get a twinge in my right calf that verges on a cramp. I'm pushing too hard. I've got to learn to let go and relax. The gym scale reads 113.2 lbs which is pretty good considering I completely drained my 1.5 liter bottle. I actually remembered to bring the high protein Ensure today so I drink that in the car before doing a few quick errands. By the time I get home an hour later, I'm starving again. Figures.

Hump Day Pre-Storm Workout

20 min elliptical modified HIIT (45 sec on / 1 min 15 sec off) = 1.62 miles
Cage Stretch

Nexersys 9 rounds Follow Me Beginner Female
  Accuracy 94% / Strikes 103% / Average Power 135% (yeah, I'm way too strong for beginner mode)
Nexersys 3 rounds Follow Me Intermediate Female
  Accuracy 73% / Strikes 99% / Average Power 102% (I've improved a lot from the past few weeks)
Nexersys 3 rounds Follow Me Intermediate Female
  Accuracy 83% / Strikes 97% / Average Power 98% (the very last round is my best at this level)

20 min Matrix Stepmill level 3 = 758 steps
Mat Stretch with 25 Dive Bomber Push Ups and one 60-second plank

Photos for actual stat reference:

9 rounds Beginner Follow Me

Two 3 round Intermediate Follow Me sessions