See also recaps of: phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, phase 4, phase 5. See weekly workout recaps in phase 6 here.
I began this phase after a three week break post-phase 5. Phase 6 is five weeks, and I took a break in between weeks two and three (life getting in the way the week of Christmas). This phase was a bit different from the preceding phases. Not only were the workouts way shorter (yay!), but it was more focused on building strength to do a pull-up.
Performance progress
The workouts were set up for most of the exercises to increase weights but decrease reps over the first four weeks, and then for week five the instructions were to use the same weight as week two, but more reps. So I included week four since I feel like that shows up much I improved in weights, since week five had a set weight based on week two, not just lifting as high as I thought I could handle.
Workout A
Workout B
Appearance progress
Over 9 weeks (3 weeks in between phases, 5 weeks of phase 6 and 1 week off in the middle of the phase) I continued to maintain my weight at 124. I haven't taken measurements again, but I think clothes are still fitting pretty much the same (maybe the tinsiest bit looser? I don't think any loss of inches would be particularly significant, though).
While I think you can kind of tell I have muscle (especially in my arms!) I'm certainly not to a point (nor would I want to be putting forth the effort to be to the point) where I'm working to have obvious muscle all over. I'm not aiming for visible abs or anything like. That'd take a lot more muscle building work, as well as reduction of body fat, and that's simply not what I'm aiming for. It can still be hard sometimes to really see where you've made progress (e.g., my stomach seems to look a bit jiggly at any weight, but I know it's substantially improved from what it looked like 45 pounds ago!). But I'm pretty content with where things are now.
Overall thoughts
It was such a relief to have these workouts have fewer exercises and barely take half an hour, compared to the hour that the earlier phases took (even after reducing the rest between exercises). I know it's worth the time, but especially with all the other types of workouts I enjoy and want to fit in, it's nice to feel like it can strike a balance.
Workouts:
Monday: Rest day - a board meeting went later than I thought it would and left no time to do anything!
Tuesday: Run 3.1 miles (13:02 pace)
Wednesday: Run 4.0 miles (12:49 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout A
Thursday: Swim 1,400 yards + bike trainer 6.6 miles (13.2 mph, 70 rpm)
Friday: Run 2.5 miles (12:06 pace)
Saturday: Bike trainer 14.0 miles (13.7 mph, 75 rpm) + NROLFW phase 6 workout B
Sunday: Yoga class (90 min) + run 3.35 miles (12:56 pace)
Total swimming: 1,400 yards
Total biking: 20.6 miles
Total running: 12.95 miles
Average daily steps: 10,337
Busy season is just starting to ramp up, but this week was just ridiculous - I had a board meeting, first rehearsal for the community choir I joined (and had to be early to take care of stuff in joining), a conference call meeting for Citizens' Climate Lobby - there was something every night! Plus fun stuff scheduled for Saturday. Even though total hours going into everything, including work, wasn't that ridiculous (especially compared to how it will be soon), it just felt ridiculously stressful to deal with everything. I sometimes think I shouldn't be worrying about fitting in so many workouts in such weeks - but working out is part of what helps me deal with a week like this!
Workouts:
Monday: Run 4.0 miles (13:07 pace)
Tuesday: Bike trainer 6.7 miles (15.2 mph, 77 rpm) + NROLFW phase 6 workout A
I'm loving how short the New Rules workouts are for this phase. They're barely half an hour long, versus the most recent few phases which were approaching an hour.
Wednesday: Run 4.55 miles (13:22 pace)
Thursday: Run 2.25 miles (12:53 pace) + Yoga for Runners (25 min)
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: Run 7.0 miles (12:52 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout B
Sunday: Swim 1,300 yards + run 2.2 miles (12:36 pace) + bike trainer 13.5 miles (13.3 mph, 71 rpm)
Hey, back in the pool! In the summer, I can make the early (5 pm) lap swim at one location; during tax season it makes sense to hit the late (8 pm) session at another pool as that's when I'm leaving work; the problem is in the in-between, when I'm working too late for one, but not long enough for the other to be convenient. Work is going to be ramping up pretty quickly for me to start making the later evening swim sometimes during the week, but I finally got myself there on the weekend anyway.
Total swimming: 1,300 yards.
Total biking: 20.2 miles
Total running: 20.0 miles
Average daily steps: 11,917
After about a year hiatus, I'm back to using my Fitbit. I have the Flex, which is rather picky in staying properly in the charger, plus it has a pretty short charge (3 to 4 days), so it felt like too much of a nuisance to keep it fully functioning. I'm realizing more and more how, even though I exercise a lot, I'm quite sedentary outside of formal workouts, and the fitbit really is good motivation to me for changing that. (And I googled and found a way to use a paperclip to hold it in the charger, that seems to be working pretty consistently.) I updated my 2016 goals post to also have a movement goal of some sort for each month - for January, I'm doing the default 10,000 steps per day.
Workouts:
Monday: Run 5.6 miles (12:01 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout A
Tuesday: Run 1 mile (10:48 pace) + bike trainer 2.6 miles (15.2 mph, 70 rpm)
Wednesday: Run 1 mile (11:32 pace)
Thursday: Run 2.0 miles (13:28 pace) + bike trainer 16.5 miles (15.1 mph, 69 rpm)
Bringing my 2015 mileage totals to meet my goals!
Running: 1,100.4
Biking: 500.05
(And, after not swimming for the past six weeks, that stands at 42,210 yards - which is at least (marginally) higher than 2014.)
Friday: Run 1 mile (11:09 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout B
Final day of the running streak! (Thanksgiving through New Year's) I thought I should start the year off on a good foot with more than the minimum, but with this cold (illness) and the cold (well below freezing with wind chill - ridiculous wind gusts!), this still felt like an accomplishment.
Saturday: Rest day
Sunday: Run 3.15 miles (13:21 pace) + bike trainer 7.75 miles (15.4 mph, 75 rpm)
A run in the snow before it turned to ice.
Total biking: 26.85
Total running: 13.75 miles
Workouts:
Monday: Run 3.6 miles (11:58 pace)
Tuesday: Run 2.5 miles (11:56 pace) + bike trainer 8.3 miles (14 mph, 64 rpm)
Wednesday: Run 2.25 (12:03 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout A
Thursday: Run 1 mile (9:15)
Friday: Run 1 mile (11:10) + bike trainer 7.1 miles (14.2 mph, 65 rpm)
Saturday: Run 4.5 miles (12:03 pace) + bike trainer 22.5 miles (15.0 mph, 69 rpm)
Sunday am: Bike trainer 8.1 miles (16.1 mph, 74 rpm) + NROLFW phase 6 workout B
Sunday pm: Peacock Lane Run - 2 miles from PRC (10:30) + 10 minutes walking Peacock Lane + 2 miles back to PRC (10:34)
Total biking: 46.0 miles
Total running: 18.85 miles
While occasionally I take advantage of my 1-mile runs (for the running streak) to just run hard(ish), the otherwise faster paces recently are still heartrate paced. I'm not sure if I fully trust the data, it doesn't necessarily feel quite as easy as when a 145-ish bpm netted a 13:30 mile, but it says I'm hitting closer to 12:00 at that same 145-ish bpm. It's not like I feel it's a hard effort, just a smidge harder than when I was slower. But it has been nearly three months now of heartrate training, so I should be seeing results. It's probably time for a trial run aiming for a 13:00 to 13:30 pace, and see where my heartrate ends up.
I've been doing lots of biking! I'm this close to my revised annual goal of 500 miles. I realized I only got to 250 by the beginning of November, so I'll end up having done half the total miles in the last two months of the year, but it's doable. Actually hit my highest ever bike weekly mileage this week (prior highest was 43 summer before last during tri training).
Workouts:
Monday: Run 3.0 miles (13:39 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout A
Tuesday: Run 1 mile (13:43 pace) + bike trainer 7.3 miles (14.5 mph, 77 rpm)
Wednesday: Run 3.1 miles (12:50 pace)
Thursday: Run 1 mile (12:50 pace) + bike trainer 10.9 miles (14.5 mph, 67 rpm)
Friday: Run 2.15 miles (12:41 pace) + bike trainer 7.1 miles (14.0 mph, 64 rpm)
Saturday: Run 1.miles (12:55 pace) + NROLFW phase 6 workout B
Sunday: Run 2.5 miles (11:18 pace)
Total biking: 25.30 miles
Total running: 13.75 miles
An odd week, in a few ways. One personal reason, which I'll talk about here once I've filled in some people in real life.
Also because of the ridiculous rain storms we had. The worst day was Monday, there was flooding all over the place, but both the rain, flooding, and mudslides continued throughout the week. When the managing partner sent an email Monday afternoon that if we needed to leave early, work from home the next day, etc., it was fine, I didn't think much of it. My commute is almost entirely up one freeway, just a couple blocks of streets on either end. That freeway got closed due to flooding of a nearby creek! I ended up commuting - from one westside suburb to another westside suburb - by driving NE towards the edge of downtown Portland and then west back out home. That should not have ever been the best way to drive home, but it was due to the other closed freeway (and actually had surprisingly light traffic on the open freeways). (Otherwise, my part of town actually stayed relatively unaffected. If some inconvenient rerouting was the worst thing I experienced, I was pretty lucky!).
The rain kept me from doing a bit more running than I would have liked to do otherwise, but I'm pretty proud of myself for at least getting in one soggy mile every day and keeping the running streak going.
