Challenge: Treadmill Six Minute Mile

Caution to the wise: If you are not a gazelle, a Kenyan, a cheetah, or that same Kenyan wearing Adidas Gazelles attempting to out run a cheetah; don't attempt this in public.

Two weeks back ole Jaron hit me up with a little, "oh by the way" challenge grenade. "Dude, you should try the treadmill six-minute mile." Simple. Yet deadly. It should have read... TO SIMULATE, JUMP OUT OF A SPEEDING CAR.

To put it into perspective, I typically finish my daily workouts with a 20 minute run holding a 8:30 minute mile. Heck, what's the big deal about shaving 2:30 minutes off the pace for a mile? It's the difference between light speed and ludicrous speed. Prepare ship for ludicrous speed. Fasten all seat belts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the 3-ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo... I pulled the plug on the challenge 120 seconds into mission after the treadmill went Plaid.

There is very little issue with failure in my book. Constant fear of hypocrisy and fact checking ad nauseum for double entendres, provides a perfect back-drop for knowing when to hold'em, and when to fold'em. Personal note to Kenny Rodger... this coward of Clark County will not be attempting the "Treadmill Six Minute Mile" challenge again. I'm closing that window and never looking back. My legs are on fire, my head is fine, hold the phone, I'll be heading home in the slow lane today.

Bring on the rebound attempt of the "300 Spartan Workout". Coming to a local Gold's Gym February 15, 2013 (aka Heartbreaks Day... and since 1976, my burfday!)

Tabernacle of Clay

Recently my family came down with "a bug." Dear Grandma Marlow would say it's a sickness that is more than a cold, but less than the flu. For me it starts with a rogue sneeze, not desert dust bomb induced. Then followed up with a scratch in the back of the throat and mud in the bones. Like clock work, the next morning's alarm is greeted with muscle aches, head crushing pressure, and one heck of a chest party... cough, hack a lung, repeat for two weeks. Over the past two decades my illness rap sheet has less variety than the The Olympia Diner's menu; Cheeburger, cheeburger, cheeburger. Chip, chip. No Coke...Pepsi!

http://lockerz.com/u/20664516/decalz/7402718/snl_the_olympia_diner_belushi_cheebur


In a given year, I'm pretty much clock work for two or three chest and head smack downs. The heart of the storm is about 48 to 72 hours of pure misery, with another few weeks of lung butter clean out. Work is rarely effected (sorry to any co-workers and clients I have infected). However, my fitness program takes a hammering! I have been derailed by my personalized virus so many times that it hurts to think of all the week and two week recovery breaks needed to get back to normal. So when my first real chest and head banger sent early warnings one night last week, it pissed me off at the thought of having to tell Jaron we would be on hold for a spell. But that following morning my body only had the vague traces of ache. There was hardly any lung sludge. Very light head pressure. It was as if I had skipped a week of lethargic body wasteland and hired a wonderful nasal roto-rooter. No time missed in the pool. No weight sets skipped. No cardio sacrificed. I'll call it Chest and Head Smack Down Lite.  

It never occurred to me that the last five months on the nutrition and fitness program are producing results the mirror does not catch. A healthier internal system that can fight off bugs. 

Dude, where's my chair?

In a society with infinite ways to cure boredom and pass the time, the days have the illusion of rocketing through existence. However, many eastern philosophical practitioners speak of being in the now. Living life in the moment. Feeling each second pass by without worrying about the next tick on the clock. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well friends and foreigners, I have discovered the key to slowing time down; 90 degree wall-sits while holding over head a 20 pound medicine ball.

During my 2008 P90X fat guy phase, ole Tony Horton talked trash on his lite version of wall sits. No disrespect Tony, but Body by Jaron adds the pressure of holding a weight above yo'head. Not only do my legs shake like a dubstep superstar after a six pack of Red Bull for the balance of the :45 second interval. I reach for any mental distractions to block out two oxygen burning shoulders adding to the party. Tick tock, tick tock, goes the clock.

The leg work out is five rounds of five reps in this phase, with :60 second rest between each round. This phase has produced a few guttural moans as predicted by the mad genius. Jaron wrote it like this: 

• Leg press, single leg, 200lbs
• Wall sits :45 seconds, 20lbs weight over head
• Donkey Calf (slow), 70lbs
• Good mornings, 85lbs
• Hanging straight leg lifts, 10 reps
• Planks on stability ball with one leg up, :30 seconds each leg, 4 rounds

Jaron kindly supplied the demo image of planks on the stability ball.The entire leg workout (cardio excluded) runs :60 minutes, plus or minus a few minutes for rethinking life's priorities. The beast on paper is the wall sits, but planks are the capstone to a brutal leg day. At one point I could have sworn this exercise combination was footnoted in the fifth circle of Dente's Inferno; "I saw multitudes
to every side of me; their howls were loud while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push."

P.S. Check out next week's challenge; 1 mile tread mill run on six minutes. (I currently run 2 miles a day on a 9:20 mile pace. Get my sprint on!)
 

Year of the Cattle

Me and New Year's Eve are not bros. I loath this sleep depriving evening as much as I do the annual waste of time spent on life changing resolutions.  So on January 2nd my ride to the gym took forever. My stomach turned with the dread of walking into a zoo of New Year's Resolution cattle taking up space on all the cardio machines. I was once a member of the aimless walking slug people; searching the weight room for that magic machine to suck off thirty pounds of, "sure I'll have another serving of mash potatoes and gravy, honey." The blog post has been mentally prepared for some time. It was a whopper! One of those good ole, hard core "Yo mama joke," colossal burn on the herd of resolution makers. I was ready to people-watch hordes of good intentions walking with imaginary gold rings through the nose. Gym staff walking around with comic strip bubbles full of dollar signs as they up sell Mr. and Mrs. Fat American. But to my chagrin the cattle were nowhere to be found.

Same thing on January 3rd, and the 4th and the 5th. WTFreak!?!? I may have experienced a galactic anomaly at two different gyms . Today being another day I can only hope to see the mass of frumpy new faces just a few days away from going back into hibernation. However, I may have to stop jumping around every corner trying to scare the invading hordes of population Excuses. It's not good for my life span to startle a 250 pound meat head with my classic, "Go back to your shanties! Ellen ain't goning to watch herself!" I'll stick to blogging and passive aggression.

I will pass the balance of this post to my main man Jaron B. Krause and to give our readers the statistical reality of New Year's Resolutions ... Queue the professional's intro music!