5/5 and 5x5
Last week we had a good Cinco de Mayo dinner. pt and I rode our bikes to a local Mexican restaurant. We called N and fortunately she was able to join us, we met her on her bike on the street. It was totally like when we were young, cruising around the neighborhoods meeting up with friends on their bikes. Except now we get to go as far as we want from home, and drink. ;)
We thought about going to one of our favorite places downtown, but they were having music that night as part of the celebration and we didn't want to get too annoyed with a band in our face as we're trying to eat. I'm glad we checked out AZ-T-CA, it's a little place nestled in the corner of a Schnuck's grocery store strip mall. Great find though, their Tuesday half-price margarita special was in effect ($2.50 each!) and they were tasty, definitely not bottom shelf liquor.
The small restaurant was packed and we waited a really long time to find a place to sit, actually ended up squeezing in at the end of a large group's table. The food was good, and cheap. I got 3 fish tacos for $6, pt had some sort of tequila shrimp for about $8. Some guy I was talking to while we were waiting bought us a round of margaritas too! The weird thing is that they had a lot of people working, but maybe just one guy (the owner) doing all the cooking. Maybe he needs to hire me on as sous chef?
I was surprised at how busy the place was, but apparently it's very popular. That's the thing about Springfield, it's like you have to know where some of the good spots are, because, as you see in the picture, you'd never know by driving past that it was hoppin' in that restaurant. Before we left some guy saw our bike helmets and started talking to me about biking; he and his buddies have a riding group that seems like it's about my speed, so I gave him my e-mail address and I hope he contacts me for one of their weekend group rides.
My goal for next year is to get on an smsl futbol squad, maybe AZ-T-CA will have a spot for me... ;)
I'm on the last week of my first 12-week 5x5 strength training cycle. I'm going to stop increasing the weights for now and just go into twice-a-week maintenance mode, as I'm getting into the "really heavy for me" range which would require a spotter for every movement. Plus I need to concentrate on biathlon prep this month and then triathlon prep for the rest of the summer.
The program is great, I wholeheartedly endorse it for anyone who has access to the equipment. (We have an inexpensive membership to Cardinal Fitness, and even they have the necessary power rack, etc.) You start at a really low weight (usually an empty 45 lb. barbell) and slowly increase each workout, no more than +5 lbs. per movement, except for the deadlift, which increases in 10 lb. chunks. If you don't screw around, you can easily finish a workout in 45 minutes (more like 30-35 at the beginning).
Final weights for me were: 185 lb squat, 160 lb bench press, 85 lb overhead press, 205 lb deadlift. These are not my maximums, they are the weights at which I could complete 5 sets of 5 reps (deadlift is just 1x5). I haven't tested to see how many pull ups I can do now, but it's definitely more than the 7 chin ups I could do at the beginning. I would have benefited even more if I had a way to do pull ups at home. That's my weakest area and doing pull ups multiple times a day, every day, would have resulted in faster gains. This is probably the strongest I've ever been in my life, and it took just a few months of consistent training to get there! Plus other than my thighs (squats+biking=whoa!) I'm not really meathead/guido muscular, just a little more lean looking than before. This is one of the differences between strength training and bodybuilding. Total weight lost is 2-3 pounds, but I estimate fat lost around 5-10 pounds. That's about 2.5 hours a week of lifting, but we also had our half-marathon training this Spring too, and that did take up a lot of time near the end.
You do some ab work, but it's nowhere near the amount of crunch drudgery that you see a lot of people do. The squat is the foundation of the program, and when done correctly, you gain a lot of core strength from that movement, because you have to stabilize all the weight you're carrying on your shoulders/back.
I won't start another proper cycle until after the triathlon, maybe August or September, and will let that take me through Thanksgiving and the holiday pigout season. Now that it's consistently nice out, I can do my biking and running early in the morning, so the perceived time sink won't be as bad.