Tough spot

The last three days have been just, Tough.  My workout has been thrown off a little by different stuff going on in life, so I've had to make due.  Monday, which is normally an upper-body weightlifting day was, instead a running night.  I am trying to work my new running shoes, the New Balance Minimus into my workouts.

http://www.newbalance.com/

New Balance recommends using them for just 10% of your running workouts and then slowly increasing that over time.  And oddly, at first, I didn't really get that.  I was really comfortable using these without noticing any real difference between them and my Asics.  But then on Monday, I ran 2.3 miles in them and came back noticing the difference.  Everyone reaches a point in their exercise regime where they seem to plateau or just run out of steam.  And I feel like I'm at the point right now.  I seem to ache constantly and my last few workouts have been lackluster.  I just don't feel energized.  My weight loss has screeched to a halt, and I even gained a few pounds over vacation. 

So Monday night's run went alright, but my muscles were so tight afterwards, especially in my lower legs.  Tuesday, is normally a running day, and I was feeling ok, so I decided to try a longer run, but in my Asics, to give my legs a little rest.  I ran my 3.64 mile loop and it went pretty well.  I did notice that some of my conditioning was paying off.  My windsprints, for instance, seemed to have improved my ability to hit a hill and actually speed up over it.  Normally, I'd shorten my stride and slow my pace to climb, but I found my self reaching my legs out and picking up my pace to climb, with little negative effect on my breathing or form once I had finished the climb.  So that was good news.  But I had hoped to maybe throw in the 2.5 mile loop at the end to make it 6.1 miles, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  I felt like, while my legs were still solid, my energy level just wasn't there. 

And then Wednesday came around.  I finally had access to my gym, so I took the opportunity.  Now, I don't know if I've talked alot about it, but up to now, I've been essentially doing split training, where I separate out muscles groups and focus on them on different days.  The Tough Mudder training system doesn't do that.  And it's a great workout, so I decided to give it a try. 
I ignored the running man, because I've been doing plenty of that. I chose about 9 of the exercises and laid out the equipment I needed in a row so I could quickly go from one exercise to the other.  So here's what I did:
1. TM Pushup- Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, my gym only has those little weights that square off- up to 12 lbs.  So that's what I used.  I did ten reps.
2. Fist and Fury - I really like the exercise for some reason. The only Kettle bell the gym has is 35 lbs, so I used that.  This exercise combines a squat and a front dumbbell raise, but you get a great cardio side benefit by doing them in rapid succession.  Check out This Article that uses a similar exercise as a great fat-burning routine that was featured on http://www.yahoo.com/.  I did 10 reps for each arm. 
3. Scissor Kick- I started this, but found myself too uncoordinated to do it- or too tired. Plus people were looking at me like I had just lit up a cigarette on an airplane.  So, like most, I just stopped.
4. Back row- I used 35 lb dumbbells for this and did 10 reps.
5. Dumbbell side lunge- This exercise is intense if you do it right.  I started out with 35 lbs in each hand and then had to drop down to 25 lbs.  And it still killed.  10 reps.
6. Push up plus row- I did this with my puny 12 lb weights for 10 reps and then decided it wasn't really do what was intended.
7. Lunge and twist.  I did this with the 35 lbs kettle bell, walking across the gym, probably 20 lunges total for 10 on each leg.
8. Shoulder press- Honestly, I think if you did this work out by curling the dumbbells up, then squatting, then pressing as you stood all for one rep and just repeating it, you could be ready for almost anything after 2 weeks of it!  It was just brutal to me.  I used 25 lbs in each hand and it was all I could do to get 10 reps out. 
9. Planks- I did the superman and drunk superman planks. 

So let's call all of that, one set- I did two and was out.  The first set was really intense, as I had energy to move from one to the other, but then I just- ran out of steam.  My second set was lackluster at best.  And it only took me about 35 minutes to do all of that.  I left the gym just disappointed at my performance.  I didn't feel like I had worked out- though my butt and thighs greatly disagreed with me and are still protesting my idea of performance today. 

If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.  I know I should be eating more, so I'm going to try do that.  I guess I've just been disappointed with my weight gain, so I've been reluctant to eat more.   I know that's probably causing more problems than it's solving. 

Anyway, I'm going to post my initial review of the New Balance Minimus on Monday and then post updates as my training progresses.  Also, I'm going to try to do one of those promised PT Tests soon- though I've held off because I don't want to embarrass myself too much.  So stay tuned for that humiliation.