Back to the Lab Again!

I'm definitely showing my age with that title, huh?

On Tuesday, it was my day to run. Just a simple 30 minute run on the treadmill at a 12:00 pace.

At around the 20 minute mark, I quit. It was the second time in a row I wasn't able to finish my run. After that, I decided that I needed to hit the road for my next few run sessions, so on Thursday I began what was supposed to be a three mile run at my own slow pace.

I made it a half mile before I quit. My legs felt like lead.

There was a time that I would have beaten myself up for this. Not this time.

Mixing powerlifting and running is difficult. Very difficult. I still want to do both because I enjoy running and lifting heavy. If you do a Google search for "Powerlifting and running workout", you'll find only a few routines, but a whole lot of forums where people are asking how they can combine the two. There's no point in beating myself up for not accomplishing a task that leaves little room for error. Instead of kicking my ass about it, I decided to figure out how I can unfuck my situation. To the interwebs!

I decided to ditch my workout routine right off the bat. With my deadlift days and my squat days, I'm still lifting heavy with my legs twice a week. That's why my legs are lead. I found a workout routine that looks like it'll kick my ass up and down the block at first, but hopefully I can adapt to after a few weeks.

Part of the routine is here (my routine is listed under the 5k method), with the exercises listed here. It's completely different from anything I've ever done. I've never heard of the Westside Method before this. You do leg day twice a week, but you're only doing heavy lifting on one of them. You also do sprints on that day. The creator of the routine said that you do that because both heavy lifting and sprints wreck your legs, so it's best to spend one day a week wrecking your legs instead of two. It sounds logical, but I'm not looking forward to the nightmare that I'm going to unleash on my lower body come Wednesday.

Along with this routine, I still need to do my shoulder routine to deal with the calcium deposits that are still in my right shoulder, and I also have a routine to fix my grip strength. I needed to add the latter routine because I'm losing my grip on my deadlifts now that I've put some serious weight on them. So all in all, I'm going to be one busy man at the gym.

Another thing I need to change is my diet. I need to eat more. That's a first.

Carb cycling is a great way to lose body fat, and it works well when I'm strictly lifting, but I need more carbs if I'm going to run. This isn't an easy task for me, as I rarely eat all of the food on my high carb days as it is. Even with half my food in liquid form, it's difficult for me to eat everything.

According to Calorie Calculator, I will still be running up a calorie deficit if I eat 3,100 calories a day. I still have about 20 pounds of body fat to spare, so I can make that work, but I need to completely recalibrate my diet plan. My food is already prepped for this week, so I'll have to wait until next week before I make major changes. Until then, I'm just going to supplement my no carb days and low carb days with as many sports drinks and starch as I can handle.

You know you've come a long way on your fitness journey when you used to eat too much, and now you're not eating enough.

If this plan doesn't work, I'm going to have to ditch powerlifting and find some other form of strength training that can work with running. I hope it doesn't come to that, because I really like powerlifting.

I like how I'm handling this situation, though. It was only a few months ago where I would beat myself up if I couldn't finish a workout. Instead of doing that, I decided to figure out how to solve my problem. That's something I need to start doing with everything in my life.