I'm Not Cut Out For This

Well, after a few political posts, we're going back to fitness. I've been wanting to write this one for a while, but I've been busy with work, taking care of the kids, and life in general.

I also have a few other posts in my head ready to get typed up. Hopefully I'll have them up in a few days. Stay tuned for them, because they're some good ones. :)

A few months ago, I decided to take up distance running again to help to cut weight. I knocked the dust off of the old Hal Higdon Novice 1 Half Marathon plan and set a goal to work myself up to running ten miles. The plan was to literally run my ass off until I dropped about twenty pounds or so.

All was going fine until I ran seven miles. For a week after that, I felt a sharp pain in my hip.

I know I'm getting old, but I am not so old as to be getting hip injuries. That's just some bullshit.

The pain was so bad that I was walking bow legged and limping all over the place. Running was out of the question. I could barely even walk.

While I was injured, I remembered back to when I was training to run a half marathon and I got injured right around the same time. Right around when I worked my way towards mile eight. That was a nasty sprain to my lower abdominal muscle that kept me out of running for two weeks. I still managed to run the half marathon in Detroit a few months later, but the injury really hurt my progress. Instead of running confidently across the finish line, I was dragging ass and praying for a merciful death.

I'm just not cut out for distance running. It sucks to admit that, but that's just the way it is. My body type just isn't made for that.

I was never much of a runner. In the Army, my best run time for a two mile run was 14:57. While that's fast by civilian standards, in the Army, it's less than one minute above passing time.

But in between the half marathon and now, I took up powerlifting, and that's where the new phase of my fitness journey comes in.

I have never injured myself lifting weights. I've never injured myself at all during any type of strength training. Ever. That's my body type. That's what I'm cut out for, and it's where I set my new fitness goal.

There's this thing called the Thousand Pound Club. For those of you that don't want to click the link, it's where your combined lifting weights of the squat, bench press, and deadlift all exceed one thousand pounds.

I crunched the numbers into this fitness calculator of each of those lifts that I have used at peak strength to determine my one rep max. At my absolute best so far, my squat is 295 pounds. My bench press is 240 pounds. My deadlift is 340 pounds.

When you add them all together, my combined peak strength is 875 pounds.

I only need to add 125 pounds to each of those three lifts to join that prestige club.  That's only about forty pounds per lift and some change!

This is very much attainable. It's very much attainable given the time frame that I'm setting for myself.

I will obtain this goal by the end of next year. December 31st, 2018. I have 14 months to achieve it. And I will!

I have to add a photo at this point for my Facebook friends (as they are the majority of the readers of this blog) so here you go: