P90X Adventures Round 3 Week 1 Review A triumphant return!

Well... I guess it's been a while.

I sort of trailed off toward the end of my Round 2 of P90X.  I never did quite complete the final week with as strong a finish as I'd been hoping, but I stayed active nonetheless.  I ended up switching gears back to biking and starting to get prepared for STP.  I got all signed up at the beginning of February and was stoked.  I just couldn't wait to get out there.

The weather started to get a little bit more favorable, albeit still cold as hell trying to bike in 45° weather and all.  Every day that wasn't raining, I was taking full advantage.  I managed to put about 465 miles on the bike in about a month.  There wasn't much ramping up this time.  The first couple rides, I was doing about 15 miles. By the last week of March, I'd been habitually doing 36 miles a day.  In fact, that week from sunday to saturday, I'd put 200 miles on the bike.  Definitely a good place to be when I have a 2-day 200 mile ride on the horizon.

Well, my knees didn't seem to think so.  After that ridiculous amount of amazing biking weather, my knees were beginning to revolt so I decided to give riding a break for a bit.  I think it was because I literally went from zero to hard training, doing 15-20+ mile rides every day without actually ramping up like I'd done last year.  I was just trying to resume my biking fitness level of where I was post STP last year which was pretty ridiculously good and my body was totally not in the conditioning for that.  I guess it was just as well because April brought in it's famous showers and I still don't have any rain gear.  So, I opted to do the next best thing... P90X!!

I managed to actually net my wife this round!  I'm pretty stoked about that.  She wasn't as stoked as I was but at least vowed to make an effort.

Me after Plyometrics week 1

Zu after Plyometrics week 1

Starting this last week was rough.  I was there mentally.  I was ready for it, but my body was struggling to keep up.  It's nothing short of astonishing how quickly muscles atrophy when not really being used.  The month I took off of P90X really showed on that first day of Chest & Back. Man, I was struggling to catch those numbers from the last time I did it.  Didn't even come close.  However, I was still doing a lot of things unmodified so that still felt good.  What really impressed me was Zu hanging in there.  She wasn't really nailing the moves all that well most of the time, but was I really on my first week?  There were a few moments where she lost it and I thought she was going to just give up then and there.  I wanted to tell her that she shouldn't get frustrated over not being able to do something the same as I do.  I did when I could, but a lot of the times when she was losing it, I just didn't say anything and kept going.  Partly because I figured she'd push onward if she really wanted, but mostly because the move was really freakin' hard and I was too out of breath or focussed.

She'd have her little fit, dust herself off, and join back up.  She'd really impressed me each day as she made it all the way through each routine all week.  I never did that my first 2 weeks even.  I think a lot of what makes it better for her is having me doing it with her.  I didn't have anybody doing it with me so if I was giving up, who was going to stop me?  Who was really going to encourage me to keep going in that moment?  Even though, a lot of the time I wasn't saying much, just me being there and doing the moves with her I think gave her the motivation to keep moving.  It definitely felt great to see her finish and see the look on her face of satifaction... after the look of pain and death wore off first.

This time I've taken more of a look at the nutrition plan.  I'd basically ignored it my first 2 times through the program and being where I am now, I was still a little hesitant on some aspects of it but I really did wanna see just how I could nail the results this time around.  I decided to google around looking for some vegan alternatives.  I figured even if I'm not 100% vegan, I could still find some alternatives to things that would work for me better than eating a ton of meat since I wasn't really into that anymore.  And I found it!

http://www.beachbody.com/product/p90xnl_058.do#article1

This has been pretty awesome and following a sort of traditional/vegan P90X nutrition hybrid method has definitely led to it feeling better of the bat.  Tonight, we just started week 2 and wrapped up our 2nd round of Chest & Back.  My strength is coming back rather quickly.  So that has me a bit excited.  Not sure if I'll be all that prolific with these updates, but I'll at least try to do a weekly recap or something of this round's adventures.  Until next time!