Time Marches On

Well, that count down timer over there sure seems to be relentless...

I had a pretty good week last week. I had Jury Duty on Monday, unfortunately I didn't get on a case... But I also didn't get to work out on Monday. The rest of the week was solid, however. Now I just need to address my diet... :(

I did some research over the weekend on the places we'll be staying in Ecuador. The hotel we'll be staying in in Quito looks pretty nice! It's the Hotel Mercure Alameda, Quito. It looks pretty modern. Not sure what I expected really but the hotel looks nice... We'll spend the first three nights at the Hotel Mercure Alameda.

After our first acclimatization hike we will move to the Hacienda El Porvenir in the Illiniza Norte range and near Cotopaxi National Park

After our night in the Hacienda we head to the Jose Ribas Refugio, climbers hut. I hear this is a really nice climbers hut and that it was recently rebuilt....

After a hopefully successful climb of Cotopaxi we'll head to the Hosteria La Cienega. This place looks amazing! I am repeatedly struck by the age of places in Ecuador. Most everything in California is new, or nearly so. New in other countries seems be less than 200 years.

With one night in the Hosteria we then head to the Hacienda Guachala for one night. This is the oldest Hacienda in Ecuador and parts of it were laid down as early as 1580! We'll prepare for our attempt on Cayambe here and recover from any lingering effects from Cotopaxi.

Our next night will be in the Climbers Hut on Cayambe. I've heard this hut is one of the nicest in all of South America!

And then when we come off Cayambe we head back to the Hotel Mercure Alameda and get ready to fly back to the USA.

Okay, back to planning my next work out and thinking about food...

R

How to have a good week and feel bad...

It's funny how one Ahh Shit! can erase 5 Atta Boy's!

Overall a good week, Monday through Thursday I was focused and was able to get in some really strong workouts.

All cardio this week was on the stair mill. I did two manual sessions, one of which was just brutal and ended up burning nearly 700 calories a couple people were actually looking at with 'What the hell is wrong with that guy!' all over their faces... I also did an interval session and a fat burner session.

Weights were good, two upper body and two legs sessions. I even did one set on the leg press with 5 plates per side.

All was good until yesterday...

I had every intention of going to the gym after dropping Sam off at summer school but I lost focus due to an issue he's had to deal with involving another student. So I came home and worked a till noon. After picking up Sam I had my performance review at work scheduled and thought that I might go to the gym after that. Good review, but know I had to pick Sam up again in two hours just didn't work for me mentally and by that time I was hungry!

So, instead I had some leftover yaki tri-tip, yaki-chicken kabob and some rice. But that wasn't enough so I had what some might call a mountainous bowl of ice cream. Of course my buddy Kurtiss would consider it amatureish at best compared to his performances involving a half gallon of ice cream and a spoon...

Regardless that was all it took for me to go from distinguished effort to poor...

Then to make matters worse we went to Filipi's Italian Restaurant for dinner after Sam's soccer game where I put a hurtin on some Chicken Parm, spaghetti and a 1/2 order of Lasagna (shared with Mandi of course) all accompanied by two Firehouse brews...

Strange how quickly you can go from atta boy to ah shit...

As an aside I've been debating with my self the merits of Stair Climbing in the gym vs. running outside. Stair climbing has felt more like training for a climb but I've been wondering if it's Cardio-ly as intense as running. Time wise I would do the activities for about he same duration but I'm not sure which works my heart more and which burns more calories (those being my two goals with cardio at this time). Love to get some feedback on that issue...

And finally I've been trying to learn a little spanish. I've learned a little spanish numerous times but I don't use it for a while and it's gone. Strange...

Anyway - Habla Espanol? Si, hablo un poco de espanol. Ah, es usted Norte Americano? Si, soy Norte Americano. :) When I get to Ecuador I'll try to resist the urge to use my standard line: Donde esta el casa de poopoo...

First hike of the season!

It looks like the little woman and I will get a chance to go on a short overnight backpacking trip in a couple weeks. Where going to head up to Sequoia National Park and hike into Twin Lakes from Lodgepole for one night.

I have been pining for the woods lately (was that bad???) So we're going to head out.

This short trip will be about 13 miles round trip. A little farther if we do a morning hike up to Silliman Pass before hiking out Sunday morning. We'll leave from Lodgepole at around 7,000' and the lakes are up near 10,000'. If we do head up to the Pass to look around that goes up to almost 11,000' elevation. I'm really looking forward to spending a night in a tent. It's been a while.

Twin Lakes was the destination on our very first backpacking trip in 1993. Gosh that seems so long ago... But it's a beautiful area if crowded at times. Some pictures of our first trip there are here: Twin Lakes 93 And our second trip is here: Twin Lakes 94

Training continues vigorously! Some may have noticed that I added a Countdown to Departure over there on the right above my picture... :D

Until the next update...

Trip Itinerary

Okay, as I was looking at flight information for this trip I was having a hard time equating what RMI was calling "Day 3" etc and an actual date. So here is the Itinerary for this trip with Dates: (very obviously blogspot completely pukes on Tables... See Below....)

Nov. 30	Depart U.S.A. Most flights arrive in Quito in the late evening. Your guides will meet you at the airport and transfer with you to our hotel. Overnight in Quito.
Dec. 1	We meet in the hotel lobby for an orientation meeting and our first team breakfast. The day is spent exploring Colonial Quito with a local tour guide. There is also time to relax and recover from our flights. Overnight in Quito.
Dec. 2	After breakfast we leave the city in private vehicle to explore Pasachoa Forest Reserve, a 1,000 acre park at the base of the extinct volcano. We take an acclimatization hike to stretch our legs and prepare for our upcoming climbs. We return to Quito for dinner and overnight.
Dec. 3	Leaving the city of Quito we travel to Illiniza Norte, a jagged peak just west of Cotopaxi National Park. This is our second acclimatization hike; this time to 15,000 feet. We spend the night in a traditional Ecuadorian farmhouse, located near the base of Cotopaxi.
Dec. 4	After breakfast, a short drive from takes us to the end of the road at the base of Cotopaxi. A short hike leads to the Jose Ribas Refugio at 16,000 feet.
Dec. 5	We focus on reviewing basic mountaineering techniques and preparing for our summit attempt. We settle in early in anticipation of our alpine start.
Dec. 6	Summit day on Cotopaxi (19,348)! With an early alpine start, we use the first hour to approach the glacier. A short pitch gains access to an interesting maze of crevasses on the lower slopes of this beautiful volcano. The ascent then weaves through impressive crevasse fields for several hours before ascending the final steep slopes to the summit. The deep, sheer-walled volcanic crater is an incredibly impressive sight. After our summit celebration and photo session, we descend to the hut. We continue the descent to our vehicles, and check into a beautiful 300-year old hacienda.
Dec. 7	We travel to the town of Cayambe where we can relax and explore some of the local culture. We have the option to visit Otovalo, a town known for its beautiful woolen products or Machachi, with its famous leather industry. After shopping and sightseeing we transfer to Ecuador’s oldest hacienda.
Dec. 8	Using 4 x 4 vehicles, we drive to the hut at the base of Cayambe. The afternoon is spent preparing for our summit attempt, with the option of a short hike.
Dec. 9	Summit day on Cayambe (18,997’)! With an early alpine start for the summit, our route begins by climbing through some low rock outcroppings before stepping onto a spectacularly crevassed glacier. Once on the glacier, the route climbs directly to the upper reaches of the mountain, where a challenging final push to the summit awaits us. After enjoying our success, we descend to our private vehicles, and drive to Quito for our celebration dinner.
Dec. 10	Early morning transfer to the airport for our outbound flights.
Dec. 11	Hobble to Work…

I noticed that Dec. 7 is the day after our summit attempt on Cotopaxi. Interesting because December 7th is not only Pearl Harbor day it's the day I graduated Boot Camp and the day my Dad got out of the Navy. :)

Weekly review and some details

Well, for the second week in a row we have good stuff to report. I was in the gym every day this week, except 7/4, and I'm going for a run in the morning!

My workouts have been typical; 30 to 40 minutes on cardio machine, preferably the stair mill, then either an upper body or legs weight workout. I have recently noticed two things. One, that I can stay at higher levels longer on the stair mill; and two, I'm putting more weights on the machines.

Instead of giving general overviews of each day I thought I'd give a detailed accounting of one workout. It may be interesting for others but I think it will be interesting for me in a few months too. We'll use today, a leg day, as the sample.

I always (I know, never say always or never...) start with Cardio. I think the idea is to get your heart rate up then it stays elevated throughout your workout.

Today's cardio was 40 minutes on the stair mill. I often do a Manual program but from time to time I do the Interval or Fat Burner programs.

Today was Manual, I started with 5 minutes at level 8. At 5 minutes i upped the level to 9 for 3 minutes. Then at 8 minutes i upped the level to 10 for another 2 minutes. So at 10 minutes I moved up to level 11, at that point I can't read anymore and have to regularly change positions with my hands to stay somewhat comfortable (that's a bit of a misnomer...). I held level 11 for 18 minutes at which point I upped the level to 12 for 2 very difficult minutes. At 30 minutes in I dropped the level to 10 then every 3 minutes 20 seconds I drop another level to finish at level 8 again. This is followed up by 2 minutes of warmdown at level 1 (machine default).

So after 42 minutes on this machine it usually tells me I've burned more than 650 calories and climbed more than 200 flights of stairs. I was drenched...

After my cardio session I put the reading material away and get my workout gloves from the locker. This is pretty much to relax and walk slowly a bit, hehe.

Then I started on my Legs session. I started with the Leg Press. This is the machine you sit in and push the sled up on rails with your feet. I did two sets of 20 with three plates each side and two sets of 20 with 4 plates each side. Then I tried to do another set with 4 plates per side and could only push out 10. FYI, these are 45 pound plates.

Next I go to leg extensions. Today I attempted 4 sets of 20 at 150 pounds. I could not finish the last two sets, I think I did 17 and 16.

Then I moved on to Leg Curls for the Hamstrings. I have such weak hamstrings that I'm actually seeing quite a bit of improvement on this exercise. :) I attempted 4 sets of 20 at 80 pounds. I've read that your hamstrings should be about 1/2 as strong as your quads, so this weight is about right for me. I finished the first two sets, only got about 16 on the third set and had to drop down to 65 for the fourth set, however I did pull off 20, barely.

After this I go over to the Calf Raise machine. I like to use the kind you sit in and put your knees under the bar then just lift with your calves. I put two 45 pound plates on this machine and try to do 4 sets of 20. I could not finish the last set, I might have gotten 15.

After the weights I hobble upstairs and do four or five stretches for my legs and lower back.

And that's Ray's legs workout in a nutshell. We'll see where I am in a couple of months...

6/30/2007 Week in Training

Well we finally have a good week of training to report! Can't say my motivation was any more than it has been but my perseverance has kept me going...

• Monday was cardio, stationary bike, 30 minutes random hills level 10, then legs pretty hard.
• Tuesday was again cardio on the bike. Both days on the bike were due to people being on the stair mills each day. Then hit the weights for an upper body workout.
• Wednesday was finally on the stair mill but at the gym near work followed by a nice and painful legs session.
• Thursday was again on the stair mill, 30 minutes, followed by a hardy helping of upper body resistance training. In addition to my normal chest/back bi's/tri's workout I added some shoulder training. That was interesting...
• And Friday despite my schedule being shot to hell by various server failures out there in cyber land we made it to the gym in the afternoon. I hit the stair mill HARD for 40 minutes thinking that was all I was going to do. Then Mandi decided to do our normal legs session. I thought, well okay, I'll play too... During the first exercise, leg presses, I was pretty winded still from my stair mill session and had to rest between loading plates on... hehe. So I'm reading a book right now, Lone Survivor. It's by a Navy Seal who was the lone survivor of search and destroy mission in Afghanistan in 2005. I'm still in the first half of the book where he details SEAL training... I thought about that book for a few minutes and pushed through my moment of weakness... I gotta say, that book has been way more inspirational than any movie or mountaineering book I've read recently... It's now on my Recommended list, just like Oprah. :D

I started looking at flight information for December this week. Gerry sent his potential itinerary and it looks like I could hook up with him in Houston and then we could fly down to Quito together arriving in Ecuador at 10PM local time. Right now that flight will cost me about $700. Looking pretty good I'd say!

Also with regards to Ecuador time. I got a new 20" iMac yesterday (Friday) and I was setting it up, time zone and everything... :D So I added a clock for San Diego and Quito, Ecuador. Quito is on central time, only two hours later than Pacific Time! Seemed kind of a trip to me since it's so far away. Our total travel time will be nearly 10 hours and total flight time will be nearly 7 hours, yet we'll still only be 2 hours difference... Show's how often I've flown north or south...

Okay, that's all for this update, I need to go play with my iMac some more...
Ciao,
R

A little gym ettiquette please?

When I started this particular blog it was never my intention to make a place for my rants. I do that enough elsewhere. But since this particular gripe is about the gym it seemed appropriate to put it here.

So here is my list of things I wish people in the gym either would or would not do:

• I use a red lock on my locker. I wish people would notice the lock and not select the locker right next to mine. Now if the locker room were full I wouldn't complain but when I go in the mornings there are barely 10 peeps in there for 80 lockers.
• When I put my bag on the bench I try to use as little room as possible so as to leave room for others. When I go to the shower I put everything in my bag or locker so the total space I use is just the footprint of the bag. I wish others would try to do something similar, as opposed to one person taking up an entire bench.
• I wish people would re-rack their plates. I walked up to the squat sled and there were 5 plates on each side and no one around.
• I wish people would put away their dumb-bells. This morning 4 of 6 benches had dumb-bells on them implying that someone was working out there. So I stood to do my curls and shoulder presses. No one ever came to use those dumb-bells the entire time I was there.
• I wish people wouldn't put their towel on a shower stall and then go swim or sit in the sauna for 20 minutes. Someone else might want to use that stall.
• I wish people would rinse the sink after using it. Nothing more gross than old toothpaste, whiskers or spit in the sink, especially if it isn't mine.
• I wish people would at least use a towel in the sauna.
• I wish LA Fitness in 4S Ranch would put shower curtains on the men's shower stalls.
• I wish people would have conversations somewhere other than on the machine I want to use.
• I wish my gym had more than 3 stair mills. The last several days they've all been in use when I get there. Of course the three peeps on there stay there for 30, 40 even 60 minutes...
• I wish people would use one machine at a time.
• I wish people would wipe machines down after using them!