I have this push-up app on my phone – if you follow the 6 week program, you’re supposed to be able to do 100 push-ups in a row. I reset it three times to week 4, because it got really hard beyond that. 280 push-ups in one session hard. I make the kids lunches in the evening for the next day … and in between cutting crust off pbj’s, I knock out a bunch of push-ups.

I got to the end of the 6 week program last week sometime. So today I just reset it to week 4 and started over. But this time I put on my pack. In my pack is a 50m rope, my climbing harness, shoes, chalk bag, and old grigri, my ATC and a few biners. I don’t know how much it weighs. It made it kinda hard. Fun but really hard. Same.

That’s what I did this morning. Then I went out to the garage where I installed a pull-up bar. It’s just a piece of 3/4 black pipe that I got from Home Depot lag bolted into the wall across a 6ft span. I got this belt thing… with a chain on it. And I’m trying to find out how much weight I can pull-up with so that I can do no more than 5 pull-ups. With no weight – I do a lot of pull-ups. With 20lbs on, I can still do a bunch. Today I chained up to 30lbs. and locked-off after 5, then took it down slow back to the ground. Closer. I’ll try 35lbs next time.

At lunch I went for a run. I’ve intentionally slowed my runs down. I found that tempo runs are hard on my body – okay and necessary to do sometimes…but sparingly. It’s fun to go really fast, but it’s actually harder to go slow. I’m trying to keep my heart rate in zone 1. For me it’s under 144bpm – conversational pace. Agonizingly slow. Audiobook pace. Today I tried something new and only breathed through my nose. And kept my mouth shut. A good policy oftentimes. If you can run and nose-breath – then you can eat and drink and run at the same time…for a really really long time. So that’s what I did today.

Training. Training. Training.
Taking this energy and focusing it. Making lists. Winter is coming. Stoking the fire.