You again?

I made it back to the gym for another round of workouts today. I don't want to burn myself out for Saturday but at the same time I want to get there in as best position as possible.

My arms and chest are a bit sore today, which lets me know yesterday's workout went well. I hope I won't be too sore on Saturday but if I am, I'll have to deal with it. I wanted to work on my legs today but I also wanted to do some cardio. I wondered though if it would be wise to do another of my favorite 42-minute cardio sessions or not because I don't want to get to Saturday with no energy.

I did only three leg workouts - extensions, curls and calf raises. I didn't have too much time and figured I'd hit those since I'd done them forever and I wanted to get back to something familiar.

After my leg workouts, I decided to go ahead and do my regular cardio session. Actually, I think it was during the five-minute warm up that I decided. I almost mixed it up - and I would have to mix it up but not by my doing - but at about minute four I went ahead to go with it.

I found another messed up machine, though. This one spat out my heart rate to me but it didn't change speeds easily. I had to manually go from the 3.7 I'd been warming up at to the 5.8 I wanted to use. It took me some time to figure it out, though, and by the time I was at the 5.8 it was almost minute six. Not to mention my towel fell off the treadmill.

Great. My run is ruined.

Not exactly. After a minute at 5.8, I just decided to run at a 7.3 for three straight minutes. I got up to minute 10 running at the steady clip. I went back down to 5.8 for three minutes and back up to 7.3 for another four minutes.

Still, there was the matter of the changing speeds. I went down to 3.9 and checked my heart rate. It was at a 183 which was good. Perfect actually. But I wanted to do the next six rounds one minute at a time. So I switched machines. The towel, in the end, was the deciding factor.

All I need now is for this one to mess up on me.

Yes, I gambled. It was a risk switching machines because if I struck out again then it relly would have messed me up. But I lucked out. The machine not only measured my heart rate, but it changed speeds easily. In other words, it worked.

I walked for about a minute and then picked up the pace: 5.8, 7.3, 5.8, 7.3, 5.8, 7.3.

I caught my breath somewhat during my brief cooldown. It was an intended part of the interval training, though. You are supposed to recover and then change speeds to maximize the workout.

After three minutes of cooldown and four minutes of rounds, I went down for a quick cooldown session before my two-minute sprint. By this time, I was exhausted. I wasn't totally gassed but I was getting there. I don't know if it was the early sustained 7.3 pace or yesterday's run but my legs weren't quite there at the end. Maybe it's raising the overall level of the run from 5.5-7.0 to 5.7-7.3. Or maybe it was the leg exercises I did earlier.

Whatever the reason, I wasn't about to back down.

I gotta change up the song.

I'd been listening to random songs but I decided to go for one of my heavy songs, Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson. It was time. I got up to an 8.3. Then an 8.6.

I think I can feel my heart. It's going to exit my chest.

My heart was indeed pumping hard. It felt good, though, once I finished the two minutes. My heart rate was 188 when I was done, which is 100 percent of my rate and probably why I was feeling it during my sprint.

Now my plan for the rest of the week is simple. I am going to rest on Thursday and run my 2.25 mile run around my neighborhood. I think that will be the best for me in terms of entering Saturday at my peak.