Insanity is a Humbling Experience

18 days ago, I ran 26.2 miles in 4:13:00. A week later, we popped in Disk 1 of the Insanity workout program. I felt pretty good about my fitness level and my endurance. I was about to have my ass handed to me.

If you're not familiar with Insanity, it's another program from the Beachbody people, the company that produced my beloved P90X. Insanity is a completely different type of hell than either P90X or marathon running. It's based on High Intensity Interval Training, which roughly translates to "Shaun T is going to make you work until you can't feel your legs and you melt, a whimpering heap, into the puddles of sweat that have collected on your basement floor."



These workout tapes are deceptive. The first month includes a set of workouts that are only about 40 minutes long. 40 minutes of cardio work? That's nothing. I can do that in my sleep. Yeaaaaaah, not so much.

The program started with a tape called Plyometric Cardio Circuit. Yes, PLYOMETRICS. The same type of exercise that caused me great embarrassment during P90X. We pushed play, and Shaun T started right in with the workout. We jogged in place, did a million jumping jacks, a million more heisman plyo moves, some heisman 123s, butt kicks, high knees, and mummy kicks. We finished the first circuit, which was about 3 minutes worth of ass-kicking, and then got a 30 second water break. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. 10 minutes and two repetitions later, and I'm already soaking wet from head to toe and ready to die. And that was just the warm up. 30 minutes later, we were ending with Level 1 Drills - stand up, jump your feet back into plank, do 4 push-ups, 8 counts of plank run, jump your feet back in, jump up, and repeat until you puke.

Like this, but he's doing it very slowly for the purposes of demonstration.



We won't even talk about the Skis and In and Outs.

Wow. WOW. I thought I was in better shape than that.

Because I've been asked, I haven't decided if I'm going to blog about Insanity the way I did about P90X. I'm leaning more toward doing some kind of "Fitness Friday" theme, more generic posts about things I'm doing and things I like and articles that I've read about health and fitness. Maybe every other week. It's something that I find interesting, but not something that I'd want to dedicate an entire blog to. Besides, I'm not really all that hard-core. I still like to sit on my couch and watch TV and eat junk food. And drink beer. Can't forget about the beer.

And For My Next Trick....

Sticking with the BeachBody gang, but changing it up from P90X. Very excited to get started! Thinking of giving myself a whole week of doing nothing post-marathon.

The books that came with the plan are providing me with plenty of reading material to keep my mind on things other than running, running shoes, running shorts, running bag, transportation to the starting line, checking my bag, getting into the right Pig Pen, proper fueling, chipotle, re-organizing my marathon playlist, obsessing (and I mean obsessing) over the marathon route, hydration, Team Rachel t-shirt disaster, how to not actually stop at water stops, whether I should try for a sub 4-hour run or stick with my 4:08 goal, what a tool I looked like in the clip they showed of me running during my interview, how Charlie is going to get Charlie V2, my grandma, and my aunt down to the finish line to watch me cross, what the weather will be like, when I should go to the expo, how bad the "taper period" sucks, where I'm going to find time to fit in long runs for the fall marathon I want to do, missing my running buddy, toenails, girl issues (may end up POAS just to remove all doubts), whether to buy a new shirt, what to iron on the back of my shirt for race day, why did Saturday's run suck so bad, what happens if the actual race sucks the way Saturday's run did, Gilbert Ave and Eden Park, Columbia Parkway, cheering stations, text updates, reading the race packet over and over again, the finisher's medal, the Afterparty.............................

P90X - in the home stretch!

We're finally in our last week of P90X! I can't believe we've made it all the way through. We'll take our 90 day pictures Friday morning. I don't know how much progress I'm going to see between my 60 day pictures and my 90 day pictures, since this last set of workouts was heavy on the pull-ups and I still can't do a single freaking one, but I'm still very happy with what I've seen so far.

We're going to take next week off while we visit family in Alabama and I get started with my new job, and then we're starting another round, P90X Classic this time, with the P90X Plus tapes mixed in to stave off the boredom. I'm also asking for Insanity for my birthday, which will be about a week after we finish Round 2. Whee!

P90X - Week 7 Completed

Week 7 is over and we're in the recovery week of phase 2. I'm looking forward to phase 3 because it doesn't include the Legs & Back workout disc! I've gotten really bored with it lately. Wall squats, pull-ups, lunges, pull-ups, wall squats, pull-ups, etc. I think part of the problem is that I still can't do a single pull-up and it makes me sad. I started out using a chair for assistance and then moved to the resistance bands because I thought it would help, but I think I'm going to go back to the chair. I'm just not seeing any progress on that front. Charlie has been helping me practice. I'm still hoping that I'll be able to do one before we're finished with our first round.

We've also been talking about what we're going to do after we're done with this round. Charlie wants to do a round of P90X Classic, but I really want to do the Insanity program, or at least a hybrid of the two, because I just can't stand the P90X cardio discs. We've compromised - we ordered P90X Plus so we're going to do the Classic and then switch out the cardio nights for another disc or I'll go running. I went running last week for the first time since the fall and it felt really good. I forgot how great it is to exercise outside. I was able to run about 2.5 miles without feeling like I was going to die, which made me happy.


We also ordered the Tony Horton One-on-One Yoga disc. I LOVE yoga, but the P90X disc is just too much. Ordinarily I have no problem with doing 90 minutes of yoga, but between not starting it until 8:00 at night and Tony's constant hyperactivity it's just not the same. The One-on-One disk is only 50 minutes so it will fit into our schedule better.


Today is day 52 so next week we get to take our 60 day pictures! I'm excited!