The Max

This morning I headed off to the gymnasium with Drew and I really wanted to try to figure out what my max bench press would be. I had been looking at this site and trying to guess what I thought I could get to. I was really hoping that I could do 100, even though I thought it might be a little bit ambitious.

We got to the gym and loaded up the bar so that I'd try lifting 100 pounds. Um, it was a no go. I lowered the bar, but I couldn't push it back up. Of course, when I told that to Drew, I expected him to pick it up right away, but he didn't really help me all that much at first even though I felt a little frantic that it was going to crash down and smoosh my chest in. So, then we decided to try again at 95 pounds. Still the same situation where I could lower the bar but not push it back up.

So, then we decided to go about it from the other direction. We took lots more weight off and then started adding it back on. I was able to lift 65 pounds just fine. I was able to lift 75 pounds with a bit of a struggle. I was able to lift 80 pounds and thought I had reached my max. Drew says he's not convinced that it was my max because even though my arms were a little shaky pushing it up, he said that it was still relatively quick. I decided that I had maxed out at 80. I guess I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't more, especially since I've been doing so much weight lifting, but I guess I know where I am now and can only hope to maintain this level and hopefully improve.

After that, I went over and spun my little heart out on the computerized spin bike. I did the race day program which gets you up out of the saddle about 50% of the time. Nothing too noteworthy to report here. It definitely is a lot better now that I realized that I can clip in with my regular bike shoes, although I wonder if I'll be more likely to forget to clip out when stopping on my regular bike now that I'm getting used to the stationary bike!

Biking
Time: 37:44
Distance: 12.80 miles
Pace: 20.35 MPH average
Calories: 363
Maximum HR: 163
Average HR: 146