Day 31: The toughest workout in 6 months

So I awoke this morning again quite surprised (seem to be a lot of those this week) at how little pain I was suffering in my legs. Yes they were heavily aching, I certainly knew I had done a hard workout yesterday but they were not painful!!

So it was time for the gym, legs felt good by this time having been up and around all morning. Remembered to get my BF re-checked and then it was time for the HIT incline run.

HIT Incline Run

For those of you who are not familiar with this one, it is the incline that changes at 1 minute intervals rather than the speed. This is all performed at constant speed of 10 kph:

1 minute at 1% incline
1 minute at 3% incline
1 minute at 6% incline
1 minute at 10% incline

As with the sprint HIT you repeat the above 5 times which gives you a total of 20 minutes.

So this is the picture, a few stretches and then it was off, felt OK at 1%, not bad at 3%, 6% pretty good, 10% here come the jelly legs!!! Back down to 1% again, this is gonna be tough. So it continued minute by minute. So came the 20th minute and I was thinking OK this is it nearly there. BUT as most of you who regularly read know I always put in a 21st minute. Well maybe because of the tough workout yesterday I will let it slide today, my legs are really dieing here? Not sure if I can go another minute

So I used a shreddi mind trick.........accountability. I thought what I am going to write in my blog tonight, will I get away with 20 minutes or will someone spot it? Well regardless of that I want the best I can get from each session when I workout so I dug in for the 21st minute. Not only is there a 21st minute but the purpose of this is to always better your previous attempt even just by a small amount, well on Sunday I ran this at 12% so today I cranked it up to 13%, this was such a killer but I kept thinking about now, my accountability to you guys and also to myself, I made this commitment to Adam that I would shred hard for 14 days and I am going to live up to my word, as I suspect you all will and are currently.

The 21st minute ended and I was destroyed, I can safely say that due to the lower body weights the day before that that was my hardest workout in the last 6 months. So the run was over. I had a couple of minutes to catch my breath.....that's not the end of the workout merely the first half.

15 minute ab session

So I caught my breath and then grabbed the fitball and medicine ball and started the fitball crunches and oblique crunches along with various other no name exercises. Finishing with the forwards plank for 1 minute and then 2 side planks for 30 seconds a piece. I was exhausted but as I said a few posts ago also exhilarated!!!

Party tomorrow night!! So it will be a really short post tomorrow, it's my wife's end of year party, free bar, free party food....mmmmmm. I have saved all my cheat meals for this and next week to have in this one evening. So I will limit myself to 8 pints and 3 plates of food. Yeah right!!! But seriously, I am going to have 2 pints and not a drop of alcohol more and some food but I will go for the healthy food there and watch the portions. I have not had a cheat meal since the shred started and I will not have another after this until it ends. Moderation, that's the key and I have not drunk any alcohol for over 3 weeks now which for me is amazing!

Oh yes before I go, nearly forgot my BF re-test? Well it averaged out this time at .... wait for it.....13.2%!!!! So it looks like (and I still can't quite comprehend it) that the stats were correct!! I managed to lose 2.4% BF in 5 days!!!

Until tomorrow....