Pushup Club

A group of people I used to work with started something called the Pushup Club. They woud pick a day of the week, Thursday in this case, and give themselves the entire day to do a set number of pushups. So on the first Thursday, they did 100 pushups in one day.

They could divvy up the 100 pushups any way they wanted to: in sets of 10, 20 or even 5 and they had 24 hours to complete those 100 pushups. Then the following Thursday the number was 200 pushups. The week after that, 300 pushups, and they would add 100 pushups to the total ever week.

This was very effective weight training because you were stressing/pushing your body beyond its previous limit in one day then giving it 6 days to recover and rebuild before distressing it again. Plus pushups are an excellent all-around exercise for the upper body.

I started doing this a few months ago as a substitute for the gym and because I got tired of running. I was already in pretty good shape so I started with 400 pushups on a Monday. I added a hundred every week and the highest I got up to was 1,200 pushups.

It sounds a lot more ridiculous than it really is. You can rest between sets as much as you like and 24 hours is lot of time. The hump for me was the week I had to do 700. Almost didn’t make that one. Once I got past that, the following week totals were fairly easy.

But then I got tired of doing the pushup club and went back to running.

Maybe now I’ll do just a little bit of running and a little bit of pushups instead of this all or nothing approach. ;-)

Running

I started running about a year ago.

Before I ran I used to go to the gym and lift weights. I would warm up on the treadmill and run about 2 miles at a 7.5 min/mile pace. I hated running, but it was probably the most healthy part of my workout.

I quit my gym one day because I would only go sporadically for a few weeks at a time. I’d get into a groove then inevitably catch a cold, be out for a week or two and then be out of my groove, making it harder to get back into the gym and start it all over again.

I liked how efficient and low maintenance running was. All you needed was a nice pair of running shoes; no gym membership, just go outside and start running. I used mapmyrun.com to keep track of my routes and how far I was running.

I discovered that running outside is a lot more of a workout than running on a treadmill and built more muscle than I expected. Duh. I registered for my first 5K race called the Banana Chase Race which is held close to my house.

I ran it in about 21:14 minutes which I was happy with since I had no notion of what a ‘good’ time for me was. I signed up for more 5K races determined to beat that time.

The next race was the Komen Breast Cancer race and my time wa something like 21:35. I decided to train harder for my next 5K race and looked up training regimens for 5K races online. The next race was an SF Dolphins Running club 5K and my time was something like 21:55. I resolved to run one more time and train my butt off for it. The Kaiser Permanente race… 22:10.

I gave up running a while and started doing pushups instead.

Then a few months ago, I saw that the Banana Chase Race was coming around again. The Banana Chase Race is interesting in that they have a children’s race after the adults race at Kezar Stadium. My two boys really wanted to run with their dad so I signed myself up for the 5K and signed them up for the kids race.

It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and the kids had a blast. I still have no idea what time I ran because I forgot to look at the billboard as I was crossing the finish line.

I may run more 5K’s in the future but for now I’m going to just run 3-4 miles every other day. I’m getting used to it.