Quick update. Just after my last post I took a good shot at meeting my 5km in 22 minute goal... and smashed it out of the water. 5km in 19:57. That's on a treadmill with no incline, but still I'm very pleased with myself.
For the past 2 weeks I've been following Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength Program. Well, as much of it as I could gather from the internet, which is unsurprisingly scattered but sufficient. I think. It's a linear progression program, which means each workout you increase the weight, using "the novice effect" to build strength relatively quickly. (Again, thanks to Oti for suggesting I move into a linear progression weight training program.)
It's a strength training using barbell weights. Squat, bench press, deadlift on workout A, then squat, press and powerclean on workout B, with a day of rest in between. Day 1 was just learning (i.e. teaching myself using internet research) how to do the moves, and what my starting weight should be. And lesson 1 was that I could lift much more than I expected. I'd been doing deadlifts etc with about 35kg, but when I moved to the olympic barbells I got to 80kg.
For context, I weigh 72kg. I deadlifted more than that, and squatted just under that.
Lesson 2 is that my arms are a weak point. My starting weight for bench press was 60kg -- more than I expected. But in 2 weeks that hasn't moved much. One reason is that it is freaking scary to lower a very heavy thing onto your chest when that thing is deliberately exactly as much as you can safely lift off your chest again. So I'll be going up in smaller increments on that one, and trying to time it so there is a gym assistant around to spot me.
But the best part about this program is that I walk into the gym knowing exactly what I have to do, with a little challenge to complete to "level up". And low-reps suit me to a tea.
On another note, I am very excited that Sasuke filmed over the weekend.
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