I’m ready! Up at 5:12am. Alarm was set to go off at 5:15am. Woke up straight from a dream. I love waking up like that because I find that my mind feels refreshed when something in the dream makes me wake up. Must be something about the sleep cycle. If anyone knows please share it with me in the comments.

Run through my early morning wake up routine. Although in honesty, I find myself running through this routine even on my rest days (Sat & Sun). Today first thing I did was dismiss the alarm so it wouldn’t go off unnecessarily. Get up. Walk to the kitchen. Pour a glass of cold water. Put a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in it. Make sure the electric kettle has water in it. Turn it on. Drink my water. Go to the restroom.

Wash my face with cold water. Dry it. On days when I’m really tired I repeat this process once or twice more. Until my eyes feel at least semi-“normal.” Today, no need to repeat. I went to sleep early and slept well.

Walk back to the kitchen. Pull out a coffee filter. Put coffee in the filter (always decaf), two teaspoons. Only on rare days when I’m really exhausted to I substitute a teaspoon of regular for one of the decaf. I think the decaf does the trick by itself most days because it has a placebo effect. Next, I pour the hot water over the coffee. Enough to make one cup. I like it strong and bitter. Something about that taste helps me wake up. But I don’t drink it right away. It’s too hot.

Instead I go put on my gym clothes. Most days I do a few sets of sit ups. This has been the hardest and least consistent part of my routine, doing these sit ups. It’s easy to skip and think I’ll just do them in the gym and when I get back. And it’s true. I do them in the gym and when I get back. But that’s not the point. It’s part of the routine and I’m supposed to do them. In any case, there you go… that’s been my biggest stumbling block in the routine.

Then I drink my coffee. It’s cooled down just enough. Usually I only drink half the cup and then I’m out the door. I usually drink the other half when I get back. I just boil some more water and pour that in to reheat it. That’s what I did today.

Out the door at about 5:25am. Got to the gym about 5:40am. About ten minutes later than I had hoped. But still way better than I was doing before I started this routine! Sometimes I used to stroll into the gym around 7am when my target was 6am.

Did my band work for rehab on the hips. Rehab strengthening for the shoulders. A set of squats, one of deadlifts. Preacher curls. Decline bench press. Leg kicks. And now I’m warmed up.

Today is a cardio day. I decide to start on the treadmill. Nice and slow. 4.5 mph pace. My arms and shoulders are tight from the lifting. Try to shake them out and relax into the run. My goal is to run 2 miles today. A nice and easy “foundation” or “recovery” run. I like to steadily increase my pace as I get deeper into the run. I end up running at about a 5 mph pace. Takes me about 25 minutes to run my 2 miles.

Then a half hour on the elliptical machine at level 10. Again not huffing and puffing. But decent pace that gets me sweating profusely. My the time I get off the machine, I’m drenched. I take off the wet tank top and put on my clean T-shirt to weigh myself, 205. Basically the same that I weighed last week. I didn’t lose any weight last week.

I’m going to try something this week. I’m going to reverse what I have been doing the last week. I’m going to go heavier on the cardio and lighter on the weights. By that I mean MWF will be cardio days and TTH will be lift days this week. Let’s see what happens with my weight. I’ll keep you posted on what I find.

Have a great day! See you tomorrow.