Getting Ready to BRING IT!

On Saturday Mike (my boyfriend and P90X companion) and I ventured out of the house with one goal: to get all our gear for P90X. As we’ve been anticipating starting the program for over a month now, we are VERY excited, to say the least. At least once a day one of us says how excited we are. Although we are both fit for endurance races, neither of us have done much in terms of weight lifting for quite some time. I was taking a really good toning class at the gym from September until December but fell out of it after we went on vacation, the holidays hit, and we moved. Since then, I’ve done some core work (planks, sit ups, bicycles, side planks, etc) after runs, one weight session in the gym and a yoga class. Needless to say, I’m not seeing a whole lot of muscle definition besides my super toned calves from running 25 miles a week. Mike is also feeling ready to take it to the next lelve. He is an MBA student with two internships AND a teaching assistance position, so he is VERY busy to say the least. Mike has always been very athletic – he played multiple sports in high school, social sports leagues in college, and then after he graduated, he began competing in triathlons and half marathons. He even completed an Iron Man in late 2009 (right before we met). I’m guessing that his body will react very well to P90X since he has years of weight training and fitness behind him.

 

We began our mission at a nutrition store. Luckily, the owner of the store was nice enough to look up the P90X recovery drink online for us and find us a similar drink. We ended up with Replenish Rapid Recovery Drink (chocolate), for $36 each. Mike also picked up some protein powder (Lean ProMatrix – banana). I already have some women’s protein powder (ProHers 5 -vanilla) that I occasionally use for a shake in the morning if I’m running late and don’t want to make breakfast. We also purchased a few GU packs for our half marathon. Total P90X expenditure thus far: $100 ($180 if you include the $80 we paid for our P90X set we purchased on Craig’s List).  

Next, we headed to Sports Authority, where I picked up a set of 8 lb and 12 lb weights (they were out of 10s and I already own 5s). Mike’s big purchase was his Bowflex SelectTech dumbbells which adjust from 10lbs to 52 lbs ($350!) We also bought a Bowflex scale/body fat calculator and a pull up bar that fits in the door frame. Unfortunately we don’t have a frame around our doorways so Mike is going to go to Home Depot and buy a section of wood that he can screw above the door to hold it. Total P90X expenditure thus far: $705.

 

Our final stop was Wal-Mart (I HATE Wal-Mart, but it was much closer than Target so we went) where we purchased my ten pound weights, a food scale and a soft measuring tape. Total P90X expenditure thus far: approximately $750. 

We weren’t thrilled about the amount of money we had invested into this program so far, but we know it will be worth it! Plus, you can use a weight set for years! The supplements will be an ongoing cost, but they’ll probably pay for themselves with the money we’ll save by barely eating out and not drinking.  

Now that we had the gear, we played around with the scale. We quickly discovered that the body fat calculator doesn’t work (Mike at 8% body fat, me at 14%), but at least we can use it as a starting point and see how much progress we make from there.

 

On Sunday we took measurements and weighed ourselves but didn’t take the fit test because Mike had his long run that morning (10 miles) and I’d have mine the day before, so we didn’t want to do it on fatigued muscles. We were planning on doing it today (Wednesday) but then decided we didn’t want to screw up our half marathon results (as I mentioned in my first blog I’m trying to PR so I don’t want to be sore at all).  

This weekend we’ll be buying our first round of P90X nutrition – which actually is the part we are most scared of. I’ll also post my crazy P90X nutrition excel spreadsheet that I made to keep track of our food and help us shop for groceries each weekend!