level3's training log: running, bodybuilding, and yoga

[level3]

Hello meso, I've been on a fitness journey this year and have had a lot of success starting from zero, so I wanted to start a log. Hopefully get some advice and support and pointers from those more experienced. Sharing my journey will help others on similar ones or considering it.

Background: Lifted for about 7 years in my 20's, some periods of very high consistency, some periods of fucking around for months. I was a pretty heavy drinker for most of this so my progress was absolutely glacial, but since I never trained any other way and loved partying more than training, I don't recall it ever bothering me too much. I just accepted I was some % slower, but as I've learned this year that % was significantly higher than I thought! I had periods where I focused on powerlifting, hypertrophy, and strongman. During that period, I was 5'10" and ranged anywhere from 180 to 220 pounds. If I had to guess I was probably never under 18% body fat. I ran 4 cycles in that period, and while the notes I took were pretty scant, they are somewhat painful to read. Mostly just realizing how unserious I was, and how deluded I was in terms of my health. Missing pins, skipping like 25% of my workouts, no cardio, got bloods done but had nothing on hand to deal with sides and maintaining blood markers other than E2 and gyno. I was pretty good on nutrition though (besides alcohol), wish I still had my recipes from back then.

I stopped lifting after covid and basically returned to sedentary life until this year. I'm in my mid 30's now and a number of factors lead to me getting back into fitness with a vengeance this year. I don't drink anymore or take any other drugs that interfere with training. Here's the rough timeline, and before/after photos. But first, I got 5 DEXA scans this year to track my progress.



Photos from the day of first and last DEXA scans:



Not sure that I agree that I'm that I'm 8.4% in the after photo, I would guess more like 10%, but I'm also pretty freakin hairy so its hard to tell e.g. that I have abs. My partners love the hair though, and I do too. I have some more photos in between I might upload later.


What I did between these dates. I was basically starting from zero - hadn't done cardio or been inside the gym in 1-2 years. Not including all the supplements etc I was taking right now, but these were the heavy hitters:

Couch to 5k training block:
- Started tirzepatide in March.
- Upped TRT dose to 200mg Test U/week. It took a few months but this landed me around 1000-1100 ng/dL total test.
- Started Couch to 5k program in late March.
- Half-assed C25k, making the 10 week program into more like a 20 week program.
- In May, switch from Tirzepatide to Retatrutide.
- In May, start HGH at 2iu/day. I ramped up to 4iu/day over the next 3-4 months.
- In June, start walking every day in addition to continuing the Couch to 5K program. WALKING EVERY DAY WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT HABIT OF THE YEAR!!!
- In July, start doing yin yoga 2-4x/week. Yoga was basically the only form of fitness I'd done for the last few years, and yin is my favorite. It's where you hold postures from 3-5 minutes, for those who don't know.
- Early August, run my first ever 5k race. Got like 32 or 33 minutes I think? I was just happy to have completed the program.
- Early August, keep running and add in 2 full body workouts per week. Just the basics: squat/bench/dl day 1, squat/ohp/dl day 2.

Half marathon training block:
- Look up what half marathon training looks like and realizing that I'm basically already doing it. Running 3x/week, lifting 2x/week, stretching (yoga) 4-5x/week, and walking every day I'm not running. I was walking quite a lot at this point, averaging around 20k steps/day. I just had to start running 1 more day per week, that didn't seem bad.
- In late August, get a ruck pack and start rucking. 30lbs at first, I do 50lbs now. Initially I was doing it 3-4 days/week but once I focused on half marathon training I went to 1x/week.
- Sign up for the local Thanksgiving half marathon and join the training program.
- Then from September through Thanksgiving, I maintained my routine extremely consistently. I've never skipped a single day in the gym (other than planned ahead of time for e.g. deloading or vacation).
- Training went great for the first 7 weeks of the half marathon program, and then I had my first injury: annoyed peroneal tendon in my right foot.
- That unfortunately was just the first tendon issue of 3 while half marathon training. None of them were bad, I just had to replace one or two runs with some other form of cardio and do rehab every day. But it was annoying as shit to deal with.
- I was very happy with how the race went. I ran about a 2:30 and had a lot of gas left in the tank. The tibialis tendon issue I was dealing with at the time gave me hell for the first 4.5 miles, with the pain around a 4/10. When it finally let up I had a fantastic time running the rest of the race. Looking back on it, finishing it was the best acute feeling I've ever got from a fitness achievement.

Transition to strength + hypertrophy:
- After the half marathon, I met with a podiatrist and took two week off from running to let things heal while I do rehab exercises every day. She put me in a different kind of shoe. I changed my lifting routine from two full-body workouts/wk to a 4-day UL split.


I'll continue the log to the present sometime later today or this week. I'm pretty happy with where my physique is at already, TRT/Reta/HGH is pretty damn good all on its own. I'm still pretty weak, too.

 

[BigDadd7]

Good luck. Also, it's ok to put on underwear.

 

[level3]

Yeah I wasn't planning on sharing the pics with anyone when I took them but I'll put on underwear for the future.

 

[level3]

What I've been up to since the half marathon:

I have 3 training blocks in mind for the next year-ish.

1) Bulk - Strength and hypertrophy on cycle, while trying to maintain cardiovascular/running ability. Probably going for 16 weeks. Running one half marathon about 12 weeks in.
2) Cutting back down to <10% body fat while trying to maintain strength and cardiovascular ability. Run another half marathon sometime during this block. Plan to cruise on 200mg test.
3) Either another half-marathon training block, or possibly marathon if everything has been going really well. Probably gonna stick with the half for now though. I really want to run a marathon, but not if training ends up being neverending management of injuries. I think another half marathon training block should get me good experience. Plus I have a training partner who really wants to improve their half marathon time before considering a marathon and I value having an awesome partner to train with very highly. Either way, I plan to try to do a slow recomp during this training block. Don't want to be adding weight.

So I started on 1) in early December. I switched to a 4-day upper/lower split. Rather foolishly, I just looked at my notes from like a decade ago and jumped straight back into the high volume routine with ~80 sets/wk. Not really considering that I was only doing 18 sets/wk up til this point (albeit all compound lifts). In terms of drugs, I started on 400mg Test C/300mg Bold C on the day of my DEXA scan (12/08). Also run HCG 250 EOD year round. Planning to run 16 weeks and seeing how I feel at that point. Guessing I'm gonna be ready to call it quits at that point because I'm running gear with so little training.

My body was already feel pretty stressed after 3 weeks of this. I got some mild golfer's elbow that I've been dealing with using a theraflex bar, theragun, and BPC/TB4 that seems to have gotten a lot better already - had no pain with deadlifts and RDL today. No real issues with legs except that running just seems harder. So last week I took a deload week, cutting volume in half and weight by 10%. New plan is starting me off at 50 sets/wk, increasing by 5 sets/wk until I hit 80, at which point I will deload and do it again. Gonna play it by ear though.

This week is the start of week 4 on cycle. So shit has started kicking in!! Today was heavy legs and the antigravity was there. E2 management also hit me in the face last week. I felt like the goddamn Michelin Man, cried like 10 times watching Interstellar, and had an ungodly amount of sugar craving. I was expecting the boldenone to handle the E2, and possibly even too much that it would crash it,, but I've never run it before so I don't know exactly how I respond to it. After taking 12.5mg asin EOD for the last 8 days, I got E2 taken this morning. I think its under control now though I am still retaining a ton of water.

Running wise, I only got the clear to start running again a couple weeks ago. First week was good, but my runs this past week sucked due to shin pumps. Never did much cardio on gear before so I wasn't sure what I was dealing with at first. Took 8g taurine before running yesterday and that dealt with it quite nicely, not 100% but certainly bearable, but I was fucking zonked out from it for the whole day. Never taken high-dose taurine before, had no idea it was so anxiolytic. It was honestly too much. Took 8g again about 45 minutes ago for my run in another 45, hoping I don't spend half the day in a daze again.

Definitely expecting some judgment on running gear after only being in the gym for ~5 months. At 9% body fat @ 180 lbs @ 5'10", this doesn't seem like an unusual body size to start gear. Figure my 7 years of previous experience counts for something - I know those myonuclei still hiding in there. I just gotta be real careful to avoid injury.

 

[level3]

Run today with 8g of taurine was a bit harder than yesterday's. I ran 2.5 miles again (while hoping to run at least 4) but the shin pumps were pretty challenging for the first 1.5 miles again and never fully went away.

Also the amount of flexibility I've lost, presumably from all the water weight, is just insane. I don't really do yoga for the physical outcome, but its pretty enjoyable for me and its much less fun being this inflexible. Since I was never into cardio or yoga when I ran gear before these issues never mattered to me.

Gonna try incline treadmill tomorrow morning. I last did it a couple weeks ago before I bloated up.

Besides high E2, some of this water weight is from way too much sodium in my diet and increasing my GH dose from 4iu->5iu. I gotta stop going to Taco Bell so often FUCK

If in another week I'm still bloated, unable to run, and yoga still sucks, I'll consider other options like changing my AAS stack. Like go down to 300 test/300 bold. All my cycles after my first 500mg cycle ran test on the lower end. I got my E2 taken this morning, hopefully I'll have the results back in a week and that would help inform any cycle changes.

 

[level3]

Did a whole bunch more reading (and tbh a lot of rereading) about boldenone last night. Apparently some people actually get raised E2 from boldenone? I was under the impression that boldenone raises E1 in pretty much everyone, and has an AI effect on E2 that varies from very strong to none depending on your genetics. But @Type-IIx has written about boldenone increasing E2 e.g. Steroid Profile - Equipoise

Needing to run any significant amount of aromasin was not on my bingo card this cycle but here I am. Pretty eager to see my E2 result from yesterday's blood draw. Next week when I get my 4-week bloods I'll add in estrone as well.

This morning I went on the incline treadmill for 35 minutes, about 90 minutes after taking 12g taurine. There was 1.5/10 shin pain in both legs until around 15 minutes in. Then it shifted to right above my left ankle, which is where I am having the most trouble. For my next run on Thursday, I'm gonna try to do a brisk walk for the first 15 minutes and see how that helps.

The giant taurine dose was not nearly as tranquilizing yesterday, so that's a relief.

 

[level3]

Still waiting on my E2 test but decided to go ahead and switch to Test 250/Bold 400 anyways. Lower total androgen load and with a less watery compound should get me where I wanna be, I think. I ordered some Estrogen Cyp in case E2 ends up crashing, have HCG and dbol to hold me over in the meantime. I actually think the whole crash E2 and inject estrogen thing is pretty geniused out. Primo absolutely wrecks my E2, I need to run it at like a 4:1 ratio test/primo. So maybe I'll try a cycle with that someday.

Have been doing yoga almost every day for the last week and am seeing improvement in flexibility. Still sucks a little more than it did before I hopped on, but its at least not painful. I managed to get into a saddle pose today by remembering that you can widen your knees. Still felt amazing even though it was not very deep.

Have not run yet since the last time but I don't think much has changed yet. Just gotta keep getting cardio in however I can. If this goes on for more than a couple more weeks though, I think I'll probably have to cancel the early march half marathon I'm signed up for. Not the end of the world, just the cost of learning. I gotta accept that this cycle might mostly be about figuring out how I can keep running and doing yoga while on gear and I might never quite get it right. Might be dry compounds with low test for me in the future.

Weight was up at 198.6 this morning. That's higher than my first DEXA scan. Can't believe it. I'm gonna be over 200 again soon and that's a big mental barrier for me. But at this rate I'm probably gonna be ending the cycle around 210-220 and I'm not gonna pussy out.

Tomorrow I'm going to a boxing HIIT class with my training partner. Never tried boxing before. Might try running later that day but also might just put it off til Monday since Monday is leg day and I want to be fresh for that.

Training at the gym is starting to feel amazing. I don't want to leave.

Rehabbing golfer's elbow is going well. The theragun is straight up magical. I keep finding new uses for it. Using it for rehab feels more like playing with a toy than annoying work, so I've been using it 2-3x a day.

I got versa gripps last week and they're working great but I was especially amazed at how much better it made barbell bench feel (which is how I suspect I got golfer's elbow to begin with). I'm thinking of just straight up abandoning barbell bench for dumbbell anyways though. I have no interest in powerlifting and I had several shoulder and elbow issues from barbell bench back in the day. Might just be time to dump it.

 

[level3]

Well the cycle really hasn't gone according to plan. Its only 1/4 over, really just getting started, but I'm learning a lot of lessons about which types of training can be combined with which kinds of drugs and at what dosages.

Because of shin pumps, its really starting to seem like I won't be able to run on any appreciable load of AAS. The increased weight by itself also just makes running a lot harder. The amount of stress put on the joints when running is like 7-9x your weight? So every pound added is really more like adding 9. Its a shitload. And I'm already +13-15 pounds and counting.

Spending a lot of time reading on Meso about endurance athletes and PEDs. I'm starting to feel that even bringing the cycle down to 250T/400B isn't gonna result in the kind of running performance I was hoping for on this cycle, which was really just maintaining what I had. Maintaining running ability while increasing weight (rapidly) might be just as challenging a thing as maintaining strength while losing weight!!

People are saying endurance athlete cycles are based around improving recovery and keeping weight down. So running test to be on the upper end (not tippy top like I've been doing), HGH at 2-3iu/day, and then maybe Anavar/Winstrol (?!) or EQ at like 150-200mg/wk. Maybe I'll try that out for the next half marathon training block.

I'm already locked into keeping this cycle focused on size and strength. I want the muscle. But I was already pretty happy with my physique before the cycle started. I think I want maybe 10 more pounds of muscle, most especially some size in my chest (bench is my weakest lift). 9-10% fat at 192 pounds seems possible this year.

Running the half marathon in early March seems out of the picture now, but maybe I'll be able to run/walk it. It will be at least a couple weeks before the new dose gets close to settling, but I have to plan what it will look like if the shin pumps don't go away at that dose. I kinda just want to stop fucking with it at that point, just let it ride and accept I won't be running on this cycle. Lean into the other forms of cardio. Maybe boxing will be dope. Training partner and I didn't end up going on Sunday cuz they were beat after running a race. Not sure if I should start it before my golfer's elbow is totally healed though.

Maybe this will be the last bodybuilder dose cycle I ever do. Idk if I ever want to do another cycle where I can't run. Running is fun and I miss doing it. Having every run be a failure sucks and is demoralizing.

Yoga is surprisingly improving. Every session goes better than the last. Still doing it almost every day, the benefits really compound when I lay it on heavy.