Weekend activities: Part Deux

Well there's nothing I can do about it. My weekends during the summer are officially taken. Between crossfit and NSC, my worries about what to do on a given weekend are officially over. Saturday FMP's are just part of life now, and good thing too. Best part is they don't start until later in the morning, leaving me a little bit of time to go out Friday night if I feel so inclined. Recovering from the FMP pretty much takes up the rest of my day, then leaving Saturday evenings open potentially. Then Sunday NSC has rides going on finally, meaning Sundays are pretty much booked. Again after a good 4-6 hour ride, I'm inclined to take the rest of the day to recover. Thus ending up at Monday to do it all over again.

I'm actually pretty impressed with my social calendar as of late as well. Must mean winter's over and I can finally come out of hibernation mode ;) Two weeks in a row of 210 VIP, followed by a crazy good paleo dinner / NOAN outing, rock band evening, and then BR 1138 in Vegas.

Looking forward then to "the birthday" next weekend, LA area outing the weekend after that, then back to Vegas to celebrate (finally) the engagement of two great friends. After that, who knows. Oh yea, that's right, FMP and NSC, that's what's after that! This summer is looking to be great.

"You know how you can make anything suck? ..."

"... Add a 400m run to it"

Today was my second appearance at the fmp class. I'm way glad that I went, however it was way hard. Lots of running this time. First was 3x800m runs, then it ended with 3x400m runs, with other things tucked in there. The other pushups and pullups would have been fine on their own, but adding that little run in there just turned it into a terrible idea. The good news is everything got finished and it only took around an hour and a half to finish the whole ordeal.

After the class, it seemed a good idea to go for a ride aroun town. I met up with Morgan to start our ride but I was entirely too wiped out to actually go on the ride right away. So we hung out admiring his pocket bike for a little while. Those things are so rad, I might even get one for myself. We decided to go out on our ride, but the genious locked his keys in the house with no access to the house, garage, or his car. After spending 30 minutes or so looking for a spare key, we found an unlocked window and he was able to break into his own house.

Then began our ride. Man it was windy. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to make it around safely being blown around. There's a positive twist to this story though. Since I've lost quite a bit of weight and whatnot since last season, my jacket is way loose on me. A great problem to have, but unfortunately it acted like a windsail when trying to navigate the roads. We didn't end up making it the whole way to VC then, half because of the wind, and half because of the sheriff we ran into who was posed to follow us the whole way to keep us in line. On our way back to town, we stopped at michael's to check out some gear to see what my new size might be. I found a jacket that I really like, now to just find it at the price that I like.

Now to the only reason that I'm actually posting this blog. Especially at 1:30 am on a Saturday. Either the night went well, or it didn't. Either way it was eventful enough for me to have something to say about it. I wasn't planning on going out, but I had already said I wanted to, and a VIP table at a nightclub isn't something to easily pass up. All in all it was a really good night. The two downsides are I cheated a bit, one shot of Southern Comfort and two drinks of Absinthe. The other downside is I ended up on great terms with two women and both of which had boyfriends.

This brings me to my next point. We joked around on our birthright trip that if Oranim was meant as a sort of Jewish hookup birthright trip (of sorts), then there should be serious preference given to single men and women on the trip, waitlisting all of those people with "someone back home". Unfortunately this wasn't the case on the trip leaving about 18 single guys and maybe 4-5 single women on our trip. Not the best odds if you asked us. Fast forward to tonight. I wish there was some sort of nightclub where if a women walks up to you and starts genuine conversation, you already know that she's available. Twice tonight I got into non-trivial conversation, only at the (self-imposed) end of the evening did it even come up that they weren't available. Totally a "Boyfriend" moment. I know that it's not the end of the world of course, but it is annoying to say the least.

That's only the downside. On the upside, I got to meet two very interesting women, and I'm glad I had the opportunity. I felt great over the evening, getting plenty of compliments on my appearance, a first for me. At least the unprompted compliments. All that's left to do is sleep and get ready for tomorrow. It's snowing quite a bit down here, and I'm hoping that tomorrow there will be plenty left on the mountain for snowboarding down on. Finally a chance to get rid of those mt rose tickets burning a hole in my pocket.

This is why I crossfit (Part 1)

I say part one, only because it's tentatively part one. There are so many reasons why I enjoy crossfit, but there are very few that really stick out.

My first reason is the people. I know plenty of friends in dead end jobs, slaving to pay bills, and I'm not even talking recently. The only thing (besides the paycheck) that keeps them coming back is the people. The crowd of people you chose to surround yourself with makes all the difference in the world. When I was a member of a larger chain gym, there was certainly a crowd of people around me. It wasn't ever a problem to get a machine, or find the weights I wanted. It was a problem to find the motivation I needed. People surrounding me with their headphones on and trying their hardest to at least "look in the zone" aren't the most effective motivating factor for me.

Fast forward to cross fit. Not a single workout has gone by where I felt like I was the only one. I've been last quite a few times, but I was never the only one there. There's always a crowd of people working it out with you, cheering you on. I work harder here not to let myself down, but not to let everyone else down either. You can feel it even more when there's a team workout. Partner pushups were not the most thrilling workout I've ever done. With someone in front of you, relying on you relying on them, it's hard to say no to just "one more pushup".

This all came to me this morning when I read a post on another cross fit blog. I just started my journey on kipping pullups. It's slow going. Soon I'll be better, and maybe even I'll have the mental and physical ability to do more and more, even a strict from time to time. The one thing I do know though is if I start to slow down, there's someone to talk to me and keep me going. I know if I start to suffer and stop, there's someone to do it with me and show me it's possible. Most importantly, I know if I physically collapse, there's someone to pick me up and carry me to the end.

I feel kippy, oh so kippy

This past weekend, two very important things happened. First daylight savings time tricked me once again. I completely forgot that it was an hour in the other direction, so when I woke up at 11:30 am, I was in quite a shock. Sleeping for over 10 hours was not in my plan. I completely missed my Sunday workout and my Sunday swim that I was looking forward to. On the plus side, all my colors are folded and the whites are sitting clean in the dryer. Still no word on the mess covering the rest of my room.

The second thing that happened is I did my very first unassisted pull-up. While not a standard pull up, exciting nonetheless. This was Saturday morning while getting pumped up for my first FMP, just like I said I was going to do! During the calm before the FMP, I decided I was going to try a kipping pull up. The only thing I did differently is I told everyone that I was going to do it. That and it's been almost two weeks since I tried last. Once I got the right swing, I just gave a good pull and up I went, chin well enough over the bar for me to be happy. Up at the top the only thing I could think of was "push away from the bar, don't you dare slam your chin on it". Once clear of the bar, I let go falling right to the ground, stunned. The classmates around me let out a sweet little cheer, I'm glad my first didn't go unnoticed.

My first comment was, "Man, I bet I probably couldn't do another one of those..." A voice from behind me came out, "Why not?" That was enough for me. I got back up on the bar and yet another one came out, just as easy as the first. "Well, there's no way I could do more than one in a row..." "Why not?" ... I got right back up, One, Two Three. "Holy shit, my first pull up, not only that, my first pull up was five pull ups. Hot damn"

Of course this means now during the warm-up pull ups, I'll be required, by myself if not my peers, to keep up those "kippers" and perhaps resort to some bandage when the wod includes a gazillion pull ups. I won't mind though. That's what the hell I started coming to this gym for. It's little victories that keep me coming back again and again. To top it off, I'm thankful that there's a good group of people around to share these little victories with, both mine and theirs.

Barbara is a whore

My apologies to the millions of Barbara's out there, sans the one the aforementioned crossfit workout is named for. The kicker is I was part of the group that only completed three rounds of the workout rather than the prescribed full five rounds. Even still it took just over half an hour to complete. This of course was after I decided to waste about 24 of my good pullups, situps, etc. on my warm up for the day.

For those observant out there, you might also realize that it's almost a full day since we did the workout. The worst part about the workout has to be the pushups. By now I'm actually enjoying my "almost self-sustaining" pullups. Situps don't leave me sore for days, and historically haven't. Squats have lost their debilitating effect since the marathon session of 250 followed by other weighted squats and whatnot. Pushups however leave me sore for days. I can't cross my arms in front of myself without feeling like my chest is going to 'asplode. It's pain.

Good news is I get to take the next two days off. I'm going to need the rest if I'm planning on joining on Saturday's fun. Saturdays usually have a grueling workout planned called FMP, Full Mission Profile. These workouts are usually modelled after real life situations, and are much more intense than the regular wod. An example is the Predator FMP, a mission to retrieve downed military property from enemy territory. I'm not sure what this weekend will bring, but if I even try to go through with it, let alone actually "complete" it, I'll be super proud of myself.

Aside from the physical, the diet has been progressively easier. Must mean I'm doing it wrong. Apparently fruit, while allowed, is only supposed to be on a one serving per day sort of basis, and on top of that only before / after a wod to give / replenish energy. Well, I'm not sure I like that a whole lot, especially since grapes have now become my best friend. The crunch of a carrot, followed by the sweet of a grape, I can almost pretend I'm eating real snack food.

Lunch by far is the most difficult meal of the day to prepare for. I'm almost ready to call it quits on finding a place to eat out and get a somewhat paleo meal. Lunch today was the first meal I ate out since starting, and at that it was a chicken salad. The "cheating" items were a little bit of cheese and the likely amount of salt in the salsa I substituted for dressing. On the plus side, it was very tasty.

Dinners are easy by contrast. Just cook up some bit of meat, prepare a veggie to go on the side, and viola, dinner. Follow it up with a handful of nuts and my dried cran-strawberry, and I've got the perfect sweet, semi-salty finish up to the day. Funny considering I got the "unsalted pistachios". Still taste a bit salty if you ask me.

Breakfasts aren't a problem considering I usually end up skipping the meal. Today I even considered waking up early to make myself something, just to change it up. I went to bed early, even got up pretty early too. Then my tired body just decided to lay down and let sleep take me back to my normal wake up time.

I've started highlighting the foods in the "eat" and "don't eat" section of my book just so I can build a mental list of things I like and what section they're in. Given this list, I'll start expanding my repertoire of food items I'm able to prepare. Just a mental note on my part.

Why does a challenge have to be difficult?

As of 1pm today, I was prepared to commit paleo suicide. Yes, it's not even through day 2 all I can think about is a damn hamburger with fries. Man does that sound so good. The hard thing right now is finding something that feels filling, besides physical activity. A cruel irony if you ask me. If I'm actively doing something, then I can stand the light foods, even no food, which is actually really bad. I can't help it, if I'm doing something physical, then I don't need the "bad" foods. The flip side to this though is if I'm not being particularly active, lets say maybe for 8 hours a day while I'm sitting at work in front of the computer, then the lighter paleo foods are not filling what-so-ever. Gram for gram, if I ate a simple hamburger with katsup, 2 pickles, a leaf of letuce, onion, and a BUN, I would be plenty satisfied. I've probably eaten twice that in carrots, celery, apples and oranges and I'm having a hard time feeling satisfied.

On the plus side, since sleep is part of this whole challenge, and since last night's baseline workout of "Fight gone bad" (google it, seriously) basically kicked my ass, I slept like a baby. Went to bed around 11:30 pm and stayed that way until naturally waking up (no alarm) at around 6am, then just dozing until around 7:30 or so.

One more thing, it has come to my attention that this challenge also include a prize to be won. As if looking and feeling great isn't good enough. The person that makes the most progress in fgb, does the best in fgb, sticks to the paleo logs / diet, sleeps more, loses inches, gains inches, loses pounds, whatever, gets a little vacation getaway south of the border. While this isn't something that I'm particularly excited about, I am certainly interested in "winning", and that means against other people not just myself. :P

Paleo Challenge - Day 1

I wasn't planning on starting the whole challenge. In fact, last week I had already sort of gave in considering I absolutely love quite a few of the foods on the no-no list. Most notably, this is going to be hard without: cheese, potatoes, pho (noodles), the random sweet, tacos, and just about every other food I'm accustomed to just spontaneously eating. To top it off, I recently went on a shopping run to get a stockpile of these illicit items.

After work today, l was actually planning on going straight home, then it changed to stopping off at Barnes & Noble to look at some Mac related literature. Then came the decision to turn left to the BN, or right to crossfit. I'm guessing you now what happened next. To my pleasant surprise, my partner in crime Lynn was there to join in on the fun. Kumar and Devan were sadly absent. Kumar even talked to me at work today asking if I was interested in the challenge, and also joking how the paleo diet for a vegearian could very well kill you... Way to look on the positive side.

The paleo challenge is designed as follows. It's a 90 day long event where each participant is to keep a log of foods eaten, workouts completed, sleep gotten, and feelings felt. There's a log book that it's all supposed to go in, and weekly we'll post our progress on the main gym blog. Every three weeks, there's a baseline workout that we'll do, we'll weigh in, measure up, and perhaps take and post photos to track our progress.

Most everything I'm planning on keeping track of in my little log book, but as for the feelings part, I plan on just incorporating them here and maybe put the important bullet points in the log book. So far, I haven't gotten much sleep... the challenge only started today :P. I'm hoping to get to bed early today though. I woke up feeling a little on the sickish side, but as always after a good workout I'm feelin' fine. Keeping on my gym schedule is just about the only thing that I think will help keep me on my eating schedule. At least for my dinners anyway, lunches and "breakfast" I'll just have to keep the workout in mind. Just as a disclaimer as well, I already feel pretty darn good just including crossfit in my routine without changing / monitoring diet and sleep. I've got relatively high hopes for the 90 days if I can stick to it. BUT... I have relatively low hopes for the period of time after this "challenge". I'm not particularly good at open-ended goals, but a 90-day goal, I can keep that in mind.

I'll keep me posted.

Facebook, Schmasebook + Crossfit

I get into the good habit of posting things relatively regularly, but have the unfortunate side-effect of liking this posting method and not having a way to distribute to anyone of consequence. So now I'm able to post my ramblings on blogger, and have them magically show up in facebook through the magic of facebook, notes, rss import thingymajig. I guess that's pretty positive

Here's a recent conundrum of mine. I'm getting pretty good at this regularly scheduled gym thing. Cross-fit is hella fun, the people are most excellent, and it seems like a good idea. I'm feeling better generally and I have the soreness to prove it. The one stumbling block for me now is I know that if I don't make some sort of effort to control my nutrition, then it's almost in vain. Not totally, but it seems like I'm only selling myself short at that point.

My paradox is that over the summer I started riding a motorcycle, yay. It's just about the most entertaining activity that I've taken part of and the closest thing to an addiction that I've ever felt. As part of that I made the conscious decision that instead of the normal 1-drink, 1-hour rule for driving, when I'm riding my motorcycle or potentially riding, it's more like 1-drink, 12-hours. And you know what, I haven't budged an inch. I've been to plenty of parties with friends, out socially, everything and not drinking, knowing that I get the satisfaction of riding, there's no problem.

Now extend my thinking to working out. I know that working out, eating right and everything go hand in hand. So if I want to be able to improve more in my workouts and fitness, I know that I should make better decisions on what I eat. The biggest problem for me then I guess is that I don't get such an immediate gratification for the work. Choosing not to drink for 12 hours, I know for a fact then when I'm going to be able to ride my motorcycle. Choosing not to have that cookie, or piece of candy from that huge basket they just put out at work... Well that's not a 12 hour payoff, or a 12 day payoff for that matter. If I'm lucky, 12 weeks of staying away from that candy basket will have made some sort of difference.

I'm not that patient, at least not when it comes to myself. If I want to do something, I'll go for the route that promises the most immediate gratification possible without sacrificing any of my original goals, within compromise of course. It just makes it that much more frustrating. The one motivating factor that I still have is the gym that I go to and the people there that I am fortunate enough to train with. Their motivation is my motivation, and trust me, they're damn motivated. There's a guy there, 30+ pushup / situp combo, after fatigue, in under 40 seconds. He's almost twice my age and looks way great. Plus the women that show up to train aren't eyesores themselves, but it's rude to stare ;)

There's a little challenge that's coming up for the next month, a little motivator if you will. The whole details of which haven't been announced yet, but I'm just a little more than interested to join in on the fun. I think giving myself a nice reasonable 30 day goal will be much more to my style than some indefinite goal off in the distance.

It's wel past my bedtime, so toodles.