Woke up a little late this morning, but still managed to get to the gym. I cut my workout short opting to skip pushups and reverse crunches. I will just do them when I get home from work. I felt pretty good on squats.

I woke up again to work out. We really are inert. The more I wake up on time, the easier it is to do. I am getting fitter, that I can tell. I just now have to convince myself the the treadmill isn't boring. I will listen to podcasts to help with that. I also have started foam rolling nightly.

Looking at my lifting progress, I think I can hit the intermediate level in the standards. I listened to the Strength Coach Pocast, and they talked about how strong, is strong enough. I think the intermediate level is fine.

I have also started to make my weekly schedule. Once I get this down, my life of success can progress.

Today's strength work

Weight = 145

Squat = 135 (.94 bw)
Deadlift = 225 (1.56 bw)
Press = 75 (.52 bw)

I rode my mountain bike last night. It was a good ride, but I think my legs were feeling it today. I did my strength workout, and felt a little week. I was still able to handle the weight, without much problem. It is getting harder though. I skipped pull ups and reverse crunches, but I will do them tomorrow. I did start to add foam rolling at night. Hopefully that will help.

Next week, I will add speed work to my running replacing my Tuesday treadmill work. I will run repeats at the track. 1/4 mile fast 1/4 recovery. I will still keep the time of the runs. My running is going well. I would like to break my PR of 29:07.

Good weekend

We had a good weekend. We went to the high school football game Friday and we won with 13 seconds left to go. It was a great effort. After the game, I watched Grand Torino. It was a great movie, I really enjoyed it. On Saturday we went to Hallowboo and then to Rick's to watch football. Yesterday we had soccer and I went for my weekend run. Then we finished with a great meal. Leg of lamb, cabbage, steamed veggies and naan. The vegetabes were overcooked, but everything else was perfect.

During my run yesterday, I felt good. I am getting into good running shape. Overall my whole fitness is good, which should help my cycling once I get back on the bike. My current routine is helping me more than crossfit did. I still agree with the crossfit methodology, but the change has helped me. In January I will start to do a few crossfit workouts per week.

This week has started off good. I woke up early and worked out, so I am moving in the right direction. My squats are building up. I started to feel resistence today with 135 pounds. My goal is 215 pounds, so I am 80 pounds away. If I increase by 5 pounds per work out, I can reach the goal in 16 workouts. Given the Turkey Trot and the Jingle Bell Run. I should be able to reach that goal by December 4, but there is time in case I stall, but certainly I will be able to do it by year end.

My life changes now.

I am not happy with where I am in my life right now. It is my fault. Only I can change it. That change starts now.

Here is what I am not happy with:
I am a slacker
I am in debt
I am worried about my job (partly because I am a slacker and partly because we are
hanging on by a thread)

I have made plans before, but I didn't really follow them. This time is different. I have transformed my body by using plannging and training, and I can do the same with the other areas of my life. I will concentrate on formulating my plan over the weekend and it will be in place by Sunday night. Most of the plan is done in pieces. It boils down to clearing stating my goal, implementing my weekly planning and finally, acttually doing it. My progress will be reported on this blog.

I have transformed my body, and can transform my mind and my life as well.

I have worked out every day this week. I made it to the gym five days, yahoo. I did miss TKD, but I might be able to pick up a class tomorrow unless we go to Hallowboo. Although I would also like to take my bike to thick bikes. I will play it by ear I guess. Overall though, I am happy with my fitness work this week. "Athletic Body in Balance" has seemed to help. Next week I will work on the squat progression.

On the poker side, this was a terrible week. I lost money all week. I made my usual mistakes. Last night I just got sucked-out on repeatedly. I think I will take a break tonight and tomorrow.


I am thinking of starting a new blog. Kind of an outward focused blog on Fitness and Finance. I will keep thinking about it.

I am on a downswing in the poker regard. The problems are many. I am playing too many pots. I am playing out of poisition. I am calling raises with bad hands. I am not paying attention to my opponents. I need to go back to playing small ball like I did when I won in Wheeling. I will concentrate on playing that way this weekend.

From a fitness standpoint. I have been stretching, working my way through Gray Cook's "Athleic Body in Balance". This has in turn approved my squat which was worrying me. I also have run on the treadmill twice this week. I really think it is boring, but it is good for my fitness.

I lost 2 buy-in's last night. The first one was horrible, the second one was questionable. Here is the low-down.

Hand I, there was an early position raise and I called from the BB with KJo, this was a mistake as I should have folded, but anyway I called. The flop came xjx, all spades. At this point I had top pair, but was beaten by an overpair, and a flush. I should have just check folded here as even if I was ahead, I didn't have a redraw. Instead, I stacked off on a bluff, firing 3 barrels in hope that villian was on a flush draw.

The second was more reasonable, I had AQ flopped top two, but villian flopped a set of aces.

My main mistake was wild aggression. I was not playing small-ball. I was swinging for the fences. I have to calm down and play small ball. Remember, never go broke with one pair.

I played some poker last night, but I didn't play very well. I got it all in pre-flop with KK and of course was against AA. I also pushed with a small pair and a str8 daw. I just played too loose. I will tighten up a bit this week.

I ran on the road this weekend. I will add a weekend run each week until the Turkey Trot increasing my time by 5 minutes each weekend until I run for 40 minutes. I have not run that far for many years. It will be good for my training.

I have been thinking lately about taekwondo. I have enjoyed it, but it is getting a bit old for me. I don't think it is very usfull in regards to self defense, and it has not really improved my flexibility, perhaps I was looking for it to do more than it can. Anyway, I would like to look at BJJ or MMA, and there is a new school opening in Greensburg. Perhaps after I get my black belt I will look into the other school, Pennsylvania Combat Sports.

passing out

I slept late this morning. This isn't really a bad thing on one hand because I got 8 hours sleep, but on the other, I didn't wake up for my workout. No big deal though as I will just go at lunch. The odd thing thous was that after I was finally able to pull myself out of bed, I was pouring my coffee my legs started to buckle and I had a weired sensation of being in slow motion. I started falling and knocked over a bunch of crap before finally catching myself before I went down. It was kind of scary and must either be a low blood sugar or low blood pressure issue. I will have to keep an eye on it.

I have been thinking about my life a lot lately, and I am not happy where I am career-wise. I need to make some changes in that area. I am making improvements in fitness and I will start using the same systematic approach to making corrections in that are as I have with my fitness. The key will be setting and following a plan. Following a plan has been my weaknes in the past, and I will overcome it in the future.

I overslept again this morning. Actually I woke up a little late and decided to go back to bed. I was up a little late working so that is why i overslept. I will finish tonight and can get to bed early so I should be able to wake up. I will try to get to the gym tonight will Jane takes Abby to dance.

Hurt my back

I was following the stronglifts program yesterday and I hurt my back again. Here is how it happened. As I was squating, I felt a "movement" in my lower back. It was an odd motion, and it must have been me rolling my hips. When I squated 85 pounds I did not have this trouble, but for some reason with 95 pounds I did. I think this may be a flexibility issue and I will work on my squat stretch and leg swings daily to loosen the hips. I will also keep my weight at 85 pounds for the next week to build up and work on my squat form. I will keep all my weight the same for one week

I slept in again today. It is not really surprising given that I could not sleep last night. The stress of working my current job is really getting to me. We need to be able to hang on a few more weeks until we get funidng and then we should be ok. If not, we won't be.

I will just shift my workouts to Thurs-Fri-Sat.

I actually woke up this morning and made it to the gym. I was a bit late and almost did not go, but I did force myself to do it. Yeh me. I stretched and did 10 minutes of bicyle cadence work and 1 mile on the treadmill. I had origianlly planed to do pull ups and dips on my Tues and Thurs workouts, but I think I will just stretch and do cardio in keeping with my strong lifts. Because it will be dark when I am at the gym I will just run on the treadmill I will try to add 2.5 min every week. Once I get up to 1/2 hour I will increase the speed. The treadmills at the gym have a heart-rate monitor. I can use them to increase my aerobic fitness. I have built an aeorbic training plan that will also get me ready for two 5-k races.

Also, I fixed my road bike derailure, just in time for putting it away for the winter

I rode the seven springs course yesterday. What a difference a month makes. I easily made it up the North Face climb and I only walked the bike a few times. I mostly made it throught the rock gardens. I think I was overtrained at the race. Looking back on it, I am pretty sure the weight loss and training load was too much. I was sluggish, and I knew it.

I cannot believe how easy the ride was. Granted, I was not pushing race-pace, but still I made good time. I was riding at about the pace we maintained in training prior to the race. Now, I just need to work on pace, but I have plenty of time to work on that.

My next goal is to work on cadence.

One other observation I made was that I really don't need my camel back for the race.

I have a serious case of Doms in my chest right now. It feels good.

I did not wake up in time to workout this morning as I stayed up too late last night, which is par for the course. This has to stop. I will focus on waking up on time in October.

I did my personal balance sheet for September. I fell short on paying off debt. I really have to work on that. I just have to quit spending.