Tag Archives: Life

Powers of Two

Looking back at my last post, it’s been almost 9 months since I have written anything here. Reading back, I feel like I don’t even know who that person is anymore. It feels like a completely different lifetime. I guess reading back through posts from 2005, I can see what was important in my life at different times. Apparently, I really liked something called “CrossFit” and was an avid health and fitness aficionado.

I re-read my last post and while it is still true, I now see what I once thought with new eyes. What kind of eyes are those? A busy parent, basically.

Anyway, I was laying in bed this morning thinking about lots of things, namely circumstances. That lead into some broader ponderings of the meaning of it all and why we are all here. See, my wife is a Baptist and for her and people like her, that question seems to have a pretty simple answer. You can figure that one out on your own or answer it according to your own personal belief.

For me, it’s not so simple. In the sermon that I heard this past Sunday, I heard that “God made each and every one of us”. Not only that, but made each and every one of us with a purpose. Crafted… with a purpose. Really? I don’t know about that. Many religions and belief systems talk about how we all have a “Godly” potential; that we all have a “light” within us. Can you map that meaning of “light” to “purpose”? Maybe. If you live your life in a way that you reach your full potential and you are a light to others, have you fulfilled your purpose? Maybe, I don’t know.

What I DO know for sure, is that my parents made me and that got me to thinking. It wasn’t just my parents that made me. If their parents hadn’t made them and the circumstances wouldn’t have been right for them to meet, I would not exist. If I would have never met V, then B wouldn’t exist. At that point, the geeky engineer in my head took over and here’s where it went:

…yeah.

For every generation you go up, it took <MATH>(2^(generation number) + (all of the right circumstances to align))</MATH> to make sure that you walk the Earth. It gets more and more amazing to me with each iteration up the table. At my great grandparent’s level, it took 8 people to get together, encounter all of the right circumstances to create more people, then have all of those people meet and make more people to get to the point where it trickles down to me being here. In that sense, 8 people unintentionally made me. I am say without a shred of doubt, that my great great great grandmother/grandfather had NO clue that they were going to be responsible for someone like me.

If you go back further, say, 7 generations, 128 people had to pair up and produce offspring that would pair up 64 times, etc., etc..

That’s pretty crazy.

If you go back 14 generations, 16384 people donated genetic material which lead to my being here to write this blog post.

What really baked my noodle was looking at myself as the starting point or at someone else’s level in the tree. I wonder what person I will have donated 0.00006 (1/16384) of their genetic makeup.

At that point, I circled back around to the first part of these ponderings. Is it all just a big machine that keeps churning and churning? Obviously, yes. The real question is, is there someone operating the machine? If someone’s operating the machine, how involved are they? Are they just kind of making sure that it’s working or are they intimately involved?

That’s what I am still trying to figure out.

Resolve?

It’s that time of year… the time when we make promises to ourselves to {loose weight|take care of finances better|treat someone/everyone better|do this that, or the other thing better, less, or more}. We say that we are making resolutions, but do we ever stop to really think about what it means to “resolve” to do something?

I have an idea of what this means in my mind, but I decided to look it up for shits and giggles. There are 2 usages, a noun and a verb.

Resolve

Verb: Settle or find a solution to (a problem, dispute, or contentious matter).

Noun: Firm determination to do something.

If you are here, stop, and read those definitions again, maybe, a few times, actually. Let that really sink in.

Firm. Determination. To. Do. Something.

Now, think about your “new year’s resolution”. Does the above describe how you feel about the “resolution” that you’ve made? If so, GREAT! You get it. If not, think about the resolution you have made and really think about your motivations and your reasons for making it. Is it just something you kinda-wanna do or is it something that is deeply important to you?

I feel like, for lots of people, there’s an unspoken sentiment that we will all say we are going to resolve to do some crap, then 2 weeks later, we say “yeah, whatever, never mind”. That isn’t resolve. You haven’t yet internalized the desire to have whatever it is you’ve decided to do.

“Resolve” means you will do anything and everything to make what you want to happen, happen.

You might not know every step to take and you might have hindrances and challenges along the way, but if the resolve is there NOTHING will stop you from accomplishing what it is that you want.

It doesn’t matter what your resolution is, the above sentiment applies to any and all things that one could resolve to do. I remember reading Tim Ferris’ “The Four Hour Body” and he makes a fantastic point which he encapsulates into a term he calls the “Harajuku Moment“. In short, this is the moment when you realize that what you are trying to do is a matter of life and death. Most people people will not commit themselves to something until they see it from this perspective. The perfect example is your typical middle aged, overweight, out of shape human hearing “If you don’t loose weight, you will die very soon” from their primary care doctor.

At this point, it’s no longer a game and failure is not an option. Well, unless you want to die. That sentiment is WAY different from “you could loose a few pounds, but whatever, it’s not really hurting you”.

I feel like I’m rambling. Back to the point…

I am not making resolutions this year. I know what I need to work on and I know where I need to go. I don’t need a resolution starting on a certain date to become a better {person|athlete|husband|father|son|etc.}.

You shouldn’t either.

Soshul Netwerks я Fun

I think yesterday will go down as “ridiculous comment flame war of 2011” day.

My wife posted a very innocuous status about lacking motivation to leave the house. Although the reason why she lacked this motivation wasn’t stated, it was because it was cold outside. Leaving this crucial piece of information out was, apparently, the fatal flaw that lead to the further assassination of people’s character and sensibility when commenting online.

See: “history of the internet”. People seem to feel that it’s “OK” to say whatever the hell they want in whatever manner they wish when posting on the internet. Now that we have things like FaceBook and Twitter, where, we can let people into the most intimate details of our lives, we also give them ability to supply their opinions about said details whether we like it or not.

Some people are perfectly fine about this. There IS, in fact, a way to convey your opinion about something that is respectful and kind to your audience or intended recipient. There is also the complete and utter opposite of that, where it’s not necessarily the content of your posting that is wrong, more so, how you decide to release that nugget of information into the world. THIS kind of transference of information will leave your audience feeling no-so-great about you.

These kinds of interactions cause unkind words between groups of people that would NEVER normally interact. To boot, a conversation of this kind would almost NEVER occur if this were, say, a giant party where all of these same people were physically in the same room. I can say will 100% certainty that if we were all in the same room (physically) and my wife said in passing “Man, I really am finding it hard to leave the house today, even with new Yoga pants”, that the complete absurdity that occurred on her FaceBook wall yesterday would NOT happen. The inflated sense of self that people have online rarely manifests itself in the real world in the same person. It’s really easy to be a complete and utter douche nozzle when you are typing words on a screen and clicking a button. The act of delivering this information verbally would have a whole other set of checks and balances that would [hopefully] prevent this level of douchery in a real world conversation. Something to the affect of “hmm, maybe I shouldn’t say that” might run through your head and make you think twice about the impact of your words.

What is even worse, is when people meet in the “real world” after these kinds of interactions on a social network and nay a word is uttered regarding said interaction. It’s awkward and uncomfortable. It’s like running into a girl you had a one-night-stand with, left before she got up, and never called at a coffee shop. There seems to be this sort of unspoken agreement that “what happens on <SOCIAL NETWORK> stays on <SOCIAL NETWORK>”. It’s sort of understood that when we meet, we won’t talk about what you said, how you said it, what it conveys about YOU as a person, and how it makes me want to ban you from my life. No, we will just go on as normal, smile, say hello, and exchange formalities.

Absurd. And here I thought that we were mostly adults.

Fret not, my 4 readers. I have a solution for you! It’s called the “FaceBook Restricted List”. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s a list that FaceBook has now included with your other lists, but anyone that you put on it will ONLY be able to see what you PUBLICALLY post. I like to call this a “soft de-friend” because you aren’t actually de-friending the person, just well, making sure they don’t provide the garbage that’s in their head unless you publically post something for them to see. Here’s how to soft-defriend:

  1. Go to your lists. Find the “restricted list”. Add the offender.
  2. Go to your wall. Find their posts. Click the arrow in the top right corner. Hide their inane ramblings.

Remember that social networks will provide the experience that you tailor them to provide.

Why not just defriend the person, you ask? Well that’s a great question, voice in my head! Sometimes it would cause more social upset to defriend the offender. Soft defriending gives you the ability to shut them up on FaceBook without actually having to have that awkward face-to-face “why did you defriend me” talk. Perhaps you work with this person or see them at a place that you attend as a member and you’d like to keep things civil. Soft defriending lets you do this. They no longer get to see your posts, hence, can no longer comment on them and you get to not have conversations with your significant other every night about “what so-and-so posted on my status”. Win2.

Happy soshul netwerking, friends!

No Magic <Anything>

… only, I DO eat healthy and work out! Sigh. I really should have known better.

About a month ago, a good friend of mine who is a distributor of AdvoCare products talked me into doing their 24 day challenge. He made a really good case for it and I have absolutely no doubt that his intentions were 100% honest and genuine. I honestly do think that he did think that these products would help me to shed some weight. I just want to get that out of the way, so there’s no confusion there. I don’t feel as though I was swindled or duped in any way.

I am not going to rehash my feelings about my weight/physical appearance as I have done so many times on here. I am sure you don’t want to read more whining. (If you do, for some strange reason, see Exhibit A)

I really tried to not put any hope in the fact that this set of supplements would work for me, but sadly, there was a small part of me that did. I had heard so many stories about people that had used them and had fantastic results. One of the coaches at our gym is a distributor and posts pictures sometimes of people’s results, so naturally, I thought “why not me”? Yeah. Not me. Never me.

I did it for 24 days and there was VERY little difference in weight, body fat percentage, physical appearance, or how my clothes fit.

From what I hear, usually, people start to see some changes during the initial 10 day “cleanse” (read: “bullshit”) phase. I saw nothing. Concerned, I called my friend who sold me these products and he connected me with whomever is above him in the pyramid. The person I spoke to is a sports nutritionist and was very nice. We talked for a bit, and to be perfectly honest, he told me to “get more protein” and pretty much to zone. I attribute my whopping 2lb weight loss to the fact that I started eating more protein and trying to zone my meals more. He also told me to drink A LOT of water, which I did.

It should be noted that the only part of the challenge where I wasn’t really in compliance was when my parents were here (2 days, but not really bad cheating). It was the last 2 days of the challenge and when I looked at my weight and how my clothes felt on day 21/22, before I ate ANYTHING that I wasn’t supposed to eat, there was little/no difference.

Spark made me REALLY jittery at first. I thought it was b/c of the caffeine, but it was explained that it was because of the high number of B vitamins. Ok, whatever, it still made me jittery. By the end of the 24 days, I guess I was used to it.

I felt little to no difference in my workouts doing the Spark + Catalyst combo right before. In fact, for some workouts, I felt downright horrible. Maybe that’s the lack of sleep from having an infant, but since I’ve been off of them, I haven’t felt that bad again.

The MNS phase was weird as well. I don’t know what was going on, but whatever was in these pills made me feel hyper and made me sweat a TON. It was ridiculous.

I guess, really the only thing that I enjoyed about these products was the breakfast shakes simply due to their convenience. It’s a pain in the ass to cook/prepare breakfast every morning and they did taste pretty good.

Overall, I can’t say that I am satisfied with these products or the claims that they make nor would I recommend them to anyone based on my experience. They have quite a bit of ingredients that I would consider to be questionable (like Splenda a.k.a Sucralose). There are also ingredients that are derived from soy and diary, which, if you are trying to be a Paleo purist (some are, some aren’t), are questionable.

While, I am sure that they work wonders for some people, I sure as hell was not one of them.

Thank God for money back guarantees, eh?

White Flag

I sort of give up.

It’s been 4 weeks of doing Starting Strength + Intervals while paying really close attention to what I am eating.

I don’t really see much difference. The scale says that I am down about 2-3 pounds depending on the day/time, but my BF % is still between 18 and 19.

I have been able to steadily increase the weights on my lifts, so I guess I have made progress there.

If you are one of my 3 readers or know me, you know that I, historically have a very hard time dropping weight. I can’t even being to describe the amount of jealousy I feel when someone new starts at the gym, goes paleo, works out, and is shredded in a month. It seriously makes me want to put my fist through a wall. I have been at this for YEARS and I can’t even make a freakin’ dent.

After just years and years and years of struggling with this; after reading all of the information I can get my hands on from blogs, books, articles, etc, you’d think I knew it all. Apparently, I know nothing or at least not enough to make anything really substantial happen.

If you asked me, I’d say the 2 biggest contributing factors to my lack of weight loss probably are my high levels of stress (which I am trying my hardest to manage) and the difficult sleep pattern that having a small child yields. I wouldn’t be surprised if my cortisol levels were very high.

Anyway… I say that I “sort of” give up. I am at the point where I pretty much want to say “screw it all”, not work out AT ALL and eat whatever the hell I want. But, I won’t. What I mean by that is, I am done trying to figure out what to do. Whatever I have thought of to do isn’t working for me. Dave has some ideas for me which seemed to work during the last challenge that we did, so I will put my blind trust in that and do whatever he tells me to do for however long I have to do it.

I will continue to work out because it relieves stress and is a source of enjoyment for me. I think at this point though, I am putting my expectations of results into a nice little box and locking it away.

I have explained this before, but it’s not worth going into one more time. My motivation isn’t vanity. I don’t care about having the best body, being the strongest, or the fastest. All I want… all I have ever wanted is to be able to go places in the summer that require no shirts and not feel absolutely horrible about it. I haven’t been in a pool in a really long time and I am pretty sure that I actively avoid situations where people will see my body. Who in the hell doesn’t love being in a pool?! Well, it seems, in adult life, your price to get in the pool is either 1) a body that you are mentally proud of, no matter how it looks or 2) a body that looks pretty good even if you don’t think it’s awesome. I have neither of those things going for me. There is no way in HELL that I am going to any function with my CrossFit friends that requires skimpy clothing. I love them all, but I am too self conscious to be there. Sad? Yes. Reality? Yup.

Really, all I am looking for is a body that I am not totally self conscious about. Will I ever get that? No idea, but for now, I don’t have the energy to care.

I wish that we didn’t live in a society that put so much stress on physical appearance, and I my logical brain, I am pretty sure that my friends who are really my friends don’t care and wouldn’t say anything to me to make me feel bad about it, but personally, I just can’t do it.

Maybe some day, some thing will work and I will be able to enjoy being outside or in the gym not completely covered up all of the time.

I am not holding my breath, though.

A break from the regularly scheduled programming…

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans…

Starting Strength was going well, but I had to take a week off to come and spend some time with Victoria’s family in Mississippi. They have had some unfortunate events occur on both sides of the family and it was clear that us being with them and they getting to meet Brenna was something that needed to happen sooner rather than later.

While the selfish part of me is, well, selfish about wanting to get back on track with getting things right for myself, I am happy to be able to support her during these rough times with her family. It’s really more important that how many inches my waist is measuring.

It has been great to see her family and to see their reactions to Brenna. It saddens me that we don’t get to see them as often, but it’s important to cherish the times that we do.

At any rate, we will be back in Austin next week and I will likely start over with week 1 to hopefully get some consistency in.

Kettle Bells, 11.5, Jacked Annie…

It’s been harder and harder to motivate myself to get into the gym this past week or so. By the time 430/5pm rolls around, my energy feels pretty much zapped. Thankfully, Nikki runs an 830am class over at 609, so I am going to try to get over into that one while I have energy in the morning.

Thursday, 4/21/2011

Ah, kettle bells. So much fun every time! This WOD was quick, but ouch, it had me breathing hard…

  • 1 Turkish Get Up
  • 5 kb snatches lt side
  • 1 Turkish Get Down
  • Repeat other side
  • 1 Turkish Get Up
  • 5 kb clean and jerks lt side
  • 1 Turkish Get Down
  • Repeat other side
  • 1 Turkish Get Up
  • 5 kb OH squats lt side
  • 1 Turkish Get Down
  • Repeat other side

Time: 3:34 with a 1.5 pood KB.

 

Friday, 4/22/2011

Ah, 11.5… this crap is almost over… can’t wait.

AMRAP(20)

  • 5 power clean @ 145#
  • 10 toes to bar
  • 15 wall ball @ 20#

I managed to squeak out 5 rounds + 15 reps. The toes to bar ate up most of my time as I am still learning the skill. Good times.

 

Wednesday, 4/27/2011

WOW, it felt much better to work out at 830am. I had energy and was able to be fully engaged (rather than “I am tired and want to go home”…). At this point, with the way life is @ home, I think that this time might work a lot better for me.

Before we got to the WOD, we did 25 strict ring pull ups. Not fun, but love that fact that we are building some strength.

“Jacked Up Annie”

50 – 40 – 30 – 20 – 10 {Double Unders / Jack knife sit ups @ 20#}

This took me 11:54. Not a great time, BUT, I did my first set of double unders unbroken!!! I have never done that many before, so that was a huge plus.

After the WOD we did some back squats. I had a hard time with these as my left elbow is hurting. I need to have it looked at… sigh. Don’t leave your 20’s kids. It’s no fun.

 

In other news, we are SO ready to have this baby! V’s due date was this past Saturday (4/23) and my parents only have a few more days here (leaving 4/30). I know that the little guy/girl will come when he/she is ready, but waiting like this has been the hardest part of the entire pregnancy. Hopefully, he/she will decide that they would like to come out and meet everyone sooner rather than later.

This Week

I didn’t get to be nearly as active as I wanted to this week. I usually try to get 3-5 workouts in. Great if I can do 5, but this week, I only hit the minimum of 3. Oh well. I felt really tired this week like my energy has just been sucked out of me.

We (my company) recently moved all of our equipment into the new datacenter, so Jose, Anar, and myself have been spending a lot of time there to work on the servers and configure them. Hopefully, soon, we won’t have to go back there so much. I think being in that windowless, loud server room all day zaps my energy.

We are still waiting on little Baby G to make his/her appearance. I don’t know who wants it out more, me or her, but it would be an understatement that we are ready to not be a pregnant couple anymore.

Monday, 4/11/2011: Skipped. Exhausted. Went to visit my grandmother while V was out with Paula.

Tuesday, 4/12/2011

Back Squats: 10 – 8 – 6 – 4  – 2 – 1 – 6, then 20 @ 50% of 1 rep max

Weights: 220# – 240# – 270# – 290# – 300# – 310# – 220# – 175#

backsquats

I was pretty happy with this, but I was really sore for the rest of the week!

Wednesday, 4/13/2011

Dragged myself into the gym. I felt like it was a good day to face one of my fears, the 24″ box jump. The WOD was:

5 rounds:

  • 15 box jumps
  • 7 push jerk @ 155#
  • Rest 2 minutes

I have to say that I debated using 155#, but it turned out OK. I ended up getting faster on each round. My first round was the slowest b/c I messed up cleaning the weight, had to drop, then re-clean. After that round, though, I did all of the push jerks unbroken. The best part of it all is that now I can cycle my 24″ box jumps without fear! Added bonus, I beat the lunch class =)

boxjumppushjerk

Thursday, 4/14/2011: Had to go grocery shopping. No time.

Friday, 4/15/2011: Got to the gym, hung out with V for about 30 minutes then realized I could barely keep my eyes open. Looked at the weights and realized that this wasn’t happening. Sorry, Fio!

Saturday, 4/16/2011

WOD 11.4 for the CrossFit Open. Yay.

10 minute “AMRAP” (LOL, are you fucking kidding?!)

  • 60 bar facing burpees (have to jump over the bar after each burpee)
  • 30 overhead squats @ 120#
  • 10 muscle ups

I took the burpees at a moderate pace so as not to gas myself out. I knew wasn’t going to get to the muscle ups, so I just tried to get as much done as I could. I ended up with 84 reps total. If I could do it again, I would focus more on squat snatching the weight after I dropped. Still though, I am happy with this.

11.4

I spent the rest of the day working on things that needed to get done around the house. I hung a little shelf outside out back window for the cats to use when they go outside through the window cat door, I cleaned our shower, I weeded out flowerbeds, and lastly, I built an HDTV antenna on the cheap that works WAY better then the crappy one that I PAID for. Check it out:

Maker Workshop – DTV Antenna & Steadicam on MAKE: television from MAKE magazine on Vimeo.

“In No Uncertain Terms”

Humans play some pretty funny and ridiculous games. We all know this. We all do this.

Everyone has expectations both of themselves and of other people. We do this all the time. We have expectations of our friends, our family, our co-workers, and even people we have never even met (think stereotypes).

Sometimes, these expectations are based in reality and forged from a track record of a person’s behavior.

Sometimes, these expectations are completely nonsensical.

We do this sort of thing all of the time in many different cases. I am sure that all 3 of you reading this right now can think of a case in which you have formed completely unrealistic expectations of someone in your life.

What happens when people don’t “live up” to our expectations? That’s an interesting question. It sort of depends on whether or not our expectations are based in reality. It also depends on whether or not the people for which we hold the expectation actually KNOW that we expect whatever it is that we are expecting from them!

In many cases, the outcome of someone not meeting your expectation (realistic or not) might be the same; disappointment, anger, frustration, etc. The way in which we actually address it with the person, however, depends on our personality, and can be very different.

Let’s take the example of an expectation based in reality.

Worker A is good at job X. Job X is always done well and on time. Worker A’s boss comes to expect that “job x” will always been done well and on time. This is an expectation that is based in reality and formed from A’s repeated demonstrated competency at “job x”.

Now let’s looks at an example of an expectation that was formed completely in one’s own little fantasy cerebral world.

A’s boss decides to give A a new task at which A has no experience with or prior knowledge of. Let’s call this “job y”. Worker A isn’t so good at job y. For the first few weeks, he’s a little bit rocky with getting it done and his boss isn’t too happy. What happened here? One thing might be that A’s boss auto-magically assumed the expectation that because A was good at job x, he’d be awesome at job y. Can you get mad at worker A for this? Maybe, but did A’s boss stop and think about A’s experience or whether or not this would be an ideal task? People have to do things they don’t like or are not good at all the time. What is really important here is the expectation that A’s boss has when assigning the task. I can think of two options:

  1. Expectation: A is going to be awesome at this right away. Result: almost certain disappointment and anger with A for not being awesome at the job right away.
  2. Expectation: A might not be so great at this right away, but he will get it eventually. Look how good he is at “job x”! It’s only a matter of time. Result: No disappointment, no anger. Why? Because A’s boss looked at the situation from a realistic perspective.

What would happen if A’s boss said “Look A, I have job y for you. You might not be stellar at it right away, but I know you can get it. Just give it your best shot!”. I think A would have a great attitude about trying this task out. Compare that to A’s boss saying “Here’s job y, have it on my desk by this afternoon.”. How do you think that make’s A feel? Rushed, hurried, panicked, are a few ideas that come to mind. How you ask someone to do something conveys your expectation of them.

Even worse, what if A’s boss just decides to drop “job y” on A and assume the expectation that he will just get it done. While flattering, what happens when he doesn’t?

What if A’s boss blatantly said “I have this expectation of you and I would really like for you to make sure it’s done” rather than HOPING that A just somehow “gets” that they should be doing this or that? That would most likely lead to a discussion where A would either say “yes, I can do that”, or “nope, not happening”.  At this point, you need to update your expectation with this new information. Is A willing to do what you have now actually asked for? If so, great, keep the expectation. If not, well, then you need to discard it as continuing to hold on to that will now only be worse.

Tell people what you want and what you expect in no uncertain terms. This is the only way in which an exchange like this is healthy. Then next time you become angry, frustrated, or annoyed with someone for not meeting an expectation that you have, think about it. Do they KNOW that you have this expectation of them? Have you flat out told them that this is what you are expecting? If not, your negative emotions are unfounded and not based in reality. If you have made your expectations clear and the person is just not meeting them, that’s a different story.

Operation Get Some–Thoughts After Competing

It’s clear that I am NOT a competitor, nor am I a competitive person. Let’s start there. Competition makes me feel like a loser, mostly. Usually, people don’t compete in something unless they have some feeling that they have it in them to win. There are things that I feel that I could compete confidently in, but CrossFit is not one of them as you just don’t know what the events are going to be.

I surprised myself on the first and second WODs. After WOD #2 I was actually in first place (I think… that’s according to HB) due to my 215# split jerk (the highest of the day), but I quickly lost it on WODs #3 & #4 as they were more metcon based and I just don’t have the lungs for them.

Here are the WODs and how they played out:

WOD #1

3x

  • 300m row
  • 10 back squats @ 185#

Immediately followed by…

WOD #2

  • 3 minutes to find your 1RM on shoulder to overhead.

My time for WOD #1 was 6:02 and I put up 215# on the shoulder to overhead. 300m is a good distance for me on the C2. I can pull hard pretty consistently, and if I am careful, I won’t gas myself out. This was the only WOD that I was happy with my performance on.

WOD #3

This is where I totally lost it and came in dead fucking last out of everyone that came out. It was a 12 minute AMRAP of:

  • 3 burpees
  • 6 air squats
  • 9 KB Swings @ 1.5 pood (I did 2 handed snatches as KB swings still don’t feel so hot on my back)

I managed to get 10 rounds plus 1 burpee. Horrible. I guess trying to compete while sick isn’t the best idea, eh? I felt like my chest was going to explode. There was also lots of coughing and hacking. After this WOD I was pretty discouraged and didn’t even want to go through with the next.

WOD #4

At this point, my attitude was horrible. Mostly of “screw it, whatever, I want to go home'”, much like a five-year-old that takes the kickball away and stomps back to his house because he’s losing. More so, the WOD was something that there was no way in fucking hell that I would ever even have a chance at, so, whatever. You gotta know when to fold ‘em, right? The WOD was:

  • 800m run (to the end of Cherry St. and back)
  • 50 games style push ups

My time here was 6:37. At least 2 minutes slower than the people that I needed to keep up with. Guaranteed that even had I ran the hardest I could have run, I still would have lost. The odds of me doing that with a chest cold… – 1280371471324.

You may have read my post on running at some point. If you haven’t, take a minute to see why I have such negative feelings surrounding this activity. Those feelings combined with the fact that I really needed to place on the last WOD to stay competitive meant something along the lines of “fuck you, fatty, you’re done” in my head.

So, V says to focus on the positives. Let me see if my pessimistic ass can find any.

  1. I did pretty well on WOD #1. I didn’t come in first, but was at the very least had a time that was competitive with the rest.
  2. I came in 1st on WOD #2 and split jerked more then everyone else. Yay for me.
  3. I participated and didn’t quit even though I felt like chewed up, spit out dog shit and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep before even arriving.

Maybe there are more, but I can’t think of any.

I have been thinking about whether or not I would like to do something like this again, and it’s hard to say. I went into it promising myself that I wouldn’t think of it as a competition and that I would just have fun and focus on getting the activity in. That worked great while I was staying with the rest of the pack.

As soon as I started to slip away, I was that fat little 6th grader back on the school court yard with everyone else leaving me in the dust and it felt absolutely horrible.

It took me a good 5-10 minutes after that last WOD to flush the feeling of “loser” out of me, but eventually I did and remembered that these are all my friends and don’t think the horrible thoughts that those 6th grade bastards did.

Take it or leave it, right or wrong, those are my thoughts.