5k like a machine! 31:20-ish for total… GREAT for me :D
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Bam →
Long was I Marcellinus! →
Nevertheless I shall brave this danger and be bold enough to show [Marcellinus] his faults. He will act in his usual way; he will have recourse to his wit, – the wit that can call forth smiles even from mourners. He will turn the jest, first against himself, and then against me. He will forestall every word which I am about to utter.
~ Seneca, from Letters From A Stoic: Letter 29
slip:4ulele2.
Many of Seneca’s letters are pretty obtuse after all this time. But this one… this one jumped out at me as being really apropos of modern life. And, uh, painfully on point for myself.
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Resilience? →
Resilience also requires downtime for recovery. Changing up my scaf routine today to take advantage of the lingering awesome weather.
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Indescribable →
I spent Saturday in Philadelphia training with a relatively small group of people.
Honestly, I was pretty beaten up, broken down, and tired before we even started. Brutally honestly, I need a break; I have simply been doing way too much for way too many weeks in a row for these old bones. So right out of the gate on Saturday, I could tell I was going to be dragging my a** all day.
And then the entire day unfolded in so many ways I could never have imagined.
I’d have to write a small book to tell all the stories; The people, the names, beautiful smiles, sketchy Philadelphia parks, smiling strangers, wall runs, jumps, cats-to-climb-ups, people who have grown and changed so TREMENDOUSLY since I’ve last seen them, old friends, new friends, people with broken hearts who are an inspiration in the way they continue to crush challenges, people ahead of me laughing and playing and urging me on by simply “being”, people behind me yelping approval that I can’t comprehend, and dinner and milkshakes and conversations and shared thoughts with people I expect I will never forget.
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I have awesome friends →
Eric and Anabella left me a bday gift bag on my desk… this is several levels of awesome: A *large* shirt. The meme is perfect. It’s really good rum. And, inconceivably, it’s the same rum I selected from a huge Rum list at the Jerk Chicken place where everyone had dinner in Toronto after the event.
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Shut up and train: Self-directed advice →
Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue – to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
~ Socrates
slip:4a100.
I think that “shutting up” has been the most difficult aspect of my Parkour journey.
In my youngling days — let’s define that as sub-30-years-old — I was always the clown: obnoxious; rude, crude and ill-mannered; smart ass. When you have a big ego and low self-esteem, you seek attention to try to make those ends meet. That’s probably a good benchmark definition of dysfunctional. Worse, I had no idea such was the case. Over the next ten years, (or so,) I started to realize that such behavior was dysfunctional and pathetic. That decade was finally followed by my beginning to try to change about 40 years of ingrained behavior.
It was at this point — just as I was trying to change the course of a very large ship with a very small rudder — that I started Parkour. At the time, I simply jumped into Parkour being my usual self. But two pushups into my first class I was stripped of my delusions of grandeur. Two minutes in, and I figured out that I was an out-of-shape pile of bacon. After two hours of trying to do something, anything, and failing and sweating and flailing and sweating more… Well, shit got real.
That first class was followed by a solid year of me having an argument with myself, in real-time, at every class. Every time I’d exhibit some variation of my dysfunctional behavior I’d mentally berate myself; Shut up. Train. After each class, I’d think back on all the cringe-worthy moments and think: Next time, shut up more. Train more.
Somewhere around two years in, my ship’s course had shifted far enough that the dysfunctional behavior was noticeably tailing off. Certainly, the behaviors I disliked were still frequent enough to bother me, but they WERE tailing off.
Now, three years in and going stronger than ever, I’ve made a lot of progress in terms of fixing myself mentally and physically. I can now say, with an air of experience: Everything has changed. And nothing has changed.
Shut up more. Train more.
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Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! →
In. The. Bag! …aaaand back to training.
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Max heart rate 189 →
New personal best out running with Tracy this morning. The traditional “220-age” formula for me is 177. The newer “217-(0.85*age)” model yields 180.
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Targeted-heart-rate workouts →
A while back I mentioned I’ve been experimenting with a FitBit HR and an intentional, designed, fitness program. I’ve been playing with this more. I originally didn’t like that I couldn’t just redefine all the zones to the HRs that we’re targeting.
Most, tradition/common workout programs I’ve seen have just 3 heart rate (HR) zones based on a maximum HR which is simply computed based on your age. The plan I’m working with from Mike, is significantly more complex. (Details for another post I suppose.) Anyway, the plan calls for very specific workouts, for example: “17 minutes in Z1”.
I noticed on day one, that the FitBit only has one “custom zone” that you can configure. So, I’ve begun manually setting the “custom zone” to the goal HR before some of the workouts. Once I plug in the specific Z1 lower/upper numbers, I can then set off on the workout.
On the device, there is an icon-based display that shows you quickly if you’re below/in/above the target zone. Normally, the icons refer to one of the FitBit’s built-in zones. But it turns out that if you set a custom zone, then the icon status is for your custom zone. Ok, now THAT’S useful!
The above screen grab is from a morning run where I had the custom zone set to my specific Z1 values. The graph shows the FitBit’s default zones (blue/”under”, yellow/”fat burn”, orange/”cardio”) and it overlays my custom zone as the hatched band. The bar graph even adds a value for the time in the custom zone.
In this example I set out to perform, after warming up, for 17 minutes in Z1. …and BAM! 16 minutes in Z1 by it’s measure. Now that’s a targeted workout.
Aside: The tail end of the graph was a strong-run-out, 1/4 mile. My opinion is that the FitBit sucks at picking up highend HR. Either that, or I’m a machine, and can run an 8 minute mile pace at a 151HR. …and it’s not the latter of those two.
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Turn vaults →
Tracy said, “I wanna’ work turn vaults…” BAM!
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