Onramp, Day 3

Workout listed here.

Today was the easiest in terms of stress on the body, but today was also the day I felt like I learned the most. I didn't ever lift - i did some minor lifting in high school for the javelin, but I realize now nobody really knew about form or how to do anything, at least not on my track team, so it is great to put the premium on form.

My ailments and soreness are really fascinating, and this is my experience:
> 1-4 hours after workout, I feel general soreness, a lot like the 3-4 hours after you finish an ultimate tournament, but it is localized to the area you worked out, rather than entire body soreness.
> 4-12 hours after workout, the areas that hurt start to really hurt, like i pulled or tore something.
> 14 hours after workout I fall asleep very sore.

Wake up the next morning and it hurts to move selected areas, the entire day is spent focusing on a very local pain, and it's annoying.

Dinnertime the next night, I have full blown pain in a few areas, and I think a tear is 100% certain, and pain will linger in that area for a while.

Then I go to bed, and when it's time to wake up for the next WOD, most pain is gone, or it is nearly gone, and I'm ready to roll.

Looking forward to week 2!

Onramp, Day 2

Workout posted here

Felt easier than Monday - which was surprising b/c all day Monday and Tuesday my arms were dead, and this was primarily an arm workout. I feel good about ramping up, slowly easing into this...very much still unsure about how all of this works.

My eating the last 2 weeks has drastically improved, my weight hasn't, and I have the urge to just start running more mileage, but I don't want to disrupt the crossfit routine, either. I am doing to do low mileage on Thursday as a run, I'll feel up for it.

But man, the interior of my left arm is really hurting in a way that I hope I didn't pull a muscle. I hope it's just sore. Only time will tell.

Onramp, day 1

I started Crossfit as part of my new job at work. I am not sure how dedicated I'll be (my motivation is high) or well I'll do (my confidence, after day 1, is low)...but I owe it to myself to give this a shot. I have 3 main goals:
1. Be active more regularly, and in turn, lose weight
2. Lose weight to improve my flexibility and make my golf game better
3. Make my golf game better, make my overall health better, and subsequently get my confidence up.

I won't get into it, but probably all of this has to do with confidence and self-esteem, and a huge part of that for me has always been feeling like I could venture into an athletic arena with people near my age and be as good, if not better, than other people. I have never been the fastest, strongest, best jumper, smartest or anything, but I've always managed to get by. That's important to me, and I'm feeling, outside of golf, that I'm barely getting by anymore.

More detailed goals are to run a sub 2 hour 1/2 marathon this Fall/Winter, lose anywhere from 18-25 pounds, and keep that off for good, and continue to evolve my mental attitude, which physical fitness is only a portion of that solution.

So, I'll always update my times, WOD's and activities here, and every Crossfit post I'll include the link.

Long story short, 24 hours after my first WOD, and i'm bordering on psychotic depression with how weak I feel. I can't do pushups, I thought I could, and I can do them wrong, but I can't do a real pushup. And my arms are toast. I don't know how I'll lift anything tomorrow.  So anyway, here's to a month of on-ramping.

Bank of America

This is the article that got me going:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/03/01/bank-of-america-still-scheming-up-new-bank-fees-just-fyi/?mod=google_news_blog

I'm really sorry to post a short rant about something relatively trivial, but Bank of America customers have to get over it. Each week we all work and earn money, and then every other week a faceless giant institution takes our money and keeps it in a safe place for us. They count it, allow us to manage it via the internet, send checks to friends, transfer payments electronically to businesses, etc.  If you don't have a home loan, or don't have some other kind of wacky setup, they actually pay US via interest to house the money there.

Now, as a business, they are, at times, asking for a few bucks here or there.  As a customer, we have the ultimate power. We can choose to not pay that. We can choose to walk away from them, shove money in jars under our floorboards, and visit the local NStar office to pay our bills in quarters and nickels.

But that is backwards, and unless you have a barn full of servers and IP address configuration machines, pay your $5/month fee (or whatever it'll be) to Bank of America, and tell them "thanks for managing my money for me, it actually is pretty helpful).

Or don't, and enjoy your piles of quarters, Scrooge McDuck.

Kirkland, WA can fit in my iPad

A few weeks ago I posted the following status update on facebook timeline: "The ability for a song to be a time machine is my religion", and the notion has been sticking with me for a few weeks, pretty hard.

During a particularly magical weekend that we all have from time to time a few years ago during a relatively magical summer, I woke up from a great sleep and asked my friend a simple question - his answer was just as simple, but was pretty inspiring as well.  He and I chat, that's what we do, so I knew exactly what to ask:

Me: "Good morning...what do you want to talk about?"

Him: "Hydrogen"

That was all. I erupted in laughter. The man knew he wanted to talk to Hydrogen. Who knows what they want to talk about?  Well, I do, now.  I want to talk about Time, and my relationship with Time, and not a fear of it, not a sadness that we all feel when we realize we are old and awful and gross, but more about it's power and ability to morph and shapeshift.

I think of something like Facebook and what they are doing with Timeline, and they are not doing the idea of making your life a digital journal justice, and hopefully someday someone will get it right...but even the way they formulate time on the page - with a linear bar running vertically, implying that your life is just a dot here and a dot there - a sequential collection of nonsense that somehow has added up to make you, you...

That has just started to irk me.  I think of Time now more like a volcano. I was watching lava erupt on TV the other day and it was mind blowing how it looks like its moving in slow motion, but its not, its just heavy and thick, and it disappears into itself and piles itself into a shape only to be another shape a few minutes later.  That's how I feel about time, and how I feel we interact with time.

Sure, bits are linear, we have developed clocks and calendars and ways to count time, but what we never figured out was how to account for those moments in your life, in all of our everyday lives, where we absolutely are emotionally transported back to a different moment, in our lives. I was always astonished by those glimpses into our past, mostly because of how real they feel...then I realized that I was thinking of it incorrectly. If I was looking at it like Facebook looks at it, it is linear, and those moments when we feel the past are just a little mindgame, but that cannot be right.

I was doing some work at home and I put on Oasis' Be Here Now, the band's follow up to their mega hit and Fisher Life Changing album, Morning Glory. I can reach back and put together the details of purchasing this album, and I can picture the Tower Records in Boston, and even put some images in my brain of what that day was like and who I was with, but then when I heard the first few notes, my brain wasn't playing a trick, it was talking to me, engaging me in a conversation, allowing me to actually feel the past.

I immediately was brought to Kirkland, WA, where my parents lived for about a year, and where I went with Trav the day after I bought this album.  At the moment when I did the lava meld back to '97 I wasn't picturing a record store, or the weather, or how Seattle smelled... I can find all that in my brain, but the voyage was more emotional, and more about me feeling the feeling of '97.

Music is continually doing this to me, and I can't tell when its going to happen, and I can't predict it, but it's doing it, continuously, persistently, and without vengeance.  It isn't always awesome, I see a smile on TV and I'm shifted immediately back to painful memories of a broken heart - or I'm watching football highlights and the sight Steve Young's #8 jersey makes me feel like I felt at Keri's party the night the 49ers beat the Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game...and the night my Grandmother passed away.  That's not linear, that's the opposite.  It's a welcomed kick in the pants.

I'm in the process right now of taking some mix tapes Luke made for me in High School and College and putting them into MP3 format. I could just go online, try to buy the individual songs, and try to piece them back together, but the authenticity of the tapes is what I'm looking forward to.  

I can't wait until one morning when I hit play on the iPod while I am driving in my car on Route 2 heading to my job, feeling like a 34 year old that stinks at sports now and can't remember where his car keys are...and instantly feel like the 17 year old kid who at at Pizza Hut & Uno's every other night with a collection of amazing friends all because of a song. I have a lot to be grateful for now, and I'm all for it, but the past is as much a part of me as the present, and I love how present it always is.