Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The Changing of the Guard

From DT. I had almost exactly the same experience this week. I must say, I really do enjoy stealing his stuff--saves me the time of writing it myself! ;)


The changing of the guard


I am posting this to log what is going on in my head as this process proceeds.

Today started the same as the rest of the week has gone. Woke up, went for a 30 minute walk and ate my breakfast.
I then left for the gym. When I got in I weighed myself and just about shit. We dropped the Kcals and added in all this stupid walking and in the past 7 days I lost nothing. The scale read 270. This depressed the shit out of me, or maybe it is the lack of food messing with my head. Either way I am tired and hungry most of the time and seem to be stuck.

I then went into the weight room to get my training done. After my warm up of band traction and a few other various movements I began my sets of pulldowns. After I few sets I could not get anything to click. I felt brain dead and weak as hell. I did a couple more sets and figured screw it and was going to hit the road.

Then the inner dialog started and at some point I got pissed off. The high intensity days are my life blood and what keeps me going and my body was just not letting me do what I need to do.

I hit a cross roads with this process. I knew there would be a time when my mind would have to carry me through. It has been a very long time since I had to train hungry and with lower than optimal physical state. Now I was faced with it and had a choice to back out or do what needs to be done.

It may just be the day or it may not. Either way I know training from this point on will become harder and harder until I get where I want to go. This process just turned from a physical one to a mental one

So I left the gym and came back in again knowing I would have to get my head right to make this happen. For me this process just became a challenge. Up to this point has been easy and no big deal.

Now it has changed.

I was told to be careful not to over train when the kcals are this low and that my energy is down. While this may be true, screw that! I only have one high intensity day every three sessions and there is no way I am going to train like a puss all the time. So I did what I had to do. I found a way. While I was still not as strong I would have liked to be I was able to find the intensity to beat the hell out of myself. Training has now become serious.

Now the process begins...

Friday, June 09, 2006

World Cup

This quote encapsulates my feelings quite nicely:

"The rest of the world loves soccer. Surely we must be missing something. Uh, isn't that what the Russians told us about communism? There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer -- it's because you are an American and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pick-up and spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control."

--Tom Weir

Monday, June 05, 2006

ZMA Dreams

I've been taking ZMA for a few days now and the funky dreams are beginning to kick in. Last night I had one where I was swimming through New York harbor, checking out the construction of the Freedom Tower. I then swam down to the pier, met dad and Jeff at a little dive and had breakfast/coffee. Afterwards, the waiter convinced me that there was a secret manuscript hidden in the upstairs bathroom. When I unrolled the roll of toilet paper to the end, I found a (full sized) copy of USA Today. This, apparently, was the manuscript.

I'm still trying to remember what the headline was. Updates to come.


Anyway... beware the mind altering powers of Zinc, Magnesium and B6.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Divine (Musical) Intervention

"Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, Lord of Mercy, Giver of Mercy, Master of the Day of Judgement."

It seems the gods smile on me of late. After nearly giving up on it, my MP3 player (some three weeks behind schedule) has finally arrived. I was this >< close to buying another and I must admit that this issue has been giving me way more stress than it deserves. Alas, such is life without readily available 'tunes'.

The Dog Days of Dieting

Ahh, dieting and the inevitable withdrawl from society and other forms of human contact. Lovely. Just lovely.

You know something is off when the following make your day:

- Rediscovering how to make your favorite blend of casein protein + oatmeal 'goop'

- Rejoicing that a series you've been watching (Lost) will not end with the second season, but that there is in fact another coming

- Discovering, joyfully, that the local market has bell peppers for 1/5th the price you were paying at the supermarket


Alas, such is the nature of things.