Morning weigh-in: 190.0#, 13.0% BF
Another night out at Brew Works, this time with Anne and Donna (and without the burger). No trainer workout either, though I’m still faithfully doing my yoga and my push-ups. They come in handy when I feel chilly: rather than turning the heat up in the house, I turn up my own heat…
It’s pretty damn cold out again, by the way, though there is no snow. I may do a towpath ride in a minute, or I may hop on the trainer. We’ll see.
Morning weigh-in: 190.5#, 14.5% BF
Looks like those numbers are back to normal — thanks to a cheeseburger and a couple of beers! Went out solo to Brew Works last night. I ran into Greg H and Laurie with some of his high school friends, but they showed up not long before I left — it was nice to see them, but I was feeling the beer and the burger, and I was pretty tired. Which is why it was so weird when I woke up around 3:00 or 4:00, and couldn’t go back to sleep. No indigestion, no hangover or anything like that, just toss and turn, and I got up early…
So now I’m just working on another CAT map project: commuter routes for Northampton Community College students. They want some recommended routes that students, who may not be the strongest or most confident cyclists (at least at first), would be comfortable riding; they are looking for routes from Bethlehem, Easton and Nazareth, and I’m doing multiple routes (easy, more direct, etc). After I/we get the routes hashed out I’ll be looking into how to present them, probably a printed map of some kind.
Morning weigh-in: 187.0#, 16.5% BF
Not sure what’s going on there with the weigh-in, but I figure that if you keep hitting them with sledgehammers the walls will eventually come down. Of course, I’d like to think that the “wall” in this case was that logjam in my official weight, but sledgehammers are two-edged swords, so to speak, and this sudden drop in weight could be a sign that I’ve been overdoing things. I got in a short trainer workout last night, that’s two nights in a row, so today will only be the morning yoga and the push-ups and we’ll call that a rest day. No idea what’s going on with the body fat; it’s usually low when I’m dehydrated, maybe this is the opposite.
Then again, it could all be due to my dinner last night: basically I ate half of a leftover cheese tray and not much else. I was planning to go out to eat, but it was raining so hard and I was tired…
It’s beautiful and mostly sunny today even if cold, but Anne is in New York, at a knitting convention with her sisters. They left yesterday in the rain, to try and beat the worst of the winter storm which came down last night. She may be home today, or stay through until tomorrow depending on the group consensus. I’ll try to eat right until she gets home.
Morning weigh-in: 190.5#, 14.5% BF (still holding on…)
One more thing I added to my morning exercise: push-ups. They’re easy to fit into the day, don’t need special clothes or any special exercise space, and I’ve been doing them off and on, as a quick way to keep warm without messing with the thermo$tat, since that cold weather hit. Then the other day I saw some click-bait about doing 100 push-ups a day for 30 days and thought “why not?”
So I’ve been doing 100 push-ups a day, 50 in the morning and 50 later in the afternoon, for the past week. I already think I see some more tone in my arms and chest, but it’s probably more like I’m just waking up my sleeping muscles rather than building more. But that’s just a week in, we’ll see what the results are at the end of the challenge..
When I went looking up the challenge online, I found a couple of articles and some Youtubes, mostly of say, Buzzfeed writers, people who were basically not exercising at all, who needed to break their push-ups up into smaller, more numerous sets over the course of the day, and in the end had some, but not really all that much improvement. Both sides of the Dunning-Kruger coin may be coming into play here, but I don’t think 100 push-ups is really all that many, especially over the course of a day, and one month is not a long enough time to give yourself to see results. (I’ll also say that doing a lot at once is probably better than doing them in a bunch of smaller doses; the last few painful ones are probably the ones that do the most good.)
For now I’ll keep with the 100 push-ups, but at the end of the challenge, if I keep going, I’ll probably add more.
Meantime, last night was the first trainer workout with heart rate monitor. A half hour, fifteen minutes of which were in Zone 3 or thereabouts, boring as hell but I did have the music playing. Dinner was leftover ribs, and this morning’s breakfast was bacon and eggs with Danish seed bread.
Morning weigh-in: 190#, 14.5% BF
I never knew her name; amongst ourselves we always referred to her as “Little One” because she was so small. Short, tiny even, and with a sweetly smiling, childlike (almost doll-like) face, though her voice had a rough edge and could be filled with anger. She was homeless, but she was always clean and well-dressed, and she was already a fixture when I moved to Bethlehem — sometimes you’d see her hanging in Wired Café, or passing through Brew Works to use the bathroom, or sitting at a little table she’d set up on Broad Street, selling handmade knick-knacks. Local vendors liked her and helped her out a bit.
She was hit by a car and killed crossing Broad Street this week. (Some more about her here and here.) So sad — it’s a tragedy no matter who was killed, but this just seems worse because I know who she was, and her life seemed so tough.
Morning weigh-in: 189.5#, 15.5% BF
I want to sit down with Scott S and a large paper map of the Lehigh Valley, like the folding kind we all kept in our cars before Google Maps came along, so we can sketch out some of the recommended bike routes for my map routing project. So, I need to get a map. I tried the local CVS (no maps), a local gas station (maps of New Jersey, Philly and Reading — WTF? — but nothing for our area), and the local market (nope). The market was 0 for 2, since I also needed a new battery, one of those coin-shaped ones and they didn’t have those either.
I also went on Garmin Connect to look for some of my old rides in Jim Thorpe, and I found that their “Explore Activities” feature, which is basically the search page for activities, was broken. The tech support chat guy went through the usual “have you tried clearing your cookies?” bullshit — no I am not going to clear my cookies, some of them are useful, and the problem is on your server, doofus. It took a while to even get him to know what I was talking about, like giving him URL’s to his own company’s website, and he eventually was able to reproduce the problem, but he had no answer, no timeline for a fix, and he even sort of intimated that the engineers will get around to it when they feel like it.
Meantime I was looking at the VMB website last week, where I ran into a problem with the calendar. I posted something about it to the forum — no response, Facebook PM’ed the guy who used to run the site — no response. Today I used the website contact form, which sends an email to club leadership — so far, crickets.
What’s gone wrong with the world?
So anyway, I did a basement trainer workout last night, then we went out to The Mint. Today was an outdoor ride, out to the community college and back.
Morning weigh-in: 190.0#, 15.5% BF
Spent most of the morning working on various projects in the basement, mostly cleanup and brew equipment maintenance, but I also managed to find and set up my trainer. I’ll get in a short ride later in the day, hopefully.
I’ve been pretty religious about the morning yoga and exercise, so that’s good, and blogging has been pretty consistent as well. Next up in my resolutions list: the cello. I got it out, tuned it up, and have been playing a few scales every day but that’s about it. I should be ramping up soon enough…
Morning Weigh-in: 188.0#, 14.0% BF (I’m still convinced that my actual body fat percentage is much higher…)
This weekend was like being shot out of a cannon.
On Saturday we hosted Sarah A’s 40th birthday party, which was basically about 40 people, including maybe a dozen kids — actual children, that is, not twenty-somethings. We got up early and I started the outdoor oven — we would be making pizza for the party — then we cleaned the house, got in some supplies and, with some help from Sarah’s parents and Mark, decorated for the party. The party itself started at 4:00, we cooked the pizza around 6:00, which was awesome but just a drop in the ocean of food we had on hand, and those burdened by kids (including grandparents on babysitter duty) all left by around 8:00. The rest of the party was smaller, and less intense with the kids gone, but things didn’t wind down until around 1:00.
Sunday should been a later morning than it was, but Anne was going to meet Ben and Renee at Lake Nockamixon for some ice skating — I dislike skating, but I could go for a hike while they were on the ice. Unfortunately, when I went to warm the car up, it wouldn’t turn over… Call AAA, change the plans a bit: Renee picked up Anne while I stayed to deal with the car. The same mechanics came out as for the last car problem two years ago, and they got lost again on the way. They jumped the car and it started up, I ran it for an hour to give the battery some juice, and we were golden but it’s going in for a battery check tomorrow.
In the afternoon we went to Stroudsburg High School, to see Anne’s teacher do a violin concerto with the Pocono Community Orchestra. We went up (in our car, which added some excitement) with Jeff and Krista, and got there way early so we explored downtown Stroudsburg for a bit (OK, we found a bar), then saw the concert, which was awesome — the orchestra was OK, but Mike was incredible.
We stayed in last night, and were in bed by 10:00. Unfortunately, I must have pulled something in my upper back or neck, and could not get comfortable — this is the same back issue I’ve had before, by the way. I finally found a halfway comfortable position, but it was not what I’m used to and I woke up with vertigo — remember that? Ugh…
I’ve made a big decision though, and today I will be putting the bike up on the trainer. I’ll try to maybe get in a half hour of moderate spin every day, enough to keep me from falling apart — it’s just been too cold lately, and now it’s about to warm up and become mucky; it’s time to train indoors for a while.
Morning weigh-in: 188.5#, 14.5% BF
Not much to say: we stayed in last night, and I did my morning yoga both yesterday and today. Breakfast was oatmeal with apples and cottage cheese, lunch was a reuben at Syb’s Deli — we did a major food-shopping day today, including an epic visit to the Allentown Farmer’s Market. I like the drop in weight, but I think it’s really just noise.
We have that party tomorrow, and it’s so cold I really don’t want to leave the house, so I suspect that we’ll be staying in tonight as well.
Morning weigh-in: 189.5#, 14.0%BF
It remains to be see whether I’m “back to that” or not, but I weighed myself this morning. It’s my blog, I can do what I want…
I came across this photo the other day, taken by my friend Brian H on our trip out to Moab in 2008. It’s one of my favorite photos of myself, in fact one of the few I actually like:
It presents me as I liked to see myself, and wanted to present myself to others as, at that time in my life. Maybe I still do want that, in some ways… Note the muscles! Those are why I’m posting the picture, actually: I am using this photo as motivation to get back in shape. (As a counterpoint, note the non-gray beard: some things are not entirely going to return ever, at least not without some Grecian Formula, or Photoshop or something.)
Anyway, I didn’t get in touch with Greg yesterday, so I went out on a nice towpath ride. It was freezing at first, but I was dressed right and working hard, and warmed up soon enough. There were a few runners out, and some hikers, but it seemed like I was the only cyclist. I did run into Sarah A’s parents (I know Bob because we both volunteer at the Museum), who were out for a walk, and we talked some party logistics — we are hosting Sarah’s (no longer a surprise) birthday party this Saturday.
My turnaround was going to be the old boat launch, but for some reason I kept going to the new one, where I ran into a bunch of first responders, ambulances, rescue boats, and the Freemansburg Fire Department hovercraft. I asked if they were on a training run, but no: there was a report of someone jumping from the Rt 33 bridge, and they were searching the river. That’s a tough job, and a bad day.
Eating: Today’s lunch is canned mackerel in tomato sauce, with crème fraîche and pickled vegetables, over Danish seed bread. Yesterday’s lunch was smoked trout on Danish seed bread, with more pickled vegetables. We’ve been getting pretty Nordic with this recent cold weather.
