Everything Louder Than Everything Else

Slow Start

Whilst travelling to Chicago this weekend, I have so far encountered:
- flight out of Omaha was delayed 30 minutes
- sat in between two large people on my flight
- welcomed to Chicago by 20mph winds and 48 degree weather
- my friend has all the keys to get into the hotel, and isn’t waiting for me
- another friend lost his phone and I’ve been waiting for an hour for him to walk to the hotel
- while I’m waiting, fire alarms go off and two engines show up. Bearing axes, face masks, and all. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

Not sure what the rest of the weekend is to bring, but it HAS to be better than the last 4 hours. Don’t worry guys, we’ll turn this around.

20 April 2012 ·

• Tags
• Slow start
• stay positive
• chicago

You Know I’m About to Kill It

Got up at 6:30 am on a Saturday so that I can “compete” in the rush challenge at my gym. 

1. 1/2 mile run around the sports plaza
2. 8 man makers: dumbbell burpees- in push up positions single arm row both sides, then push up and stand back up or stand up and shoulder press = 1rep
3. 5 tire flips
4. 2 hills
5. 1 basketball shot or layup
6. jump or step onto plyo box to get through garage door and do 20 over head kettle bell swings
7. go out side door, run around the building, enter fitness room and do 50 side to side on a step box
8. bear crawl to ketle bell
9. 20 squat up right rows with kettlebell
10. dip push up combo on a row of 4 step boxes
11. frog jump to the finish

I have no idea how this will go. But I do know I feel like a boss!!

14 April 2012 ·

• Tags
• march of dimes
• better bodies

Self-Consciousness

Recently I have been internalizing most of what is going on around me. My friends, family, personal hobbies/free-time, and especially work has been tirelessly analyzed. For a while there, I felt like I was skating on thin ice, getting further and further away from mainland. Soon enough, my lungs started to freeze, huge glacier walls appeared over the horizon and suddenly were on either side of me. As I trudged ahead, instead of proceeding with caution, the valley started to come to a point and before I know it, my shoulders were rubbing against the hard ice, making it more and more difficult to go any further. So I tweaked a few things, thought about turning around, but instead decided to stop. I decided I cannot go any further, but I also cannot take any strides backwards. That icy, cold, claustrophobic world must be left behind. From here, I must climb. It sucks. I’m much better at walking up a steady flight of stairs, rather than finding my own hand and foot holes to hoist myself straight up. But it’s already getting warmer. The decisions I made at the bottom are the ones I must stick with. If I let go, I cannot tell what will happen to me. But I suppose it won’t be good and it will hurt like hell. My pride is the first thing I must regain. Pride is a funny feeling. It can fill you up, turning you either into a confident, self-conscious person, too much can certainly turn you into a monster, and too little can make you hollow and frail. I’m forfeiting a lot of my pride, in a drastic turn that will inevitably leave me in a better place. All I have to do now is follow through.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that…

10 April 2012 ·

• Tags
• it's always darkest before the dawn
• make it right
• one chance
• pride
• self-consciousness
• spring forward

My Random 5K

Let me get this straight. It’s 64 degrees outside? At 4:30? January 30th… in NEBRASKA?!? Okay, I’m going for a jog outside.

To preface this experience, I must start at the beginning. I’ve always been an active individual. As a child, I was always outside playing sports, or some version of capture the flag/ghosts in the graveyard/etc. In high school, I would always have a pair of gym shorts in my car in case me and my friends decided to play basketball instead of going to a party. In college, I lifted weights at least four times a week. After college, however, is a different story. It has been over three years now since I have left the friendly confines of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where my gym membership was already included in my tuition and fees. I have struggled trying to justify purchasing myself a gym membership during these few years and actually pulled the trigger once. And then opted out about 8 months later when I had been to the gym less than 8 times total. It bothers me when I have money automatically taken out of my bank account when I don’t even get a fair trade. I was spending about $30 a month on literally nothing! Afterwards, I kept telling myself that I have a job that keeps me on my feet all day (literally) and that I have a pretty high metabolism so I probably won’t ever start to get “fat.” Then I started noticing it. The laziness, the general lack of confidence and energy. It had kind of bothered me, somewhere in the back of my brain (probably near the medulla oblongata) that things just didn’t seem right. 

Finally, I decided it needed to change. I need to work out. I need to exercise. I am 26 years old, I can find the time and money to exercise. 

I must say that I have never been big of New Year’s resolutions. If you want to change something, just do it. Suppose you realize you are eating waaay too much fast food, so you want to give it up. But then you realize it’s December 27th and you can simply work it into a “New Year’s Resolution”. What do you do for the four days left in the year? Gorge yourself on McRibs and double cheeseburgers? Maybe, Or maybe you should just decided to try and make a change right then on the 27th. So, it just so happens that I decide I need to start exercising around the time of January 1st. (Plus I made a few goals, but that will come later.)

As I was saying, I realized that I could budget a monthly gym membership and my first step was focusing on joining a gym. If I join a gym, then that will motivate me to regularly. Right? I found a great gym, exactly what I was looking for; no initiation fee, friendly staff, plently of free weights, and plenty of treadmills. Step 1: done. Next, I had to go out and act! So far, my routine isn’t as much of a routine as it should be. I found out real quick that I’m not very strong. But I will work at that! It takes time, I know.

Normally, I run for around 15 minutes, or a little over a mile every time I commit to exercising. I use it as a warm-up before I start lifting weights. My main focus is gaining back my strength, not cardio endurance. But here’s what is most interesting to me: I forgot how much running can change you. Running helps melt away that crappy feeling you get when you come home from work. It makes you focus on your body instead of dinner, bills, your boss, friends, or any other stresses. It puts you in control of what is going to happen to your life in the next 10 to 60 minutes (or more).

You are making the decisions now. You decided to go to the gym/park. You decided what to wear. You decided that the best thing possible for you to do right now is get winded and get sweaty. You are in your own zone. You are in your own head, motivating yourself, teaching yourself. And at the end of your run, you can reflect on what you did. You can experience your own cause and effect.

Needless to say, right now, running is very cathartic for me. 

So here we are. I got off of work today, rolled down the windows in my Malibu and cranked up the tunes. Getting home, I realized that should definitely run outside today, but my neighborhood sucks! I live in a great neighborhood, but there aren’t any parks and there are entirely way too many hills. So I went onto Google maps and found a neighborhood right by my gym so I can go for a warm-up jog outside and then go hit the gym for a quick workout. That never happened.

I parked the car, started jogging and just felt great. I decided to just keep going until I got tired of it, which is normally about 15 minutes (see above). But it never happened. My trainer on miCoach soon said I had ran 1 mile. But I felt good, so I kept going. Soon it was 2 miles, the most I have ran at one time in probably 2 years. I figured, “I’ll just keep going until I run a 5k.” Soon enough, about 33 minutes and 21 seconds later, I had ran my very own 5k (even though you can see that I clearly stopped running before the 30 minute interval). In shorts and a t-shirt. Outside. On January 30th. In Nebraska. Thanks for the help, Andrew W.K.

30 January 2012 ·

• Tags
• Andrew W.K.
• Nebraska
• adidas
• better life
• endurance for life
• miCoach
• running
• I feel good