onward

I continue. Chess is on a week off, although i took a few days off myself from sleeping through alarms. I hiked with Sam last monday, hiked a couple more times during the week, but was not as on top of it as i might have been. Continued to maintain my log, watch my intake, and drink my water. Worked Caprica for two hours on Friday and found it was much, much easier since getting my ass moving; i could run after her without being a total lummox. The battery in the digital scale died, so that's my excuse for not weighing, but the smaller size pants are getting better in terms of fit. Bought more fruit. Trying not to despise someone who "done me wrong."

Saturday at Limekiln. I need to update my ipod list.

July 1: The Rude Painter

Today i am supposed to be done with the dissertation and filing it with the ruler lady at UCLA. I am not done and it's not happening. It's well under way, but i did not make the deadline. I took the time off to interview for jobs that were a foregone conclusion (by coincidence, the last time the hire was a foregone conclusion, one candidate threatened to sue because this was a tainted process and this was corrupt and bad. Oddly enough, when he was the foregone conclusion, this was not his opinion. hmm.) and got my hopes up, only to end up feeling completely useless, filing for unemployment, and generally alternating between moping, despair and panic.

What i HAVE been doing right is continuing this torturous bootcamp, even if i miss the occasional day at 6 am in favor of hiking later in the day. And yet, as i was telling sam yesterday, the scale is just a digital version of the devil's abacus. it lies. keeping track of calories and food intake (yay, journaling) on the iphone, including the workouts, which would seem to have me some days taking in less calories than i've expended; and yet, per the satan scale, in one day i gained six pounds. i think not. "muscle weighs more than fat," they say. "you drank a lot of water." "it's close to your cycle." All valid points. but we still judge by that number. surely emptying my brain must dump some pounds as i write this chapter!

Today: Chuck's "easy" day. Walked (and sometimes jogged) 1.5 miles, ab work ("every day is ab day!"), high steps (another way to butt blast). Keep in mind that we got there at 6 am. A sign was posted "area closed, filming today." No one there. So we went in and did our work. One lone painter, apparently thinking that painting the rails with primer constitutes the creative endeavors of the Sistine Chapel, was getting antsy although he had plenty more work and rails to do beyond where we were. At the end, when it was apparently safe to confront us, watching us pack up, came over, brusquely, "yes, yes, please pick up your things and go, i have to paint!" Um, jeez, Michelangelo, so sorry to interrupt your "process." DID I MENTION IT'S A STADIUM??? No soup for you!

Dogs are biting at each other like hannibal lechter after some fava beans. Back to peasant land tenure in the 17th century.

Back on it -- June 28

Stopped my moping and got back to work with CHESS. I was not as hard-core as sam and rebekah, but it beats sleeping in. For some reason, jumping jacks have become my nemesis. Rebekah suggests that this is because as a cow, it is high impact for me (she didn't phrase it that way). Still, jogging is less heinous for me than jumping jacks. I must work at these. The stairs were not as hellish as they've been.

a shopping run at the heinous evil walmart this weekend yielded some sports bras that may actually keep the girls in place, relatively speaking; some hand weights; a yoga mat; and OH YEAH, some jeans-shorts (i.e., no elastic, no stretchy, actually zipping up) in a SIZE SMALLER. which i was getting to anyway, but putting those on with ease, zipping up without sucking it in, and finding no muffin top was a little bit of joyous satisfaction.

Yay for watermelon and drinking the full 8 glasses of water.

June 22

"High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is about mixing high intensity bursts of exercise with moderate intensity recovery periods. It’s brutal but has incredible advantages. It’s the quickest way to get in fit, lose fat and supercharge for sports performance." http://www.intervaltraining.net/

The idea is to work like hell for 30-40 seconds, rest for 5-10, work like hell for 50-60 seconds, rest, etc. Repetitions and increased intensity burn more fat that, say, just elevating your heart rate for a sustained period.

Took it easy for a few days while i did interviewing fun - don't want to walk into job interviews crippled by muscle cramps, a little hard to explain. Got back into reduced mode by hiking with the dogs at Aliso Canyon and Limekiln -- Limekiln being not so easy, but pretty enough. Continuing my stuff at home, in spite of not going to CHESS, but continuing to cheer on for sam and rebekah. Recruited Caroline as well.

So back in the saddle today (but not tomorrow, fingers crossed, invoking mojo), bright and eary at 6 freaking AM! it's worth it to get to work while it's cool, come home, relax a bit and you're still in time to start the day. Stairs, windsprints, "suicides," abs, arms and some weight work. Here's the fun, fun stairs. And for comparison's sake, here's a big, fat photo of now, and will add when less. It has kicked up the metabolism significantly, and i notice that i am more reticent to eat crap foods when i've worked that hard to burn off previous crap foods. Unfortunate, as of today i'm out of fresh fruit, so i'm going to have to take my misanthropic self out among the mouth-breathing public and get some stuff at the market. not that there's junk food in the house but it's good to have clean options around.

Onward. Endure.

The stairs from hell

Day 3 but posted late
With all due respect, Led Zepplin has it wrong. Heaven had very little to do with it today. Dragged my aching quads out for more circuit training. New! Bonus! Fun! Abdominal core strengthening. Lunge, squats, squats with weights, wind sprints, climbing stairs, ab exercises with medicine ball, and my new non-favorite, "crawlies." Stretching your legs out with your arms bracing yourself on the stadium bench, you take one step with hand and leg, move the other one down. I thought that looked pretty do-able. After half the bench, i decided i liked climbing those 44 steep stadium stairs to the top better. All six times. Oddly, i find that going down the stairs with my cramped up leg muscles was much worse than climbing.

"I lost 20 pounds...How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the fuck you think, son? I exercised." Sam Halperin posted on shitmydadsays.com

Today was a hike in Aliso Canyon on what Sam calls "the bunny trail." (there are a lot of bunnies in the canyon, hopefully hiding away from the hawks and owls). It was a mercy day, a break from "brutal" training yesterday, which will be an every-other-day kind of fun. I also went out yesterday with Caprica and herded for about an hour...walking backwards at a rapid pace is more difficult than you think, especially if you're an oaf like me. So felt very righteous...until i began to feel the effects of yesterday's work. ow. But slept great last night, and wasn't so happy to hear the alarm at 6 this morning. But that's the better part of working out with friends, you feel a responsibility to show up. The canyon was beautiful, just off Rinaldi and about two minutes in you'd never believe you were right off the freeway. After a few minutes' walking, i warmed up enough not to notice so much of yesterday's sore quads and began to enjoy the surroundings. Came out of it a nasty mess, a little incident with a lost cat, and stopped for coffee at sbux on the way home, only to run into a former student/barista when i was sweat-drenched and red-faced. Nobody ever runs into you when you're nicely dressed and made up, y'know? A good day!

Day One

Been working on the fitness thing for almost a year now and have really hit a wall for the last month and a half. Started working out in earnest with Samantha and Chuck. Woke up at 6 am this morning actually looking forward to exercise. wow. I must be ready! We started at Pierce stadium with interval training for 45 min. It was....um, sorry chuck....grueling. I lunged, i lifted, stretched, ran windsprints and other things that i no longer recall, along with walking the track (starting at a rapid pace, not so rapid by the time i finished) for about a mile. Quads and glutes are wicked sore now. And true to prediction, it was not pretty. All chins and a color matching my shirt. (i don't normally look this icky, but i'm figuring visuals will be inspirational to keep going). Now back to the monks and later to work the dogs.