Growth and Rebirth

Been quite a while since I've posted anything in this space. Had some thoughts on the run this weekend that it might be time to change that a little.

So Sunday morning started as my Sundays often do with a run. This Sunday saw me, again as I often do, climbing the hill north of the apartment which has Talliesin West, fancy house made by Frank Lloyd Wright. As I was running up and down the hill in the morning air I had some thoughts. I am not the man I once was, nor am I the man I thought I would be. I'm better.

Years ago I participated in a charity walk up South Mountain for cancer research, a noble cause and something I'm glad I did. Someone affiliated with our group ran up the mountain that day and I remember saying to him after the fact, by way of congratulation, "I could never do that". For the longest time I thought that was true. That there were some things that I just wasn't able to do because that's not who I was. I'm happy to say that I've managed to prove me wrong. I can do that. While I've not done that specific event or run I've done that. I've run a half marathon, two of them even, I managed to just run 14 miles on Sunday because I could (and I almost certainly could have gone further had I bothered to bring any water). I've done things I literally used to think I'd never be able to do. I'm a better me than I used to think was possible.

I've realized through my life experiences that many of the limits that I've taken without question in my life were self imposed. Things I never thought I'd do, foods I didn't like, things that didn't interest me. Many of them were only foreign to me because I'd either decided I wanted them to be or just decided that's the way things where. It's only when I've begun to question those notions of what my limits are, what things I've never tried might be fun or tasty or possible, that I've been able to find my way past my assumptions into unexplored and amazing territory.

While up on the mountain as it were I was struck with some inspiration. Not just about the running, which I do because I love it regardless of how beneficial it may or may not be to my overall health and fitness, but also about some goals and some plans for achieving them regarding my general training. Firstly I came back reinvigorated with a desire to work on gymnastics/bodyweight skills as a way of improving not only my strength but my body awareness and my flexibility. As a result, and most likely with some help from the wonderful nerds over at NerdFitness I'm gonna be putting together a new training plan, and you all know how much I love designing training plans. So far I'm thinking 2 parts pushing, 2 parts pulling, and 1-2 parts legs done about 3 times a week with the other days being filled with some skill work and some core work. That plus my running should help give me a decent base of fitness to enable me to accomplish most things that get in my way.

So with a general format for a training plan in mind what the hell are my long term goals? Well thanks for asking! Firstly a running goal, I'm gonna finish a marathon, and beyond that I'd really like to try and run a sub-3:00 marathon at some point. That's a really long term goal though so for now I'm gonna set my goal as finish and my not-goal as do it under 4:30. Really that's my only specific running goal and I'm ok with that for now. Eventually it'll probably expand to include a HM PR shooting for 1:55 or something but that won't be happening for a while yet.

That leaves me with some strength goals next. I'd really like to be able to do a muscle-up for a couple reasons. First it's a really impressive looking skill and being able to do one is therefore pretty sweet. Secondly, and a little more helpfully, it would actually come in handy for me at work from time to time to be able to grab a platform edge over my head and be able to lift myself up onto it. It's also a skillset that should transfer to rock climbing which is something I'd like to get into doing more often because it's always been fun when I've done it in the past. Second strength skill I'd like to master is the pistol squat and it's close cousin the weighted pistol. I'm already making some really great progress on this front and should hopefully be there within the fairly near future. The increased leg strength seems already to have helped my running slightly and I'm hoping that the practice will help further in injury proofing my body if not in increasing my speed or endurance. The third strength related skillset I'd like to master is back related. I'd like to be able to go from a standing position into a bridge and back to standing (also from the bridge into a handstand would be nice but that's a separate goal path). Again I'm making some pretty good progress already just need to focus in a bit on it. My work on this one over the past months seems already to have helped with some back pain I was having and not unlike the muscle-up this skill is a neat party trick. When people see me press up into a bridge from the floor it's pretty impressive so I'd imagine it's only more so to be able to get there from a standing position. Being a cool-looking skill is a good reason to make something a goal right?

So there's a brief list of goals for the next little while and some ideas about how my training might look. It's not completed nor is it a perfect plan but it's something and it's something I like and that I can work toward, and more importantly inform my training. So there you have it, a revelation from the mountain top about the path that has led me to be the me that I am, and which will lead that me to be the me I can become.

Until next time, be the you you want to be especially if it's a you you never thought possible.

Changes

So it's been another rather long gap between posts, and this one is where I announce some changes going on over here.

As some of you who follow me on twitter may have seen/heard I'm currently working through a Whole30 challenge. This limits my food choices to things which are health promoting and eliminates things which are not health promoting. That's a pretty big simplification but it's all the detail I feel like getting into here, if you want more feel free to look into the information available at the website of the challenge authors, Whole30.

As part of it I'm abstaining from weighing myself for the duration of the challenge, in using it as an opportunity to stop tracking most of the other things I have been tracking for so long, body fat, mood, calories, water, sweat rate while running, body temperature, heart rate while running, all of these things are going out the window for at least 30 days, possibly longer. The only things I'm still tracking are my daily mileage for walking and running, my workouts, my sleep, and my resting heart rate (and that's not really being logged so much as measured to protect against the mild chance of overtraining as I ramp things up toward my half marathon on Labor Day Weekend).

At the start of the challenge I was sitting at around 205 pounds and a not terrible body fat percentage, and there is good chance the challenge will improve that, but that's not the point. The point is about becoming healthier in my life, my relationship with food, and with my body. So far I'm doing alright with it and hoping to continue to do so. While I'm still highly interested in improving myself and hopefully providing a useful template for others I'm not sure what avenue that will take going forward and what it will look like. I'm going to continue working to improve myself and offer advice and well researched opinions to anyone who seeks them.

In the meantime, take steps today to be the version of you you wish was staring back at your from the mirror. If you want to lose weight, do something to make it happen, if you wish you were stronger, go lift something heavy, if you want to be faster, go run faster. If what you've been doing isn't working try something else and see if maybe it does. Take matters into your own hands and make sure that you do something today, right now, to make yourself into what you wish to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 84)

Sunday once again and time for an update.

Simple week this week, work continued along it's chosen path, my diet choices were slightly less good than they might have been but still good overall. So what are the lessons this week showed me?

Firstly, my flaxseed test has been going better than expected. By Wednesday my lower back pain, which has bothered me for large portions of the past year plus, has disappeared almost completely. Previously it had improved with changes in my work/non-work split, which is as much as I can tell related to how much time I spend in regular shoes vs barefoot/vibrams, and when I had switched mattresses to one both bigger and made of memory foam. This is the first time I can recall that my back pain cleared up so completely. I attribute it to the flaxseed oil, because the flaxseed is high in Omega-3s which help reduce systemic inflammation, which is likely one of the root causes of my backpain. Since the only major change I made to my diet in the past week was the introduction of the flaxseed I think it's safe to say that is highly likely to be a major contribution. In addition to that my gums have improved in color and tenderness, and my toe is both less swollen and in less pain. It's enough that I'm going to continue with the flaxseed for the foreseeable future.

The other thing that I've decided this week is that I need to focus more on my speedwork if I'm going to get to my goals for my race in January. As a result my training for my long runs is going to shift, instead of being strictly based on mileage I'm going to be working on increasing my speed and distance in tandem each week until I hit my target pace, and then focus on making sure I get where I need to be in terms of distance. Which is not to say that I am in doubt about my ability to complete the distance, the doubt is that I can finish it in a time that I'm not ashamed of. That and the continuation of my weight training are the goals for my fitness for the near term. Long term I'm hoping strongly to be able to get back to doing some martial arts in the future, we'll have to see what I can find for that though.

So, what does the scale have to say this week? 208, same as last week. Staying nice and steady, and I'm ok with that. I'm feeling better now than I have in a very long time, and that's the most important thing. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 70)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.

Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.

This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.

Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.

So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 60)

Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.

My diet shift has been going well, and I'm feeling better. I'm looking better, feeling fitter, and this weeks run included the best pace I've managed to achieve since I started tracking runs back in October.

Not much to talk about this week, but let's see what ends up on the  page shall we? Firstly, in health as much as in any area of life, small changes are often the most useful ones. Small changes build up and snowball into much bigger changes, and the momentum can take you to amazing places. It's important to put things into perspective when trying to make life changes, small changes are a lot easier to make and stick to. Making small changes, either together or in series, is much easier than making a big change. Each little change will put you closer to where you want to be, and help you to get the momentum to make more changes, and eventually you will get to places you never thought you could reach.

Second thing I want to talk about today is the importance of data. Changes may help you make improvements, but you'll have a hard time pinning down the degree of your improvement and figuring out what is the most effective change you've made if you don't collect and analyze relevant data. For me right now I've been trying to manage my weight, and my body fat. To collect data for that I needed a digital scale, and a caliper. If I was trying to track my blood glucose I'd need a glucometer, for heart statistics I'd need a heart rate monitor. I'm bringing this up for multiple reasons, firstly I'm likely going to expand the data that I'm collecting about myself to see what I can find, secondly it's important to remember that if you want to find what works best you need the data and the initiative to figure out what best means and how to accomplish it.

So, do the numbers say this week? 201 up a pound from last week, but I'm not worried, my body fat is moving in a direction I like and so everything is looking pretty good. So until next week, be the person you want to be, and consider tracking some data to prove it.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 59)

Sunday again, so here I am with another post.

This week my weigh-ins have fluctuated up and down, and I'll be interested to see where it goes.

This week, I found myself without a clear idea of what I wanted to use to fill this space until around Friday afternoon, and what I was left with was more a feeling that I should share a couple things here to get them out there.

Firstly, some plans for what I want to do with my diet in the future. January's experiment left me feeling great, with more energy and fewer general complaints than I can recall having had at any point in the past. Since switching back to a more standard diet I find myself with frequent low-grade headaches, especially following meals, less energy, and more instances where I feel a powerful hunger rather than just a modest hunger. Having switched back, I still feel better than I did before, but I think that was mostly due to the body recomposition that I was able to achieve while I was working in that experiment; however I'm experiencing the headaches, I'm more tired, and I get the feeling that I'm missing something. It leaves me with the feeling that I should seriously consider switching back to the primal plan long term. So I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and keep at least 75% primal going forward, and see how that works out for me. If I notice the symptoms to be connected as I suspect I will try and increase that percentage as time goes by and see where I end up. Sure, it may seem restrictive to some, but it's easier than you might think, and the percentages give me the flexibility to "forage" off of menus when I go out to eat, or make adjustments on the fly and not have to feel guilty about it.

On a related note, I think at some point in the near future I want to try 2 weeks of primal eating with some restriction on my protein, I want to see if I can make it two weeks as a pescetarian to see how the other half lives as it were. My hope there would be to come away from the experiment, much as I did from my primal experiment, with a better understanding of the difficulty faced by those who are either forced or have chosen to live a life without certain things, and at the same time to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the foods I eat, in this case primarily the vegetables I eat and the importance of high quality produce to the flavor profile of a meal. After that, I have a somewhat more "fringe" plan for another two week stint at some point, 2 weeks as a strict carnivore. That one I want to try out partly to say I did, partly to better appreciate the simplicity that it provides, and partly because the results interest me from a human-hacking perspective and an anthropological perspective. So that's where my diet experiments are heading as time goes on.

I've also determined that I really need to have clear and delineated goals if I am to achieve anything in my human-hacking activities. To some degree I already knew this, "lose weight" is bad, "lose 5 pounds" is better, work out more is bad, work out 4 days a week is better, etc. But I have been reminded recently that if I am to achieve much of anything I really need to setup clear goals that I can monitor and track progress on if I am going to have any hope of getting anything meaningful done. As such, I'm going to be trying a bit harder to figure out appropriate quantifiable goals that I can use as stepping stones to my overall goals.

Well, that's about all the general stuff I have to share right now, so on to the numbers for this week. 200, up .5 from last week. Change I can live with, even if I am going to be working on keeping it in check a little bit better going forward. So here's to the future, and whatever it holds. No matter what you may be now, always go out of your way to be the you you want to be.

Some observations from College

I've been pondering over writing this post for a while now, and have only finally gotten the time to actually put it together and put it up here, enjoy.

The longer I've been here at college the more I feel like I haven't learned anything in my classes. I'm here in my fourth year now, and a large fraction of my time in classes is spent thinking things like "I know this already I learned it in," some other class from my first year or two here, or wondering how other people in the class tie their shoes at night, let alone how they have managed to get into an upper level class without grasping things like parsing English sentences.

Recently when I've found myself lamenting that class is a waste of my time I've tried to ask myself what I have been getting out of college. I've found that "the least of learning is done in the classrooms" is really a very applicable statement to my experience here, so thanks go out to Thomas Merton for saying that so I could quote him.

One of the things I've been thinking over in relation to this post was the idea of making a series of posts about "things I learned from college". This may or may not come to pass, only time will tell. I can say with certainty however, that no matter how little I feel like I've actually learned from my classes, I've learned many things from being here at the University that I wouldn't have been able to find so easily had I been somewhere else.