TheDelographer

I'd like to add something new to my repertoire of physical activities, so I think I'll take at least one rec class at UCSD this coming quarter. So let's do a poll! My thoughts thus far: Muay Thai seems cool and would be very new to me, Tango is a terribly romantic and fun looking dance and possibly a good way to meet women, gymnastics could help me in my quest to add handstand pushups and muscle ups to my workouts but might require the awkwardness of being the only guy in the class, and sand volleyball is just fun.


Poll #1450328
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Which rec class should I take?

I've mentioned before that I expected that this economic crisis would fuel interest in Ayn Rand. Sure enough, The Ayn Rand Center reports that "[s]ales of Ayn Rand’s 'Atlas Shrugged' have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008," which itself was a record year.

Hat tip: Diana Hsieh

Upcoming post: Comments on Greg Glassman's revolutionary definitions of health and fitness (probably won't get a chance to write up my thoughts until the end of the quarter)

I've experimented a few times with avocadoes in smoothies, and I think I've finally hit upon the perfect combination:

1 banana
1 avocado
1 teaspoon coconut oil
8-12 oz whole milk

BLEND

Five rounds:
Walking lunges, 10 reps, 30 lb dumbbell overhead
Burpees, 21 reps
(ground was somewhat uneven)

Time: 19:30

I still want to go out with my Vibram FiveFingers a few more times before commenting on them too much. My initial impressions, though, are positive, in that they are as close to barefoot running as I was hoping they would be. Also, they do a good job of forcing me to run properly. If I land on my heels, or if I smash my feet into the ground, it does not feel good at all. But I also seem to have a better awareness of what I'm doing with my feet when I'm wearing them, so they're mostly comfortable enough. On the other hand, running on concrete feels, well, like running on concrete. And if I step on a pebble, I feel the pebble and there's even a hint of pain--just a hint. I think that's pretty cool.

Running on grass was perfect. Since I go out running at night, the grass is very wet. A little moisture gets to my feet, but nothing to complain about.

And on that note, tonight I did the following:
Run 800 meters
Rest 1 minute
Sprint 100 meters
Rest 1 minute
Sprint 100 meters
Rest 1 minute
Sprint 100 meters
Rest 1 minute
Run 800 meters

I didn't time the sprints, but I was going fast enough to scare the dogs that were being walked in the park. One of them started to chase me. I lived.

Lynne - bodyweight benchpress, pullups - 5 rounds for max reps

Warmup: dips, pullups, squats (I had planned to do a different workout using the squat rack, which was in use; otherwise I wouldn't have done pullups during warmup.)
Round 1: 2 X 185 bp; 10 pullups
Round 2: 4 X 175 bp; 7 pullups
Round 3: 4 X 175 bp; 7 pullups
Round 4: 3 X 175 bp; 7 pullups
Round 5: 2 X 165 bp; 6 pullups

The 185 benchpress is a new PR! The pullups were all kipping pullups.

And once again school has eaten my life.

There's Dollhouse to look forward to. Joss Whedon's new show premiers in just about two and a half weeks on Feb 13.

I think I might start posting my workout numbers here, just to post them somewhere. I had made a place in my personal journal for that info, but I don't seem to record it there because it just seems like too much information. So let's give that a start.

Workout - 1/25/09

Deadlift 1-1-1-1-1-1-1
205 - 245 - 265 - 275 - 275 - 265 - 265

New PR on the deadlift - 275 lbs!

Yesterday I discovered the greatest little program, Microsoft SyncToy. When I'm at home, you see, I like to use my desktop computer, but I also do a lot of work away from home and hence have a lot of material on my notebook computer. After a long period of time, I was left with a confusing lack of organization. Microsoft SyncToy lets you easily sync two computers over a wireless connection. Now I've set up three folders on each computer to be mirror images of each other: my documents folder, my Microsoft OneNote folder that contains all of my notes and many other documents, and my EndNote library (which contains all of my bibliographic information). The program is working perfectly. If you have similar needs, I highly recommend it.

One thing to watch out for. If I take notes on one computer and then, before syncing, take notes in the same OneNote notebook on the other computer, then I presume I would lose the notes from the first computer (since the program would just transfer the more recent version from computer 2 to computer 1).

Today I went running to the beach, and then on the beach. This is such a beautiful place; it's a pity I have so little time to enjoy it.

Mark Rippetoe is well-known in the crossfit community as the author of Starting Strength. He is also both wise and hilarious. Here are some gems:

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general."

On drinking not 1, but 2 gallons of milk per day:
"But you would be shitting primarily cheese. Are you ready for this?"

"Now I also know that you're supposed to 'listen to your body', but my brain says 'don't be a pussy, and just lift the fucking weights', and that's just what I do."

"The bulk/cut approach holds that you can either add muscle or lose bodyfat, and that all training should be concerned with one or the other. This assumes that aesthetics is the criterion by which progress is measured, that pictures therefore tell the story, and that picture magazines can be the arbiters of success. This type of thinking completely ignores the performance aspects of training, and performance is much more easily and rapidly influenced. Rapid, quantifiable progress keeps motivation high, much higher than waiting for a six-pack that may or may not show up."

On the ethics of meat eating:
"Okay, have you ever been around chickens? They are stupid, uncooperative, inconvenient, ill-tempered creatures. They get what they deserve. Fuck chickens."

"Soy milk is essentially Coffee-Mate laced with estrogen, and is best left to vegans and other socialist vegetarian types that can't bring themselves to eat the completely natural-for-humans flesh of our friends the Animals but who have no trouble with slaughtering trillions of our other friends the Plants and processing -- in gigantic factories run by multinational corporations with shareholders that eat meat themselves -- very selectively chosen components of their poor little bodies into gooey shit that humans have never had an opportunity to adapt to digesting. Why, eating such material, with its high levels of isoflavones, touted by gynecologists as tantamount to Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT), will make you grow boobs, and this will screw up the clean lines of this fine young man's Under Armor. I recommend against it."

Since I've switched over happily to their raw milk from grass-fed cows (raw meaning not pasteurized and not homogenized), I decided to pick up and try some Organic Pastures Raw Butter today. I haven't used butter at home in ages. I haven't done much baking, I don't put it on toast on those rare occasions when I eat toast, and I've been opting for oils like olive oil and coconut oil in my cooking. A little more variety in my diet is a good thing, though, so along comes raw butter.

Well, could raw butter possibly be better than ordinary butter?

It's hard to say. For one thing, it's unsalted, so my taste test straight out of the tub was indecisive. I think I noticed some of the grassy taste of the milk in there, but it's tough to say. No huge difference, in any case. Then I used the butter in some of my cooking later on. The thing is, though, that the butter is obviously no longer raw when it is used this way. It's still worth using this as opposed to other butter, in my view, because of the grass-fed diet, so that it may win in the category of nutrition, but when all is said and done, raw butter doesn't win in the category of taste.