This week, olympics and stupidity.

So, here’s a short recap of the last week excercise-wise. I’ve spent the precious few minutes I’ve had available this week working on Taekwon-do patterns preparing for the upcoming season that starts this monday. I might’ve not mentioned this to you guys but I’m the administrative officer and sometime instructor of a small TKD club, keeps me kinda busy through the winters I’ve also been biking and rowing a bit.

On another note, there’s been some hoola here about the flag-bearer of the Norwegian olympic team. Usually the flag is carried (at the opening ceremony) by a former gold medallist, but this time none of the active gold winners participated in the ceremony. Instead the powers-that-be selected weight lifter Ruth Kasirye to carry the flag. This did not go down well among certain “sports fans” Why, you ask? Well, you see Ruth happens to be born in Uganda, and came to Norway only ten years ago. Oh, and she’s not quite white-skinned, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it, eh? Wonder if the noise had been quite as loud if swimmer Sara Nordenstam had been selected. Sara has been a Norwegian citizen for just four years. Hmmm..

Whatever the case may be, I hope neither of these two were bothered by the stupidity. Ruth moved a lot of weight and finished seventh in her weight class while Sara picked up the bronze in the 200m breaststroke. Yay to both!

Coming up for air, again!

So I’m still “still here…”

Last few weeks have been… an experience. Steve used the word melancholic, which I think describes parts of the situation. There are some other, stronger words in that direction that could be used as well. Things are looking up though, and I hope to be back regularly pretty soon.

Enjoy the rest of summer!

So I’m still here!

An unfortunate collection of circumstances including, but not limited to vacation, extreme hot wweather, computer crashes, and the return of previously mentioned family issues have prevented me from posting here in the past week. I have been working out a bit though, and will try to recap later.

Keep on keepin’ on

Never mind the headache.

Picked the wod I was planning to do two days ago:

Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:

15 Push-ups
12 Ring dips
115 pound Push-press, 9 reps

Scaling and adapting to the local environment:

15 Push-ups
12 Bench dips
9 reps of 7kg DB OHS

Finishing with a lousy 3 rounds + 15 push-ups. My (lack of) arm strength really lets me down on these things. I had enough juice to keep going, but the arms refused to tag along. The last set of push-ups were more or less 15 sets of one.

Heading out for a bike ride to blow off som extra juice.

Crap-ola

So, two days of stress ending in immense headaches. Meh! I need to do something about my schedule.

Deadlift Donkey

Rx: Deadlift 5-5-5-5-5 reps

I haven’t done any deadlifts for years, so worked mainly on form with dumbbells (2×11kg) Weight was easy, but form was horrible, so did a few extra sets to try to get it right.

Oh, and yesterday was rest day. Apart from the two+hours with the lawnmower.

My sister celebrated her birthday today, so not exactly clean eating either

What do you make?

We interrupt our schedule for a brief message from the people who made us what we are:

Edit: Hah! Embed away

I hate running

Rx:

Four rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
50 Squats

Brandx puppy:

Run 400 meters
25 squats

Finished in just below 19 minutes (some flyfisher started talking to me just as I was finishing up so I missed the exact time.) Went real deep on the squats and had to split the last three sets. Running went surprisingly well, even though my knee didn’t like it all that much.

I’ve actually impressed myself three times today. First, I’ve eaten really well for the last two days, but this afternoon I had the wildest cravings for potato chips. I’ve broken down before, but this time I walked right past the crap shelves, 1-0 me. A bit later I had finished trying to rein in the kids and put them and the house to rest, I calculated I’d been at it straight for fourteen hours, surely I deserved a rest? I mean, up and about with a three-year-old all day could be called a decent workout all by itself, right? (It really is!) Still, I suited up and left the house on my bike to find a suitable place to do todays wod. 2-0 me! Now, for the third victory, did I mention I hate running? I actually finished 4×400m without slowing to a walk (or puking) For me this is a huge win, 3-0 and it’s a rout!

Did I ever tell you how much I hate running?

Oh, and PS! Cashew nuts, yum.

Numbers

The real stuff:

For time:
15 Handstand push-ups
1 L Pull-up
13 Handstand push-ups
3 L Pull-ups
11 Handstand push-ups
5 L Pull-ups
And so on down to 1-15.

Really scaled down wimp workout that I could manage:

Sub regular pushups for HSPU (well, for the first two sets, then down on one knee for two sets, and both knees for the rest,) then body rows for the L-pull-ups. Still toasted my arms. Right now I’d like a speech-to-text synthesizer to spare me from all this typing. Time 18:50

The body rows gave me a chance to try out my new toy. I played around with it a bit warming up with elevated push ups, assisted one-legged squats and (attempts) at dips. It does most everything that rings can do, and then some. I think I’ll be using it a lot.

At the end I just want to mention this post by forts. I know I’m a little late mentioning it, but I found it very well written, and in tune with my own sentiments. In that vein I’d like to point all five of my readers towards Kiva.org, every little effort helps no matter how small.

Slow going

Well, family issues taking more time than expected, as they always seem to do.

Have been feeling like crap the last few days, but forced myself on the rower tonight just to get out of the rut I seem to be in. Went 5×1k (or whatever it is my rower calls 1k) in 3:17-3:07-3:10-2:59-2:55 with my body fighting me all the way.

Started reading “Enter The Zone” last night. Still don’t think I’ll be going all out Zone, but a lot of interesting stuff! Also recieved my copy of “Starting Strength” today, just leafed through so far, it sits next in the queue after “Enter…” (oh, and “Sixty Days and Counting” by Kim Stanley Robinson)

More pull-ups spotted in the entertainment industry: Episode 2 of Bionic Woman, impressive even though the arm is supposed to be “bionic”.