Tag: exercise

Three Hours to Go

Three hours left in the work week.

180 minutes.

10800 seconds.

It’s a long weekend for me too. The company I work for puts a cap on how much personal time you can accrue and as your bank builds up you have to take time off to stay below the cap. It’s not as bad as the Boston Bruins salary cap woes right now, but it will get there if I don’t use time regularly. Because of that, I took two days off next week. Monday and Tuesday. That all means that ol’ Robbie has himself a four day weekend coming up.

Sadly, Jen was not able to take the two days off too, so that means I am on my own for the second half of my super long weekend. That means there will be lots of personal creative project type stuff. I checked the weather at the ocean for the next few days and both Sunday and Monday are looking like good candidates for sunrise photos. At least one of those mornings will be Photography Day where I will grab some sunrise at the beach and then hit a few places on the way home. Film and Digital. Bank on it (weather permitting).

There will also be a lot of music. As much as I can stomach. I plan on making gigantic progress on the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. That includes guitar tracking, vocal tracking in the car (because I have a weird mental block that won’t let me sing when people can hear me unless I am playing guitar with a very loud band), and mixing songs as I finish recording them.

There will also be progress on the current Doctor Who series binge watches. I finished season one of the original show this morning, and I am almost done with season four of the current show. So very many more seasons of each show to go. Progress will be made. I fully expect to move from the 10th doctor to the 11th doctor in the new show but I expect to still be on the first doctor in the old show. Like I said… so much Who to watch.

I am also thinking that I will be back on the couch to 5k wagon next week. It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped. I want to get back into it, even though I am very doubtful I will ever run that mythical 5k. It’s still a goal, I just don’t know if it’s an achievable goal for me.

I have two days off booked in August too. They are for a weekend trip to Maine for a wedding. Bellana will be joining us for that and I expect lots of photos from Acadia National Park near Bar Harbor. Again, film and digital. That include Cadillac Mountain, which is the first spot in the continental United States that sees the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. It would require a SUPER early wake up to see, but I want very much to see it and photograph it. Now that I think of it, I should replace my broken tripod before we leave for that trip. The broken guy is good enough for this weekend, but for Cadillac Mountain? I’m going to need something that works. I’ll take care of it.

Okay, my late lunch break is over now. Time to get back to work and finish off this work week on a high note.

Morning Fail

Guess what I didn’t get to this morning before work.

323/365
323/365

I managed to finish my daily exercise, watch this week’s new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (excellent!), and finish the Library episode of Doctor Who that I started last night but fell asleep during the second episode.

No music though, so the morning goes down in the books as a failure.

Pick Up the Dumpster, Please

We rented a dumpster for the weekend. I had a ton of crap in the yard that needed to be dumped, and a ton of crap in the cellar that also needed to be dumped. Renting a small dumpster is what we do when we find ourselves in a situation like this.

They delivered it on Friday. I worked off and on filling it up on Friday through Sunday. They are supposed to pick it up today. The window they gave us is 9:00am to 5:00pm. That window is going to close in less than an hour (the clock says it’s 4:13 right now).

What the heck are they waiting for? Come and get the damn dumpster. I want to put our cars back into the driveway. They’ve been parked on the street since Friday morning. I know it’s been raining heavily all day, but should that stop the pickup? I wouldn’t think so. Let’s get this done, shall we?

Subject change

It’s been almost a week since I did a couch to 5k run. I am not sure when I am going to get back to it. I will get back to it, that’s a promise, I just don’t know when. I also think I am going to redo the entire last week. Instead of picking up where I left off, week three, workout two, I am going to start at week two, workout one. I feel like I need to do some rebuilding. I still want to finish this process. I just don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to get there. We’ll see.

Subject change

I just want to go out and take pictures of stuff. Film, digital, whatever. I want to do it first thing in the morning when the sun is out. For almost the entire month of June and so far in July there have been few if any mornings with sunshine. It’s infuriating and utterly depressing. Why? I can’t remember the last sunny weekend morning. The forecast for this coming weekend is already saying cloudy and rainy. It’s hard to do this shit on a weekday, but even those are always cloudy and rainy. This Spring was the Spring of suck, and the Summer is becoming the Summer of suck. I just want to scream.

At least I can fill the creative void with some music. I just don’t want to. I want to split the difference. Music and photos together, not one or the other. Blah!

Feeling Like a Failure Today

I made the decision last night before going to bed. I was going to sleep a little late and skip today’s running. I just knew I didn’t have a 30 minute trot around the neighborhood in me. My legs were still sore from almost 48 hours before, I was stone dead tired all day yesterday, I just wanted to wake up an hour or so late and go down cellar and watch Star Trek Strange New Worlds and just not worry about running. I did the running in place thing (pronounced yogging) instead so my exercise ring is closed.

So in other words, I feel like a total failure today. That’s nice.

Where do we go from here? I am not sure. I should do a run tomorrow and get myself back on track. Instead, I might give myself another day and then get back to it on Saturday. I am also considering going back two trainings and instead of doing week three, run two, I would do week two, run three. Week three, run one kicked my ass so thoroughly I feel like I need to build back up to it and then try it again. We’ll see.

I don’t think I am ready to quit yet. I ain’t no quitter, but… maybe in a few days I will be. I don’t know. We will have to wait and see how complete a failure I end up being.

Week Three, Run One

Each time I got out for a run it is exponentially worse than all the times before combined. This morning was no different. To be blunt, that fucking sucked.

One minute walking followed by one minute running, repeated 15 times. Adding in a little cool down walk at the end where the coach lady wouldn’t shut the hell up, it worked out to 31 minutes and 17 seconds and a total of 2.29 miles burning 244 calories.

I was never feeling good about any of it at any point but it wasn’t until maybe the sixth repeat that I started feeling in really rough shape. After repeat number nine I was strongly considering just stopping and going home. After 12 I just said the hell with it and finished. The next run will be Thursday and it will be the same as today. I am wondering if I should repeat it a time or two more after that before moving on to the next thing. I wonder if building up a little extra stamina might be a good idea. We will see how I feel on Saturday when we get to the scheduled end of week three.

Until Thursday’s run then, I think I am going to sit on the couch and hope my legs start working again. I’m not feeling terribly optimistic about that just now.

Two Weeks Down

Wow, did that ever suck.

Today marked the third workout of the second week of the Runkeeper app’s My First 5K training. Each of the three trainings this week, and the last one from week one too, have found me increasingly convinced that I am not going to be able to finish this program. I know the whole point of this is to be challenging and to increase my endurance and all of that fun stuff, but each time I go outside and for one of these walks/runs I am questioning my sanity more and more.

Today was 10 rounds of walking for two minutes and running for one. I made it through six before I had any real difficulty, but I think it was after three that I started to doubt whether or not I was going to be able to finish. Eventually I got far enough along that I knew I would finish today but the doubt transfered to whether or not I would be able to finish the next run, or the one after that.

Is my endurance and stamina increasing? Yes. Absolutely. When I think ahead to the next run knowing that the format will change to one minute of walking followed by one minute of running repeated 15 times, do I feel like my endurance and stamina have increased enough that I can pull the next workout off? No. Not even a little bit.

This could just be me being a pessimist, but I really cannot see me being able to run 3.1 miles at a time without stopping. It just feels like an impossible ask. Am I saying that come Tuesday morning when it is time for me to go outside and try week three run one I am going to say no thank you? No, I don’t think I am there yet. I don’t think I am quitting. I just think that I can see myself quitting at some point in the near future. Maybe I’ll surprise myself but… maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll come up with something else.

We’ll see.

Week Two, Run Two

Two minutes walking, one minute running, repeat eight times. I cannot express how much that sucked. It was different than two days ago, somehow. It seemed tolerable until the last two rounds on Wednesday. Today it got harder much earlier, but at the end I don’t think it felt as tough as it did at the end last time. I’m not really sure how to describe it.

I took a slightly different route this time. Instead of just going around the circle I went down the road a ways. My map looks different and that’s something, at least. The next run will be on Sunday and that will be two minutes walking, one minute running, repeated 10 times. That is going to suck out loud.

I knew this was going to be a tough challenge, but it’s difficult enough that I would not be surprised if I abandon this little quest at some point. I don’t know if I have running a 5k in me. I am not ready to give up, I just won’t be upset with myself if I get further along in this process and come to the conclusion that I am just not a runner.

Maybe if that happens I’ll take up bike riding. Probably not.

When I got back to the house, this scene was waiting for me.

How much is that kitty in the window? Meow Meow

Screwy Day

Let’s recap all of the things that have been weird today…

  • Crappy night’s sleep (less than six hours total)
  • Difficult exercise routine that legitimately kicked my ass
  • Super thirsty all morning, finished 75% (48 of 64 ounces) of my water goal before I even left for work
  • Migraine while driving. Boy did that ever suck
  • Lingering foggy brain to start the work day. Didn’t cause any issues but was very unpleasant.
  • Upset stomach while driving between office buildings. It had been three hours since I’d eaten anything so I had a snack. I probably had too much of a snack. I brought this up to the doctor yesterday (not being able to tell if I am hungry or sick). Her response was (paraphrasing), it’s been three hours since you ate so it makes sense that you’re just hungry
  • Destroyed my water goal before lunch and nearly hit my protein goal as well but felt uncomfortably full before I could actually finish eating and therefore still slightly under the goal
  • Unhappy stomach after lunch including really bad gas, which is especially rough given that I am in the office surrounded by other people
  • Still super thirsty. Water goal is 64 ounces. I have had 72 and will probably be close to 100 by the time I leave work two hours from now. This happened two days ago after a morning run as well. I mentioned it to my doctor yesterday and her response was (paraphrasing), yeah that makes sense. So not something to worry about, just something new

All in all, none of this is bad. None of it is even all that unusual, it’s just that all of them hitting at about the same time… Yeah, what a day, right? Right.

The Streak is Over and What About Tomorrow?

My guitar playing streak is over. I lost count of how many days in a row I played for at least a few minutes. It was almost three weeks, I think. I failed to get any playing in yesterday. Oh well.

This morning before leaving for the doctors appointment I was able to get some work done though. Jen is in the office today so I had some quiet time in the house alone and I used it to record some vocals. I put them onto the 10th and final June song and two more May songs. I think I have six May songs still waiting for lyrics and vocals. I have decided to extend the deadline for the May songs to July 3rd. I am not extending the deadline for the June songs. Those need to be wrapped up by Friday. I only have one guitar part to add and then mix the final five and that’s it. No problem, he said with false confidence that probably wasn’t really that false.

I thought I was going to get back onto the photography bus today. Film, to be specific. As I was getting my shit together to go to the doctors appointment I looked out the window and saw sun gleaming into the back yard. Right. I grabbed Dad’s camera. I didn’t know where I was going to go after the appointment, but I was going somewhere. Then when I actually got outside and got in the car, the sky was clouded over and ugly and sad. Oh well. The day is coming. It’s summer now. Film photography. Digital photography. All over the place in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire and maybe even more places than that. I want Boston. I want light houses. I want to go shootin’. Ideally I want to go shootin’ with other folks, but if I have to do it alone at the crack of dawn then that’s what I am going to do. You heard it here first, folks.

What should I do tomorrow? Tomorrow is my work from the office day. I will start the day in Foxborough, which is about a million and a half miles away from my house. I will need to be on the road by 7:30am.

Should I try to get my couch to 5k training in? Tomorrow is the day that it should happen, as I am trying to do this every other day, but I was planning on pushing it off until the day after. If I get up at 5:00am and get right the hell out the door and start, then I should be done by 5:30. That would give me more than enough time to do everything I want to do, including recover from the exercise and watch episode two of Marvel’s Secret Invasion.

I am undecided. If I am out of bed by, let’s say, 5:05am then I will do it. Tomorrow’s plan is to switch from walk for three minutes and run for one minute, repeating eight times to walk for two minutes and run for one minute, repeated eight times. I fully expect my legs to fall off. It’s going to be freakin’ brutal, but it should also take less time than yesterday did. We’ll see.

Okay. That’s enough for now. Back to work, Robert.