Training update

You might have noticed a lack of training updates on the site since my half-marathon. There is a reason for this...A lack of training. I thought that after doing my half-marathon, doing the other half would be a peace of cake, a simple task of getting my mind to push my body onward for another hour and a half.

Maybe I can still do that. I could not today. I set out to do my marathon and stopped after 20%. My body was stiff and sore. There was no fluidity. It was a miserable experience pretty much from the get go. I spent a good deal of time yesterday either sitting at a Little League game or working in the yard so I was stiff, sore and sunburned from that.

I've been trying to figure out where I want to be going post-marathon. Unlike in my youth, say my cycling days, I have no desire to go beyond the marathon. It's a one-time thing. I'm not going to be shooting for 50K rows or 100K rows or faster marathons.

Despite my desire to shoot for endurance at the moment, I'm built for power. I want to continue to use my body in powerful ways while I still can. There's a reason why there are no sixty-year old professional athletes, Julio Franco excepted.

So I've been giving this a lot of thought, a lot more thought than action. My first objective is to take more action. Deliberate practice, working hard towards a set goal.

What will that goal (or goals be)? I need to lose weight. And frankly, it seems inane that I think I have the willpower to row a marathon but not lose weight. What are the benefits of eating cookies (as an example)? They taste good. But do they really? Especially packaged crap? No. And there are no benefits beyond the taste. They make me fat, they take years off my body, they contribute to disease. Pro/con list is very unbalanced. Reworking my eating is number one on the goal list.
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I'd like to get down to 250. From there I want to be able to squat and deadlift twice my bodyweight. I think it is very doable with a deliberate plan.

Lastly, I want to get back into martial arts. Study capoeira, get my second degree black belt in karate, or both. Until I'm in a better place from a time/finance standpoint to be getting formal instruction, I can be working out on my own. I'm not Ralph Macchio with his library book doing stretch kicks in his living room. I know what I'm doing. Again, just need to do it.

And of course I'll be writing about it here. I checked my stats and saw that my post complaining about my brain is my most viewed post ever! That really interested people! Oh wait...what's this? Search keywords...."two different colored eyes", "max scherzer eyes", "different colored eyes". So people weren't reading my post because they were interested in me? Well, that's just ego deflating (not really).

I will in all likelihood set something up for me to monitor what I'm doing. In all likelihood I will share it at some point. But outside of my announcement of my successfully rowing a marathon next week, on this blog I'll be returning to my regular theme of book reviews and whatever pops up in my head.