Month: July 2022

Doldrums

Well, I am snapping out of it. But I’ve noticed that if I lay down and don’t prop up my knees, I feel it (glute, down the leg) when I get up. Still, the effects of the injection linger..I think it is healing, oh so slowly.

Today: PT, walk, and weights. It was warm (84-85) and it was an effort. And it was 2-3 minutes faster than my previous on this course.

I did the walk after pull ups: 10 single, 10 single, 10, 10, 5 wide, 5 wide, 5 mixed 5 mixed

Then 30 Incline, 30 decline, 30 incline, then 10 with my new step stool

Bench: 9, 9, 8 with 145

Deadlift: 10 x 134, 184, 228 (all low)

high incline: 3 sets of 10 x 94
curls: 3 sets of 10.

That was it.

The back/glute IS handling walking ok, but I do have to keep the pace up a bit.

Post hoc ergo Propter hoc

It started off ok; did PT, walked, more PT and then I did a few chores before heading to the poll. That included taking out the trash..and ..of course some bees had started to make a nest under the lip of the lid.

One stung me.

Now my hand is swollen. But the bee sting came before the pool opened at 11 am and so I swam anyway. And I ended doing my “fastest” (least glacial?) set of 100 yard repeats since 2014.

I didn’t say “FAST” but they were faster than I had been doing.

So: bee stings means a faster swim time?

The workout: indoor PT

2 miles:

About the walk: I started out to do the first 1.1 and then finish PT..but I had it going (13:58 mile 1) and so I just kept going and did it all at once. It was ok.

Then PT 2, then the bee sting.

I decided to swim anyway:

600 (side /back)

400 of 25 fin drill, 25 swim

5 x 100 hard, 100 back on the 5 minutes: 1:37, 1:37, 1:39, 1:39, 1:39..first rep I chased a faster young man.

200 pull cool down in 3:36

Before swimming: 202.3 after: 200.9

Cousin visit

Which WAS nice. But…the “photo with them” was botched.

Workout notes: PT, a walk that went better than expected, then weights. Note: I did the walk after 40 of my 60 pull ups and after most (but not all) of my PT.

Note: this was 2:24 faster than the same course yesterday. Go figure.

Pull ups: 4 sets of 10, 4 sets of 5 (mixed grip)

Push ups: 30 incline, 30 decline, 30 incline, 10 deficit

downstairs:

Bench press 4 sets of 5 x 156

dead: 10 x 134, 10 x 184, 10 x 275 (8 inch)

shoulder: 10 x 94, 94, 105 (7-3)

curls: 3 sets of 10.

Weight appears to be heading down.

PAIN: walk went really, really well.

Lessons learned

Ok, today’s lesson:

  1. When I am walking and I feel the “onset” of the glute pain (“prepain”) I an sometimes avoid it by speeding up. Of course, I can only do this when I haven’t had a power reduction in my left leg. Today: mile 1 was a sluggish 14;55; second mile of 14:10 felt better.
  2. Swimming: I have gotten to the phase where “cheap improvement” is over; to improve further, I need to make my technique better and to swim more. But I have to do so cautiously.

PT

Walk (added 0.1 to the walk)

It was not 100 percent pain free, but I’d say that the discomfort maxed out at maybe a 3 out of 10 and improved on the second mile.

More PT then a swim:

600 warm up of side/back

400 of 25 drill, 25 swim with fins

1000 alternating 250 swim, 250 pool. Sluggish:

4:45, 9:22, 14:11, 18:41 (swim: 4:45, 4:49, pull: 4:37, 4:30)

200 cool down of back, side. Note: side 50 is 1:10.

Weight: 202.8 before swim, 201.7 after.

Shoulder: no pain, but I can feel it at times. I had better keep the stretch.

Politics, culture wars and all that

I’d like to give a prediction about the upcoming midterms but..well, cannot. For one, the abortion rights issue could be a game changer, and yes, the President’s party often loses seats, many of the losses come from Congressional Districts where the incumbent party overperformed in the Presidential Election due to coat-tails…and we didn’t see coat-tails in 2020.

It is as if the old models might not be relevant.

And, contrary to popular opinion, Biden has not done that bad:

Still, I tend to agree with this:

But the culture stuff might end up killing us. Observe:

Now, the NPR listeners/UU Church/Liberal Arts crowd are saying how she just “OWNED” or “Schooled” Sen. Hawley. But to the average voter who isn’t immersed in that lingo….her answers sounded..ridiculous.

Yes, of course, Sen. Hawley was playing politics with his “simple question”; I am not naive enough to think he was asking in good faith. He WANTED to pick that fight for the cameras.

And what a better foil than a Berkeley prof with nose rings…

On a college campus, “calling out” someone as being “transphobic..etc.” wins you points, but it flops in the public.

You see something different going on here:

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was going up the Capitol steps when a professional provocateur (a real jerk) decided to make remarks about her behind (and throw in an anti-choice remark).

He posted the video but it was taken down from Twitter. But I saw it because ….the Representative POSTED IT HERSELF!!!!!!!

Why would she do that?????

Then she posted this:

In the second video, she appears rattled but didn’t appear so in the first. Given that she was not exactly sheltered in her previous life…my guess is that she is scoring points with the “me too” crowd. But it does make her look easily rattled..I’d imagine a leader quality woman just saying “oh, grow up” to the professional jerk.

But, here I am talking about this sort of stuff when there are more serious things to ponder:

That is huge; there is a negative impact in the lives of women. And there is this:

I support BLM, but yes, sometimes the armed person in a standoff who was trying to kill/had killed others is a black guy. This in no way negatives that black guys are sometimes unfairly profiled or treated poorly.

But not every police shooting should be an incident to be hijacked by “activists” with an agenda.

Midway through July and

Ok, this is frustrating …progress is measured by tenths of miles and by pain level after the fact, and toward the end of the walk.

1.33…slight…1.07…even slighter but still there. But that is 15 miles for the week. That is better than last month.

So, for the weekend, 3.2 yesterday, 2.4 today for 5.6..which was once about a week for me. But still…so paltry.

Yes, there was the PT before/after and some deadlifts

10 x 134, 10 x 184 (warm up)

10 x 245 4 inch handle (felt kind of easy..ok, should have been easy)

10 x 275 8 inch handle

We’ll see…

It is better than zip.

More Chiefs baseball

I watched the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday games.

Thursday: 5-1 loss, but the Chiefs had the bases loaded in the 9’th; couldn’t convert.

Saturday: with Tracy and Barbara: 3-2 win! This was their second win in this series and the game was played before 5000 fans; best non-4th of July crowd in a while, I think.

Sunday: today, 3-1 loss. Chiefs pitching was ok though they gave up 2 home runs. But the Cubs pitcher smothered the Chiefs; only allowed 5 hits.

Microscopic progress

Neurogenic claudication (pain in the glute/leg upon walking a certain distance that is derived from a nerve impingement) ..takes a very long time to recover from; progress is measured in tenths of a mile in a month. Really.

So, today, I tried something slightly different: I mixed PT, stretching, and pull ups…walked my first mile treating it as a PT exercise, then did more PT, push ups, walked 2 more miles (very sticky so the walk was slower), then took it downstairs for weights.

And both walks were as about as pain free as they’ve been since all of this nonsense started 1.5 years ago or so. Not perfect, put the pain was negligible …well within the upper 1-5 percent of all my walks.

If I could do this *without* the long PT/push up break in between, I’d declare myself “healed” and then transition to “conservative training.” But I don’t think that I can, just yet. Maybe with some weight loss? That is trending well also.

Note: slight residual soreness in the leg/glute later in the day, but not much…just enough to let me know it is there.

Pull ups: (with PT in between sets..a LOT of it) 5-5-5-5-10=10-5-5-5-5 with the last 4 sets being chins, chins, mixed grip, mixed grip.

Push ups: 30 incline, 30 decline, 30 incline, 10 deficit

Bench presses: 156: 5, 5, 5, 161: 4 reps My feet in the air makes me use less weight.

Curls: 3 sets of 10 x 50

rows: 3 sets of 10 x 22 (trying to use the back)

high incline: 3 sets of 10 x 94 (getting better depth)

Whining and regret will get me nowhere.

I admit that I underestimated how much of my “post morbid obesity” (physical) identity was centered around my ability to cover long distances on foot. Ok, there were times when it was also centered about how much weight I could move.
No, I was never “really good”; my best feats were probably “walked 101 miles in 24 hours” (May, 2004) and, in terms of weight, a rather average 310 lb bench press and 410 dead lift in the gym when I was in my early 20’s. And I was a bit proud of that, at least internally.

But, that is sort of gone. I can lift..with modification, and I am getting used to that. I still get joy out of my modified lifts, of very, very modest weight. But the neurogenic claudication …that is a tough one (roughly speaking, upon walking, I start to get uncomfortable glute pain 1.5-2 miles into it, and IF I attempt to push through it, I get sore after the fact…same if I try to arch when I bench press or do “heavy” (for me) trap bar dead lifts.

So, my adaptation is to mix my walking: a couple of sets of 1 mile walks one day, 2 miler the next..and lifting: do sets of 10 trap bar dead lifts with more modest weights and of different handle heights (low, 4 inch, 8 inch)

Well, enough of that. There are plenty of people overcoming a heck of a lot more:

And so I’ll continue and continue to modify, seek, adjust, and try to improve from where I am.

Today: PT (a lot of it ..did some balance work on the wobble board too)

1 mile walk to the pool. Kept the effort modest.

It was rainy.

Then 2200 yards of swimming:

600 of side/back
400 of drills with 25 swims (fins)

5 x 100 on the 2:20. These were disappointing (slight catch in the shoulder but..not much)
1:43, 1:41, 1:41, 1:42, 1:41

200 of 100 back, 100 side

500 pull in 9:06 (4:33, 4:33); I thought I had picked it up on the second half, but I was just tired.

Weight afterward: 203 lb (ate Indian food yesterday).

The Cubs vs Chiefs fiasco

Well, the South Bend Cubs visited the Peoria Chiefs.

Tuesday; 6-0 in a game that wasn’t as “close” as this big score would indicate; First Cubs batter hit a home run…and it never got better; they outhit the Chiefs 14-2.

Wednesday: even worse; 11-1 final; at least the lead off batter “only” got a double this time..and ended the inning with a ground out. Yes, 6-0 after 1.

The talent difference is stark; it is like an AA team playing a high A team.

Well, friends made it interesting.

Yesterday;

About the best I can say is that the crowds were better than average…a lot better.