This is another of those times when I need my inflective font. Today I would like it to make the sound that Charlie Brown makes when he’s flying through the air after Lucy pulls the ball away from him, before he lands on his behind. But first, lets take a moment to consider how good a field goal kicker Charlie Brown could be. He probably has a mass of like 30kgs, while a football has a mass of maybe .5 kg. He flies easily 10 yards before landing in a lump. I’m saying he’d probably clear some 60 yarders. Not bad for like a 10 year old.
Anyhow, my workout last night sucked, and it sucked from the starting gun. I was a little janked out from the beginning because once again the work periods don’t sum up to the workout duration; they miss by about 60%. It’s not like the plan cost a fortune, but you’d expect it not to have huge errors like that. The plan isn’t very elaborate and what customization there is is easily handled by the most novice Excel user. It’s now happened enough times that I sent the creator an email asking what to do about it and to please fix it. I’m also a little put off by the fact that it’s advertised as being for someone who can train a maximum of 12 or 13 hours in a week, but they don’t tell you beforehand that there will be weekdays (today, for example), when you are supposed to do 4 hours over two workouts. Not happening in my neck of the real world. What’s wrong with maybe 2 hours a night 4 nights a week, 3 hours Saturday and 2 on Sunday? Despite the pain in the neck that being a Mac user imparts on trying to deal with WKO software, and the myriad benefits of a program where you open the book to today’s page and do what it says, I am going to get WKO and deal with my own program.
*******NOW I AM EDITING MY POST*********
The program's author, Hunter Allen, promptly and comprehensively answered my questions and concerns regarding the program. His response was more or less 'yeah, I have to do some quality control on those suckers, if you need some make up time just ride sweet spot for the missing time, when there are two workouts do #1 if you work out in the morning and #2 if you work out in the evening, and the "spring training" program follows the 12 week program, unless your big goals are late in the season in which case do an "LT builder" program next, then a "spring training" program.' I have no follow up, all questions answered. Thank you, Hunter Allen, especially since I am now promised a full trainer year without putting any thought into it. As you can see, thinking puts me off track.
****End Edit****
Anyhow, I got on the trainer and immediately knew it’d be a struggle, and it was. I lengthened the warmup to try and get something going, but nothing doing. Maybe the weekend was a bit hard and I had some delayed onset spentness in my legs. I’ve also been sleeping like absolute shit lately. During a normal night I’m good for about 6.5 or 7 hours of sleep, but lately I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night to think about work stuff. Then the last hour of sleep is sleepicus interruptus while I think about what’s going on that day. At the end of each day I write a list of upcoming stuff on the whiteboard so I don’t have to tote all that stuff around in my head and wake up early, but it’s not quite working all the way. I definitely need to work on better sleep.
The other thing that’s happening is that I’m still really wound up about the mortgage deal and the bailout and everything surrounding it. Credit as we use it now is a relatively new thing, it has just exploded over the last couple of decades. I heard a commentary on NPR yesterday where Ted Koppel described the American economy as a great big Ponzi scheme, and to a huge extent I think he’s right. People are going into foreclosure, having bought houses with mortgages that they knew had a risk of going up. When the value of the house went down and they couldn't refinance, they said "screw it" and want a life boat. When the table was tilted to their advantage, everything was all right. Imagine a casino where you play black jack, but you get to bet or not bet after the cards have all been played. Or a casino where you always got dealt black jack. that's the casino where these people want to play. We have greedy, selfish people doing that kind of stuff, we use too much crap that we don’t need, we pay for it with money we don’t have, and the stock market keeps rising based on the belief that this will continue, unbroken, ad infinitum. Call me a fairy but this shit keeps me up at night, literally. Being part of this American system isn’t a game I want to play.
Well, I’ve already missed a workout today and I still have a hard one to do later.
3 comments:
I have the same problem. My coach puts in the workouts and often they don't match the time on Trainingpeaks. So, even with a "real" coach it happens. He says that the long ride on the weekend is the most important to actually do the number of hours listed and for the others, just focus on trying to do the workout and forget about the time listed. Life gets in the way for sure.
As far as credit/markets go I feel like we've been here before. Weather it's the S&L thing, or the dotcom thing or junk bonds or LTCM it feels the same. It's hard for the little guy to get diversification enough to feel protected especially when the mutual funds (vehicles for guys like me) will deviate from their espoused strategy to chase returns. I don't mind so much people taking risk with their money, that's part of the deal for the big reward. What makes me mad is that I don't like my money taking risks when I didn't intend for it to take risks.
People were loving life when their home values were going through the roof all those years. It's hard to feel sorry for people when they leveraged themselves to the max, drove up home prices, and bought a 4000sq/ft McMansion with only 1 kid in the house, turned around and refinanced, cashed out, bought SUV's, trips, garage full of junk, maxed out credit cards, etc,...
I drive by miles and miles of gigantic houses with two or three people living in them every day and ya gotta wonder.
On another note, I read somewhere recently that even the poorest Americans live in houses 1.5 to 2x the average European. hmm. ok I'm rambling.
Training, blah, I'm only managing about 8-10 hours a week now, max. Can't wait for the weather to turn.
The other thing that’s happening is that I’m still really wound up about the mortgage deal and the bailout and everything surrounding it.
Dude, I work in public policy. I used to care about things outside my own lane. It only got me sleepless nights. Know how to fix that?
Repeat after me:
"Ahhhh, fuck it. Not my problem, man. Not my problem."
You learn to say that more often, preferably as a mantra. You'll sleep better. I promise.
Post a Comment