The Very Dark Yellow Badge of Rhabdomyolysis?
It's tempting to attribute this to age
Go for it.
For the record, I find Crossfit vaguely embarrassing
Fair.
2 posted from the perspective of ever-fatter indolence because I can't even do the damn ten minute workout I found online which will obviously be insufficient even if I do it every day but it seems like what I have time for these days.
I've been thinking 'does not get in shape easily' with respect to running for a while now. The last year and a half, since Newt got interested, I've been running more consistently than ever in my life (which is still not very). And putting on distance isn't all that hard, if I do it in a fairly methodical fashion. Going faster, on the other hand, I sort of figured would happen spontaneously as we got in better shape, and it completely has not -- we're still plodding vaguely along very very very slowly, at the sort of jogging pace that you could walk at if you were trying really hard.
This depresses me mildly.
Newt's twelve now -- I'm assuming that sometime in the next two or three years he's going to suddenly get much much taller/faster/generally more athletic. While he's very tall for his age, he's still very much a little boy rather than a teenager. Which will change the dynamic from me nagging him to go faster to him being no longer even capable of going as slow as I need to. I am also preemptively mildly depressed by this, while recognizing it as part of the great circle of life.
I have the same problem. Every time I've tried to add speed, I've torn a tendon or ligament.
I don't get hurt -- I very rarely get hurt. The bruised or whatever it was foot from running in barefoot shoes is the only athletic injury (if we're not counting cuts/bruises/blisters) I ever remember having. Running faster is just really really hard and doesn't seem to get easier.
If you are slow to get into shape, are you also slow to get out of shape?
Yesterday I cleared a 20' x 10' (?) area of weeds, and was so tired I went to bed at 7:30.
I don't know how fast other people get out of shape. I can take a month or two off without losing much conditioning.
Robert Halford would have told LB to do wind sprints and strength stuff because just doing distance running isn't much good for getting faster, and would have told Heebie that it's probably mostly age and also 115 is not pathetic at all. Also that he has sucked about going to the gym for about the past month after stupidly over committing to a too extreme version (exercise plus extended stretching like yoga every single day plus no alcohol) which just kind of overloaded the circuits. But is now getting back into it.
Rob the Masshole is a broken shell of a man with no values and no hope.
I can FINALLY outrun my dad, when we go jogging together! He's twice my age. Sigh.
8: I now think that part of my problem was not running fast enough. Or maybe just not paying enough attention to my stride when I was tired and couldn't run at my usual speed. My stride gets shorter and my foot hits the ground differently. Anyway, if I'm moving at 10 or 11 minute miles, I feel far better. When I slow down from that, I'm literally plodding and I think that is what is doing most of the damage to my tendons.
11 clarifies so much about this new commenter who seemed so at-ease here.
10 is not the case for me. Definitely notice a big change after two weeks, a lot a lot after a month, and then it gets worse from there.
I do actually do wind sprints with Newt: once a week most weeks we do 12x100m at the Columbia track. This is remarkably little fun, and seems to have little or no effect on the sort of speed it's comfortable to jog at.
Have you tried fartleks? They did me no good at all, but I enjoy saying the word.
I like running, but when I do sprints my knee hurts, and when I run slow, it takes too damn long to actually get exercise. Not nearly as long as it takes when riding my bike, which I like the best, but haven't done in like over a year.
And I'm doing pushups and pullups (with one of those giant rubber band thingies). Unreliably, as well, but at least a few times a week most weeks. So, some strength training. Getting past sets of twenty-five pushups is really hard.
Getting past sets of twenty-five pushups is really hard.
I can't do that either.
This is the thing I've been doing inadequately often, plus some dumbbell shit at the end.
17: Tried it once or twice, and Newt vetoed it as way way too hard. He's actually remarkably useful as a running buddy, because he'll reliably wake up at 6 and guilt-trip me into getting up, which I wouldn't do on my own. So I do need to keep workouts in his comfort zone to keep him on track; if he loses enthusiasm, the whole system collapses.
I meant leg strength, at least for running. But I'm not exactly a distance running expert, many here know more than me, but I'm pretty sure that just a lot of distance running at a comfortable pace can't reasonably be expected to get you faster in its own.
If I really wanted to run faster, I should probably stop either the drinking or the candy corn/Swedish fish/jelly bean habit. If I weighted what the mullahs say I'm supposed to weight, I'm probably shave at least half a minute off my mile.
Just losing the extra 't's alone would help.
We do have a nice big hill to run over, so that's something, strength-training-wise.
125: Oh, sure. At my college weight, 25/30 pounds down from here, I'd probably be much faster. And I bet I could do multiple unassisted chinups.
And if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.
28.last: There's a reason that the canonical example is a relative that is not a direct-line ancestor.
If my truck had balls, I'd be lower middle class.
I actually don't know why I went for the Yiddish version there. The one I grew up with was "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a teacart."
If my dog had lassers he'd be better.
I'm doing pretty well at moving around faster in short bursts by playing a lot racquetball and concentrating on intervals and strength training (and some mild weight loss). However, that has re-activated my old Achilles heel which is my Achilles tendon. It bothered me when I was very active and many years and tens of pounds lighter. So in a way its reappearance is a good sign. Experimenting with shoes and inserts to see if I can at least mitigate it. It does not bother me much during the exercises but it negatively affects my normal gait.
"[L]assers" is a neologism crossing Lassie with lasers one presumes.
Thayuht's haw we talk bout optical amplifeers in the holler.
I've been hitting the gymn pretty regularly. I sprang for a personal trainer since having someone waiting for me is pretty much the only way I'll go. Also having someone else do all the thinking and planning makes it much easier. I just quietly do what he tells me to and don't have to worry about keeping count or remembering how much weight I used last time.
I am in crappy shape but a lot stronger than I used to be. I think I need to do much more cardio. Unfortunately I get bored as hell and just end up focusing all my attention on how uncomfortable I am. Music helps, as does the little stand I built to hold my laptop in front of the elliptical trainer so I can watch stuff like the daily show. I haven't tried reading blogs while ellipticizing but perhaps I should.
35: "I tried one of them Lazarus beams on granny, but she stayed dead."
I just had a motor installed on my cargo bike but it's really subtle (just a largish hub with a wire coming out of it) so I don't have to be too embarrassed about it, although when engaged it makes a sort of woo-woo sound. Carrying all the kids up some hills was doable but painful for me and not doable at all for wife so we installed the electric assist motor.
OTOH I could bring it to the meetup and carry people up and down Sifu/Blume Street going woo-woo.
Racquetball AND prep school soccer? Now Stormcrow needs to pop the collar on his IZOD Lacoste shirt to go for the 80s yuppie trifecta.
Sorry, that was a last burst of energy from some now destroyed planet light years away. I will now concentrate on loving Shane Victorino's poop-like face, and the void.
I've improved my sprinting speed on two occasions. The first was sometime in high school when I realized I wasn't actually trying as hard as I could, and the second was a few years ago when I realized it was counterproductive (and uncomfortable) for my feet to strike the ground in the direction opposite the one I was trying to go, and I was not using my calf muscles when pushing off. If these insights seem less than revolutionary, I have nothing to offer. Maybe run downhill?
Shane Victorino's poop-like face
He has the best worst beard.
it was counterproductive (and uncomfortable) for my feet to strike the ground in the direction opposite the one I was trying to go
Wait. What?
43: he would try to run, but end up going backwards. It's like when you put a car in reverse by mistake.
My grandma put a car in forward by mistake. Fortunately, nobody was walking out of the post office at the time.
45: Eggplant was trying to but he ended up in the back with the postal workers.
39: Did you (or your buddy) read that Dallas Morning News piece yet?
Heebie, I bet it's not age, or at least not primarily age; being postpartum and breastfeeding (if you are) is hell on the ability to retain and build muscle, especially if you're also trying to lose weight. Still, that's a pretty good back squat.
I believe to get faster, one has to train at being faster. Sprints, explosive movements, etc.
I recently encountered "And if the hoppy-toad had wings, he wouldn't bump his butt on the ground," which pleased me no end.
explosive movements
Way ahead of you on that. I should stop with the Taco Bell.
47 -- yes. It proves my former shadow of a self either right, or wrong.
Or, I am the shadow. Why exercise? All is failure and you end up weak and old and dead anyway.
being postpartum and breastfeeding (if you are) is hell on the ability to retain and build muscle,
I hadn't actually considered that. I tend to think of pregnancy itself as an ordeal that you're recovering from, but not something that actually hampers the recovery.
I'm afraid of my own shadow because it's what I've become
Why do I waste my time with people who'll never love anyone?
My only sin, my only sin: I started hating my own skin
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Rob the Masshole does.
I'm pretty sure that just a lot of distance running at a comfortable pace can't reasonably be expected to get you faster in its own.
Exactly. You get stronger by stressing your body more than it's used to; if you run at the same pace for the same distance over and over and over again, you'll plateau there. This is why Hal Higdon says "[t]o set a PR, you need to improve your endurance and your speed. You can do this by (1) running more miles, (2) running faster, or (3) some combination of both." If you want to get faster, LB, you might look at this training plan he put together.
I tried to do his plans when I did my half marathon, but couldn't keep it up. I had to rest every other day.
And the week before the week of the race I got confused because of a typo. I went to the zoo to see the tapir.
56: We've been slack since last spring, just doing comfortable half-hour runs and the once a week sprints, but we were doing a variety of plans similar to the ones linked before that. And the faster runs were just miserable, and never got less miserable. I don't seem to have a gear between slow plodding and "Jesus Christ nothing is worth feeling like this." (which kicks in at not terribly fast).
Yay, Heebie. [For doing stuff]
Moaning, myself, I'm in terrible terrible shape at the moment. A couple of injuries that meant I didn't train much at kickboxing for a couple of months, and total lack of time due to a big ramp up in work commitments combined with baby stuff, have meant that I'm in shitty shitty shape. I'm back kickboxing again, but I feel like it'll take at least 2 or 3 months to get back into shape.
I'm only about 5lbs heavier than my usual [heavy] weight, but I look and feel like it's much more.
I've been doing long walks pushing the buggy [US: stroller] around an approximately 6 mile circuit, with some hills, but while that's probably sort of maintaining some cardio fitness my upper body strength is just gone, and it has been shit for a while anyway.
Gah.
re: my 6 mile buggy pushing circuit: my pace is pretty good for walking. I do it in under an hour, just. But I'm horribly sweaty and ungainly while doing it.
Same here. If you can walk a ten minute mile, much less six of them pushing a stroller, that sounds quite impressive to me.
I think the actual route is a tad under 6 miles.
[Checking google maps now]
OK, being very accurate with the pedometer points on Google maps rather than just going by the marked distance, it's 4.7-4.8 miles, so, erm, a big 'tad' under 6. And I do it in about 56 minutes, so somewhere around or a bit under 12 minute mile pace. That's still pretty fast for walking, but it's not quite as quick as 10 per mile.
I used to do quite a bit of speed walking for cardio as I have crappy knees and shins and can't run. I'm not as fit as I was, but I seem to have the ability to keep quite a fast walking gait up. I get horrible sweaty, though, although I'm not crazily out of breath.
Now I'm not as impressed. I can talk about 12:30 minute miles. Any faster and I need to run.
Yeah, under 12 is a a way past the point where running is more efficient than walking. I used to do a circuit round the woods near where I lived which only took about 45 minutes, but it was way easier to jog it [grass/mud so not quite as hard on the joints] than walk it at the pace I used to do.
I remember from treadmills that I find it hard to do anything between 4 and 5 mph. I can't jog-trudge that slow, nor walk that fast.
Carry the baby for six miles and your problems will be solved.
I can talk about 12:30 minute miles
If you talk anything like you comment, I'm betting you can do a lot better than that.
I've got 99 problems, but carrying a baby for six miles isn't one of them.
AMRAP 60
Baby shoulder carry, 1 mile.
I don't seem to have a gear between slow plodding and "Jesus Christ nothing is worth feeling like this."
Does jump-roping trigger the latter feeling?
I can get my legs into shape pretty easily. This summer I went from absolutely zero shape to doing a 6k vertical feet hike in a month. I can also get into biking shape pretty quickly and I find my speed does increase significantly as I get into better shape. On the other hand my upper body is completely useless and has never been in shape even back during periods when I actually regularly did stuff that involved upper body muscles.
If I were in any worse shape right now, I would probably be dead. These recurring low-intensity foot pain problems I've been having really make it hard to walk as much as I want.
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My calamitous friend is working steady for the first time in forever and has asked me to help her get her financial life in better order. I know she has bad debt from student loans and hospital bills, but I have no idea how much it is. I think a lot of this will just be hand-holding through making humbling phone calls, but I may need to ask y'all's advice on some stuff too. So put on your thinking caps.
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Ernest turned 13 last week and we celebrated by buying him lots of new furniture from Ikea, and he and I made most of it together. Atm I'm still stronger than him for screw-tightening purposes, but it's interesting to look at him and think that he will be stronger than me in the not-too-distant future. Not something I've thought about with the girls.
OT: Stupid newspaper websites with stupid audio ads that launch automatically when you're innocently trying to read the paper during a computer conference call.
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Status update: Birds are chirping. The sun is shinning. The TiVo has been reset.
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76: Autoplay anything ought to be punishable by public whipping.
According to this book, there is a lot of evidence that "trainability" is genetic:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sports-Gene-Extraordinary-Performance/dp/1591845114
One interesting part is that 1/4 men are strong responders to resistance training, 1/2 men are average responders and 1/4 of men don't respond to resistance training at all (Apparently they don't get any bigger muscles).
72: I can skip rope gently forever with no effort, but if I try and do the two-feet-at-once fast jumping rope like a boxer, I trip pretty much every ten cycles or less. I suppose if I put some consistent effort into it, I'd trip less.
74: Get her hooked up with Lutheran Financial Services.
Don't go to Calvinist Financial Services. They get all judgey.
Jesus saves, Moses invests, Calvin sees who is already rich and figures they must the holy.
Oh yeah, re: girl's high school football:
How great is that?! Bergkamp-esque.
doing a 6k vertical feet hike in a month
Even for something like this, a month seems like a long time to spend hiking.
The guy that did the eat, fast, live documentary also did another one about fitness. They drew some blood to determine how trainable he was, and then had him train his butt off for a month, before they gave him the results.
At the end of the month, they did the CO2 max test, and he hadn't gained any fitness. Then they revealed the results of the bloodwork, and that accurately predicted that he was on the "extremely unlucky" side of the test results.
73: I can also get into biking shape pretty quickly
I read that first as "bikini shape" and suddenly your pseud took on new meaning.
"You get stronger by stressing your body more than it's used to"
That's the theory behind high impact interval training, isn't it? Since I only believe health studies that tell me things I'm already doing are good for you (in my case hockey is a good high impact repetitive short duration exercise) I like that theory.
I suppose being basically fat and lazy is a plus in these conversations, since instead of thinking "oh no, I am not doing crossfit or learning to punch people effectively" I get to think "well, actually I bike commute every day year round plus do a few extra miles here and there, I'm doing great!"
The doctor always says I'm quite fit in terms of heart rate and blood pressure and my lung capacity is above average, so I must be doing something right.
I don't have much upper body strength, but I really don't have to lift heavy things very often so I don't worry about it. When you've been podgy all your life and you have pretty much the whole wide-shoulders-flat-hips-short-legs sort of build and thus don't really look much better when you're trimmer, the idea of strength for strength's sake just isn't that compelling.
But you enjoy your crossfitting, everyone!
Yeah, but you don't sound lazy whatsoever.
strength for strength's sake just isn't that compelling
You clearly lack the need to show off. I'm not that strong, but I'm a fair bit stronger than people seem to expect someone who looks like me to be, and I do enjoy the occasional chance to nonchalantly haul heavy stuff around in front of people (boxes of papers, mostly).
The pushups and pullups don't do a thing for me cosmetically, unless the intended audience imprinted on Rosie the Riveter at an early age.
84: speaking of great goals, did you see the highlights from the Arsenal-Norwich City match? Both the first goal and Ramsey's were ridiculous.
91: "Wow! Two back tax cases and a liquor license revocation and she wasn't even breathing heavily."
Re: 92
Yes, and some of the general link-up play throughout was sublime. Ramsey seems to have morphed into Zidane.
76: Try "Clearly" from Google on those and the ones where the text grays out and a pop-up demanding something or the other show up. So far that has been working very nicely for me. Maybe "Readability" works too.
90: Actually, I'm very lazy. On any given day, I am either frantically doing a thing so that I can go back to loafing in bed with a book or loafing in bed with a book. I am a lazy person with lots of anxiety, so I tend toward certain types of convulsive effort, but my real wish is for pure slack. I am not my happiest when I am, like, achieving, climbing the highest mountain, building the sparkliest webpage, killing it on the dance floor or crushing my enemies with the power of my comp lit rhetoric - I am my happiest when I am reading the internet with a plate of snacks and a soothing beverage by my side.
Honestly, I think that I only ever achieve things because I like to look back on having done them. Once we achieve some kind of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind memory manipulation which allows me to reflect without actually doing, I may never leave the house again.
An actual lazy person would put the frantic doing off to the vague future, and go right to the loafing.
I have been ramping up the abdominal exercises and push ups in solidarity with the household's ballet student, who has a new teacher this year and a major increase in challenges. I can just about keep up on those two at the moment. Have never attempted any of the balance and gravity defying feats he regards as child's play, let alone anything he would find difficult. It is truly awe inspiring both how fast he grows and how much he eats - and now for the first time in his life he has visible muscles sprouting. My putzing about in the gym is pretty shortly going to look even more feeble when he's shoulder pressing 16 year olds - gracefully.
Male ballerinas are fucking hardcore badasses. Seriously that is a lot of fucking strength.
I asked him a few months ago if he ever looks at the girls and thinks ahead two or three years to the moment one of them is hurtling through the air at him, and then he's supposed to catch her and hoist her skyward - was this prospect occasionally a bit daunting? Yes, he replied, a bit. But he has the faith of one who has been training from the age of four, and he's seen others before him on the same path.
At the moment it's largely about impossible leaps etc.
Back off, crypt-wrecker.
I am my happiest when I am reading the internet with a plate of snacks and a soothing beverage by my side.
[wistful sigh]
Also, DQ! It's been a while, or am I confused?
Hi Moby! Posting always sporadic, but have resigned myself to doing so from phone so perhaps a bit less lately?
"Wow! Two back tax cases and a liquor license revocation and she wasn't even breathing heavily."
"Other litigators used to kick motions to dismiss in my face," writes Liz B. of New York. "But since I tried the Masshole Method, they step aside and let me continue with my line of questioning, no matter how inapposite!"
Four out of nine Supreme Court Justices endorse the Masshole Method. (Kennedy is neutral.) Write for your free booklet today!
"I'm not sure I'm following. Exactly how does moving to a paperless office relatively disadvantage you?"
Male ballerinas are fucking hardcore badasses.
As you will find out if you call them ballerinas to their face. A friend of mine was a principle dancer when he was younger and he was fucking fit. Ballerinas are pretty tough too, even if they tend to be slightly built. What there is is mainly muscle.
78 gets it exactly right.
81: I'm assuming you mean Lutheran Social Services financial division, and not Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. I actually temped for Thrivent for a week 17 years ago. It wasn't very compelling work -- filling orders from Lutheran churches for Sunday school worksheet booklets.
We'll see, I guess. I think mostly what we need to do is:
1. Get her some kind of bank/credit union account
2. Find out what debt she has
3. Work out payment plans
4. Keep up with the plans
I might get her going on "Your Money Or Your Life" and some stuff like that, but frankly this is a "been down so long it looks like up to me" situation, so it would be cool just to have some idea of where she actually stands. Ideally, we could get her school debt squared away enough that she could qualify for the young-mothers-housing-included program at the local community college. We have another friend who did that and is now a homeowner with good credit etc.
111: Other types of dancers are usually no slouches either. Even the amateur dancers I know who only perform publicly a couple times a year are mostly in amazing shape for their age/body type/etc. I'm not super close to many of the ballet dancers in town, but the modern/hip hop/jazz/tap/"culturally specific" ones all work just as hard. This one 50ish éminence grise of the ballet/modern scene is not only very fit, but built like an NBA player. I'm not a small person, but he just towers over me, and not in a beanpole way either.
112: I'm glad your friend is working, and it's really kind of you to help her out. I don't have good suggestions about finances, but I hope she manages to get ahead.
One of the local martial arts teachers was a dancer with Balanchine, yonks ago. Very powerful technique.
Thrivent is great, but only for Lutherans. Second the recommendation for Lutheran social services.
I had a previous life as a competitive distance runner, and it really is no pain no gain. If you're not nauseous at least once a week after your workout, don't expect a lot of improvement. Also, fartleks. Also, I'm pretty sure a lot of speed is genetic. I'm faster than friends who run every day, and I run as little as possible these days. Back in the day, I had teammates much faster than me, and we seemed to be putting in the same amount of effort. Ditto, I still mostly suck at yoga after 6 months, though I suck less than I used to. There are still brand new students better than me. It turns out distance running and yoga work against each other, so if you're flexible you can take pride in that over being quick.
so if you're flexible you can take pride in that over being quick.
People who remember everything else I've said about my athletic skills will understand while I'm weeping softly now. I'm going to go lift something heavy to make myself feel better.
117: I'm also slow, inflexible, and only marginally coordinated. I take comfort in my superior napping skills.
We also have an org here called AccountAbility MN that mostly helps low-income people with taxes, but also does generalized financial counseling. I should probably get her hooked up with them too.
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I had lunch yesterday with a friend from my last law firm job who I'd hardly seen since I left. Her career took a nosedive after she left there and will probably never recover. I emotionally checked out of the place when I decided it was run by sadistic lunatics, and spent my last year and a half jobhunting and doing very little productive. She gave it her all, stayed invested, and left shortly after I did without another job to jump to when she just couldn't take the abuse any more. And it's been a bad market for lawyers ever since: she's temping now.
I've spent the rest of the day, since that lunch, fantasizing vividly about running into the head sadist at some professional event, and telling stories about the shit he pulled to a rapt audience of other attorneys. (I also kind of want to email two partners I worked for there, who, while I wasn't particularly close to either of them, were both neither insane nor abusive, and mention that they were bright spots in an otherwise hellish experience. Five years later, there's probably no point to it.)
Hopefully, I'll get over this in another day or so; I'd kind of blocked that job out of my mind completely, and I'd like the traumatic amnesia to return, please.
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If you're not nauseous at least once a week after your workout, don't expect a lot of improvement.
Does eating at Arby's after exercise count?
But, I'm slow and it took me six months of sustained work to be able to touch my toes without bending my knees.