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A Shiny (Old) Bike!
After my bike accident back in 2005, my father bought me a sweet Mongoose mountain bike. It’s maroon and champagne colored, and I used it to commute in college. When I graduated and moved to Charlotte, though, riding became purely for pleasure, and wasn’t particularly feasible for commuting. (I’ve pretty much always lived across town from my job and I sweat a lot when I exercise.) By the beginning of 2008, the bike was idle. I carted it with me to the house, where it sat in the garage (excuse: the neighborhood was too hilly and roads too narrow!), and to my current apartment patio (excuse: it’s probably ruined now!)……
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Ski Free
SkiFree was such an integral part of my childhood gaming experience that I couldn’t resist an offer to go skiing for a weekend at Sugar Mountain in Boone, NC. Greg, Deana, Meg, and I stayed in sleepy Blowing Rock (awesome food!) in a cozy little inn/motel. Unfortunately, I was sick. Quite sick. Snotting and coughing and sneezing. All the classics. When we arrived at Sugar Mountain on Saturday morning, I was feeling distinctly unathletic. A cold plus asthma generally makes for chill time. Deana was like, “No, no. Skiing isn’t really athletic. You’ll be fine.” Okay, then! As I watched people stomp around on their skis, I also got increasingly…
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A Month of 5/3/1
Back in December, I ran across and fell in love with the idea of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program. After my weights arrived, I wasted no time crafting up a plan spreadsheet and getting rolling. Again, wow. As a refresher, the program focuses on four main lifts–military press, deadlift, bench press, and squat–one per day. Add assistance exercises around those to complete the workout. Core Lifts I’ve had to make some interesting adaptations over the month. I have no bench and no squat rack, so those are the two exercises I’ve had to be the most careful with. I hunted for a way to avoid learning how to do a power…
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5/3/1: First Two Workouts
I’ve done my first two workouts (bench and leg press) of the 5/3/1 program, and wow. Just… wow. I included lat pulldowns and rows as the assisting exercises in the bench workout. Mmm, balance. Wonderfully, my shoulder gave me no guff at all, even in the ensuing soreness. (And oh, the delicious soreness.) I think this might be a serious way for me to finish rehabilitating my shoulder. I’ve been stalling for weeks with all the light-weight, high-rep rehab exercises, and the pain levels were staying the same. I iced heavily after the bench workout, and suffered no bone spur-specific pain in the following days.
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Setting up for 5/3/1
Have you gotten your recommended dosage of sexism lately? I have. I bought an ebook containing a very smart, simple, sensible weightlifting program, and in the process of reading it and surrounding articles, pushed my sexism meter about as high as it would go without me punching someone in the face. Even if punching Jim Wendler would likely get me snapped in half. Look, the dude can bench press over 400 lb. (Although I suppose that being able to bench 400 lb isn’t a true indicator of his infraspinatus strength, so he might not be able to just rip me in half…) If you haven’t gotten your daily dosage of…