The MetropolisKid’s 52 Day Challenge Blog

I’ve been feeling pretty down the last few days.  Not sad, or depressed…  The best word I can come up with to describe what I’ve been feeling is ‘lethargic.’  I haven’t really been interested in much or had any particular desire to do anything…neither at home nor at work.  In fact, my disinterest has been pretty universal until (potentially) some point during my RT today.

Dunno why.  But right now I have at least SOME motivation to get through the tasks I’ve been putting off.  I’ve got two concerts, a religious event, a film screening and some corporate thing to get squared away.  Only the corporate event and the religious thing have any urgency to them, the rest are later in the year, but there’s no reason not to get on ‘em now while I remember what they are.

With the Olympics over, I’m going to try to focus my energies in developing my own shows.  Currently, I’m trying to arrange to supply the tech for the Toronto Comicon…..Mostly I just want to get in for free.

I attended one on Sunday at the Convention Centre to meet the organizers and say hi.  There’s another at the end of March hosted by a rival company that I’m going to attend, as well.  Their guests include Lucy Carro from Battlestar, whom I went to college with.  We’ll see if she remembers me…it was only, what…TEN years ago?

Pretty crummy workout today, for a variety of reasons.

I was feeling pretty down yesterday, which led to skipping the RT.  Burned a CE - but didn’t go too nuts with it.

Today was make up for yesterday, but…I dunno.  Something was off.  I didn’t get anywhere near my target of 5 chinups.  My last max was four, and today I could only eke out 2 complete unassisted, and did the rest of the sets assisted. It didn’t hep that the gym was full of wankers.  I saw two guys wandering about chatting on their cell phones, and there was a small gaggle of teenage boys who’d staked out almost a third of the weight room…which is fairly sizable.

After warmup, I had to wait for one of the doctors (I have to asume that anyone who absolutely NEEDS to bring their cell to the gym is a doc) to finish debating with his girlfriend before  I could use the squat rack, and then again for the teens to get bored with whatever the hell it was they were doing to use a bench for the rest of my RT.  Maybe my chins were affected my the negativity of the resulting pissy mood I was in.

Le sigh.

Onward and upward.

With just over 2 weeks left to the challenge, I’m feeling pretty good about it.  I HAVE to get on top of my CTs, but aside from that, I’m ahead in all departments.  In fact, I’m only a half a pound away from hitting my 5% goal of 12lbs.

I’m enjoying phase 3….for the most part.  I love workout A.  I’m up to three honest to god full weight chinups amongst the assisted, and the whole thing seems to fly by, even though I’m exerting myself.  Workout B is a bit more tedious and the pushup/rows are killing me, but even it goes by fairly quickly.

I’ve been thinking about this thing I’m doing more and more in terms of a perpetual life change, rather than a phase.  While I am denying myself things I enjoy, and have since childhood, I also remember that they used to be rare treats - ice cream and candy and chocolate and fast food - not every day staples.  At some point in the future, they may regain their status as infrequent delicacies, but never will they return to being the cornerstone of my diet. I think it may have been the freedom of living on my own that did it, that made the radical change to my diet.  I COULD eat whatever I wanted, with none saying yea or nay, so I gravitated to the instant gratification and the most attractive offer. It only took me 14 years to realize my mistake.

Oh well.

Here’s to the next fifty years of better choices.  (people in my family tend to kick at about 60.  I intend to better that by at least 20 years)

It’s been a week since my last post, and we’ve passed the halfway point of the 52DC.  I’m proud that I’ve had only one burned CE so far - in fact, it’s the first one since Christmas.  I’m not even sure why I did it - it was pretty random.

The last week has seen the rashiest, highest-budget event that my boss has had me take care of yet.   On Tuesday, Virgin Mobile announced its new highspeed global network and new phones/plans.  The event was a day long affair, with media in the morning and a dance party in the evening.  Photos can be found here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167847&id=67376019814, here - http://emanueladepaula.blogspot.com/, and a video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFif8e9YLio.  If you watch VERY closely, you can see a very sleepy me watching from backstage.

The show has kept me away from the gym, but I’m back today for one more week of phase 2 before moving to 3.

Wow.  Almost halfway.

So, most of the last nine or ten days I’ve spent on various showsites about the city, from the Burroughes Building (shiesters) to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.  It’s been a bit of an adventure.

At the Burroughes Building (Queen and Bathurst, for those who know Toronto), we built an event for Quebecor.  The loadin was kind of icky.  We had to load in from a back alley that was too narrow to turn our truck in.  The result was that we off loaded the truck into the alley and then spent the next hour loading gear into the sketchiest freight elevator I’ve ever seen.  And then it got stuck in between floors.  Good times.

After we got our gear unloaded, the building managers shook us down for access to the house power.  Being farly organized, we’d made arrangements at the top of December for all of the necessities of the show.  Unfortunately, the rep we made arrangements with no longer works there and the building has decided that any deals brokered by her are null and void, and that one hour into setup is the best time to let us know.

We had no choice.  We had to agree to the exorbitant extra fee to get the show running.  Still, though, the electrician showed up 3 freaking hours late, having decided to go to Whitby on a whim.  Mother%&^er.

The Toronto Board of Trade dinner was a bit smoother.  Our problems there were pretty minor.  At one point, the centre staff swiped some of our sandbags to hold doors open.  Normally not a big deal, but the sandbags they took were holding up our drape line, and the doors they opened created a gale force wind that ripped through the hall and blew the weakened drapeline over.  I managed to catch the hardware on the way down and right it until someone could close the door.

The clients for both shows were happy with the events, although the Burroughes Building has lost a customer in my client, so overall, it was a fairly successful week for me.

And while the events took me away from the gym for a couple of days, I counted the loadins as RTs and CTs, since, while the movements were different, there was still an awful lot of physical work involved, and I believe my progress has continued.

I’ve got one more big event this coming weekend, with what proves to be a ridiculous load-in at a converted church (read, LOTS of lighting, staging, and audio equipment going up LOTS of stairs), and then I’m taking a few days off.

I’m going to extend my time doing the Phase 2 workouts by a couple of days, so I can wait to start Phase 3 at the gym after my time away.  I’ll be near another Goodlife, but they have no bars or freeweights, as they cater mostly to cottagers.

My office is currently waging war on the senses….well…mostly just olfactory.

Nothing gross - just very…ethnic.

This morning I put a roast in the crockpot, and it seems no matter how many times I wash my hands, they still smell delicious - onions and garlic….and now soap.  On top of that, I went across the street to the sandwich place (actually, they don’t make sandwiches, but the previous owners ran it as a sandwich house, so for now and always - it’s the sandwich place) and got a chicken shawarma for lunch.  I’m pretty sure it’s TNT clean (correct me if I’m wrong), minus the pita - I mean, it’s essentially seasoned chicken with vegetables and tahini.  So now, I personally smell like a Lebanese village.

Yesterday was my first day back at the Goodlife gym near the office.  I was going to have to make the transition from the condo gym before Phase three anyway, so sleeping in was as good a reason as any to reinsert myself into the public gym.  The place has some new equipment and wasn’t as retarded packed, although still fairly well populated, as I was afraid of.  I managed to get through the RT without any fighting over equipment, and I’m actually looking forward to going back tomorrow.

I like going in the afternoon, over lunch.  Not only do I get to sleep a little more, but it breaks up my day nicely.  My vocation doesn’t really prepare one for keeping regular office hours, so when I have to do it, I like to get out for a bit.

I was going to go back today, actually, to get in a CT, but my legs and my right arm are feeling pretty trashed from yesterday - I’m not really sure why - so I thought I’d give them the day off.  I suspect that 120lbs on the lat machine at the condo gym and 120lbs at the Goodlife might differ somewhat.

Almost to the double digits.

Today’s been a busy one.  6am up to go to the gym, then to work for 9 to get ready for a meeting that got bumped up by a half an hour and ran 2 hours over.  By the end of the meeting, I was ready to chew my leg off…or, better yet, my neighbours leg - I was that hungry.  I ended up eating my first real meal of the day (not including re and post shakes and the follow up shake/cream/coffee/pseudo meal) at 2 in the bloody afternoon.

Not cool.

I’m usually pretty good at spacing my meals out.  Right now, my body feels like it’s trying to catch up.

Last night was also the company christmas party.  I eschewed the festivities last year, being somewhat antisocial, but resolved to attend this time around.  In order to avoid eating a bunch of pastry wrapped hors d’ourvres, I had dinner before going to the party.  THEN I found out that there was going to be real food there.

D’oh.

I had a couple (read 5) probably 1oz hunks of tandoori chicken and a couple of litres of diet cola - I’m not much of a drinker, and the event was at a bar (The Drake Hotel), so I felt kinda weird when everyone was eating and drinking and I had nothing in  my hand.

I’ve been trying to cut back (successfully) on the diet cola intake - not that I’ve had much more than a can a day on average - and last night was an obvious exception.

Today saw the beginning of the third week of Phase 2.  I surprised myself by making it through 4 sets of lat pulls without lowering the weight.  Aside from discovering that I’ve been doing swissball jackknifes wrong, these are the hardest part of the workout for me.  I must perservere, though, if I want to get back to doing unassisted pull- and chin-ups.

It’s also getting pretty close to the stage when I have to stop using the condo’s gym and move to back to the better equipped Goodlife near the office.  The condo’s freeweights top out at 50lbs, and I’m sure I could handle more - at least for the Romainian deads.  I’ll finish week three and then make the shift.

Tabata tomorrow morning.

Let’s hope my legs don’t give out at an inopportune time.

Well - one week down, and 6.5 to go.

All told, I think I’m doing alright.  I’m a little behind where I’d like to be in terms of weight loss and strength gain, but, then again, who isn’t?  I’m still on target to hit my goals in 46 days.

46 days.

That sounds like such a long time.  More than a month, even.  I’ve learned, though, that time can zip by pretty quickly, and any belief otherwise can lead to terminal procrastination.

This site has been down most of the day, and I’ve gotten a billion spam coments that delayed posting.  This may be why so many folk have moved to the wordpress proper.

I tried the second set of dumbbell complexes Kong’s been touting lately.  Again, I think I was overly ambitious with the load.  I went pretty light, but some of these are moves I’ve not done before.  I only made it halfway through before wanting to die, but I don’t feel as wrecked five hours later as I did last time.  The day after next, I’ll try the Tabata on my day off of RT.

The pattern I’ve settled on is something like this:

RT1, CT1, RT2, Day off, RT1, CT2, RT2, Tabata, RT1, Day off

It looks like a lack of focus in terms of CT, but I’ve enjoyed the two I’ve done so far, and mixing the three of them in will pretty much guarantee I don’t get bored with it.

Tomorrow’s the start of Phase 2, week 3 of TNT’s RT scheme.  An extra set of everything, but an extra 15 seconds of rest in between.  I’ll have to actually get  up on time for this one.

I posted on the boards a few days ago about saturated fats.  Jaclyn’s been telling me that…well, basically that I’m going to die.  I’m being extreme, but she acte as though I was nuts when I asked her what was bad about saturated fats.  She watches a lot of this Doctor Oz character on the tube.  Apparently, the amount of saturated fat I’m eating is going to turn my blood into cream or some such.  I did some reading, and then after getting some advice from the guys on the board, I did some more reading.

TNTman says his bloodwork has improved greatly eating the TNT way and he’s got the paperwork to prove it.  I think I’ll set up an appointment with the doc to see where I stand in relation to the last physical I had, which would have been before I started TNT.

*** EDIT ***

I’ve just gotten my latest Amazon.ca order in the mail - Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyrad Book, Dr. Johnny Bowden’s Living Low Carb, and The Men’s Health BBOE.

It’s been a busy day at work.

The Olympics are having an effect on every other event coming up in that they all need to be squared away before people want to bugger off out west. I’ve got a whole pile of events coming up in the last couple of weeks of the month, which coincide with the setup of Molson Canadian Hockey House in Vancouver.  It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

I tried out the complexes as a CT day this weekend.  I may have been too ambitious with the weight.  It certainly felt more like an RT and I decided to take today as a day off.  The complex I did involved eight or nine dumbell exercises in rapid succession with a 60s rest between supersets.  The next one I’m going to try has only four or five movements with a 90s rest.  Dependin on how that goes, I’m going to alternate in between RTs, with a day off every fourth day, like so:

RT1, CT1, RT2, Day off, RT1, CT2, RT2, Day off

We’ll see how the next complex treats me, though.  Maybe I won’t need the extra day off and can continue thusly, with every sixth day off:

RT1, CT1, RT2, Day off, RT1, CT2, RT2, CT1, RT1, Day off

The latest argument Jaclyn’s brought up is my consumption of saturated fats.  Now, I’ve read the Men’s Health article and the NYTimes article about why Keys’ study was lacking, and I understand how 20-40 years of social programming can fudge the facts.  What I don’t get is how can these scientists and doctors - trusted members of society - how can it be possible that they just ignore information they don’t like.   I’m no scientist, but that’s the first rule in grade 9 science:  The the theory changes to fit the facts, not the other way ’round.

I’ve printed both articles and am planning to leave them lying on the coffee table, though I have no faith that she’ll read them.

Well, the Olympics are really started to gear us up.  My boss has been up to his eyeballs revising equipment lists and booking crew.  Yours truly, unfortunately, will be in Toronto handling all the stuff he can’t while he’s out west.  On the one hand, it’s great that he trusts me with his clients.  On the other hand….I wanna go to Vancouver!

Today’s the 3rd day of the winter 52dc and it’s going well.  Tomorrow, I’m going to start one of the cardio complexes featured in an article on Tnation.  I have a pretty common aversion to cardio - it’s just so damned boring.  These complexes, though, are built around RT motions, so hopefully they’ll be less onerous.

I had a really good holiday vacation, aside from the few days in Montreal when my diet and exercise went right off the rails.  Every try to stick to a diet while living with a pack of Italians?  Over a major holiday?  Not humanly possible.

New years was a bit of a let down, but I let my son stay up to watch the countdown, which I think he really enjoyed.  What’s up with Dick Clark, though?  Someone really needs to let Disney’s animatronics team go in and do some repairs.  I’m not even talking about the stroke-effected speech.  The makeup they’re troweling on him for the cameras is making him look just so horribly artificial.

I’ve started going to the gym earlier to avoid the resolutionists, but I suspect that they’re only really a problem on the weekends.  During the week, it’s still been pretty quiet in the condo’s gym… I wonder what the Goodlife is like right now?