Get off your a$* or quit trying

First of all….I hate television.  I can’t think of anything productive from even owning one and when I use my own I am aware that I’ve essentially lost a small battle in the constant war against becoming more stereo typically American.  I admit that while traveling abroad I have been embarrassed to appear too “American” to the natives in whatever place I visited.  I’m not ashamed of my country as a whole, our world leaders, or our history……I am ashamed of our people.  With each passing year we are getting fatter, lazier, and incredibly dumber.  I don’t know what came first the chicken (in this case the dumbing down of our nation) or the egg (the increasingly widening asses of my fellow Americans).

Does it matter which came first if they both suck?

Either way I think they go hand in hand.  The dumber we allow ourselves to become, either by spending 100x more on defense than education or replacing things like learning with American Idol, simply wreaks havoc on our quality of life by forcing us to depend solely on a handful of practitioners to make every important decision about our bodies.  The next time one of my elders tells me “I was just fine until I went to the doctor”, I am going to poke my temple with a fire poker.  Yes, we are that fucking stupid that we allow this to happen to ourselves and simply expect the medications to fix it to not only be affordable but provided at no cost to us as consumers.  This stupidity contributes to the expansion of our hind sides and general decline in health which forces most of our sub-human com-padres to solely sit on their asses and turn on the idiot box or some other form of life wasting activity.

As for the egg in the scenario, it isn’t innocent by any stretch.  I’ll admit that it is very entertaining, however many of us watch it while doing things that are simply terrible for our health and well-being.  It is all too common for us to shove food in our faces while sitting on our asses and watching television.  Something should click at one point that this activity just isn’t healthy.  The more time we sit in front of the shit box the worse we get. Not only is it addicting, watchers get more out of shape and less likely to actually get up and move.

Cut the Cable

You maybe be thinking why or what do you do now.

Why?

• Because I find myself limiting my days too often by allowing 1 hour of TV become all night and never getting things I want to get done.

Now What?

• Now with the free time that I would have used to become a zombie in front of my TV watching Cable, I now will spend time reading and studying things that interest me.
• I will have more time to pursue a new passion and dream project sparking in my head (that is all the details on that)
• More Music: I will now use free services like Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker to stream music
• Read: Now with no random TV to suck my time, I will be able to sit back and catch on a lot of reading that I need to do.
• TV Substitute : So I will not be completely without my TV, as I can still use services like Hulu or Netflix to watch shows when I want, but having to stream them will allow me to only watch what I want and not get sucked into too much.

So This will be interesting for the first week or so, but just like other changes once it kicks in and becomes the normal I will look back and wonder how I managed to waste so much time

Mud, Pain, Brotherhood (My Muddy Story)

Backtrack to 2001

Keeping the details short: two men, brothers not from blood but from bond have a falling out and lose track of each other. Well, time goes by fast and without any communication … 8+ years go by. Neither have forgotten about the other but no attempt from either side to reform the bond is made. Then, through a mutual close friend the brothers reconnect and small chatter starts going back and forth.

Shortly after the small chattering between the brothers, I start going through a major crossroad in my life and I discover my new-found love of working out and training. At first I was just moving, not sure how I was training or what I was training for. BUT one day while sitting in a sauna reading Austin Fit Magazine, I saw a full-page ad for the Warrior Dash (Forney). This ad reached out to me somehow and I had to get home and find out more about the event. First, I had never heard of such an event much less attempted anything like it. I knew I had to do it but I needed someone to run it with me; share the pain. From everyone I knew, there was only one person who I knew was crazy enough to do it with me at the time, my brother. Well, after looking into it more I reached out to him and asked if he would want to do the event. I was not going to take no for an answer and had a game plan on getting him to run the Dash with me. If he had any second thoughts I would promise to run the course in a Kilt, but I think that was just an excuse for me to get a Kilt. Well, I played my Kilt card too quickly cause he was going to say yes but I threw it out and I was a man of my word and ordered my Kilt and ran the event in it.

Forney Warrior Dash

The event was a few hours away so this was a whole weekend trip, where his wife, niece, and I will say our dad all went. This was the first and longest time we’d shared together since the reconnection and it was great. But through the training (at this time just solo training), mental prep, and excitement that we each endured, we started to rebuild more than the connection, we were reforming our brotherhood bond. The run itself, again, was the first muddy run I ever ran so I was not sure what to expect. Before the fire shot into the air to start our heat I was nervous, scared, excited and many other words to describe my feelings, but I knew it was going to be ok: I had my brother next to me. Well, as he would tell you, he was next to me for a short amount of time cause once I felt the heat from the fire I shot out of the starting line like a mad man and took off. After the 3 miles of mud and obstacles I finished with, I am sure, one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever had and waited at the finish line for my brother. I am sure he had a smile but it was hard to see from the amount of mud he was covered in from head to toe. When it was over, we all as a group hung out at the event surrounded by 8000-10,000 like-minded people listening to music, drinking beers, covered in mud and just loving life.

Tough Mudder ATX – The Aftermath

The Aftermath

If a year ago you would had told me I would be doing a 10 mile obstacle course built and designed by British Special Forces I would had punched you for suggesting the idea. Well my mental state and need to test myself has changed a lot over the past year and this had to be the toughest test to date for myself.

The course as advertised did truly does test all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and CAMARADERIE. With that being said I would had not been able to run this course more less complete the course without my best friend Clint. First the training runs that he pushed me through prepared me for the run like nothing else. Second, this is not event that you can run solo, you HAVE to have someone there next to you that you trust with your life and to push you mentally and physically to no quit. I highly suggest running this event as a team (2+ people) and a team that will bleed, sweat, and endear pain together.

Obstacles

Here are the obstacles from the Austin Event and my take on each.

1. Mystery Obstacle – Obstacle designed race day surprise. Expect something truly bad ass.
   Jocks on the Rocks – This is a large pit that is about 4ft deep that is filled with muddy water and tons of ice. You have to jump in and cross to the other side. The best tip can give is just jump as far into the pit as possible and get out quickly, IT IS COLD!!!!
   
2. Kiss of Mud – Eat Dirt as you crawl on your belly under wire set only 8 inches from the ground.
   There not much height between the ground and the wire and barbed wire so you have to get down and crawl. I found it is easiest to crawl using my elbows and shoulders to pull the rest of my body. If you try to crawl on all fours it makes it slower and harder
   
3. Walk the Plank – Test your feat of heights and cold all in one with our 15 feet high splash into the pond followed by a swim back out.
   First the ramp to top of the plank is very steep and slippery. You WILL need assistance getting to the top. Once on the top, looking down SUCKS, 15ft is HIGH. Next and the most important part is the water is COLD!!!!!!!!, it is will put your body into a near shutdown mode from the cold shock. DO NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY Once you get into the water, you will have about 50-70 meter swim to the other side and this is a swim, you will not be able to touch the bottom.
   I highly suggest challenging yourself in all the obstacles but if you have any concerns with this one, do not feel bad skipping this one. 
4. Devils Beard – Try as you might you will get caught like a fly in a spider’s web time and time again in our annoyingly lo cargo net.
   This was not too bad as others were at the start and end of the net holding it up and tight. The net was still very low to the ground but this helped a lot during the crawl. So point, Help your fellow mudders. If you are not lucky to have others as handy to help, you can hold up the net with one hand and move through slowly.
   
5. Texas Bale Bonds – Hurl yourself over these enormous hay bales. Watch out for the one with a pitchfork inside.
   There were two rounds of Hay Bales (round). The first round was just one level that was about 4ft high. It was not too hard to jump to the top of it with a running start, but some might need help. The next set of bales were 2-3 levels high making it near 8-12ft high total. As they were multiple levels you could jump to the crease between each and move forward. As you climb the multiple levels, like the previous and future assistance will help so look for people on the bottom to help push you up or people up top to pull you up.
   
6. Cliff Hanger – Teamwork is essential as you scramble up and over this steep and slippery motocross slope. We dare you to try it on your own.
   The slope on this is very high and slippery. There is no rope, it is just you and others very the angle and mud. The best tip I can say is be smart and plan your attack. If you look closely you will find small foot holes to brace yourself. If you find one, try and brace yourself and push or pull others up and make your way up with help from others. Also WATCH FOR SLIDING PEOPLE.
7. Berlin Walls – Show team spirit and camaraderie as you work with other Tough Mudders to scale our series of 12 foot high walls, tough enough when dry, but really fun when wet.
   This was one of my favorite obstacles. I was able to jump and grab the top and pull up and over without much if any assistance, just get a little moving start.
   There are 3 sets of walls, and as flat as the walls are, there are some boards of the walls that bend out that can help as foot holds. Also there is enough room to sit on the top if needed to help others up.
8. Boa Constrictor – Prove you can cope with cold dark confined spaces and a few nasty scratches with our specially designed Tough Mudder tire tunnels.
   Tunnels were about 20ft in length and about 2 – 2 1/2ft in width. The bottom of the tunnels had a small layer of mud/dirt. There was no best way to get through other than just on all fours in any way you can, there is not a lot of room to get creative.
9. The Log Bog Job – Because running through a swamp isn’t tough enough, you’ll have to hop over or crawl under a series of fallen trees.
   This was more of a nice trail run through some runs with some branches and logs scaled and laid across the trails. Not that bad of a obstacles.
   
10. Creek Crusade – Slosh your way through waist-deep sludge without losing your shoes into the mud.
    There was a good amount of streams to run through and they ranged in depth ranged from
    
11. Fire Walker – Plain and simple run through our blazing kerosene soaked straw. Expect flames at least 4 feet high.
    Due to a Burn-Ban at the time of the event, this obstacle was replaced with the Texas Smoke House Replacement. This is a large house like structure that you have to jump into through the window like holes, but once inside you can not see more than 2-3feet in front of you from all the smoke-like substance in the house. To make the obstacle even more of a challenge there are some nice up and down muddy slopes to over come before getting to the other side.
12. The Trenches – Get stuck in our energy-zapping trademark Tough Mudder thick mud as your way through a maze of trenches.
    The mud in this stretch was true mud and about ankle to thigh high at points. As advertised it too some energy getting through it.
13. Hold Your Wood – Make like a lumber jack and drag a log up and down a set of slippery hills.
    So coming up to this obstacle there is a huge pile of logs of all difference sizes. You will have your pick of what you carry either solo or as a team. I was lucky to be able to carry as a team. Once you make your pick you will make your way around a nice little track with some fun mounds just to throw your wood back into the pile. Have fun with and do a few shoulder presses with your log for kicks.
14. Underwater Tunnels – Bob underneath the obstacles on the surface of the water as your head shrinks to the size of a walnut.
    Just like the Walk the Plank, the water is COLD and will suck a lot of energy from you and once getting in you will be swimming and NOT walking through the water. The entire swim in about 50+ meters and in the middle of the pond is a series of 4 rounds of barrels that you have to swim under. Be aware when under water and directly under the barrel it will be pitch black and you will have to keep moving forward. 
15. Twinkle Toes – Make your way across a log bridge without falling into a freezing cold lake.
    This is the only obstacle I could not complete as designed. I fully took it on, but I could only get about 2 feet at most before falling into the water. The beams are first muddy and wet from all the previous runners and second the beams are VERY unstable and wobble a lot. Just be ready to get wet on this one.
    
16. Ball Shrinker – Try not to fall off this rickety swinging rope bridge into the muddy waters below.
    This was not as hard as I thought it would be. As you suspend over the water trying to balance on a thin rope and hold another over head, you will wobble front and back a lot as others are on the rope with you at the same time. But as long as you have a good grip you will be solid. I don’t think I saw anyone fall during my time at the obstacle
    
17. Funky Monkey – Monkey bars were easy when you were five, but you’ll need to hold on extra tight to these. Some of them have been greased with butter and you’ll get a shock when you fall into an ice cold lake.
    OK, I will say this was the obstacle I was looking most forward to, don’t ask me why. So to the advertised greased with butter, I was lucky to not get one of these, but there is a good amount of mud on bars. For a few tips, I took off the gloves I was wearing so I could use just my bare hands for better grip. Next on the outside of the bars closest to the wood there was not nearly as much mud equaling a better grip. And if you were wondering, I made this obstacle my bi#h as I completed it.
18. School of Tough Knocks - Be the Kelly Slater of bus surfing as you climb cargo nets to the top of this old beautiful just to make the 12 foot jump back down again.
    So this obstacle was not as advertised, there was not a bus to be climbed. It was a nice fun water pond to run through to a vertical cargo net that you have to climb just to then climb down to run through more water.
    
19. Electroshock Therapy – Release you inner demons as you sprint through a field of live wires, some which carry a 10,000 volt shock.
    At first the wires will either be low charged or not charged, but as you get to the middle and end the charge seems to go up. I can just talk about one shock that I got to my shoulder that nearly made my knee buckle. Just be prepared to get shocked and it will not feel good. RUN FAST 

Just a Number?

So I went and did a BodPod test to get a more accurate body fat% compared to the handheld device I been using. Well my handheld device ranges between 15-16% on most days, so I was expecting something around that. But what I got was something completely different, something I was not ready for.

My results:
Body Fat: 25%
Fat Pounds: 39lbs
Lean Mass: 116lbs

Like I said I was not ready for a 25% body fat reading. MY first thought was when I was a lot heavier what was my true body fat%. My next thought was that I am completely mad at myself and need to get even more serious about things. I am going to amp up the intensity and manage my diet to a higher level than before because 25% will not do.

Trying to find the good from this, I am more motivated than I have been for a while to get this number dropped. I am going to try and avoid using the handheld device I have and I will return to the BodPod in 4-6 weeks. The only means of tracking I am going to use is tradition tape measure and scale. If the weight is not changing and the inches are showing gains or loss then back to the drawing board.