Training Log Archive: CleverSky

12 pullups, 30 pushups, 60 situps, 30 squats.

12 pullups

12 pullups

Snow dealings, round 5b: clearing the turnaround at the top of Mom's driveway. Pretty heavy, wet glop.

Fortunately, the way the weather went, my driveway wound up clear and dry. My mailbox looks inaccessible, though, and I'm not inclined to try and remedy that.

Snow dealings, round 5a: my driveway. My impression is that this particular storm was largely a bust, but at my place it snowed pretty steadily all day, and I ended up with about 8" of cement. The snowblower handled it, never quite stalling, although a number of times it sounded like it was on the verge of doing so. Did some of the plow snow down by the road with a shovel, because although the snowblower could do it, I had to take such narrow slices that it wasn't worth it. Spent probably about 50 minutes total out there. There was a thin layer of slush left, with a sleety drizzle falling. If it drops below freezing tonight, the driveway will be a sheet of ice in the morning.

C • Amazing. At my place, when ... 2

60 situps, 30 pushups, 30 squats.

12 pullups

C • 12 in 12 seconds 2

Termination date for my employment at Randstad Technologies, on Monday I start my new job at Autoliv. No difference in where I work or what I'll be doing, just in who cuts the checks and the details of my compensation. Although I had aspirations of getting out of work early enough to go for a run, when I finally did get home I had a headache, and I just sort of crashed and didn't get any exercise in at all.

12 pullups, 60 situps, 30 pushups, 30 squats

50 situps

Out late at the Banff Film Festival, just crashed when I got back well after midnight.

50 situps, 25 pushups.

It was bound to happen eventually: looks like Nancy's eye-rolling comment was enough to push me onto the Noisy Logs list. I thought about making some comments on the logs of the two people behind me, but I assume I'd still need to find somebody else to promote onto the list if I wanted to get pushed off. Oh well, whatever.

Hard to get motivated to go outside, because it was about 20F and incredibly windy. I finally bundled up in the late afternoon and grabbed the funky waxless skis. This was largely on snowmobile tracks, with a few short stretches on ATV tracks, and some at the beginning and end that were just off-trail. The snow was very firm, and the dusting we got overnight provided just enough of a surface that I wasn't sliding all over the place. The snowmobile tracks were pretty icy, so conditions were very fast, and the steepest bits were out of control, so I had to sit down a couple of times. The watch had only a partial charge, and in the cold weather, it wasn't enough to last the whole way (I adjusted the time and distance).

12 pullups, 60 situps, 30 pushups, 30 squats. Kind of a loaf the past couple of days, and I should have done something aerobic today, so I at least did a few extra of each of these. Sometimes I wonder if it's appropriate to log them as intensity 5, but when I've just finished a set, I know from how hard I'm breathing that it is.

Picking up a milk crate containing 40 punds of barbell plates. As part of a medical examination. The last one I can recall having was performed by a pediatrician.

C • An unusual test 13

Could have done some exercises, but decided to skip it.

11 pullups, 50 situps, 25 pushups, 25 squats

50 situps

11 pullups, 50 situps, 25 pushups, 25 squats. The last few times I've done these, I tried for the extra pullup, but it just wasn't there, couldn't even get started. This time I got the notion for the count of 11 going in my head from a few reps out, and had a sort of psychological running start. Then I thought about one more, and it seemed like there was no possibility at all for that. I wonder how much of this is in my arms, and how much is in my head.

Snow dealings, round 4b: clearing the top of Mom's driveway, and getting her car extricated.

I came up with an idea of how to improve the bindings on the giant snowshoes, so I tried it out in the yard, and it seemed to work well enough, so I kept going. Still not perfect, and they loosened up a few times, but I was able to deal with it. Down the normal way, and saw that a snowmobile had been out -- how inept does somebody have to be to get down to dirt with this much snow? Went in the woods off to the side to avoid the places where people had already been. I was hoping that the Lane trail would be unbroken, but there were snowshoe tracks on it. Fortunately, they went only as far as the marsh, then turned back, so I had it all to myself until the Mystery Blazes turnoff, where animal tracks started (presumably dog). I went straight, and when I got to Holman, I was pleased to find it unplowed. So I headed up the hill, figuring that at the first house I'd take off the snowshoes and walk home, but instead I took the access road through an undeveloped lot and back into the woods, joining back up with the trail near where the backyard snowmobile trail comes in, and home from there. This was a lot like a killer stairclimber workout.

Snow dealings, round 4a. Had to shovel around from the front door to the garage door to clear the first few feet of driveway, because there was no way to get the garage open with all the snow that was drifted up against it. There's also about 75 minutes of snowblowering on top of that. The antique snowblower came through like a champ and handled everything, despite the fact that the snow depth was just about exactly the height of its maw.


Even did the mailbox, and all without having to refuel. (I wonder how this snowblower got here. I know I got it from my parents, but I have no idea how I transported it.) The honest depth that I measured on the lawn was about 21", and in the driveway 17.5". Those numbers are less than the snowfall total, because I didn't go out until the sun appeared at 11 AM. In fact, while I was using the snowblower, it looks like it settled an additional inch. If measured by the official method, where you measure it every hour (or less?) and then sweep the surface clean, it would be a lot more.

The nice thing about the travel ban was that I didn't have to worry about cars coming when I turned the snowblower around in the street at the end of every pass (or when I was doing the mailbox).

C • I didn't know you had a bas... 3

Bah. I had great aspirations of putting on the giant antique leather and wood snowshoes and going for a tromp in the woods. I could have sworn that the makeshift bindings worked fine last time I did this, but today they kept loosening up, and I spent at least as much time fiddling with them as I did moving. And then it turned out that a bunch of people had already snowshoed on my intended route, which made it a lot less fun -- the whole point of these huge things is to break trail in deep snow. So I gave up and went back to look for more suitable footwear.

I was going to grab the medium snowshoes, but since somebody had packed the trail for me, I decided to look at my ski collection to see if I had anything suitable. I turned up a mystery pair of waxless skis, with a price tag (ductape and magic marker) indicating that they had been marked down from $50 to $20. I dimly recall having bought them out of the junk bin at Windblown, I think just because they had bindings that fit a weird old pair of boots that I had. So I dug out the boots, and some random pair of poles, and headed out again.

This went okay. Going downhill in the showshoe tracks wasn't bad, though they stopped after not too long and doubled back (which is why it looked like so many people had been through there. From that point on it was like slow snowshoeing, often couldn't even see my ski tips in front of me, hard work. A bit easier once I turned around, going through my own tracks, which weren't even recognizable as such. But once I got back to where the snowshoes had been, it was packed down well enough that I was able to move at a decent clip despite the fact that it was uphill.

And then relaxed with one of my favorite beverages, a pint glass packed with dry powder snow, with orange juice poured into it. Same idea as a Slurpee, but really good.

The plant officially closed at noon, I left at 12:30, and the roads were still fine, so I got home quickly and had ample daylight left to go out for a run. It's a blizzard, right? Might as well exercise outdoors! There was still little enough snow that my footprints were down to bare ground. Crossing the brook was a little funky because that whole area was hanging ice, where the water froze over while it was high, and it then subsided, leaving a flat surface that I would just crash through. Not a big deal, really. This felt like hard work, the whole latter part I was just wanting it to be over, but at least I got it done. I really expected it to be over 50 minutes, and was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see the time.

50 situps. Stayed at work late, figuring that Friday I'd be doing limited hours, and I dozed off before doing my intended exercises.

Mom has almost burned through the two cords of wood that she had delivered at the start of the season, so she ordered some more. I think this was the first of two truckloads, and I had to get it out of the way before the snowstorm so that her driveway can get plowed. Filled up her indoor woodbox and got most of the rest of it into the shed. Assuming more comes, it will go in the woodpile in back yard.

While I was there, I rummaged around in the attic and recovered a few items of Dad's, primarily the skate-sharpening jig and whetstones, which I'll have to try and figure out how to use. But I also acquired the interesting bits of his accumulated armaments.

None of these could be used to inflict harm, other than by bopping someone on the head with one. The lower right is a starter's pistol (I need to look some more to see if there's any of the noisemaker ammo left), the grenade is a practice training device, and the two items on the left are the realistic type of toy guns that were made in the 1930s.

10 pullups, 25 pushups, 50 situps, 25 squats.

10 pullups, 50 situps, 25 pushups, 25 squats.

I was talking with Stephen recently and mentioned that I had rings in my garage. He asked if I was going to train to do the Iron Cross, which he remebered seeing in the Olympics, and I told him no. But what was interesting was how he misremembered the Iron Cross. Not having the name handy in his brain, he described it, and in his version, you started from a dead hang, and keeping your arms straight, you raised you body to the Iron Cross position. Anybody who could do that would be in a pretty good position to get a medal, I think.

C • Cross 9

The part before the battery ran out. I tried to charge it last night, but it wouldn't do it; looks like the problem was that the power strip I had the charger plugged into is flaky.

But I was clever enough to have a second watch on, which I started to record how much longer I was out there.

This was sort of the fulfillment of a dream I've had for over 40 years: the iceboats were there. I initially was not going to skate, because the lake was covered with snow, but there were some people playing informal hockey, and I saw a sail, and there were clearly folks ice fishing, so I decided to give it a go. Turned out the snow was only about two flakes deep, enough to hide things but not enough to impede skating at all. The iceboaters warned that there were thin spots (yesterday one broke through, which doesn't mean that the sailor gets wet, but the craft suddenly slams to a halt, potentially from high speed, and I guess the guy got thrown out and got pretty badly hurt), so they were wary about venturing very far out onto the lake, but I did a tour of the eastern half, stopping to chat briefly with ice fishermen who all reported thicknesses of 6"-9". There could very well have still been thin spots, though. The warm rain mid-week also smoothed this lake out nicely, and the surface was great, even better than yesterday. After my tour, I hung out with the iceboaters, and the time includes some time (maybe 5-10 minutes) of standing still chatting with them while they were becalmed. There wasn't enough breeze for them to really get going, though they were able to sail intermittently. I really wanted to see them moving fast enough that I couldn't keep up, but that never happened. Still pretty cool skating alongside them.

They're parked and empty in this picture, the sailors were off marking cracks in the ice while they waited for the breeze to pick up.

The warm rain mid-week did a pretty good job of wiping out the snow and zamboniing the ice. Still not fabulously smooth, but waaaay better than last week. Also a bit warmer, and I was dressed better, and there was less wind. I started out slowly so that I could scope out the ice thickness, and when I concluded that it was safe, I sped up. Nice to get some outdoor skating, despite the bumps and the fact that the ice occasionally makes distressing noises as I pass over. The best ice was in the SE corner, so I did a few laps there at the end. The actual time and distance were a few minutes and about 800 m longer, the stop button apparently got pressed by my jacket cuff when I was on my way back to where I started.

10 pullups, 25 pushups, 50 situps, 25 squats.

During a meandering conversation at work yesterday, the topic of deer flies came up, and one of my coworkers muttered "fucking deer flies...". I laughed, surprised that he knew the technical term, and enlightened him about blue hats.