March 7, 2009

Stingray Shuffle 3K

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 1:00 pm

I ran the stringray shuffle 3k this morning with cheri. It was sponsored by a local running shoe store called the Running Zone.  I’m pretty happy with it, it let me get it in my head that I can run the distance without stopping.  I was going at a slower pace than I do when running here, but I wanted to finish without stopping so I was taking it easy.  Here are my stats:

MALE AGE GROUP:  40 - 44
Place O'All No. Name       Age City       St Time      Pace
29    568   520 Mike Ward  43 Melbourne   FL 22:26.2   12:03

Me and Cheri rounding the curve to the finish line (note the concerned looks on the ambulance attendants):
Mike and Cheri on final approach

February 26, 2009

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 10:39 am

Peter, on his hyperlipid blog, has a great post graphing all cause mortality vs % of calories from fat:

Cholesterol presentation: Between countries

He shows the graph that Keys used in his arguments against fat with the cherry picked countries and then cherry picks his own set of countries to show the opposite.  He also shows a graph of all the countries and it’s just a big cloud.

Keys was so sure of his position that he basically took the data that contradicted his hypothesis and manipulated it to support it instead of accepting that he was wrong.

February 23, 2009

DOMS is killing my calves

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 11:09 am

Wow.  I knew I was in trouble when my calves hurt yesterday after running.  The day after the day after is always the worse and today is really bad.  I look like an 80 year old man hobbling around.  I was planning on running again on Tuesday but I don’t know if my legs will have healed enough by then.  I think I was leaving my weight too much on my toes and not shifting to the back of the foot enough.  It could be that my legs are so out of shape.  I should have a better idea about it after my second run.

Tonight we are doing biceps and chest so I will try to stretch my calves out a little bit when I bend over to pick up weights.  May have to delay running again until Wednesday or Thursday.

February 21, 2009

Running, baseline

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 1:52 pm

Got off my butt and did my first run in several years today. I used a heart rate monitor and ran (HA!) until my heart rate got above 180 then walked until it dropped to below 130 and then ran again. I made it two miles taking about 30mins to do it with four periods of running. The last run period was very sloppy, I had a lot of trouble keeping my forefoot running going, I kept wanting to take a larger step which made me land on my heels. Not fun in the Nike frees, which I guess, is why I am using them.

I am skipping the leg workout today, Karen is doing the leg routine now. May try some squats tomorrow some time if I don’t end up working in the yard too long. Probably won’t try running again until Wednesday.

February 11, 2009

Running, not so much

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 8:40 pm

We did triceps and back yesterday so now the back of my arms are sore as well as my biceps. A little in my back, but not too bad. I couldn’t do as many pull-ups as I wanted since my biceps were so sore from Tuesday. I held off running because we are doing legs Thursday and I figure I will be sore enough from that without adding in some running soreness. Hopefully I will be able to manage something this weekend.

Cherie wants to do a 5k towards the end of March. (I think, not real sure of the date, got this second hand through Karen) Not sure if I work up to 5k by then, certainly not at my current rate. :/

February 9, 2009

DOM today

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 12:05 pm

We did the first workout of the series Sunday and I am sore today even though I was working out with lighter weights than I should have been.   I think the Imuran makes Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness worse for me. My joints were bothering me all day Sunday so I couldn’t workout as hard as I wanted to.

It’s supposed to be a nice day today so I will try to get some running in tonight.  Monday is always hard though, I just don’t seem to have much get up and go on Mondays.  Tuesday will be the next workout in the series.

I managed to remember to bring my toaster oven in to work today, so I have a chuck steak and will probably drive the rest of the crue crazy around 1 or 2 this afternoon when I am hungry for lunch.

February 4, 2009

Running off to a slow start

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 1:22 pm

Well, the best laid plans and all.  Monday night was raining and Tuesday wasn’t a verty good day, I was tired all day and came home beat.  Now the weatherman is saying that it’s getting into the 20’s tonight so I am pretty sure that there will be no running tonight.

Karen and I ordered some workout videos from Cathe and you need to detirmine your one rep maximum for the various excersizes in order to know how much weight to use so I may work on that tongiht.  I did my 1RM for curls and according to the calculator, it’s 35lbs.  What a wuss I’ve become since the major workout prior to the wedding.

February 2, 2009

Starting to Run again

Filed under: General Health — Mike @ 1:42 pm

At my lowest weight, before the prednisone and the honeymoon, I was 155.  Since that time I have climbed up to 170.  I’ve been doing my pushups and pullups somewhat haphazardly and recently got challanged to start running again.  So.  Tonight after work I will strap on the pulse meter thingy and get to it.  To get back into things I’ll run my pulse up to max and then walk until it setttles down again.  Cycle through that a few times and see how it goes.

I also plan to work on my fore-foot landing technique.  The last time I tried that, I ended up running on my tip-toes and getting really sore calves.  Since then I’ve read over more on the technique and will work on landing on my toes but pushing off with my heels.

November 6, 2008

Halloween 2008

Filed under: News and Views — Mike @ 9:58 pm

Quick post of my Halloween costume this year.  Here is the appliance glued to my face with no makeup:
Appliance glued to my face, no makeup.

Liquid latex used to smooth the edges and first layer of makeup:
Liquid latex used to smooth out the edges and first layer of make up.

Final makeup:
Final Makeup

Teeth inserted and cowl in place:
Teeth and cowl.

September 2, 2008

Weekend at Disney

Filed under: Uncategorized — Mike @ 1:15 pm

We spend last weekend at Disney, a celebration of Karen’s birthday.  And my belated one since we kind of skipped over it in all the wedding prep stuff.  We stayed at Disney’s Pop Century this time.  Not the best experiance, there were just too many people there.  Too many people at the one spot to eat so we had to fight the crowd to get our breakfast from the ala cart setup and then hunt for a spot to eat.  Too many people waiting for the bus from Pop Century to the attractions so we either had to be at the front of the line or we ended up standing.  Too many people waiting on the bus to go from the attractions back to Pop Century.

We stayed Friday night and Saturday night, coming back home Sunday morning.  Friday night we spent wondering around Epcot.  Karen brought her new camera along and took a bunch of pictures as she tried to figure out all the settings.  We had some trouble finding a spot to eat, Mexico was all booked and Japan had the sit down meal place closed for renovations.  We ended up eating at the octoberfest buffet in Germany which was good for me, plenty of meat to eat!

Saturday we hung out around the resort most of the day.  We tried the pool but spent most of the time hudled under the eave at the bar as the rain came down.  I think we managed about five minutes of swim time at one point before the thunder started and the lifeguards chased us all off.   Saturday night we spent at Downtown Disney.  We ate at the House of Blues since we got there a bit early and all of the really nice sit down dinner spots weren’t serving dinner yet.  As the rain began to trickle down again we ducked into the movie theater and watched Tropic Thunder.  It was pretty good, definitely a laugh or too.