This Odd Brunch

Fitness and food go hand-in-hand. Meredith and I swim, then we eat. Mike and I work out, then we eat.

I asked for an Entertainment Book for Christmas to try and get over my irrational phobia of coupons. After working out on Sunday, Mike and I consulted the book and decided to try lunch at T.T. Reynolds; the only problem being that T.T. Reynolds isn't open for lunch on the weekend.

We decided that we'd try The Firehouse Grill since they were open and had "grill" in the name. The service was excellent, and the food was very good, but it turned out that Mike and I were the only two people who didn't know everybody else in the place, and on stage Carol Gaylor and Bruce Katsu were performing popular songs.

::scratches head::

The whole experience was surreal, and I do plan to do it again, but there should be some kind of warning on the outside: "You meal may include a Sheryl Crow cover".

My initiation for Masters Swimming is finally complete (I guess?)

I've been swimming with the Masters team since September, and while everyone is friendly enough I haven't really felt like one of the guys. It doesn't bother me because this was never meant to be a social activity. I joined Masters for extra cardio, and I'm happy with the slow lane clique. As long as I'm not in anyone else's way I'm content.

The last week of the month, practice is always packed with the usual crowd plus new people dropping in to try it out. The slow lane ended up with so many people that Cheryl had to move the newbies to other (faster) lanes. After about 300 yards of the warmup our entire lane just kind of fell into sync. Our workout was a little shorter than the rest of the team, but we cranked out our 3500 yards in 1hr 15min and finished right along with everybody else. Less than 1/6 of the team is competitive tri-athletes or recent former NCAA swimmers, everyone else is 10+ years off the swim team or just fitness swimmers. The middle of the workout was (15) x 50 yard sprints, and by the end people were really feeling it.

A bunch of us ended up in the hot tub afterwards, and it was much more social than it usually is. People usually talk in twos and threes for a couple minutes and move on; this is the first time in three months I've seen 10 or 15 people have the same conversation and carry it into the locker room.

I realized the velvet ropes were behind me when some of the old timers, who were discussing work (some kind of consulting practice, not the same one but similar industry I guess), were talking about wanting a secretary but not being a position to hire someone who's 100% overhead. They mentioned a shared acquaintance who occasionally does work for them on the side, which then degenerated into nasty blow job jokes. I was really just standing there getting dressed, but I guess creeps can smell each other, because all the sudden I was on the inside...

A perfect score on your PSATs and a National Merit Scholar, nobody knows your name. You fuck one goat...

Masters: Day Two

My first practice with the Masters team last Tuesday was quite humbling, so much so that I skipped the next two and didn't return until Sunday. Prior to Tuesday, the best workout I'd done in the pool was 2200 yards (and that was probably back in May or June), so hopping in with 28 other people to try and crank out 4100 yards took the "gym class hero" right out of me.

I ended up skipping Thursday night simply because I had absolutely nothing to give (it was a long, exhausting week at work). Knowing myself as well as I do (motto: I'd write an instruction manual, but no one would read it) I was concerned that I was already skipping, and was worried might never go back. Skipping the workout on Saturday only added to that concern.

The lights weren't even on in the Aquatic Center when we got there for practice. I shared the last slow lane with an slightly older guy (late 40s/early 50s) who was a little slower than me but had better endurance. When Cheryl started writing the workout on the boards, there was only 1600 yards on it, so I was like "wh00t! It's fucking Christmas"...

Yeah, that was the warmup. Apparently she writes the warmup on each board and then goes back to write the workout itself. I think it totaled out at 4100 yards, and while my lane mate and I only did about 2500 yards, the workout went really well in my opinion. I just need some time to get used to the distance.

Not dead yet, so I'll be back there on Tuesday.

Return to the Pool (or: Where have I peed these past two months?)

Last night was my first time back in the pool since June. It was not a spectacular workout by any means: an easy 1200 yards in about 50 minutes, but it felt good to be back. Shoulders are a little tight today, and the chiropractor noticed when he adjusted me this afternoon. The tendon that connects my shoulder to by bicep is inflamed (which is the problem I was having before), so plenty of ice and rest are in order.

The plan is to finish out this week and next in lap swim at Oakmarr, and then move over to Mason's Masters team starting in September. I'm a little nervous about that, but the coach insists that there are 60 year olds on the team whose ass(es) I will regularly kick. We shall see.

I've also been running again the past couple weeks, and that feels really, really good. Nobody else would notice, but I think my endurance is almost back already. The last run through some Eurostyle cross country trails in Reston was awesome, and hopefully the same deal tonight.

I'm easing back into my routine before the school semester starts August 28th. Big fun.

Meredith swims the 1600 at George Mason

After meeting with my tutor, I went over to the Aquatic Center to see Meredith swim in a meet there. Her triathlon coach encouraged them to join Curl Burke's Masters Team and swim in some of these meets to get more practice and experience with the swim portion. By doing this, Curl Burke gets distance credit.









Meredith takes off:



Strong finish:



She had an excellent showing overall, especially since it was her first time out at this. Amusingly enough, the woman in lane one got out of the pool after 12 minutes because she "wasn't feeling it" so they DQ'ed her. Better than that though, the heat before Meredith swam, they called time when the slowest guy was only on lap 37 (they have to swim 66 laps) and was handed his cane when he got out of the pool. Good for him that he can get his swim on at 134 years old, but damn did he hold everything up.

Online Training Tools

I wanted to take a quick second to plug two online training tools you might find useful if you're working out, swimming, or just a huge tool.



The first is UberHuge, a lovely little tool written by Feld Alum Hunter Daley. Uberhuge is designed to log and manage your workouts and any dietary supplements you might be taking. It's like a personal trainer, only it doesn't call and cancel on you 7 days in a row. (Bitter much Alpha John?) It's a neat tool, and the author is fun to drink with.



The second is Dynoswim, a database of swim workouts that you can draw from or add to. While I've never gotten drunk with Dean and Josh, they were very interested to find out where I found out about Dynoswim (the message boards on the US Masters Swimming website), and were quick to make changes based on some feedback I gave them. Very cool guys, very nice site.

Teany Time

Annie emailed me last night to see if I wanted to swim with her after work, so we rolled over to Spring Hill about 7:30pm. After she worked her magic and got me under the velvet rope (cause that $8 one-time-use fee would have busted me good), we jumped in the pool and spent about 90 minutes going through our workout. We spent some time at the wall chatting, but we did quite a bit of swimming too. A very different (and good different) type of workout than I'm used to in our regular lap swim -- which incidentally resumes four days a week starting next Monday. We're going to try to get another swim in on Sunday, followed hopefully by a 7,000 calorie brunch from Cafe Deluxe.

When I finally left Spring Hill last night, I considered eating the seats in the Gold Stratus I was so hungry, but instead I thought "I'll hit McDonalds and get a yougart parfait" so I survive the trip home. On the 5 minute drive over to McDonalds it became apparent that I was about 90 seconds from fainting, so I decided that maybe I'd get a plain grilled chicken sandwich and maybe just have something light when I got home. I figured that McDonald's couldn't really fuck up a chicken sandwich with nothing on it, could they? To my complete surprise, apparently they have a new (new could be in the last five fucking years for all I know) grilled chicken sandwich that comes on this oval shaped wheat bun, and it was (to borrow a Jew Andrew saying) "completely spectacular". The chicken sandwich and the yougart was exactly what I needed, except maybe an ambian because I couldn't sleep once I got home.

Before the break, my trainer Christina decided that five mornings a week was a bit much for her (my occasionally oversleeping aside), so she and I are getting together Tuesdays and Thursday now and I have a different trainer named Walter on Mondays and Wednesdays (the fallacy being that I will actually go to the gym on Fridays all by myself). I met Walter this morning, he seems very cool. We had a dandy workout where he proceeded to nicely bust my ass for the entire morning. Since this was our first time working together, he sort of picked weight I was used to and we did burn outs to see how many reps I could really do. I am really going to feel this tomorrow. One set of flies I did 45 reps (we normally do 12-15, clearly not enough weight) and I did a couple crazy ab exercises today that I'm sure will make it impossible to get out of bed tomorrow.

Between those two ass-breaking events, and the useless 1:15pm meeting I had today, I went home at lunch and snuck a 20 minute nap. Now I'm just trying to burn the last hour of the day up so I can go home. I just made myself a nice cup of piping hot tea that I bought the last time I was at Teany in NYC with Meredith.

And now a picture of a mean, biting kitty cat to make this post complete.

Buddy, you're just not that interesting

I went swimming after work today at the rec center (as opposed to when I swim after work at the pool on campus), did my workout, and rolled into the locker room for a shower when I was done. The showers there are individual walled showers that face into each other, and I grabbed the only open one that was on the end closest to the door I had just come through. I had just finished a really long kick workout, so all of this involves 1/2 of 1 second of caveman think (shower open...stand under...) and while I'm washing pool chemicals and child urine off myself, I become aware of some douche bag yammering at his buddies.

This is a pretty big pool, and they have a lot going on, but my guess by the ages of the guys, the time of night, and how many of them there are that this is a Masters swim team that just finished their workout. Whatever. I'm not really paying attention but this dude keeps fucking yammering -- he's the ony one talking, and then I zone into what he's talking about: his fucking SF-86 and how the people who filled it out did it on paper. ::gasp::

For those of you fortunate to have never worked anywhere near the Federal Government, Standard Form 86 is a piece of preliminary paperwork required for any National Security position. This, and fucking a Senator, are the two most bragged about let-downs in Washington, DC. For real.

Buddy, I know you think you're hot shit, that you're gonna get your Clearance, but guess what? The janitors at NSA have TS/SCI with codeword -- you're going to be cleared for TS with Secret access so you can join the growing numbers of oxygen thiefs riding the bench for some beltway bandit looking to cash in on this round of defense spending.

That's why I called him a douche bag earlier, but that isn't the purpose of this post. See, dude had another personality defect that I zeroed in on as I'm leaving the shower area. All these dudes are still showering and still talking, and as I'm walking past them to my locker I notice that chatterbox is the only one who has taken his bathing suit off, and is standing face out to these other guys while he's talking. Alright, I actually think it's weird when I work out in the morning and the swim team at Mason shower in their bathing suits, but I can go either way on that argument.

I need you to put on your thinking cap to picture the locker room: looking down it's square shaped, and on the left running vertically are the showers and the steam room, just to the right of the showers (still vertical) is the wet area and benches, then just to the right running horizontally are five rows of lockers. Mine is all the way in the back (bottom), so I go there and get changed, and I have to walk toward the front to get to the exit. So while I'm getting dressed I still here the yap machine going on like he's trying to get laid, telling some story about how his girl got called by an FBI agent blah blah blah, and I realize as I'm walking out that he's totally changing out in the wet area which is kind of odd. Why? So he can be near the dude who seemed the least bored in the shower area and finish bragging about how his life is being turned upside down.

Definately not a "gay" issue, but a definate boundry issues. It's like that farting dude that everyone knows that you just want to shake and be like "dude, get your ass fixed", someone needs to be like "even if I was into man junk, the last 20 minutes is more than a lifetime worth".