Running the Carbohydrate Gauntlet

I got a preview tonight of what my weekend is going to be like while officiating a swim meet. We only had an hour of swimming tonight (two heats of 1650 yard freestyle), so they didn't set up a full-fledged hospitality room. But there was a table set up with some edibles. There were three platters: one full of cookies, one with mixed nuts, and one full of fruit. The cookie platter was much larger than the other--but having those other choices made it easy to stay away. Tomorrow I will be there from 7a.m. to after 4p.m. Hopefully the ratio of choices will stay as good as it was tonight!!

The Tale of the Scale

Popped out of bed this morning, changed into my birthday suit, hopped on the scale, and saw:

208.6

Looks like I'm down a couple pounds for the week. That was pretty much the norm during my first three months when I went from 242 to 212. The rate of loss came to a screeching halt after my hip injury which curtailed both my racquetball and some rather intense kettlebell training I had been doing. Both of those activities had something in common--they both include interval type training rather than long, sustained efforts. Hopefully now that I'm back to training like this, and I stick to my "Primal Nutrition" style of eating, I will continue to drop the body fat. I do have a challenge in front of me however. I will be at the pool a good part of the weekend officiating a meet. All officials at these type of meets (USA Swimmng age group) are unpaid volunteers. Heck, it's worse than unpaid--we have to pay $55 a year just to belong to USA Swimming. But one thing that meet organizers do well here in Corpus Christi is provide a well-stocked hospitality room. Of course, the definition of "well stocked" is open to interpretation. Often that means a large supply of baked goods, pasta dishes, and other things that don't exactly meet my needs. So sometimes I have to improvise such as picking up a couple of breakfast tacos and scrapping the contents off the tortilla and onto a paper plate. But it's always a struggle because the old sweet tooth is still there (I'm looking for a dentist to extract it). I can only hope they have some fruit!

Heavy Metal Day

Ok. You can take this title with a grain of salt. First of all, all the plates at my gym are totally encased in plastic. Secondly, the weights I lift hardly qualify as heavy, but it's as heavy as I've done...so I guess the title stays. :-)

Press (front rack position)
10 x 65
8 x 75

Squat
15 x 105
8 x 155
4 x 175

Deadlift
10 x 135
5 x 155

Those press numbers clearly show my weak area.
I felt pretty good doing the squat. I was able to maintain good form for all these lifts.
I don't know if my shins can take much more deadlifting. I ripped open a scab from the last time I did deadlift. I also think that I probably need to work with a knowledgeable teacher before going any heavier than I'm doing now. I don't want to take chances with my back!

I probably won't do much until Monday. I have a big swimming meet to officiate that starts Friday and doesn't end until Sunday evening. This means many, many hours on my feet so the odds are I won't feel like doing much when I get home.

Friday's Tale of the Scale is about 7.5 hours away!!

The Comeback (or How I Survived the Ibuprofen Invitational)

Racquetball is a great sport. One of the things that makes it so is that it can be played at any level from a novice to a professional and the participants can get a good workout and have fun as long as both players are at the same relative ability level. Unlike tennis, where beginners may have trouble sustaining any kind of a rally, anyone with a modicum of hand-eye coordination can get their racquet on the ball and advance it to the front wall. But the sport really shines as a conditioning tool when played by more advanced players. It calls for sudden bursts and quick reactions, all contained in periods of intense effort with recovery built in. It's "doing intervals" without "doing intervals."!

Back in the early 80s, I lived racquetball. I was on the court for two hours every weekday, and spent lots of weekends playing in tournaments. Unfortunately for me, I played my best racquetball when I wasn't in a tournament. My biggest disappointment came in 1983 while I was stationed at Osan Air Base in Korea with the USAF. I was playing in a tournament that sent the two-finalist to the All-Korea tournament. In my semi-final, we had split the first two games and I was up 10-6 in the tie-breaker. I only needed one point to make that final but it didn't happened. I wouldn't use the word "choke" but....ok...I choked! I went back to my room, threw my racquets in the closet, and didn't play again for around 15 years. I turned to running instead and started collecting 10K t-shirts.

Fast forward to 2002 or 2003. Some guys in the office were playing racquetball at lunch and I decided to give it another try. One thing I noticed right away was the racquet technology had changed big time. My little Ektelon 250G looked puny compared to the oversized racquets being used today. So I bought a new racquet and started playing 2-3 times a week. I didn't come close to regaining my old form but I was having fun and getting some exercise. But that all came to a screeching halt when I injured my hip last fall. I would play a match but then when I got out of my car to walk to the office I would get a "stop you dead in your tracks and have you call for your mama" spasm in my right hip. It was diagnosed as a strained hip flexor (Psoas) and I was told the only cure was rest. I waited a couple months and tried again but all I did was set my recovery back to square one.

So yesterday was the big comeback. I played one of my old regular opponents and split a couple of games. When I got back to the office, I had a snack that included 800mg of Motrin. I made of point of getting up from my desk often and walking around so that I wouldn't stiffen up. This morning it feels fine and I'm ready to put regular racquetball back in the fitness mix. I also think that the kind of training I'm now doing, the intervals in particular, are going to help my game immensely. The pattern that I normally followed playing this one opponent was that I would win the first game big, then the second game would be close with the other guy winning about half the time, followed by a third game that I usually lost. His advantage over me is quickness and court coverage. My strengths are a good serve and tactics--knowing when to hit a defensive shot rather than go for a kill. But my achilles heal has always been my lack of ability to sustain a high level of play over three games. Hopefully that is about to improve.

Bottom line--if you have never tried racquetball you should give it a shot!!