Track Pete

building teh interwebs

Mike on Saturday said "I don't think I've ever had so many injuries at once before." So true. They're not really injuries for me, and they're a combination of other sports I've been playing (honestly I've only aggravated stuff doing parkour mostly), but a quick overview of how Pete feels right now, starting the sixth week of training at Primal Fitness, in order of most to least impact: Right elbow has "tennis elbow" and is sore, not supposed to do anything that is painful. Happened during softball, can't really play softball right now as a result (throwing = bad). Right leg has a minor groin pull up near the top, hurts to walk around generally and I have to be careful how I use it. Jumping off the right leg might be totally fine once, then incredibly painful the next time. Randomly gets very painful and tight during class or walking around and causes me to limp. Happened before kickball a couple weeks ago trying to do a cartwheel into a s...

I seem to have a fairly consistent problem updating my blog on weekends. Hrm! Well, rather than the full monty, I'll give a quick review of Saturday's workout: Cat leaps, wall climbs, climb ups and top outs! Basically we reviewed Wednesday's workout with the cat leaps, then broke up and started really focusing on the proper technique to climb up and onto an obstacle at speed. Travis made a comment about the final part, the top out, and how back when he was training there were no tutorials and it took him forever to figure out how to do it - but he was going to show us in a day. Sure enough, with about two minutes of instructions it clicked in and made total sense... but like so much in this training, I never would have arrived there. So, you're on top of a wall/ledge/etc. with your hands over it. Getting up to the point where your waist is even with it and your arms are locked and you're about to come over is called the climb out - I've got that part down...

Best part of the morning - sausage egg and cheese on multi grain bread Yum

Party!

Lol sure sure

Okay, I gotta try to do this somewhat quicker than normal - my buddies will be lurking on xbox live to kill some zombies. Today was both awesome and total suckage. I'll talk about both, but first an intro to the suckage... yesterday playing softball, I did one of my trademark monster throws from way out in right field to home plate. The kind where I scoop up the ball at speed and in one smooth motion spin my entire body into a leap, throwing my arm around with all the momentum of my legs and spinning body and wail it. The good news, it got home and prevented a run. The bad news - I released the ball with my arm torqueing outwards against my elbow, instead of inwards bending the elbow. The result was all the force of the momentum of my forearm and hand pushing against my elbow the wrong way. Ow. I have done this before, you'd think I'd learn. Alas. The end result was instant pain and I could not play the rest of the game. Even with two tylenol in me I wasn't su...

Umm what? why does this tree have a bumper?

Woohoo! Sure enough, today we went straight into the cat leap. Totally solid, I can see this being wicked fun - up there with the vaulting, though challenging in a different way. Today I also brought the camera out again, though I ended up fiddling with the position so much during class (we spent a lot of time "down" waiting in line for the box) that the time lapse will be super jerky... Ah well. So, before heading out to class I hit RFD with some friends (a typical Monday thing) and decided to actually have a beer this time. I was careful, got a small one at just after 5 and it worked out okay... it seemed to be through my system by class at 7, and I didn't have any problems with my stomach (my biggest fear - throwing up due to the heaviness in the stomach, not the alcohol). Nice to know I can handle this in the future if I'm careful. Warmup (x3): 1 lap (4 blocks) 5 wall runs each leg 10 squats 1 QM up and back 10 pullups Yet again at first blush this warmup di...

Blogging on the roof while my ribs are grillin - awesome way to end the day

RFD good!

Okay seriously I am loving the vaulting. It's both challenging and incredibly fun at the same time, and it totally appeals to me. I'm going to be sad to leave it behind for Week 5... Today was pretty nasty out, not sure exactly what the deal was. Temperature wasn't too high but it was just a horrible DC day, muggy, uncomfortable, hot. The kind of day where you sweat all nasty when you're out and never cool down... and I spent an hour after noon running around, jumping, and generally being active inside a big huge concrete oven. And enjoyed the hell out of it! Warmup (x3): 1 lap (4 blocks) 10 pullups 10 pushups 10 jump ups per leg 30 second handstand Here's what's kinda sad - I looked at that on the whiteboard and thought it looked incredibly easy (I was wrong). Chatting with some of the other guys before we started, we were talking about the addition of the handstand and how hard that was. Gotta admit I was way wrong here - last year I had been doing a l...

My first parkour injury - clipped my ankle doing a lazy vault a bit too fast. It will either be fine or totally swollen tomorrow lol

Wait, it's Friday. Why am I blogging about Wednesday's training session now? Two reasons - first, I ended up going directly from training on Wednesday into an XBOX 360 killfest with some of my friends and crashed shortly thereafter. Second, I was actually going to skip it until Saturday but I'm sitting here at work waiting for word back from Net App on a core device failure that is resulting in massive impact to our clients... with nothing really to do, so I figured I'd recap. Of course, my memory is a little fuzzy now because I didn't get it down right away. Let's see what I can recall... Warmup x1: 1 lap (4 blocks) QM up on precision trainers 10 pushups 5 pullups 20 squats 10 pushups 10 pullups QM back on precision trainers 1 lap (4 blocks) I think that was the deal. I knew I should have photo'd it with my phone... blargh. In any case, it was a higher focus on upper body than normal (prep for next week), with the QM on the precision trainers being ke...

TGIF

Productive meeting!

First, I realize I skipped blogging about the Saturday session (Week 3, Day 3) - if you're wondering, yes I made it. We spent almost the entire time practicing vertical wall runs and tic tacs, resulting in my calves hurting in really weird places (the outside of the calf). I went to the zoo immediately afterwards and never got around to blogging... Anyway, today was awesome, without a doubt the most fun yet! We focused on vaulting the entire day, after a crazy upper body warmup... I don't remember the entire thing exactly, but I believe it was (start to end): 1 lap 1 set QM up and back 5 pullups 5 pushups 10 precision jumps 10 pullups 10 pushups 20 squats 5 precision jumps 5 pullups 5 pushups 1 set QM up and back 1 lap It was pretty loony, I accidentally did 10 pullups each time (ow), but didn't have a problem with much. The last set of QM annoyed my quads, and my legs felt really weird (especially my calves, still sore from Saturday) during the final lap but I made it...

Simple mac and cheese with chorizo crusted in a cast iron skillet - yum

Fogo!

Zoo was crowded and hot and not many animals out but still fun!

Pizza and trivia

Grill and chill in full swing!

three trips down the river, tons of fun and a good workout too! solid way to spend a thursday

Today was totally awesome - vertical wall runs for a little bit, followed by one part of a horizontal wall run referred to as a "tic tac." The picture to the right is me practicing the tic tac running up the stairs in my building - there's no doubt that it is an incredibly faster way of going around the corners, I can hit the wall and leap up about 4-5 steps. Of course, I'm not fit enough to do this more than a couple times in a row haha. Okay, rewind: Getting to Primal today sucked. I was out in Chantilly near Dulles, left at 5:15 figuring I'd be back in the city by 6:15.. instead, horrible traffic. I managed to park outside my apartment building in a no-parking zone at 6:55, run in and change in about 2min, then return my zip car and run the 1/2 mile to Primal at full speed, getting there only a few minutes late when the warmup was in progress. Warmup today (x3): 1x lap (four blocks) 5 rolls each side 10 leg popups per leg 10 jump pullups 5 rolls each side...

Found this in my phone from last week, Marine Something circling monument fields

Today we finally got a real taste of something new - something most of us have realistically never done before, and normally would never do. I mean, there are always situations where someone will jump, and occasionally someone might roll... but when was the last time you tried to run straight up a wall at full speed? The entire class is really starting to bed in and gel now - we're laughing and joking a lot more with each other and really having a good time. We're also all in less pain, and it's interesting how fast we recover. I was talking with Cameron during the warmup (on our final job around the block), discussing how the first week we were exhausted the entire class, but by the end of the second week we had extra energy to burn just a few minutes after the warmup. This is what good training is all about. Today's warmup was complicated, so I took a photo with my cell to help me remember. It went like this, one time through the following: 1 lap (4 blocks) 1 s...

Eep warm up

Time to get crushed again! (parkour)

Fuddruckers is evil but oh so good!

I'm starting to find a groove now, which is pretty cool after only two weeks of training. I noticed this on Wednesday and confirmed it today - I'm definitely able to handle a lot more than I was when I started two weeks ago. Still having those darn quad problems but at least they seem to ease up a lot faster! Saturday training was cool (I missed last week), we apparently overlap with the Intermediate class, so we got to meet a bunch of new people and warm up together, then do some initial exercises together. Of course, a lot of the normal people from our class didn't show up (it's Saturday after all), so it was a bit smaller than normal and kinda neat. Warmup (x3): Rob called this a "light" warmup because we were going to be working hard in the class. Eep. 1 Lap around the block (4 blocks) 10 precision jumps 10 explosive pullups 10 leg popups per leg I was able to run/jog all three laps, which was neat (the first day of class I could do this, but every tim...

Today was interesting. I went out around 3:30PM and it was beautiful and sunny - when I got back to my office, it was pouring and nasty out. Then when I left the office around 5:30PM it was okay out, and when I walked to Primal Fitness around 6:30PM it was nice again. By the time class started at 7PM, it was a brutal rain outside again - I think deflecting at least a few people from showing up. We began class with a new warmup as usual, this time without laps: 1 set Quadripedal Movements back and forth across the gym 10 precision jumps 10 explosive pullups 10 tuck jumps Repeat a total of three times. As usual, my quads are still troubling me, really preventing me from focusing on some of the jumping. However, I made it through all right this time (wasn't the last person to finish!) and also really felt an improvement on my tuck jumps and precision jumps when it comes to using my quads. On the other hand, I feel like I have less control and balance on the landing of the precis...