Sunday, May 11, 2014

Ten Year Blog Anniversary Finding my stride



What an apt day to celebrate my ten years of keeping this blog with my ritual Sunday Ruck walk. A solid and strong two hour walk with my 30lb rucksack. Ten years ago when I started this blog, on a lark, I couldn't walk two blocks without serious knee pain. I had been training with kettlebells at that time for a solid year,reluctantly giving up ALL powerlifting movements as it was obvious, even to me, that it was crazy to try to keep on finding a new way around the inevitable; that I was finished lifting heavy things.

And today, with a brand new knee and a new life, I seriously have hit my stride , both literally and figuratively. Today's walk took it's usual course; a very slow start and really loosening up at lap nine. Lap 11 was the fastest by almost 45 seconds.

The kb was really starting to rehab my back and I was slowly but surely able to move better and better all the time but it wasn't until almost a year later that I started blogging my actual workouts here.And, with the exception of a mental health break for 9 months in 2009, every single workout I have done in these last 9 years has been logged here.

I have kept training logs for almost as many years as I have been training. Not during the gymnastics years but definitely with the endurance training ,bodybuilding and powerlifting. It just didn't make sense to keep a paper log and a digital one, so in 2004 when most of my life was shifting to the computer I decided to go with just this online training log. And the rest is history, digital history.

I used to write more "article" like entries but it just got to be too tough to keep up, and the entries just became more pedestrian record keeping of my training, with the occasional insight into some breakthrough or frustration or training idea. So it goes and anyone interested in it has plenty of grist for the mill to look over.

As I don't ever plan on quitting training I also don't plan on not recording those workouts, as always for me primarily. If anyone learns something from my training journey so much the better but the key thing is for ME to learn from each and every workout as well as to have those sessions written down so I can observe, analyze and measure progress or the lack there of. And, of course, find the reason for what is happening.
Same with the videos I take.It's very cool to be able to look at what I did  any number of years ago and compare not only my training form but my physique and actually see if what I think is happening is actually happening :)

Today was solid if not a slow start:
Eleven Laps
Two full hours of walking
Eleven squat stretches for 45 seconds each ( still getting deeper)
Thirty pound pack

Most excellent.

tomorrow; LOTS of KB Front squats

datsit
neverquit.

3 comments:

Kikolu said...

Rif,

I have to tell you that i follow your blog since 2008. and its been a very interesting read ever since.
2008 i ran my last marathon so i ve come the same road as you: endurance training m(running, walking, cycling), a couple of years as a power athlete and recently a mixed breed with gymnastik / bwe type of strength training and 3-4 runs on hard trails in a week mixed in with 5-7 rides a week.
would you give us all a look inside of all your metamorphoses, like a picture of you as a runner , bb, lifter? i would really appreciate it.
did you train strength as an endurance athlete also?
or do you know serious power athletes that are good endurance athletes too?

Diana said...

Mark-
I've enjoyed your blog for so many, many years. I remember the posts about how frustrated you felt with your knee and the lack of being able to do things, but you stayed positive and did what you could and then your TKR is just a masterpiece of how that all turned out!
I'm excited for you and look forward to many more posts of great things to come!

Unknown said...

Mark,
Just stumbled upon your site this am while searching for some KB reading material to add to my own arsenal.
Yorur journey is worth reading and I enjoyed this journal entry alot. it reminded me of my own journey and thougts on fitness and it's effects long term.
Thank you for your honesty and sharing your journey.
-ManTis
clawout.blogspot.com

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