This is just a quick post because the Mayans said the world is supposed to end today and so I don't want to put much into it if no one is going to read it. (Who am I kidding, no one reads it anymore anyway.) I went to the do the workout today just in case the world doesn't end. The main part was 4 minutes of burpee box jumps, then 2 minutes of the bear complex (Clean,Front squat, thruster, back squat, thruster) as many of those as you could in the two minutes. Then we had to do 2 more minutes of burpees. Although this was a short workout, I now can't reach above my head or squat down on the ground at the moment. That's going to be kind of inconvenient because rumor has it that Santa might be bringing us a TV he's going to need to be able to reach above his head to mount on the wall.
Anyway, I am going to be very ticked if the world ends and the evening classes got to get out of all of those burpees. Even if we all die in some horrible painful death, when we all get to heaven, I'm going to be holding a grudge for my evening class friends and the grudge will be so bad that I'll probably end up going to hell, assuming I wasn't sent there in the first place. So I'm kind of hoping that the world doesn't end today.
The other reason that I don't want it to end right now is because the last song that I just heard was that Diamonds song by Rhianna and it's stuck in my head and I'd rather not have it stuck in my head for eternity......Shines bright like a diamond....Shines bright like a diamond....Shines bright............
Friday, December 21, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
So I'm continuing to get stronger and able to do more things but there's one thing that I still loathe and probably always will. That's running. I still hate it. I'm used to coming in last still but on days where there's running involved, I'm usually finishing around when the next class is finishing. I have decided though, that it takes me that long because I'm more efficient. Kind of like one of my heroes, "Cliff Young".
If you've never heard of Cliff Young, I'll give you some background. First off, I think running a marathon sounds like an absolutely horrible idea. An "Ultra" marathon is anything from a double marathon to just running for weeks. Well in Australia, they used to have one that was 875 K. (I one time in my life ran a 10 k and thought I was going to die.) 875 K is basically 543 FREAKIN MILES! So when I say an "Ultra" marathon, this was an ULTRA marathon, that took the runners a week to run. These were the top endurance athletes in the world that would try these and most of them couldn't finish. So anyway, in 1983 they had the inaugural Westfield Australian 875 K Ultra-marathon. It would basically be like running from Salt Lake city to Denver Colorado. The competitors run for 18 hours a day and only rest for about 6 hours. There was a $10,000 prize so the best Ultra Marathoners in the world showed up for this race. Amongst them was a 61 year old potato farmer, who was in rain boots and coveralls, named Cliff Young. The other runners realized that he was actually part of the race and obviously didn't think anything about it.
Most people thought he was crazy and tried to talk him out of it because they said he would die. He said that it wasn't a big deal because when he was a kid he used to herd sheep and run around the mountain for two or three days at a time with little sleep. So obviously, at the first of the race, all of the younger runners left him in there dust and he started with a slow steady shuffle. Because of this, he was not even close by the time they all stopped 18 hours later for their 6 hours of sleep. The only thing was, he didn't know about that the standard protocol was to sleep for 6 hours so he slept for about 2 hours and then just kept going. When he said that he used to chase sheep around for 2 or 3 days, HE LITERALLY CHASED THEM AROUND FOR 2 OR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT!
So you have probably figured out where this is headed. This really is a tortoise and hare scenario. These elite young athletes in the state of the art running gear were so far ahead by that first night but little by little, he got closer as they were sleeping until he finally passed up the others and kept going. He shuffled along for five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes. By the last day he had basically become a celebrity. Not only did he pass up the rest of the field and win the race but he broke the record pace by ALMOST 2 DAYS! Here's a clip about the dude.
The cool thing is that 5 other runners finally finished the race and he decided to split the winnings and gave $2000 to each of the other finishers and didn't keep anything for himself.
Later when he was 76 years old, he tried to run raise money for orphans by running the entire circumference of Australia but had to drop out after he ran 6,520 K of the 16,000-K run because his only crew member (who was following along in a car) became sick so they had to quit.
Anyway, back to one of the many reasons that he's my hero, sports scientist have studied the "Young Shuffle" and found out that it's one of the most efficient ways to run an endurance race. Several of the winners of that race in follow up years, won the same race by using the "Young Shuffle".
So I've decided that I'm really the most efficient runner in our class with my shuffling around the track. The only problem is that the WODs are too short. If they were to go for 5 days straight, I'd be the best one in class for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_%28athlete%29
If you've never heard of Cliff Young, I'll give you some background. First off, I think running a marathon sounds like an absolutely horrible idea. An "Ultra" marathon is anything from a double marathon to just running for weeks. Well in Australia, they used to have one that was 875 K. (I one time in my life ran a 10 k and thought I was going to die.) 875 K is basically 543 FREAKIN MILES! So when I say an "Ultra" marathon, this was an ULTRA marathon, that took the runners a week to run. These were the top endurance athletes in the world that would try these and most of them couldn't finish. So anyway, in 1983 they had the inaugural Westfield Australian 875 K Ultra-marathon. It would basically be like running from Salt Lake city to Denver Colorado. The competitors run for 18 hours a day and only rest for about 6 hours. There was a $10,000 prize so the best Ultra Marathoners in the world showed up for this race. Amongst them was a 61 year old potato farmer, who was in rain boots and coveralls, named Cliff Young. The other runners realized that he was actually part of the race and obviously didn't think anything about it.
Most people thought he was crazy and tried to talk him out of it because they said he would die. He said that it wasn't a big deal because when he was a kid he used to herd sheep and run around the mountain for two or three days at a time with little sleep. So obviously, at the first of the race, all of the younger runners left him in there dust and he started with a slow steady shuffle. Because of this, he was not even close by the time they all stopped 18 hours later for their 6 hours of sleep. The only thing was, he didn't know about that the standard protocol was to sleep for 6 hours so he slept for about 2 hours and then just kept going. When he said that he used to chase sheep around for 2 or 3 days, HE LITERALLY CHASED THEM AROUND FOR 2 OR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT!
So you have probably figured out where this is headed. This really is a tortoise and hare scenario. These elite young athletes in the state of the art running gear were so far ahead by that first night but little by little, he got closer as they were sleeping until he finally passed up the others and kept going. He shuffled along for five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes. By the last day he had basically become a celebrity. Not only did he pass up the rest of the field and win the race but he broke the record pace by ALMOST 2 DAYS! Here's a clip about the dude.
Later when he was 76 years old, he tried to run raise money for orphans by running the entire circumference of Australia but had to drop out after he ran 6,520 K of the 16,000-K run because his only crew member (who was following along in a car) became sick so they had to quit.
Anyway, back to one of the many reasons that he's my hero, sports scientist have studied the "Young Shuffle" and found out that it's one of the most efficient ways to run an endurance race. Several of the winners of that race in follow up years, won the same race by using the "Young Shuffle".
So I've decided that I'm really the most efficient runner in our class with my shuffling around the track. The only problem is that the WODs are too short. If they were to go for 5 days straight, I'd be the best one in class for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_%28athlete%29
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