Another solid workout, and it could very well be my most strenuous workout day, despite being a "rest" day for my resistance and pre-Chirunning regimens. The only issue I had was again with this soon-to-not-be-gimpy foot. As it was a foot-focus kind of day, after a few minutes onto the treadmill, I had to switch to the bike due to the pain, to ultimately avoid injury. I'm always a little irritated when I have to do that, but again, this is not for achieving 30 minutes or a day; this program is about the multi-month haul—it ain't the Superbowl; I got tomorrow, too.

I'm beginning to envision the fall season—oh, not the specifics of reps or any of the sort. Rather, it is the value of community and the type of people I'd like to interact and surround myself with. Not that we can ever be static, but a trend toward a particular approach to life. And honestly, traits that I work to develop within me.

Positive: Honestly, it's FAR too easy to be critical-lazy. Look at any blowhard Net post out there: not only is it antithetical to goal achievement, it's just VERY UNATTRACTIVE. There are ways to honestly bring up issues and potential risks in a very positive, goal-achieving approach. But, that involves work when most folks tend to just emotionally vomit on people.

Cool in their Confidence: Hey, I'm awesome. I keep it a secret. Folks that say they are, followed by a bunch of "me, me, me's," need more awesome in their lives.

Grounded & Awesome: Hey, while being an awesome, cool cat, we can recognize that we are (worthless and) weak in other areas. Look at a dungeon group: 3 DPS, healer, and a tank...FTW. Awesome tanks suck at DPS and so on. I gravitate toward people who are adept while freely admitting that they are weak in other areas. Even ol' Midas's touch had a fatal failure.

Don't Be an Uncle Rico: We all have have our failures...our letdowns...times when a black mark is put into the loss column that have shaped us. But, we ought not to overtly breathe from that moment and most certainly not espouse it! I quickly become dismissive of those who attempt to suck me down into their self-propagated, well-worn tread nightmare. If I may misappropriate from The Talented Mr. Ripley, they "can be a leech...and it's BORING." They can boohoo on their own dime; I'm all out of Kleenex. We ALL go through heartbreaks—that doesn't give us significance—and shame, SHAME on those who use it as an identity. As the Shinedown lyric goes, "I'm so sick of this tombstone mentality."

Instead, they can show me how they turned around what seemed like a loss to a win—BUT only to use it point to the future. But, most of life, c'mon we're on to Cincinnati.

Be You: Refuse insufficient identity; don't accept a cardboard cutout life. I don't pay attention to what's cool or trending. I haven't since '95 when I chose to move from the "popular" lunch table to the coding geeks. I'm thumbs-up about quirkiness and having idiosyncrasies. Having a niche or two—be an expert—goes a long way!

Anyway, those are a few areas that I would look for in members of a community that I would like to be a part of in whatever interest I pursue, whether a martial arts school, a running group, a gym culture, or even a tabletop consortium. Oh, and mega points if they agree Picard is superior over Kirk...but Adama is the Admiral.

As I'm in my fourth week of working out, I feel as though I'm reached a good rhythm. I've passed the initial jarring that occurs when I start a completely fresh schedule. That said, I never want my engine to just idle; I've been revving things up, after all.

I've been leaning more toward adopting interval training. You may recall from an earlier post how I've refrained from doing interals at the outset because I feared if I systematically pushed too hard, it would drain the life from my motivation. I also have fears about injury since I'm already working through an old injury with my left foot. Motivation and injury prevention are my two biggest issues to manage because failure on either will have all of this crashing to a stop. In essence, I'm building a bend but don't break regimen. Fortunately my free safety is my nutrition. Even if I did my last fly, I'd still shred the weight. That said, I'm adopting multiple approaches to cutting the fat, and one of them is intervals.

Of course, I've already referenced my Tabata Taekwondo. I refuse to approach it in the manner many 119lb, twentysomethings say to approach it "100%", an all-out effort that conjures a demon-infused Richard Simmons in a cloud of cotton candy. I've done that in my teens and 20s—that lasts just long enough until the thrill of doing something new wears off or injury short circuits the process. In general, the problem I have with "going nuts" programs is the problem I had with Taebo from the 90s: the focus. What is the approach? The target? What's the real world application? Or are we just flailing our limbs out in a mass hysteria? When I apply Tabata to TKD, my approach is to go as fast as I can while maintaining clean technique, chiefly because practicing poor technique will beget more POOR TECHNIQUE. Sometimes I think fitness can lean toward completing the rep itself or the ego-driven upping the weight instead of the process itself. Sometimes I want to dial back some of my weight, because of my own tendency to rush through the eccentric motion and let gravity do the heavy lifting—I may just consider adjusting my training to underscore the negative motion if I'm going to be consistent with my TKD.

All of that aside, clearly, I am bringing in intervals into my training, and I'm testing it out further with my bike cardio. I don't trust my left foot enough for the treadmill until I drop more weight. Nevertheless, I gave it a go on the bike this morning. I'm still a little leery about it, as during the more intense times, my foot aches. See, I don't mind huffing-and-puffing or my legs hurting in a good way, but its the structural ache that can be a workout killer. The question is, how much bend do I have before the break? Yet, on the flip side, I don't want to muddle through and be dull. There's this great line from Battlestar Galactica: Razor from Admiral Cain:

You showed me that you were capable of setting aside your fears, setting aside your hesitation, and even your revulsion...Every natural inhibition...When you can be this for as long as you have to be, then you're a razor.

The crux of all of this is how long. And this process isn't a two-week sprint; this is a multi-month approach. Flaming out in the first stretch won't get me anywhere.

Here I am, proudly standing at the start of Week 5 of my program. I've now got less than two weeks before the May 14 weigh-in, the first of a series of six-week weigh-ins.

From the start at 4AM, I pressed. As soon as my alarm chimed, I went quick. As I've recounted before, I've trying to optimize my workout time and in that, I've had a problem to get me and everything else setup as it has dragged the start time anywhere from 4:12 to 4:20; I have to run down items, find LTE access in my gym, choose music, etc.—not to mention I have a password with many, oft-erred keystrokes I type into my Chromebook!

This morning, I began training at 4:04. My approach:

• Be quick.
• Create music themes for each workout day, e.g. Monday is 70's music—it fits a Back routine. Have playlists ready to go and preferably pre-downloaded when the LTE drops out.
• Set up the bluetooth receiver the night before.
• Switch from the Chromebook to the iPad. Have resources already pulled up, like Google Sheets with the worksheet set for offline usage.
• Stay tight to the schedule and maintain a stopwatch for the rests.
• Be cognizant of the next exercise in case equipment needs to be moved during rest at the end of the current routine.
• Finally, be quick.

Over the weekend, I made changes to my workouts that require me to really tighten things up. Feel free to check it out on my "My Training" section. I've created an overview to make it easier to understand and a page for everyday sans Sunday since its straightforward. I'm finally aligning my week to fit July's running schedule. I added more Taekwondo into my workouts through Tabata sets and forms; I removed bike on non-cardio days, though I will still use it to finish out to 6AM, like I did this morning for the last 4 minutes.

In order to concentrate my workout, I have to see each second as precious. I run a stopwatch so that not only do I maintain that 45 second between sets, I also enforced it between exercise routines—the biggest challenge is remaining mindful of it and the specifics of the next routine.

One of the benefits of the Tabata training on the bag is working in combinations. I created an opening combo that I like: C punch, hammerfist (with bottom fist), hook (with lead). It's not much in the way of defense until the hook, and that's why I think it's more of an opening move. It felt good to get its rhythm improved while picking up speed and strength along the way. It's not much in the way of a back workout compared to my elbow strike + backfist combo set; however, I want more explosive moments in my training and had the timeslot with Monday.

So there you have it, the kickoff with a great Monday, a solid 1:56:00 workout.