Gratified

Hey, people are still reading my blog, even after all this time. And even if it's only those of you who commented (or didn't, in Brain's case), that's pretty cool. Thanks! I'll try to make it worth your while to continue reading. Fortunately for me, most of you probably read b/c you are trying to procrastinate or are bored, so there's not a lot of pressure to write a Pulitzer Prize-winner.

It's been a fun weekend already. I'm thoroughly enjoying interning at Team CrossFit Academy (http://www.teamcrossfitacademy.com/), even though I learn a bajillion things every time I do--and retain maybe two of them. So I interned yesterday morning, after rowing a 5K and working on my deadlift, and while it's true that my retention rate needs to improve, I'm setttling in more, learning people's names, feeling more comfortable and maybe a teeny bit more confident. I got a degree in a learning field (educational psychology), so I know both personally and professionally that learning can feel awful, both because it is hard to acquire new knowledge and skills (makes your brain work overtime, and in the case of things like CrossFit and bjj, your body as well), and because it reminds you of the fact that you don't already know these things, which sucks. No wonder people don't like to take up new hobbies or admit that they are at a loss.

But doing that makes us better, smarter, and more empathetic, I think. Learning is is a virtue, I guess. (More evidence that learning sucks. It's far more fun to work on vices.)

In the evening, I helped one of our teammates celebrate his 40th birthday (Hooray! Someone who is older than I am!). His name is John, but his nickname is Big Ugly. He hated me when we first met, because I said, "That's a terrible nickname for you. You're not that big." The nickname spawned others: Vince became Little Ugly, Johnny became Mini Ugly, etc. I wanted to be Pretty Ugly, but nobody liked it. Maybe that's a good thing. And he didn't really hate me. He tried, but I'm just so cool that he couldn't. I bought him a birthday lunch: a Red Bull, some beef jerky, and some peanut butter cups. All from the dollar store. Happy birthday, Ugly! Thanks for being older than me!

Today is some training, maybe some movie watching, maybe some writing or reading. I'm pretty beat from the week of training and CrossFitting I've done; TCFA has a "strength bias," which means lots of barbell work. This week, I back squatted, front squatted, clean and jerked, deadlifted, and snatched. I am terrible at these things (back to learning being a virtue--it's hard to suck at this stuff, but the only way to get better is to do it more. Plus, it's really fun, when I put my ego aside). The theory behind the strength bias is that getting stronger helps you on other measures of fitness as well, including metabolic conditioning. In other words, a few reps of picking up heavy objects close to the maximum amount you can lift will help you PR on benchmark CrossFit workouts like Fran or Helen. I'm using myself as a data point about this--I've never lifted this frequently before, so we'll see how it works! Plus, I just like the stuff and want to get better.

But it will be interesting to see how it helps me prepare for tournaments, the first of which will be the ADCC gi qualifier in Santa Cruz in a couple weeks (http://www.abudhabibjj.com/). I draw the line at GOMAD, though. That's Coach Rippetoe-speak for "a gallon of milk a day," which is what he believes we should all be drinking. Well, maybe not that much for women, but he thinks milk is a great post-training nutrition source and that it helps us get "70s big."

So here's another post, literally the contents of my brain spewed out onto the computer screen. I am grateful that you are all still reading--and mildly worried that you might need to get out more. Gonna go train now, because that's why I write this blog in the first place.