Thursday, July 14, 2011

So you think you can trick me?

I tried, I really did. 

I'm not the world's biggest fan of reality shows - probably the most popular ones I've ever watched are Project Runway and Top Chef.  I've never watched Idol, Survivor, Apprentice... I just don't care.  So You Think You Can Dance has been at the periphery of my interest for a while (actually, a very long while, it turns out - I had no idea it was in its 8th season!), mainly because dance can be incredibly athletic and I can get sucked into pretty much anything that involves physicality.  So last night being a vast wasteland of TV nothingness (one of the downsides of the All Star Break), I though I might check it out. 

Wow.  And I don't mean that in a good way.  It was a 2 hour show, six couples, two dances each.  The dances, as it turns out, take less than two minutes each, so let's do a little math, eh?  We'll give them the full two minutes, which means there's 24 minutes of action spread over a 120 minutes slot.  And what takes up the rest of the time?  Judges and the host yammering.  I frankly couldn't STAND to watch them - they were so annoying, it was almost surreal - and was vigorously channel surfing within the first 15 minutes.  I flipped back to the channel and managed to catch parts of three more dances, but gave up totally well before the first hour was out. What a shame; the idea has a lot of promise, but then the judges think they're the stars... it's a fail.  (Same sort of thing goes for certain sports announcers who can't get over themselves and just call the game - not that I'd mention any *Joe Theismann Joe Buck Tony Siragusa for starters* names.  Makes me watch sports with the TV on mute half the time.)  I suppose I could watch the performances on YouTube but I'm not invested enough in the series to bother.  So much for a midsummer night's diversion.

I have a week left to inform Law School of my decision one way or another.  As it stands, I will almost definitely not go; as much as I'd love to do law school, I can't wrap my head around spending the rest of my working life as a lawyer.  OTOH, physical therapy seems like such a natural fit to me, I think I'd really, really regret giving up on it this easily, going for the law thing JUST because I can.  So... that's pretty much it, honored as I am to have actually gotten in to school.

Training is going pretty well, although this past Sunday's run was not fun.  I've been starting the long runs before dawn, but I still wind up finishing them well after sunup.  Most weeks it seems I've been lucky enough that it's been hazy our outright cloudy (one morning I ran in thundershowers!), but this past week the sun was full out right away, which after a spell made for less than pleasant going.  I've been wondering if this all really will be sufficient for me to make my goal in - wow, just over seven weeks now - or if I should pass on this race and do a 50K in October instead.  Of course I remember all too well my doubts about my September half last year (although they were related to time, not distance), and that was pretty much the heat talking.  I suspect this is that to some degree as well.  

I have a couple of off schedule weeks coming up, what with the mud run this Sunday and Special Training next Sunday.  I'm just going to take this next week as a welcome step back week and not make up the missed long run; the following week is a bit more up in the air.  Tentatively I plan to make up THAT missed long run on Monday, take Tuesday off and just feel out the schedule from there; however the Special Training is a beach training, and I seem to recall last year's beach training being pretty tiring, so I guess I'll just play that one by ear.  As for strength training, believe it or not I'm STILL on NROL/Abs.  Doing just two workouts a week has really extended this last phase and while it's clear from my workout logs that I'm still getting something out of it, I think I'd be getting even more out of it under different circumstances - not that I'd change anything at this point.  That said, it's been six weeks on these two workouts with five workouts left in the program, and they're wearing a bit thin on me right about now.  But I will finish it out, and that will actually leave me with a question of what to do NEXT, or more accurately, between the end of NR and the 12 hour race, since I'm sure I won't want to start a new program just then.  I'm leaning toward just taking the TRX to the gym and messing with it, along with one heavy lift per workout.  Just a thought.

Funny, I have no plans for AFTER the 12-hour...  Feels odd!  I'm sure I'll come up with something... 

No comments:

Post a Comment