Pushup Challenge! - Week 2 Begins

Today I did only 34 pushups, but that's how many the program called for. I'm starting to get really tired when that max-out set comes. At least that means I did 34 though.

My stomach was killing me again. I think I may just be sick. I haven't had much of any appetite for the last two days, so I'm going to see if this gets any worse.

Pushup Challenge! - End of Week One

Today, I did a total of 41 pushups. Yay.
But I still max out at 10 consecutively.

My arms, shoulders, and back are all fine. It's my lower abs that are killing me. Am I doing this wrong? I don't remember pushups hurting this much back when I could do 20 straight without trouble. Granted, I'd been training up for a season of football then, so I was in about as good of shape as I have ever been.

Bah! I will get back in shape! I know round is a shape, but I'll accept rectangular. We men aren't supposed to have curves, dangit!

Pushup Challenge! - Initial Aches

I had no idea I would be sore for so long after doing those pushups the first day. For the first couple of hours, my arms wanted to do nothing more than hang from my neck, mostly because my shoulders had given up as well. The next day, my chest and shoulders felt like they needed stretching every two minutes. By the time I was supposed to do my second session's pushups, my lower abs were aching. On the website for the one hundred pushup program, they mention all these muscle groups, but I didn't believe it until I could feel each one aching separately.

Today, I did the required amount plus 3, giving me a total of 38 total today, the most being on my final set. Already I can do 66% more consecutively than I could just a week ago. I can see and feel results already, and all I'm doing is pushups!

We'll see how I feel about it after I get the aches from this session, eh?

Rockport Walk Test

I work in an office and am sedentary in my everyday life. So again, I am generally considered not "fit". Thus, I have been trying to improve this with a little low level exercise to begin with.

I found the Rockport Walk Test, and decided to give it a whirl. The initial test is to walk a mile as fast as you can and take your pulse immediately afterward. When I did, I came in as well
below a good fitness level, especially for my age group. This started me out in the "Blue" program.

I began 5 weeks ago, and already I've been feeling better. In fact, even though I've missed several different walks due to late nights in support of missions with terribly timed classes, I've already walked 21.25 miles, just as a part of this program. That's outside of the amount of walking I do on an average day, which is somewhere between 0.5 and 3 miles, but spread out throughout the day and taken at a leisurely pace generally.

I'll be checking in with this program as well as the pushup challenge.

Pushup Challenge! - The Guantlet is Thrown

I was reading get rich slowly recently, and J.D. has got another blog called get fit slowly. He learned about this one hundred pushup challenge, and passed it on to his readers. I checked it out mid-week, so I wanted to wave off until the next week to actually get started with it. After I decided to wave off, I realized I should square off against someone in order to keep myself motivated. Who should I call?

IO: "So, Dad, want to see who can do 100 pushups at the end of a six week program?"
Old & Bald Guy: "I could whoop you right now at pushups. Hell, I could whoop you right now in general if you weren't a thousand miles away."
IO: "Ok, Dad, we don't have to get too confrontational about this here."
O&BG: "Have some backbone and make this a real challenge!"
IO: "Alright, but maybe you should talk to your doctor first. I don't want you dying because I've challenged you to get healthier."
O&BG: "That's a good point. I need to go write that into the will. If I die competing in this challenge against you, you're out of the will."
IO: "That hardly seems like a good reason for me to try very hard at this, but then again, I believe that you're planning on leaving me your 'good' looks and a couple of twist ties from the collection in the kitchen drawer."
O&BG: "Keep it up and you might just lose those twist ties."

So the gauntlet was thrown, and so it was taken up. The first step to the program is to test yourself initially, seeing how many good form pushups you can do consecutively. I sent him a link to the website and told him to see how many he could do. I was careful not to tell him how many I did, allowing him to resist the temptation to literally one-up me.

I got a reply email this morning, in which he told me that my mother can verify he did 25 pushups.

Crap. I did 6.

So this morning, I went for the gusto and did the program as well as I could, eventually doing 27 total, though there were breaks as prescribed. We'll see how this goes, huh?

Entitlement

Here's a pet peeve of mine: Entitlement.

There's a certain amount of things people should expect to receive in
life. Your mother should love you, you should be paid for your work,
and you should be treated like a human being. There are probably more
things, but there are some that do not apply.
Tonight, while working the overnight shift, the folks at the console
behind me were talking with their intern. There was of course a lot of
idle chatter about where she's living and where are some good places to
eat around here, all the information someone new to the area needs.
Then, they got to talking about how some of the interns have site
familiarization trips to Kennedy Space Center through the company. She
felt that it was unfair that the people who work on the shuttle program
should be sent on a business trip to introduce them to their main
worksite. She felt that she should also get to go on this "tour." Why?
Because she's an Aerospace Engineer, and those she knows going are
Electrical Engineers. This is what I'm talking about with entitlement.
She's already being paid well above the average for an intern, gets all
kinds of free stuff, and yet complains when she doesn't also have an
included trip to Florida. Is she entitled to such a trip?
I was also an intern who worked on the Space Station, not Shuttle, and
didn't get to go to Florida. At the time, I remember wishing I could go
too, but I never felt that I was entitled to such a thing, especially
compared to anyone else.
How does one combat this growing sense of entitlement I've seen
everywhere? Does no one realize there are consequences of their
choices, good and bad? This is real life, not a video game with a save
point where you can just go back and reload to get a do-over. (I wish
it did have that though.)