Plan to Spiderman

Here’s my plan to make it to Spiderman.  Getting it all back together.

Eat as fresh as I can without sacrificing the joys of living and social dining.

- Quantified that means that I’m preparing at least 21 meals per week.  Lots of cook once, eat for days dishes.  Ingredients are all from around the edge of the grocery store, fresh local vegetables, eggs, chicken, fish and mollusks, yogurt and fruit.  Dishes will include a variety of stirfry, salad, omelettes, baked chicken, steamed vegetables, curry, and soup.

I should do what Steve Kamb says

This is in response to Steve Kamb (of Nerdfitness.com)’s statement that everytime I say “I should” do such and such, I have to drop and give him 10 push-ups.

I will be Spiderman

I set a rather ambitious goal for myself.  I plan to become Spiderman.  I might not have his webshooters (yet), and I might not have been bitten by a mutant spider and given supernatural strength… but, I’m working on that the hard way.

Fitness

Sunday I’m running a 5.4 kilometer leg of a Japanese team marathon, known as an ekiden.  Apparently it’s one of the harder legs of the race because a considerable portion of the run is uphill.  I have not been training too hard for this, since it’s only a roughly 3 mile run, but I have started picking up my workouts in general.  Before I left for Japan, Garret and I were on a regular routine of going to the gym and occasionally jogging or hiking as well.  It was great, I learned a lot about weight lifting.  He referred me to a fantastic book called Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe.  I read a lot of the material on the correct form and motions of the power lifts, and started doing a few of them, mostly press, dead lift, and squat.  After coming to Japan I was searching hard for a gym that had a weight set.  It took me a long time to find one, but I finally started resuming my weight training.  Then I hurt my arm randomly, and re-hurt it surfing.  So I stopped for a long while.

Out of the routine it was hard to get back into it.  But at last, I’ve got a workout partner who himself has finally healed his own ankle injury enough to come with me to the gym.  Anyway, I found out about a really intriguing fitness program called Crossfit.  My workout buddy, Matt, has been doing this program for over a year and had nothing but rave reviews regarding results.  Unlike most workout programs, Crossfit is designed for anyone barring significant physical injury or disability, and it is designed to develop well-rounded, full body fitness.  Today Matt linked me to a fantastic article that discusses the very notion of fitness.  It was a great read.

Anyway, I’m tired from a long week of resuming working out, intense Japanese study, finally getting my Japanese drivers license, and 3 classes every day.  Time for yoga and sleep.