Musings

Rather than allowing my recent fat gain continue to bother me, I decided to do something about it. As of Monday, I'm resurrecting my long-neglected FitDay journal to track my food intake. Oddly enough, I feel like my craving for food in the last four weeks has suddenly been switched off. Although I am now eating significantly less, I no longer experience that urgency to eat. I am amazed how little the body actually needs as oppose to how much I think it needs. However, it is becoming clear that when I eat a normal conventional diet, it leads to inevitable fat gain. I'm not even talking about a diet that is ignorant of healthy choices. By "normal conventional", I'm referring to 3 meals a day of quarter-quarter-half starch-lean protein-veggie of sensible portions. After many dealings with my kitchen scale, I am more convinced than ever that my idea of sensible portion is much inflated.

I miss the days of eating Japanese white sandwich bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And whatever happen to the way I was brought up eating? I miss family-style Chinese dinner with a bowl of rice. These are all distant memories only suitable for occasional treats now (which I have to earn by long hours of workout, sigh).

Training continues without missing a beat since the race on Sunday. All the bruises are located in odd places that I would never expect to hit the ground. I went to my first indoor practice of the season on Monday despite being ridiculously scared of falling. The floor of our practice venue is infamously slippery and it took me a long time to readjust to that sensation. I could not bring myself to skate in a pack even though we were only doing slow steady laps. Fortunately, by the end of practice, muscle memory gradually returned. My next practice ought to be a much better experience.

I was a little skeptical about plyos on Tuesday because of my injuries. The bruises did not hurt too badly but my right shoulder continued to bother me. Frog jumps were painful at best because of the arm swings. Aside from shuttle sprints and step-ups, I was able to complete the plyos program. Wall sit felt completely effortless last night. I wall sat for four minutes yet did not feel any fatigue. I could easily stay there for another two minutes. I suppose sitting out two drills had something to do with it! After three weeks of build up, our training group felt ready to cut down on rest time between drills. Fantastic session for everyone.

A funny thing happened while we were stretching. Since we train at the Athletic Centre of University of Toronto, there are plenty of young athletes sharing the space. Plyos is an important component for track and field athletes and last night we saw one of them doing box jumps next to us. The stacked boxes reached higher than my waist for sure. Our group exchanged knowing smiles as we checked him out without looking too conspicuous. Minutes after the guy walked away, JaP couldn't help but to give it a try! I would too if I'm not injured.

Comments

[Andrew Hegarty]

Impressive re: Wall Sits Candy. Maybe you should consider holding some sort of weighted item to increase the tension. ;-)