Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Travel Chronicles Chapter 21ish
Talking about collective consciousness, different brain wave states, and how to get in the zone and postulating that perhaps being in "the zone" is a link to the collective unconsciousness.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
New 5k PR
Picked this up on Sunday -
Didn't feel too bad afterward, and my average heart rate was 163 or so which was about 15 beats below my average when I ran in July, and this was about 1:30 faster. The weather was about perfect though, maybe a little on the cool side, would have been good to have running sleeves instead of running with a long sleeve shirt. Less sun though probably helped keep the heart rate down. I was also probably 5-7 pounds lighter than I was in July so that should have helped. Still need to drop about 20 more pounds, that should help get the time down more especially if I can hold on to muscle. I think what I am doing is working just a matter of grinding some more and putting work in.
Didn't feel too bad afterward, and my average heart rate was 163 or so which was about 15 beats below my average when I ran in July, and this was about 1:30 faster. The weather was about perfect though, maybe a little on the cool side, would have been good to have running sleeves instead of running with a long sleeve shirt. Less sun though probably helped keep the heart rate down. I was also probably 5-7 pounds lighter than I was in July so that should have helped. Still need to drop about 20 more pounds, that should help get the time down more especially if I can hold on to muscle. I think what I am doing is working just a matter of grinding some more and putting work in.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Travel Chronicles Chapter 12
It's Chapter 12, even though I say 11. Today we talk about morning routines.
My routine if I had time and wasn't rushed for anything:
1) Wim Hof Breathing.
3) Cold shower (start warm and end cold)
4) Breakfast or skip this step for now
5) Yoga
6) Quick weight lifting
Travel Chronicles Chapter 11
- Be honest with how many calories you are actually in taking.
- Use more calories than you intake, but don't starve yourself. Your body will actually burn up muscle first if you aren't using the muscles and preferentially hold on to fat (crazy right, come on body do what I want).
- Any weight loss is going to starting by changing your routine. I hate the word diet, because those are temporary. You got into the situation you are in because of how you are eating and how you are living. If you want to lose weight and keep it off you have to make a lifestyle change.
- Fat comes off easiest with aerobic exercise or exercise where the heart rate is in Zone 2 -3. A high heart rate will push you anaerobic and it will just burn up glycogen stores.
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Friday, April 03, 2020
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Remember the #Hawkeyes
My Upward basketball season has just ended and this was one of the best teams I have had as far as kids listening and doing things and they just played as a team. It was so heart breaking the way the season ended, we lost by 2 to the number 1 seed of the tournament and we were the 5. The kids were in tears, Peach was in tears, I totally didn't cry. I was close but I was just so happy with how hard the kids played that no matter the result I couldn't be upset. You see it was the second game we played that night, during the week and we did everything we could. The game ended for us on a turnover well 2 turnovers actually as the game was tied with 30 seconds left and some how they other team got the ball and the best kid on their team got a free layup with 10 seconds left. So I called timeout, and told we were going for the win, we were going to shoot a 3. So I drew up a play where a kid would dribble left and hand it off to another kid and he would shoot it. Well the one kid came up to early and the other kid threw it off his back and it went back court for a violation. The moral of that story is - practice a desparation 3 point play so that the kids aren't caught off guard in the last 10 seconds of the season.
This team was special and I wrote a while ago about how a team becomes a special team and while I'm not sure how or when it happened this team definitely had that, and I wanted to foster that and keep it going as long as I could. I have coached or assistant coached the last 8 or 9 years in upward, coached some civic basketball, and learned a lot along the way from other coaches and on-line and I don't think I could have got as much out of a team before this season. I never really coached before 10 years ago, but have coached all the way up from T-ball, baseball, basketball, and even some flag football. I do enjoy helping kids get better by teaching them what ever I can, but Upwards is a special kind of challenge because practice time is limited. I had one other team that I felt somewhat comfortable yelling out plays, but this was the first time I ever accomplished it at the 3/4 level. Not saying they executed the plays perfectly every time, but it kept me involved in the game and I think they got better at things as the season went on, and started expecting things. Maybe I'm more organized now, but there was a feeling of something kind of organic and you could tell the kids were buying in. We didn't really have a go-to-scorer per se that I could just get the ball to and say go get me a basket. A lot of points came from our defense were, we would get a turnover or rebound and push the ball, but if we had to run a play or get someone a shot we did. One game we came out and hit 3 or 4 jump shots early in the game and sometimes that is fools gold because jumpers don't always fall, especially in 3rd and 4th grade. The well dried up. I think we scored 10 in the first half total, after having 8 in about 3 minutes. Then we got down 10, at 20-10 in the last period and some how, some way we managed to score 14 points and win by 4. That was the last regular game before our Upward tourney and we had won 3 in a row. One thing about Upward though is that sometimes you can get behind in the rotation if teams don't have the same number of players, and it is especially disadvantageous if you have more players. I won't get into the details but basically if you have 8 players they play evenly, and if a kid was out one period he has to play the next period. By having 8 kids you ensure that your best player is out at least 2 periods. Well the first round of the tourney we play a team with only 8 kids, and they were all boys. Usually that is a rotation loss. But for the tourney we could manipulate the roster and I spent about 2 hours tinkering with rotations so that I didn't have all 3 girls on the floor at once (boys don't like to pass to girls at this level for some reason, so this would give them at least 2 options to pass), I had one of my two designated in bounders on the floor at all times, and I had my best lineup going into the last period. That was the first time I have seen a team of 8 beat of team of 6, 15-14, 5 seed over the 8 seed. And the other team had a chance at the end just one of our players made a great defensive play and stopped a layup.
So the next game we were matched up against a team that had a similar number of wins, but also had 9 kids. This resulted in a rotation loss for them. That is as simple as I can put it. I think we won like 27-21. Then we played the number 1 seed that same night, and if we had played them fresh I feel like we would have won instead of playing with an hour of rest after the first game. We played a box and one defense, that we actually installed the game before after halftime. It wasn't great but man was in effective. We lost by double digits the previous time we played and this time we lost by 2 and had a chance to win at the end. That is all you can ask for. And I really can't stress that with limited practice time, how hard it is to install a defense let alone a gimmicky defense, but that just speaks to the specialness (not sure about that word) of this team. I wish we could have gotten one final team picture, but everyone was kind of upset so it was definitely understandable that we wouldn't have wanted our picture taken. The number one seed did end up winning 18-13 over the number 3 seed, so we definitely gave them a better game. We were also down in the rotation 8 kids to 7, so their best player only had to sit out once, and they only had one girl. Sometimes Upward doesn't get all of the fairness check boxes just right, but every once and a while you get a team that just comes together and can almost overcome any deficit. Hope next year is just as good, can't wait. Here is a picture of me and my main man Charlie.
This team was special and I wrote a while ago about how a team becomes a special team and while I'm not sure how or when it happened this team definitely had that, and I wanted to foster that and keep it going as long as I could. I have coached or assistant coached the last 8 or 9 years in upward, coached some civic basketball, and learned a lot along the way from other coaches and on-line and I don't think I could have got as much out of a team before this season. I never really coached before 10 years ago, but have coached all the way up from T-ball, baseball, basketball, and even some flag football. I do enjoy helping kids get better by teaching them what ever I can, but Upwards is a special kind of challenge because practice time is limited. I had one other team that I felt somewhat comfortable yelling out plays, but this was the first time I ever accomplished it at the 3/4 level. Not saying they executed the plays perfectly every time, but it kept me involved in the game and I think they got better at things as the season went on, and started expecting things. Maybe I'm more organized now, but there was a feeling of something kind of organic and you could tell the kids were buying in. We didn't really have a go-to-scorer per se that I could just get the ball to and say go get me a basket. A lot of points came from our defense were, we would get a turnover or rebound and push the ball, but if we had to run a play or get someone a shot we did. One game we came out and hit 3 or 4 jump shots early in the game and sometimes that is fools gold because jumpers don't always fall, especially in 3rd and 4th grade. The well dried up. I think we scored 10 in the first half total, after having 8 in about 3 minutes. Then we got down 10, at 20-10 in the last period and some how, some way we managed to score 14 points and win by 4. That was the last regular game before our Upward tourney and we had won 3 in a row. One thing about Upward though is that sometimes you can get behind in the rotation if teams don't have the same number of players, and it is especially disadvantageous if you have more players. I won't get into the details but basically if you have 8 players they play evenly, and if a kid was out one period he has to play the next period. By having 8 kids you ensure that your best player is out at least 2 periods. Well the first round of the tourney we play a team with only 8 kids, and they were all boys. Usually that is a rotation loss. But for the tourney we could manipulate the roster and I spent about 2 hours tinkering with rotations so that I didn't have all 3 girls on the floor at once (boys don't like to pass to girls at this level for some reason, so this would give them at least 2 options to pass), I had one of my two designated in bounders on the floor at all times, and I had my best lineup going into the last period. That was the first time I have seen a team of 8 beat of team of 6, 15-14, 5 seed over the 8 seed. And the other team had a chance at the end just one of our players made a great defensive play and stopped a layup.
So the next game we were matched up against a team that had a similar number of wins, but also had 9 kids. This resulted in a rotation loss for them. That is as simple as I can put it. I think we won like 27-21. Then we played the number 1 seed that same night, and if we had played them fresh I feel like we would have won instead of playing with an hour of rest after the first game. We played a box and one defense, that we actually installed the game before after halftime. It wasn't great but man was in effective. We lost by double digits the previous time we played and this time we lost by 2 and had a chance to win at the end. That is all you can ask for. And I really can't stress that with limited practice time, how hard it is to install a defense let alone a gimmicky defense, but that just speaks to the specialness (not sure about that word) of this team. I wish we could have gotten one final team picture, but everyone was kind of upset so it was definitely understandable that we wouldn't have wanted our picture taken. The number one seed did end up winning 18-13 over the number 3 seed, so we definitely gave them a better game. We were also down in the rotation 8 kids to 7, so their best player only had to sit out once, and they only had one girl. Sometimes Upward doesn't get all of the fairness check boxes just right, but every once and a while you get a team that just comes together and can almost overcome any deficit. Hope next year is just as good, can't wait. Here is a picture of me and my main man Charlie.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Friday, March 06, 2020
Adult Convo with the boy
So the whole basketball thing for the high school is kind of blowing up and multiple parents are writing letters and voice their overall displeasure with the coach and his staff. Shocker right? So I have written a letter as well and I wanted to talk to Sampson first before submitting it. So we talked and he read the letter and it was a good talk. I talked about how I had to quit my senior year because of coaching, and that maybe we are just destined to never play a senior season. He has played well though when he played, but a lot of lessons were learned from my time to help prepare him, where I had no help growing up and neither parent played sports so sports were not very important in my household. Anyway he said he hated last year and he only gave the coach a second chance this year and kind of everything from last year was confirmed and he doesn't want to submit himself to the verbal abuse for another year, which I totally understand. He is in a little different situation from me, the coach pulled me and another kid in at the beginning of the season and basically said we weren't going to play and we were wasting our time. So after 4 games (all loses) and playing for a total of 2 minutes (scored though), I could see the writing on the wall and ended my season there. It was also a pay for play school so rather than pay to sit, I left before having to pay. Sampson's situation is actually entirely different, after getting some varsity time last year as a sophomore he started some as a junior and was the 6th man, he just can't get by the yelling and swearing and demeaning behavior of the coaches. I completely respect his decision and wanted to make sure he was done and he laid out a good case for being done. I told him to never say never, but in this case there is no glory or record to obtain so it is far better to spend his time doing something else. Maybe next year he can help me coach Upward. Even though I had some horrible experiences with basketball and it gets me again here with my son, I still enjoy the sport, enjoy watching it and enjoy helping so that kids get a chance to play. Now the old Hawkeyes are still in the playoffs but as the 5 seed so we got some work to do, but hopefully we can get that dub in the first round and then get another dub an hour later. Go Hawkeyes!!!
Thursday, March 05, 2020
Ugh
It's hard to describe that feeling were you have been gut punched and feel horrible about things, but the thing that caused the punch also creates a lot of doubt and questions. So it is just like "I have to deal with this, but how." So that is where I am right now, my boss or ex-boss was relieved of his job duties yesterday and he was a good boss. I have had 5 bosses in my professional life, and he was definitely in the top 5. Pretty easy math there. Actually maybe I have had 6 bosses, but one was for around 6 months so not sure that counts, anyway he would still be top 5. Honestly I wouldn't want to rank my bosses, but he was good. I think Dale Clark is probably at the top of the list because he was very smart about what he was doing and always treated me well and allowed me to succeed and gave me opportunity to prove my self and improve myself. Columbian Chemicals was an underrated stop on my employment path for sure. Anyway today feels like there is a cloud hanging overhead. Worry and uncertainty rule the day and thinking about what has happened has left me feeling very weird about my future and how things are going to be handled. Just ugh, about the whole situation, about who is going to take over, about how much more work this will be, about how this may not have been completely thought out...
Season 7 continues...
Andy is now the new boss. 🙁 But funny thing is, two days in and Andy hasn't even mentioned the promotion to anyone working there. The announcement was sent out in an e-mail.
Season 7
I figured out this weekend that my professional life is currently in season 7 of the office. Michael has left (although, not by his own accord this time) and now we are leaderless. I can only hope that Andy is not put in charge here, and if Andy is put in charge that there is a least an ass tattoo in the future that we can all enjoy.
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