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Posts Tagged ‘jeremy’

“Not dead, yet!”

January 14th, 2010

I mean not to get all morbid, but everyone dies sometime.

However, my use of that particular saying, “Not dead, yet!” in regards to what I shouted (or at least I meant for it to come out as a shout, might have sounded a bit more raspy and with a slight hint of wheezing.

(note: when I yelled out ‘Not dead, yet!’ I was half imagining myself on a cart of dead folks from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”)

I made it through my 2nd night of Gladiator Bootcamp. My poor aching body is wishing that I had taken a nice hot bath on Monday and Tuesday night, instead of only just having taken one tonight (Wednesday).

I am sore, I mean to some degree that doesn’t begin to describe the pains I have discovered in my muscles (and my right knee). In terms of my right knee, that one I know exactly what happened there, I tripped and fell last Friday.

I tripped over the gate that we have separating the living room and the kitchen. I don’t know exactly why I tripped, I remember my right shoe catching the top of the gate and me thinking ‘Crap, this is gonna hurt, A LOT.’

I think I was able to cushion the blow with my knee mostly, but I also landed on my right hand (and arm). The pain from that was pretty intense for a few minutes. But once I was able to get up from the floor to a seated position, I figured I wouldn’t need to call anyone for help. After another few minutes, I got myself up onto my feet and didn’t falter.

So, umm I “walked it off” and went about the rest of my day, thinking to myself, “I wonder how bad this is going to effect my performance on the first night of camp gladiator?”

Answer: Not at all really. My knee is sore, but by Monday night, it wasn’t bugging me enough to interfere with the exercises they had us doing.

However, the real question I should have been asking myself was “How would an intense 1 hour work-out effect my body, given that I spend the VAST majority of my time seated at a desk, typing on a keyboard?”

Answer: A LOT!

The pain I feel, is only when I move around, not while just sitting here, which I think is a good thing. Cuz, if I hurt as much as I do when I go up and down stairs, I might have to start drinking at the office.

Anyway, I think you get the point, I am EXTREMELY out-of-shape and have managed to overdue it, a little bit.

I did my best tonight at bootcamp and made my way through all the exercises they threw at us. I will openly admit that I did not complete all of the ‘mountain climber’ sets and that my push-ups look more like I am just holding myself up and moving about what I imagine is like 15cm, maybe 15mm, it’s the metric system and I went to public school in Michigan, you do the math, as I might be a little challenged.

(Just kidding, I actually think my public education was pretty good. It would have been better, had I attended classes more regularly, but that is a post for another time.)

In regards to the push-ups, to me the few centimeters (or millimeters) that I managed to move my body up and down via my chest muscles were like me going through a full-range of motion with what felt like an elephant on my back.

Given that my chest muscles twinge a little bit when I wash my hand vigorously at this point, I am going to say that I am definitely getting a work out, even if I am unable to complete a full push-up.

But this is only the first week. And I am already getting the crazy notion into my head that I might be able to go and do the 5:30am Friday bootcamp. Maybe, possibly, no promises.

I definitely think I will be doing three bootcamps next week, this week might be pushing myself a little bit too much.

In terms of tonight, it was a series of sprints (which due to the my performance on Monday night, I did my best to jog), followed by 50 of each of the following exercises: push-ups, alternating lunges (or ’scissor lunges’), bicycle sit-ups, squats (I did the rowing squats that I have been doing on Wii Fit, just felt more familiar to me), and finally ‘mountain climbers’ (which I cannot do properly, yet).

After doing 50 of each exercise, you had to do two laps around the field, returning to your exercise mat for a set of 24 of each of those same exercises that you just got done doing 50 of. Following your set of 5×25, you doing 1 lap around the field and then take a break.

I finished in 30 minutes and like 5 seconds (might have been 15 seconds, honestly at that point I was proud to be standing under my own power).

I give many props to Kevin, Daniel, Jeremy and Eryn, all of them finished before I did.

The instructor stated that we will be doing that same ‘assessment’ at the end of bootcamp. Provided that I can keep my legs from feeling like they are made of rusty metal, I think I will be able to shave several minutes off my overall time.

The one thing I will say about bootcamp day/night #2. I feel better than I did after night #1.

Don’t get me wrong, I still ache (all over, speaking of, time for more advil), but I honestly at the end of tonight felt my muscles loosening up. I really, really need to get to the field like 10 minutes earlier, and do some good stretches and walk around the field a few times, get limbered up.

At this exact moment, I feel almost normal. Of course soaking in a tub of hot water that has been laced with epsom salt for about 45 minutes does wonders for those aching muscles.

But I might also be feeling good, because apparently Chocolate Milk can aid in recovery after a hard work-out. I have Daniel to thank for this tip, I stated on Twitter that he might be lying to me. And he told me to Google it, to which I found he wasn’t making it up. Check out the search results for yourself.

Ok, the maintenance has been over for a bit and my blog post here is finished up, I need to go and get some sleep.

Laterz

PS. Thanks to everyone running and attending the Camp Gladiator. Everyone is very supportive and it makes pushing yourself to do exercises that I don’t necessarily want to do, easier, keep in mind I paid money for this, so the encouragement is very helpful.

bdbenner Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

The heart of a Gladiator

January 12th, 2010

(figured I would follow-up the Time Lord post with a similar sounding title)

So let me first start off by saying, I managed to get myself over to the soccer field for Camp Gladiator #7 about 10 minutes later than I had wanted. Honestly though, from the looks of it the folks in charge there I think must have started a little bit before 6:10, because everyone was already doing some serious exercises. That our I mistook the warm-ups for part of the serious workout.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I think it was on Wednesday, one of my coworkers, Eryn Chandler, was mentioning that she went to high school with a friend who’s cousin won the last American Gladiator contest, or something like that. Regardless, of the six-degrees of gladiator separation, I have signed up for Cam Gladiator (#7).

Eryn was talking about how she was thinking about signing up. I heard her asking Kevin if he would do it and he sounded interested at the time. The next day there was much chatter in the office about Camp Gladiator. There was chatter about referrals and how much money you can get for referring someone, I remember hearing Daniel mention that he was going. That is when right about the same time they asked me if I would do it. I had looked the site over the previous day and thought to myself that I didn’t think I was physically fit enough to get $160 worth of exercise (4 weeks of sessions, as many sessions as I want to attend).

Then came the Camp Gladiator Groupon, this is a new thing to me, but Groupon is this sort of weird group coupon system (Group + Coupon = Groupon). I like to think of it as Woot! + Local Business. There is one special a day and they eventually run out of Groupons. The Groupon lowered the price to $70. So that combined with the fact that Kevin said that Jeremy was thinking about doing it, I succumbed to the peer pressure of exercise.

I stated that I would do the camp if Jeremy would. However, Kevin managed to finish talking me into it, not that he was hard selling me on it, but at this point Eryn, Kevin, and Daniel were all signed up. So I figured, heck I will sign-up. I am not saying that Jeremy signed up because I did, but I did sign-up before he did.

The first session (for us) was last night, 6:10p - 7:10p, out at a soccer field near the intersection of Braker and Mopac.

It was chilly when we started and proceeded to get COLD. I will definitely need to wear a sweatshirt next time around.

We did sprints, push-ups, jumping jacks, ’sexy spiders’, ‘crab walks’, ‘crab shuffles’ (think that was the name), ’super-mans’, ‘bananas’, and some sort of weird V-shaped sit-up thing. It was very intense.

As previously posted, I am trying to get into better shape. I can honestly say that if I had not been doing a bit of the Wii Fit every night, then I would most likely have not been able to do as many of the exercises that everyone was doing at Camp Gladiator last night. I mean don’t get me wrong, I got winded very early-on and had to slow down my pace, but every time I felt that I was recovered, I ‘kicked the intensity back up’ as to try and get the most out of my $70.

I am not sure if I will do another Camp Gladiator or not. I think I will need to see how I am feeling by the end of these four weeks. One personal goal that I have for week three and week four, is to do three sessions a week. These first two weeks I think are going to really kick my ass.

I am going to try and alternate the Wii Fit with the Camp Gladiator nights. I have the Camp Gladiator session in my Google Calendar, thus allowing them show-up on my iPhone. Mondays and Wednesday nights. I think I am going to try and hit up a Friday session on weeks three and four.

Anyway, I need to finish my lunch and get back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner cam gladiator, daniel, eryn, exercise, friends, jeremy, kevin, wii fit , , , , ,

Beam Me Up Scotty?

May 9th, 2009

No wait, you’re not Scotty!

I won’t give any spoilers but the reboot of the Star Trek franchise has some unexpected twists that help make the whole movie understandable to those of us that might know a bit more about Star Trek than we normally care to admit. However, there are already websites out there that will outline for you all of the inaccurate events and facts in the movie.

I wanted to get a quick post out, before Gina and I head out. We are going to go see Star Trek, again technically, in regards to Gina. Our friends over at UnwiredNation were nice enough to snag us some tickets for the IMAX preso that happened down at the Bob Bullock history museum, on behalf of the Austin Planetarium Foundation.

However, Gina suffers from motion sickness and could not really watch the movie last night on the HUGE screen. I have to admit there were a few times that I found it, well disturbing to watch the movie with all the twists and turns, not necessarily sick feeling but it was giving me a wee bit of a headache to try to follow along some of the parts.

This afternoon’s showing will be my third in the last 48 hours. I saw the movie at 9:45AM yesterday morning with the Jaduka dev staff (including Jeremy & Kevin) and John came along as well. The movie theatre was mostly full, but not packed.

Gina asked me if I minded seeing Star Trek again this afternoon, to which I tried to come back with something witty and failed, but no not a problem at all.

Well, I best publish this and get my shoes on.

Laterz

bdbenner movies , , , , ,

I wouldn’t say that I am miserable

March 31st, 2009

While listening to Jason and Deb, on 101x, this morning, I learned that a recently published ‘study’ has stated that men named ‘Benjamin’ are the most miserable in Britain.

When hearing this on the radio this morning the word ‘Morose’ came to mind, but that just leads me to think of the following movie quote from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Well, look at these morose motherfuckers right here. Looks like somebody shit in their cereal… Bong.

While my demeanor has been a bit glum the past few months, to the point one might have called me ‘morose’, the last few weeks have been actually pretty decent.

Jeremy listened to Jason and Deb this morning as well and congratulated me on having the most miserable name. Both of us agreed that we didn’t know any happy guys named Josh. So, I guess that means someone needs to release the list of happy and miserable names for the USA.

Well, I best get back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Random , , , ,

Worth a thousand words

March 5th, 2009

jeremy took kevin's pic

OK, maybe not a thousand words, more like a sound, maybe “Gurpasdkhf”.

Kevin just looks like his eyes are going to roll back and the rest of him fall forward.

Kevin is holding a gift that he made for Val as it is her birthday.

Jeremy brought in his camera and he snapped a few photos of Kevin’s gift and Kevin. I kinda dig this one.

Jeremy getting artsy

Check out the Jeremy’s whole Flickr set.

Happy Birthday Val! (well, tomorrow anyway.)

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner blogs, friends, kevinNuut , ,

Sleepy

July 30th, 2008

Gina is in the Philippines, so I haven’t been sleeping too well. Several reasons why.

1. With no curfew, I find myself staying up later than usual.

2. The dogs go nuts with every little noise and usually wake me up in the middle of the night.

3. Cuz I miss her. (I just heard someone say ‘awwww’)

I have neglected my blogging.

I should have drank another red bull and headed down to this networking party that Jeremy is at tonight. But I have to save my strength for the networking party on Saturday. I hope I don’t miss anything too cool at the party tonight, but I definitely need to get some sleep tonight.

I had a maintenance window last night that had me up late and tomorrow morning at 8am I have a conference call with some folks in UK or somewhere in Europe. Good times, good times.

Well, I wanted to do a little update before going and passing out.

Laterz

bdbenner travel , , ,

Staying up late

July 1st, 2008

I set my alarm for 0140, giving me time to crawl out of bed and over to the computer with plenty of time to spare.

Low and behold,  Jeremy messages me.

He is still awake.

Course he is on vacation, therefore he can stay up at long as he wants.

Ok, the maintenance is about to start.

Laterz

bdbenner Uncategorized , , ,

Back in Austin

June 27th, 2008

And grateful it is Friday.

I have a number of home projects that need to get squared away this weekend to ensure a relaxing vacation, so this weekend will be action packed.

The trip back from Dallas was fun. Jeremy and I had a chance to catch-up with a buddy who lives in Dallas. It was good conversation and pretty decent food (we went to Bone Daddy’s).

On the way back we listened to the music on Jeremy’s iPod  (we listened to some of mine on the way up). Oddly enough most of the music we listened to I also have.

We finished off the trip listening to different tracks off of Billy Joel’s greatest hits albums. I always enjoy a good singalong with the Piano Man.

Back to grind.

Laterz.

bdbenner Personal , , , , ,

ROAD TRIP!

June 24th, 2008

Jeremy and I are packing up and heading to Dallas tonight. (like probably right after I am done with this post)

We will be up there for meetings all day tomorrow, then driving back that night.

Not sure if posted an update about his car, if he hasn’t then I will scoop him here.

They believe it is a sensor in his transmission, so between the part, labor and changing the transmission fluid he will be out about another $300 bucks.

The mechanics believe that is all the work that is needed to fix his car.

Well I best shut it down and get the laptop in the bag so we can motor.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal , , ,