Joseph – A Life Less Ordinary

Well, after several months of being at CrossFit and seeing what it’s like, I love it a lot and now it’s time to push myself a bit more further. I still can’t do double unders (jump rope with the rope passing through twice). I mean can do them, but I have to do at least 1-3 singles jump ropes and then shoot for the double under, I’m working on trying to do double unders continuously. With that, I just ordered the SR-1 Rogue bearing speed rope from RogueFitness.com. Great reviews on the jump rope, so we’ll see how it performs when I receive it. The other workout I want to be able to do is a muscle up on rings, gymnasts make it look so easy, and when I gave it a shot, I couldn’t get it, but I will eventually learn how to do a muscle up.

Learning lots more in Judo and Escrima training. As far as Taewkondo, hopefully I can go for my 2nd degree black belt this year.

Mother’s day is tomorrow and I guess I will be barbecuing, so that will be fun. I need a vacation though, just don’t know when and where to go…

It’s been about a month since I’ve posted, but yeah, that’s because nothing interesting or new has happened lately. Well, my post are never interesting to anyone I suppose. What can I say? I got a bump on my left hand now for trying to check a escrima stick today. Well, I actually blocked the stick with my escrima stick, but as I blocked it, I tried to check my training partner’s hand, which basically means I block with my stick and use my other hand to check the other person’s arm (wrist/forearm) that is wailing at you with their stick. But I missed and the stick hit my hand. It’s all good though. I got a few nicks and bruises here and there from escrima. Gotta love it though, it’s intense.

Ranch Romp Mud Run in Hollister, California is coming up this Saturday May 5, 2012 and I am doing this one. It’s going to be awesome. After that on May 6, 2012, going to celebrate my niece’s 2nd birthday at Chuckie Cheeses. So it will be a fun weekend. Looking forward to it.

Other than that, It’s just working, CrossFit, and Martial Arts. Still the same stuff, but I love it. It’s also NBA Playoffs time. Even though we lost Derrick Rose to a Torn ACL, I still believe we can get to the NBA Finals. Let’s go Bulls!

Oh and I believe Diable III (PC game) is going to come out this month, so can’t wait to play it. Yes, I play PC games.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be participating in the Big Sur International Marathon this year. I think I’m getting more into the obstacle type courses/runs rather than just running long distant miles. I think it’s more fun to go over obstacles such as going through mud, climbing 5 ft walls, jumping cars, running up a steep hill, and just other obstacles. I just signed up for the Ranch Romp Mud Run in Hollister, California on May 5th, so it should be fun with all the obstacles and It’s only a 3.5 mile course, not bad at all.

Well, it looks like I’m going to be mixing in a lot of workout training, which is, Martial Arts (Taekwondo, Judo, and Bahala Na Multi-Style Escrima) along with a traditional gym workout, and CrossFit. It’s going to be intense, but we’ll see how it all pans out. I’ll most likely have one day of rest, that being either Saturday or Sunday, if I can get those two days for rest that would be awesome, but I know on Saturday mornings I teach Martial Arts, so it will be a bit hard not to train because sometimes when I teach, I also like to train. I get in that mood when you start teaching and all of a sudden I find myself training along with the students.

Week 4 of the CrossFit Games Open and the workout gets even more insane. It’s 12 minutes, as many rounds as possible of:

150 Wall balls
90 Double Unders (Jump ropes need to pass through twice)
30 Muscle ups

I’ll be happy if I can finish one round, but it’s going to be tough. Gotta work on the skill sets of the muscle ups. Double unders and Wall balls, I can pretty much do.

On the other hand, I’ve downloaded Windows 8 consumer preview and loaded it up onto the VMware workstation just to play around with it. Didn’t do too much with the new OS, just wanted to see the feeling of navigating around it and it’s new metro style tile type UI (user interface). Not really a big fan of it, but I do see it working well with tablets, but for a desktop user, it will probably take some time getting used to. However everything is still there, except the Windows icon/start button is now removed. As for specifications for running Windows 8, it’s pretty much similar to Windows 7. 1GHz processor, 1GB (x86) or 2GB (x64) of RAM, a DirectX 9.0 compatible graphics card with WDDM drivers, and a dozen or so gigabytes of hard drive space.

Well, I’m kinda scared to see what the 2nd CrossFit games WOD (Workout of the day) for the week will be, since the first weeks workout was pretty brutal when it was just only burpees AMRAP (As many reps as possible) in 7 minutes, which I was only able to do 68 burpees. I was shooting for at least 80. After that I went onto the CrossFit games website to see the leaderboard and two guys are tied for first place. First guy is from the U.S. and the other guy is from Europe and they both did 161 burpees in 7 minutes, which is insane. Well, bring on the 2nd workout of the week, hopefully I don’t puke. Lol.

I also started running again with my Nike+ sportband and ran 2.24 miles today. Gotta get ready for those small running events and the Mud Run that’s coming up this March.

Other than training….I’m just taking it day by day and see what life throws at me and do my best to get through it.

Made some Chicken apple for lunch. Going to try this Paleo food plan. I know I won’t be following it religiously, but I will try to do as much paleo food recipes as I can, probably 2 to 3 times a week to start off. Paleo and Zone food plans are what crossfitters recommend. So I’m going to give it a try. So far, the chicken apple isn’t bad at all. It’s actually pretty good.

Just looking at the other Paleo recipes, makes me more hungry. They all sound really good.

So, I signed up with the CrossFit gym that I go to for the CrossFit games this upcoming July. We’re trying to get as much people from our gym to sign up for it even if none of us advanced to the games. It’s a good experience and a way to push myself to see how far I can go with this. My times are not the greatest when doing a WOD (Workout of the day), but I can say that I do push myself and I get a good workout in.

CrossFitters for diet, they go with the Paleo diet plan or the Zone diet plan. I don’t know if I can strictly do Paleo, but I have made the chicken apple recipe, which was quite good. I know it will be hard to get into a habit to just eat strictly Paleo, but I’ll try to eat Paleo maybe 2-3 times a week if I can. Usually I’ll eat whatever is convenient, but it wood be whole quality foods. I’m not a health freak either. So I do eat some bad foods because that’s just me, I love to eat. But yeah, I also talked to the head instructor of the CrossFit gym that I go to and he was thinking that maybe if everyone at our gym pitches in $100 we can get a luxury box to watch the CrossFit Games in L.A. I think that would be cool, we’d have our own box with food and drinks to watch the games. Still kinda far off from that, but we’ll see how it goes.

CrossFit games open starts next week on February 22nd and the workouts start, so hopefully I’m ready. and only 3 men and 3 women will only advance to see who the fittest person on earth is. Should be interesting how it all pans out, but either way, I’ll be happy just getting a workout in.

Well, Ever since 2009, every year for me starts off with the Big Sur Mud Run and from there kicks off the other small marathon running events for me. I’m still debating if I should do the 9-miler run at the Big Sur International Marathon since most of the other runs are sold out and Big Sur Marathons are always a bit pricey. I also got an invite in the mail from terrainracing.com today, which is another mud run event up in San Jose, California that starts I believe the last week of April. So, I’m debating if I should do that one as well. If I do, then it would look like this for the 2012 running events that I will be participating in:

1. Big Sur Mud Run (March 24, 2011)
2. Terrain Racing Mud Run (San Jose, CA. April 28, 2012)
3. Big Sur International Marathon (Participating in the 9-miler April 29, 2012)
4. Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital Heart and Sole 5k & 10k Walk/Run (May 19, 2012
5. Salinas Valley Half Marathon (August 12, 2012
6. The Warrior Dash in Hollister, California (October 27, 2012)
7. Santa Barbara International and Half Marathons (Participating in the half marathon November 10, 2012)

I guess I’ll see how it goes. As of right now I have only signed up for the Big Sur Mud Run. Most likely I will be signing up for some more as the events come closer.

I don’t read the local newspapers anymore, because pretty much I read my news on the internet nowadays. It’s like one day I read an article that Mcdonalds chose Salinas, California to make a commercial about where they get their lettuce. That being because Salinas, is the Salad bowl of the world. I guess that’s one positive thing about this dead/boring place. Haha. And, well today, I read that we even hit headlines on the New York Times, in a good way? Not even. More in a bad way, which was about the gang violence here.

I lived here all my life and I live on the East side of Salinas, where it is the most dangerous part of Salinas, California. Some people don’t even want to come here because of the gangs, but I guess if you lived here all your life, you don’t even notice it anymore or you just don’t care, or you’re just used to it and it doesn’t bother you. I’m just a person working and trying to get through life and be happy. Maybe one day I’ll hit the jackpot/lottery and get the heck out of here, or if I choose to stay, get a place away from the East side, although the gang violence in Salinas, CA. is everywhere, it’s just happens the most on the East side. But like I said, I’m used to the news and what goes around here, but to actually be on the New York Times is terrible.

But like everyone else that lives here, It’s just another day in Salinas, California. Get up and go to work and go home to your families and hope nothing bad happens.

Here’s the video of the Mcdonalds commercial and the second one is the article from the New York Times about the gang violence here in Salinas, California:

http://www.youtube.com/user/McDonaldsUS?v=Hv2lNjF1Pl4&feature=pyv&ad=21051261212&kw=mcdonalds%20commercial

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/us/in-salinas-fighting-gang-violence-on-a-shoestring.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

SOPA better not pass that’s all I can say. Here’s a list of sites that have confirmed that they will have a blackout for 2 days in order to protests against SOPA.

http://nlb-creations.com/2012/01/13/websites-confirmed-for-the-jan-18-blackout-protesting-sopa/