I've not written in a while. Last week a 12 year old boy died while using a weight training machine. It sure dampened the entire week. It was the grandson of a former employee at the company where I'm employed and many folks were upset by it. Time and unforeseen events catch us all. It prompted me and others to give a lecture to our kids on never being to confident when using barbells and such. I lift heavy weights and use a pro rack that has safety bars to prevent weights falling on the person if muscle failure occurs. The thing is that you have to set them up otherwise they are useless. So I always set them up for the type of work out I will be doing. Youngsters need all the supervision that we can give them. Their curious minds and instincts are to be encouraged and commended but they must also be alerted of the dangers. My condolences to the family. Inononce is to be protected even as you see it in this kittens eyes.

Today went out and ran. I started walking and somehow I ended up sprinting, which is a good thing because I later went to have lunch at IHOP of all places thinking an egg omelet with vegetables would be great. That is until I found out that one pancake has 180 calories and there were three of them. The total damage was somewhere in the 1300 calories. Boy was I mad, I only ate half of it cause I thought save the rest for later, but something told me to check the calories since I'm tracking those here: http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=oastorga I was quite disappointed, my favorite pancakes turns out are not made with real grain. OHHHH! Lesson learned. No more Harvest Grain and Nut pancakes for me! I realize this is nothing in the big picture of what's going in the world, but I feel violated!

It's Sunday and today I hit the 240lb mark with my Dead Lift without using hooks to lift the bar. This week will be the last week before I go on another recovery week. My weight is at 235 so I can now lift my own weight plus a little more. The whole workout consisted of Dead Lifts (pictured here while my dog keeps guard), step ups , Romanian Dead Lifts at 150lbs (this was quite easy after doing the 240lbs dead lifts). I also did squats at 270lbs, 1set of 6 reps (that's all I could do at that weight). I lowered the weight to 250lbs and did 1 set of 10 reps. Lowered again to 225lbs for another set of 12 reps. This last Friday I did a 7 mile speed walk so I'm good to go for 8 miles in a couple of weeks. I did make a mistake in that I ate more than I should have (I actually forgot to log in a protein shake I had earlier today and had a yogurt, blueberry, almond butter, vanilla whey mixture with cinnamon and dark chocolate that put me at 3,000 calories, oops. I'll have to make that up tomorrow.

This Tuesday was kind of crazy, well it did not start out that way. I woke up early, around 5:45am. I put my heart rate monitor on and warmed up with a slow walk while watching a DVD on my laptop. Had a good breakfast (Rolled Oats with trail mix, whole raw milk, vanilla whey), it was quite good. Later at the office things went kind of crazy, my desktop would not let me log in, programs that had been working stopped working etc. Things calmed donw towards the end and had an excellent dinner along with all my previous snacks. I love almonds and had a small piece of chocolate to boot (70% cocoa, dark), it was good! So things turned out well, like this young hawk here. Rescued and put back to health and I think the preserve was releasing it later that year. Just absolutely beautiful. Look at those plush feathers. So the day went from good to crazy to good again. I feel like this hawk looks, strong and healthy. I hit the 10mph limit on the treadmill in my workout today and that was great. So forward we go!

Sometimes you feel like everything is closing all around you and then a glimmer of light brightens up your day. And so we go on. This weekend did all my scheduled walking and today after a good rest was up before 5:00 ready for another day.

Training so far is going according to plan even with all the mishaps and life going around us. I give myself the OK to feel good :-) Monday was not so blue after all!

It's Thursday evening. On Tuesday, one of my uncles passed away. He was 86 years old. I was the one that had to tell my dad that his brother was now gone. It was very tough to do this and I probably should have approached the matter differently, but I could not think of doing it any other way than just telling him straight out. I stayed with my dad for a few hours and reminisced about our times together with him. We looked at some old photos and talked about the funny moments that marked our lives. He was upset as one can be when given such news but later calmed down. I do have pleasant memories of my uncle and hopefully my dad will eventually come to accept this loss. My younger brother died in 2000 of a brain tumor and all these memories came forth also. So we must go on. Life is short enjoying in a healthy way is of paramount importance as it makes up for many shortcomings. The day is coming when those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and rise again. To better days ahead!.

The cycle begins again, it really began on Sunday but Monday is good enough. That's why I thought the photo here would be appropriate. These monarchs are waiting to mate after a six month stay in the Eucaliptus groves of Pismo Beach. They begin a cycle where after they mate the males end their life, and the females travel back up to Norther California, if I remember correctly every two weeks a new generation moves North. Mating season is quite a scene, but I guess if I knew that after mating I was going to die, I would wait as long as possible myself :-). The monarchs are in these groves from November to February when mating season goes full swing. In any case my training cycle is again in full swing. Today I'm a little sore from Sunday's workout, did some recovery cardio and met my nutrional goals. And sin of all sins, I enjoyed some ice cream (boy was that good). Till next time....

Well the weekend is here. Let's see this was a good Friday. I was supposed to be off work today but I forgot that I had signed up for some training so off I went. The day started out well, I got up early and finish Thursday's workout. I did squats and romanian dead lifts. I varied the way I did the squats by slowing down the up and down phase. I slowed it to 6 or 7 seconds down and up and held the full squat for 2 to 3 seconds at the bottom. I could not do as many as I usually do even with lighter weights. My legs were burning for quite a while. It seems like a lot of work but being in a little better shape allows me to hike to places like the one photographed here. This is Punchbowl falls in Oregon. It's only a 2.5 mile hike off the main highway but well worth the run. When I went there this past summer I got up early in the morning and raced walk to this spot. I was the only one there for one glorious hour (well it was just me and the birds and whatever else roamed the area at that time). I look forward to going here again with my friends. I will have a good night sleep tonight.

Thursday, Nov 3, 2005. Did not sleep as well as I would have liked to last night. So I did not get up early to work out. I went during lunch and did my dead lift workout. I took it easy. I only used 230lbs max and went down from there to 180lbs and 130lbs. I slowed down the tempo to maximize tension on the muscles and had a pretty good workout nevertheless. I did step-ups holding 20lbs on each hand for 15 reps on each leg. One set of leg extensions at 130lbs on the stack machine and I’ll do the squat session later tonight.

My heart rate monitor stats were an average of 131 average heart beats and I hit a max of 160. I spent 25.12 minutes in zone 3 so that was pretty good. On Wednesday I hit a max of 180 as I was doing intervals on the treadmill, that workout only lasted 25 minutes total.

One thing I’m happy about is that I was able to hang on to the barbell without hooks for most of the workout when doing dead lifts, so there is some improvement there. My diet has also changed a bit in that I’m following a more protein oriented meal plan. So I’m eating about 236 grams of protein to match my current weight. So let’s see how I do later tonight…

The photo here was taken in Florida some years back. Parrot Jungle I think was the place.

It's Tuesday. I'm now back on my weight training schedule for another three weeks before another active recovery week. My wife's uncle is a back at home after the apparent heart attack and also my mother is doing well. I’m glad I was in an active recovery week while all of this was happening since stress levels were a bit high. The photo here was taken near the California, Oregon border where we visited the Oregon caves park. Lighting was kind of mysterious to me.