New training regime - bring on the mornings!!

Okay folks, today was Day 1 of the new training regime. a.k.a. the 'get your lazy ass out of bed early and train and don't use the car' regime. I woke up at 5:45am, dragged my butt out of bed in the dark and cold to the washroom to wake up a bit before taking the dog out. The dog did not want to go out at 6am (although he was quite happy to go out at 2am this morning after chewing on a large chunk of femur yesterday afternoon!). Short dog walk around the block, back inside to get into biking gear, scarfed down a Red Bull for some energy, then I was out the door, bike in hand, and rode over to the gym. This morning's workout: 200 m and 125 m sprints up a hill, and 10 repetitions on the stairs. Plus the run to and from Strathcona Park. An hour's worth of laboured breathing and a slight pukey-feeling. Although I'm not as fast as the boys, I can hold my own. And I'm out of shape - this will definitely be good to get back into shape!! And since I wasn't doing as much sprint work before July, I think this will make my conditioning a lot better than before. It is brutal and horrible work, but without pain...

I biked in to work as well, which adds another hour of cardio to the day, approximately. 14 km each way between the gym and work. I wasn't moving fast this morning, that's for sure!! But some fat-burning low intensity work is not a bad thing right now, especially to disperse all the lactic acid from the sprints.

Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday will be sprint/hill/stair days to push my anaerobic and lactic threshold. Wednesdays and Saturdays will be long run days. And then regular training in the evenings. This post-fight pudge will be coming off quickly!! Provided the food intake is normal and healthy.

Being up and doing that much training already makes for a very long day! I'm exhausted right now. Coffee is my friend. And water - I don't think I'm hydrated enough today. I took my office Nalgene bottle home last week because it had a definite fishy smell to it. I'm not sure if that was from the water here in the building, or simply from not being cleaned thoroughly, but it really had to be disinfected. So I'm stuck with only a small bike bottle here to hydrate from - not nearly enough.

I just printed out a published paper on nalivkinite, a new Li-dominant astrophyllite group mineral. I apparently reviewed this manuscript, as my name is in the acknowledgments, but I don't recall doing the review at all!!! How sad is that? I vaguely recall it, but not in any clear way. I would have been the obvious choice of reviewers, of course, but still... Wow. Getting back to research means cleaning out the cobwebs from the last 1.5 years and rediscovering work I have or haven't done yet!! Although I suspect I reviewed this paper at least 1.5 years ago, and it's just getting published now? That's way too long of a delay.

Did I mention I'm NOT a morning person in the slightest?!! Actually, once I'm up, I'm happy to be up and moving early. It's just that initial getting out of bed moment that is horrible. That's when I can get up, hit snooze or reset the alarm clock entirely and go back to bed. But that's wimping out. I can't afford to do that right now.

I came across this quote in the Bangkok Post today, wrt to the political situation in Thailand:

"In recent times, "democracy" is a word that has been thrown around more often than a ping pong ball in Patpong - and suffers about the same level of degradation."

I thought it was hilarious. Ah, memories of Khao San road and the invites to ping pong shows!!!