In Which the Holidays End
Shortly after my last posting, dear reader, I jetted off to snowy New Hampshire with bewcastle to spend some holiday time with my family. We had snow, lots of good food, and the opportunity to visit and catch up with friends. I also got to undertake some serious workouts, two with my cousin recently discharged from the Marine Corps, now attending college in the GI Bill. I have to admit that I was a bit daunted at the prospect of hitting the weight room with a cousin about the same size as me, but younger and fitter. I was encouraged that I held my own, and this initial success leads me to a second weekly resolution.
As you may recall (and may regret...) I vowed last fall to begin reading a book per week, with a review to be posted here to keep me honest about my intentions. Well, I'm still chugging along on my book-a-week pace, aided by the several books I managed to finish over the holidays. More on those below, but among the books I read was a workout book recommended by notjenschiz , The New Rules of Weightlifting. The premise of the book is to design workouts based on the six basic movements that the human body actually makes (squatting, lunging, twisting, pushing, pulling, and picking something up). Although the book is based on careful and well-documented research, the tone is causual - sometimes annoyingly so, as the author seems to be at pains to come off as 'one of the guys' rather than some 'egghead kinesiologist' (and yes, that's sometimes the level of the discourse). But if you can ignore the wannabe meathead tone, there's some great stuff there, including a wide range of different workouts with different aims (fat burning, mass development, strength building, etc.). I"ve decided to post some workout notes here - again to keep myself honest in the hopes that public declaration will help keep me on track. I've never been very good at sticking with a workout plan, so I am optimistic that greater consistency will lead to better gains.
Last week was pretty good - I started on Monday morning at 260 pounds. Monday was "Breaking Workout A" from the New Rules book - high reps, short (60 sec) rests. Tuesday was intervals (1 min. hard, 2 min moderate) on the rowing machine, Wednesday was a light day - a brisk walk with bewcastle , Thursday was New Rules workout B, Friday was 2 miles followed by 8 100-meter sprints, and Saturday was an interval circuit of rowing, pushups, situps, swiss ball squats, and woodchops with a 10-lb medicine ball, on a 40 sec on, 20 sec off pace. Four circuits, 2 min rest halfway through.
Saturday night, however, I got together with ian_tiberius and richardabecker to drink a bottle of 21-year old Lismore and indulge in some wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating conversation. It's so rare to get the chance to just hang out with a couple good friends and let the conversational currents carry you along. I had a wonderful time, but I think the pizza and snacks may have done some serious damage to my week's gains. However, if I"ve still managed to lose 2 pounds when I weigh in tomorrow, I'll be happy. Slow and steady wins the race, after all. I'll keep you posted, dear reader!
In addition to New Rules... I enjoyed a number of great books over the holidays. Two were installments of series I've already praised in earlier reviews - Simon Scarrow's Centurion, the latest, and perhaps last, installment of his "Under the Eagle" series following two centurions in the Roman legions during the reign of Claudius., and Joseph Delaney's Night of the Soul Stealer, the third installment of his Last Apprentice series. Both were great fun, and lived up to the promise of the authors' previous efforts. I am fearful that Scarrow may have moved on - he's already published a couple volumes in a series on Napoleon and Wellington, and Centurion wrapped up very nicely with no loose ends. Of course, I prefer that to just letting a series dribble off with no good ending...
My main accomplishment of the holidays, however, was a scholarly monograph - Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer. I was clued in to this book by a reference in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and I was interested to follow it up. Fischer's basic premise is that four major waves of migration to the American colonies over the seventeenth century - each from a different part of England and each bringing people with a unigue and discernable set of cultural values - shaped the regional cultures of our nation and still effect the US even today. Specifically, he chronicles the arrival of Puritans from the southeast of England to New England, West Counry cavaliers to the Tidewater South, midlands Quakers to the Delaware Valley, and "Scotch-Irish" borderers from the old English-Scottish border to the Appalachian backcountry. Although there are some holes in the details of his scholarship, as is inevitably the case with such an ambitious and wide-ranging work, he does a convincing job of proving his argument. The book looks daunting at almost 1000 pages, but one can glide over details about cuisine and styles of house-building rather quickly and concentrate on the main arguments. It was a well-reserached and fascinating read, and the insights he provides into the regional cultures of the US leave you time and again nodding your head in agreement or startled by some connection you'd never thought of before.
More on books and workouts later, dear reader!