Category: Sports

Posted on

2 Runs In a Row

Big moves in the running world for me. I felt strong enough to run two days in a row.

On the first day, I extended my new quartine route with a couple more turns and a more scenic route while avoiding the lakefront path. As you can see in from the Wahoo screenshot, I ran on the west side of the Lake Shore Drive to appease the closings Mayor Lightfoot, unfortunately, had to put in place.

The first run was just under 3.5 miles, and the second run was the same route and in the same clockwise fashion. If this route sticks, I will alternate it both clockwise and counter-clockwise when needed.

Two runs in a row is monumental for me. I cannot remember a time outside, maybe college than I ran two days in a row. So I’m pumped and going to try and mix this into the training schedule and get some more miles in peer week.

1st Run 3/31/2020: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Average Mile Pace 163 bpm

March 31st 2020 Run: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Pace
March 31st, 2020 Run: 3.47 Miles 9:49 Pace

2nd Run 4/1/2020: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Average Mile Pace 163 bpm

April 1st 2020 Run: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Pace
April 1st, 2020 Run: 3.63 Miles 10:05 Pace

Both of the runs felt very similar, and no noticeable difference between the two. Looking forward to furthering progress

Posted on

2nd Run Back 3/21/2020

3.45 Mile Run @ 11:32 Mile pace

I took a few days off to help let my body have a fighting chance to recover from the first run in forever. The working strategy is to give myself ample rest in between runs in the first couple weeks to stave off any shin splits and overtraining. Overworking is a common issue in beginners that are too excited and try to train at full speed without building up the necessary fitness level to match their workout regime.
Knowing not to hit the ground running (excuse my pun), I will be diligent and not overdo it and push my pace. Persistence will be the key to success here.

Onto the run, 3.45 Miles with an 11:32 average.

The first third and last third was heavy on the walk-run ratios, but the middle third was a steady run with no stoppage or noticeable slowdowns.
Overall this was an excellent follow-up run with an increase in pace with more distance ran vs. walked.

Posted on

1st Run In Forever 03/17/2020

Distance 3.68 Miles AV Pace 12:34/Mi

With not having to commute to work, it seemed like a good time to start running again/exercising, reading back through my work out logs it has been just over a year since I last attempted to raise my heart rate in the name of health.

There have been many times I have had to restart a workout regime. The usual fears were there, shin splints, being way to sore the next few days, don’t have the right shoes, it’s too cold outside. After two days of being stuck inside and the cabin fever driving me crazy, going out for a run with all those “scary” excuses was an easy decision to get my butt off the couch and hit the lakefront for an easy peasy jog.

I got super lucky as the day I decided to go jogging was one of the best weather days of the year so far, the sun was out, and the temperature almost hit 52 degrees—shorts and Quarter-zip with a beanie and light gloves at the start of the run.

Run Breakdown: Distance 3.68 Miles – Avg Pace 12:34/mi

  • The first half mile was pretty easy as I was not trying to break any speed records my spirt.
  • Second half mile, I started to feel my abs working.
  • 2nd mile I began to switch between jogging and walking
  • 3rd mile had more prolonged bouts of walking – I was feeling out of breath, and my running form was to deteriorating fast  
  • Last half mile 50/50 run-walk with faster pace on the running trying to get home and get some dinner

This 1st run was lackluster performance-wise, but I was proud that I got out there and got the first one out of the wat. On to the next run!

Posted on

Weekly Post 12/16/2019

Highlights:

  • Lunch with a highschool friend
  • Started bringing leftovers for lunch
  • Finished The Wire

Lowlights:

Goals for next week: Try to reduce my lunch budget

Following last week’s post and I had another business lunch set up with a highschool friend downtown. Just to talk about the future and see if our forces could align and expedite some progress. This is still a new experiment for me so there is a lot to figure out and organize before these business lunches will start producing some juicy results. Either way, it was fun to catch up and talk about old times and the present comparing stories at how similar and yet different our lives past have been and how we still have a lot of the same experiences.

 For the majority of this week, I broke out the old’ lunch pail and brought leftovers to work to eat for lunch. To be fair these meals were planned leftovers with the full intention to have them for lunch the next day. In my quest to keep reducing my expenses on food this seemed like the next logical step. We quickly found out that usually dinner is the most expensive meal of the day and having the same meal for lunch the next day just doubles my spending. The good take ways for this habit is that I am now building a routine to bring lunch rather than going out to eat five days a week. If I can keep this habit than the next step would be to meal plan for lunch and be mindful of what the food costs are compared to a usual fast food meal. Those meals range between $12 and $8, If I can get my spend down to $7 or $6 I would be very happy. I don’t have a plan yet other than to keep bring meals from home into to work and once that habit it and nature then start to plan out my lunches.

I watched HBO’s original show The Wire. This came out right at the tail end of Highschool and finished up while I was still in college. Never really heard of it even though around that same time I was watching Entourage and Sopranos every Sunday night. Soon after though, this show kept getting recommend both by acquaintances and on my regular websites. I Started this show multiple times when over the last 6 or 7 years and never made it past the 3rd episode for some reason or other. New shows that come out that “You have to watch” it always got put on the back burner. Then I read another article about the 50 best TV shows you need to watch. I can’t remember which article but it kicked me in high gear and I made it past the first season in one weekend. That first season of The Wire was so good I just kept pressing play.

It hooks, line and sinker me in as I made it through the 2nd season in the by the end of the next week. after those first two weeks, I was on roll watching it every chance I got, during lunch breaks, in the morning before work. I was addicted by the time I finished the 4th season I was burnt out. Only 12 more episodes to in the final season… it took the entirety of that next week at that same feverous pace finish out the whole series.  

This was an awesome show. Lots of intricate storylines that build from season to season, yet each season had its theme that leads to entertaining season finales that almost stretched over the last 3 episodes of each season.

Watching this show blitzkrieg style isn’t recommend due to the 60 min length of each episode, If I had to do it again I would have tried to keep it’s at a season a week. That would have probably kept me from having that burnout feeling towards the end of the series. The Wire would be a must much recommendation from me, I’m sad a neve got into this show when it was airing that could have been fun to witness.

The 2019 Bears season is over. What a disappointment, there was so much hype after last year’s level of play and in the supposed progress we made in the offseason. The offense installed the 2.0 version and Mitch was making leaps and bound type progress. All that hype washed away after the season opener loss to our archrivals the Green Bay Packers. To be fair I did hold on to some hope that they could pull to it together but, halfway through the regular season it a was fools’ errand to still believe that this team was going to be better than where it was last season.  

It will be a long offseason, hopefully, I can fill it up with some golf and baseball and hockey.

Posted on

Weekly Post 10/21/2019

Highlights:

  • Fired up the grill
  • Driving Range Session 

Lowlights:

  • Ate 2 Desserts On Monday
  • The Bears Are Embarssing 

Goals for next week:  Zero mocahs during the work week.

In the long-time effort of trying to reduce and or eliminate caffeine from my diet. Mochas/expresso has been the toughest to raign in. Kicking the soda habit only took three months. Albeit I did stop cold turkey style, the coffee is much more a social/ fun engagement for me layered with the added benefits that the jolt of caffeine gives on those weekend end mornings after a fun night out.
Maybe I need to change my goals to something more achievable in a short time and put some wins on the board and build off that success. So starting to this week My new goal will be to only have mochas 3 or fewer in a week. I will strive for 2 of those to be on the weekends and stay away from the weekdays as much as possible.

A quick recap of the Bears the past weekend. We sucked and I’m not ready to talk about it yet. This season is dangerously close to falling off a cliff. Not sure who to blame here but it feels like a lot of bad coaching decisions have not prepared this team at all for this season.

Got to fire up the grill this week for the first time in a while. Since both, I and the wife are back at work full time and the baby is at daycare. Family time has been condensed to 200 minutes daily. This has cut out a lot of time for things like grocery shopping, dry cleaners, golf. One of the services we have found to help maximize the time spent at home and not running errands was Hello Fresh. This meal-delivery service drops of ingredients for 3 meals a week. All of the ingredients are separated in a way to ensure a meal in less than 30 minutes. There have been some meals that took longer than that but all of those were due to a longer oven time, but the prep time is wicked fast. All of these meals are designed to be cooked with the least amount of tools and create as little mess as possible to eliminating the need for me to grill anything. I’m sure we could be grilling most of the meats that have come in the meals but they mostly cooked in a pan with sauce. So it was a real treat when I found some great looking bone-in ribeyes at the market this past weekend.

The weather was a little warmer on Sunday so I went to the range for an early morning practice session. I hit the first 5 or 6 balls well then the next 25 progressively got worse and worse. This time though I was able to work my swing back to some decent ball strikes. That process took way too long if memory serves me right it was close to 40 balls which do not is able in a regular round of golf. This is why we practice though. The best swings of the day came form hitting my 52 and 58-degree wedges. All of a sudden I’ve developed some distance control. I played a game where I would aim for the 25,50,75s yard flag and was sticking balls within a couple of yards and hitting the flag a few times. This is a major game-changer for me, if I can take the distance control to the course I should be giving my self ton of more par chances and maybe even some birdie puts on the Par 5s Now I just have to get out and play but it does feel like the golf season here in Chicago is about to slam shut.

Posted on

Weekly Post 9/23/2019

Highlights:

  • Bears Won
  • Short Work Week

Lowlights:

  • Still Worked 6 Days

Goals for next week: To continue have smoothies for breakfast

Bears won so this week instantly became a great week in my book coupled that with a holiday week here wasn’t much to complain about. Even though I did work 6 days this week it was not the usually hectic and frantic workplace that I usually experience in 6 days.

Bears played well against a winless Washington Redskins team. It’s early in the season but every win is major since our loss to the Green Bay Packers and how strong the rest on the NFC North division is playing at the moment. Add that we have an intense second half of the season scheduled as well we cannot afford any more step backs.

Been getting into a nice groove with my Breakfast smoothies. I no longer crave anything else in the morning until I am hungry for lunch. I also have been working in some salads for lunch from the salad bar. So far I’ve been having a smoothie 5 time4s a week and a salad for lunch 3 times in that same week. This has been a major improvement in my weight management strategy. Plus all that extra vegetables have to be doing some good as well. I have been enjoying the progress seen on the scale and have given that extra motivation to stick to my routine to faster reach my goal of getting under 220 lbs.

Posted on

Weekly Post 9/8/2019

Highlights:

  • Played tennis
  • Breakfast smoothies

Lowlights:

  • Missed 2 workouts
  • No Golf
  • Chicago Bears Lost

Goals for next week:

  • Make a Smoothie every workday
  • 2 workouts
  • 1 meditation session

There was a lot of expectation for the Chicago Bears season especially with a season opener against the NFC North divisional rivals Green Bay Packers. This whole offseason we heard that Mitch Trubsusky had advanced enough to the level that Preseason game reps were not needed. To be fair this was a trend other teams around the league were also participating in to keep the team as healthy as possible for the entirety of the season. In a knee jerk reaction, a day after the Bears offensive production yielded scary low results. and showed that we desperately needed those in-game reps during our pre-season to tighten up. I will not turn this blog post into a game recap, but maybe I might expand that type of content into an additional post to separate them and keep these short and simple.

I got invited to play Tennis with some old college friends at the park this weekend. I have not played since maybe, gym class junior year of high school? They were able to lend me a racket and a quick recap of the rules and some formalities of the sport. I was little up on my tennis knowledge since the US Open was dominating the sports broadcast world for this past week and a half. It was fun playing some doubles matches on a Saturday afternoon in the park, the weather was perfect for the 2 hours we played and I even was able to score some aces on more than a few serves. It would be cool to get out there and play some more tennis before this Chicago weather kicks in.

I’ve continued to make breakfast smoothies and I feel the difference from eating at Mcdonalds every morning. Not sure if its all the vitamins or the lack of caffeine and milk that I have deleted from my diet but, I feel much better and have also lost a little weight. My body does miss the caffeine, I will have to grind it out to make it past the dependency and come out clean on the other side. Hoping to make my iced mochas a treat again and not an everyday habit. I’m still on a quest to shed some pounds, I’ve never have attempted to lose weight without working out. In the past couple of years, I’ve lost the time and/or excitement to work out, which always has to give me this weird paradox. Working out hard one day and eating while attempting to stay at a caloric deficit but, my body would be ultra hungry for 2 days after I work out and I would end up at a caloric surplus. Missing out on that instant gratification, I would lose all hope to go back to my non-health-centered lifestyle. The major goal here is to lose weight without working out to help curb my appetite. Hopefully, I will gain some motivation to go for a run or lift some weights once my body has adapted to the 2000 calories a day. Overeating at when adapted will only be 800 calories extra meal, which will be in the same range as my workout effort and will my hunger satisfied and not reaching for sweets or that extra meal.

Still Missing out on some golf. My schedule is starting to book up especially with Football back in full swing. My weekends don’t seem to have time to go play 18 holes in a day. Maybe I, should be to playing 9 holes instead? Halfing the holes is still golf and I’ll take any golf over zero golf. It is also time to start thinking about offseason training to make the 2020 season the best golf yet.

Posted on

1st Golf League Night 6/25/2019

Season-1-Week-1-Shadow-Golf-League-6.25.2019

As I’ve taken a more dedicated focus on my golf game with lessons and range sessions and driving my wife crazy doing drills during commercials of our favorite TV shows. I came to realize that playing social golf with my buds was not the type of competition was not fulfilling my goals. 6 to 7 beers a round and unlimited mulligans mixed with cigars, had me question what was I practicing for if I didn’t care about my score. I looked up some of my local courses and found a Tuesday league that fit my schedule.

It was a shock when I though I signed up for a 9 hole league and I showed up for the first day to find out it was a full round of 18 holes. I wasn’t able to leave work as early as I thought I could so I rolled up just 15 minutes before our tee time.

Not only was I going to play with complete strangers for the first time ever but I was also going to have to tee off with a crowd of about 20 guys that were all in the league as well without any time at the practice range #UnderPressure

To keep myself from being thrown out of the league on the first hole I checked down to my 4 iron and hit a decent shot that just missed the fairway on the right side. The object of this league on this day was to score a few putts a possible. Out of the foursome, I came in third place behind 2 two years veteran of this league. They were good all-around players and were also very welcoming me to their golf world. They also were extremely patient with me as played some of the worst golf ever. This was easily the worst round in the past three years.

It was a good experience to play a round of golf where every stroke was counted and you had to finish all of your putts outside of a foot were gimmes. It really gave me a true picture of where my golf game is currently at. Safe to say it been way worse than what if been sharing… but hey I wasn’t doing it on purpose.

I plan on posting my scores format eh league round to hopefully show my progress. This week will be a screenshot of an excel file until I can figure out how to post properly sized table in a WordPress blog post. Once I figure it out I will go back and update it for better viewing. Can’t wait till next week!

Posted on

Range Session 6/22/2019

Found myself with a spare 90 minutes and with the sun in the sky figured it would be nice to be hit some balls for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Due to the time crunch, I headed to the Jackson Park Driving Range.  This is a CPD driving range with about 45 very distress mats and a range that goes to I believe 250 yards.  It cost 13 dollars for a large bucket which is about the same as other large buckets I’ve purchased at the other ranges in the area.

It’s been a while since I picked up and swung a club for almost three weeks!  So I was nervous what my swing was going to look like and what my ball flight path was going to look like.  I was ultra nervous about hitting my driver, you never know where that ball is heading lol.

I started out with my usual starter club the 6 Iron.

My usual order of clubs is:

6i,4i,9i, PW, Driver, 52 degree Wedge

With the 52 degrees wedge, I will start with full swings than some 75% and lower to 50%.

I hit my 6 Iron really well and felt my glutes activating which meant I was hitting some pretty good distance. The distance and nice strokes continued through the Pitching wedge.  I even worked in some nice little baby fades #beautiful

Onto to the Driver… I was a little hesitant to pull this club out of the bag but, with how well I was hitting the other clubs I felt ready to crush it #GripandRipIt

From my earlier rounds this year and the trial and tribulations I’ve had with my new driver with the flexible shaft it has.  I had become very unbalanced and my hands were chasing the head of the club to compensate for my what I thought was a bad swing was really just the shaft doing its job.  After a couple of rounds with some experienced eyes, I was able to swing the club and make clean contact and stay balanced throughout the full golf swing.

Remembering my cues  to stay balanced and to keep my hands high on the down stroke to  give the head a chance to hit the ball square, I hit the first couple of balls well but the distance was lacking so I decided to turn up the power and really drive from the legs and see what a 100% swing produced.  Immediate chunked shot, followed by a topped ball that looked like one of those cool trick shot stingers you see on Instagram all the time.  I took a quick break and drilled a couple of practice swings making sure to hit all my points to be ultra sure I wasn’t dropping my hands.

The 1st swing after the practice shot was just straight pipped down the middle of the driving range and so did the next 2 shots. Now feeling super confident I decided to get very aggressive and swing my hardest and see what would happen.  The full power shot got crushed and went a little right and a little bit more draw than I would have liked but the ball went straight down the line and on a decent size fairway the ball would have been down the right side edge of the fairway or just little off on the first rough.  I hit a few more drives and then the ball started to pull left or I was closing the club head. I’d had enough of the driver and was ready to start hitting my targeted checked down wedge shots.

Conveniently my to 50 and 75 Yard are damn near my  50% and 75% shots which come in handy when trying to find a target on the range to hit to.  This is going to be my main interest in the upcoming range session is trying to dial in my wedge shots to help give me a better shot at eliminating 3 puts.  If I can land the ball within 12 feet of the hole from 85-35 yard away from the pin.  Would be nice to score some 1 puts holes as well.

Hopefully, this session will Kick start my interest in practicing more as it really is the only way to get better at playing golf.  My goal is to hit 3 rounds in a row under 96 before the end of the summer.

Might have the chance to play up in the Lake Geneva area this weekend, I’ll be going for low 90s. Wish me luck!

Posted on

Weekly Summary 4/8/2019

Highlights:

  • Big time night with the Boys
  • Wine Wednesday

Lowlights:

  • Low amount of sleep

An action-packed week and weekend lead to some serious low amounts of sleep.  

Wine Wednesday with the Family to celebrate my fathers birthday was a delicious dinner that turned into a Bourbon fest with some heavily poured glasses of Bookers Bourbon.  Bookers was my grandpas’ favorites so it is always nice to enjoy a couple of glasses and hear fun stories about him.

Dinner was homemade Italian beef made by my sister.  She nailed it with the ratios of meat and bun.  The majority of the time I don’t order this sandwich at the restaurant due to the mess it comes with. I walk out of lunchtime feeling like I need a shower to clean up.

Not sure when it will be my time to host a Wine Wednesday, but I will for sure post the full spread of food and drinks.

Now onto the weekend.

This Saturday as a college buddies birth party.  The weather was super nice and sunny with the temperature pushing 70 degrees. Standing on the deck was almost too hot, but that was just that “fools Spring”  feeling.  once the sun started to set that cold air overcame the warm sunlight and we head indoors to watch the Michigan State and the Texas Tech basketball game.  Made a live bet on this game and one a unit so I was feeling pretty good.

The after party went back to the birthday boys house since the sun had set.  Old jokes and stories came about with beers.  The party was running its course and someone mentioned that “We should go to the Casino”  This came at the perfect moment where everybody was deciding whether to go home or go out and there was a handful of us ready to stay out.

The uber ride to the casino was pretty funny with a honda civic packed with a bunch of drunks dudes amped up for the casino.  When we arrived at the Casino there were cop cars with lights flashing.  Turns out there were literal “gypsies” in the casino that were caught selling drugs and solicitation dates just before we got there.  

This group was referenced pretty heavily at the craps table we started playing at and there were some serious jokes at their expense being told by the patrons and dealers alike.  

It was long night ant the table but I ended taking home some cash to have a fun breakfast the next day.  I’ll be back for some more action soon I bet. lol.