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First Soccer Practice

Made it to the 9am scrimmage today. Our side is gonna have about 18 players which apparently will be good as people are not so reliable on the Sunday league from what was mentioned. It was fucking freezing this morning, well maybe not that bad. I am sure that the fact my furnace hasnt been working for a week has something to do with that.

The field is about 10 minutes south of my house which is not bad. I may bike it in the future but we shall see. Condition was okay. There was grass mostly in hibernation but the dirt was soft which was really nice. I have gone with turf boots for now and they held up just fine. My toes however did not. The first issue was that I didnt have the boots tied up enough to keep them from smashing up front. The second issue is that I need to keep my nails better trimmed.

For the most part our team is pretty good. Keeping our spacing is somewhat of an issue as it generally is. Communication was pretty good but needs to get better. We have two ball hogs who are very talented but need to get better at passing the ball. For tall blokes there is me and one other guy then we have a number of mid sized guys who are quick. It will be interesting to see how we rotate people through the game.

Our manager is John who is also pretty good on the pitch. I mentioned getting a bar sponsor and he is all for it. I will talk with my people this afternoon and see what we get.

Overall I am feeling pretty good about the squad. We need to get the communication fixed and start figuring out positions.

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Railroad run just past warner

Had only 30 minutes today because my heater is out and I had a repair man on the way. Still it was great to get out there and see how my legs felt after all the yoga I have been doing. It has been over a week since my last run so I tried to take it easy. This is always easier said than done especially when I have Drum and Bass blasting in my headphones.

I made it past warner and my google maps app tells me it was 3.27 miles. Not bad for 35 minutes. It would be better to be going faster but I am happy to be running. Here is the route:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1561689

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evite

I just spent about 10 minutes setting up an evite and none other than evite.com and am now ready to place a Bic pen into my eye. Really though what an excrutiaing process that website it. Then just as i finished everything and went to send out the evites, it crashes and loses all the work I had done. Then the whole concept of having to use a web program to do what email, texts, and phones are for. So thats what I am gonna do.

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Travel Day

Gotta love travelling on a Thursday. The airport is empty and things just flow so much easier. No one is stressed cause most of them are business people. Fewer families so less screaming kids, which is always a good thing.

Southwest Airlines has a new boarding system which breaks up their ABC groups to 1-30 and 31-60 for each one. This eliminates people from sitting in the group lines for hours before the flight. Some people still see it as the same thing as a cattle call to which I am unable to reply because I have always seen flying on commercial airlines as a cattle drive of sorts.

Luckily this time I have an iPhone so I was able to watch some snowboard videos and read more of Free Culture by Lessing.

The Dollar rental car was easy enough, they even brought the car around. I made the trip up to vail in about 2 hours even though the weather was less than ideal. There was also a high amount of people camping out in the left hand lane.

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Railroad path to Elliot

Strapped on the Nikes and hit the dirt for the first time in a week or so. The weather is just right for a coat and I have the iPhone set to DJ Hypes xmas show from 2007 (fucking right on!). The stiff air hits me momentarily as I step out the door but I am already moving at full speed from the headphones. Now its just a question of getting the breath right.

My hamstrings are killing me from yoga. The concern for sudden and total explosion/shattering is on a good portion of my mind during the first 5 minutes of the run. The savior was the breathing technique of just using my nose for the majority of the run. Naturally the sprint at the end broke that whole system.

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Ashtanga

Two days in a row! Third class in four days! Getting close to starting a trend here…

This is a 2 hour class focused around a much more technical process. Not as redundant or repetative as Bikram. This is with a substitute teacher (whose name escape me) who had just been to a seminar of some such at Estes Park. She names of a few names that I mostly dont recognize, but John Friend’s name pops up and takes me back a few years.

There is a constant reminder of how many years it has been since my practice at Yoga Village. Has it really been since 2004? Thats only 4 years, really just a blink of an eye…

Definitly need to get a thicker mat and towel of some sort.

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Power Yoga

For anyone who knows me they know that I come up with new trends and latch onto them fanatically. Sometimes this lasts a while and sometimes it fades quickly. I made it for 2.5 months with my last workout routine and had good returns. Now I am focused on Yoga primarily to get my flexibility back but also to focus back on who I am and what I am capable of.

With weight lifting you show yourself how much weight you can lift. The boost that you get from lifting more than you ever have before is a good one, but it is temporary. The main problem is that getting injured is very common.

With Yoga you are stretching but there are also very powerful poses that require balance and power to complete succesfully. Many people confuse it as being an exercise that only works on stretching, but if you have ever seen me after a class, and see how drenched I am with sweat, you would change your tune right away.

Todays class was with Jeff again, but this was a much more challenging class than the Level 1-2 from Saturday. Todays focus was on the idea of opposites. Meaning that if you are focused on Anger you need to find compassion, jealousy needs to find trust and compassion. Jeff’s example of how this is bad for us is all the reports we have yearly on Depression versus the very few done on Joy. Also pointed out is our Department of War, but no Department of Peace.

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Level 1-2 at Innervision

Went to my first yoga class in years, and had a lot of fun. The studio is located a few miles from my home and I will eventually start walking/running there for classes. Its also right next to the Sprouts Grociery store so it is great for keeping lots of fresh fruit and vegetables in the house.

I was driven there by a few factors:

  1. Current relationship stress
  2. Soreness/Tiring of current weight lifting program
  3. Rememberance of how great yoga made me feel in the past

This class is called ‘Level 1-2’ and is intended for all levels. The teacher’s name is Jeff and he is a part owner. We started at 9am which is a funny time on a Saturday to get up and go workout but that was another reason why I wanted to go. The coincidence with New Years just a few days before had a lot to do with this as well.

I have been working out at the Gym for a few months on a new workout program and had seen great results. The problem is that I am not interested in being all muscle bound with no flexibility. The lifting includs a lot of squats so my back and legs had gotten very strong and I have also started running again, which has been a blast now that I can keep my knees from crushing each other. Now I needed something to get my flexibility back and also give me more than just knowing how much I can lift.

The class starts with my phone alarm going off, which happen to sound like church bells. Jeff found it somewhat appropriate while I was red in the face with embarassment trying to shut it off. We start with some call and response which is the funniest call and response I have ever had. Something about a Paddle and rhymes, quite a good mental exercise for getting into the moment and forgetting all the rules we construct around our lives.

The physical aspect of the class is done very well but what makes Jeff such a great teacher is the philosophy that he teaches during the class. For this class we focus on finding something in our lives that is beyond ripe and needs to be pulled from our tree and allow it to act a fertilizer for the next step of life. My thoughts went to the current relationship that wasnt really going anywhere at the moment, and I thought that was because the relationship was done or maybe my perception of it needed to be changed. Either way the mental exercise went very well with the yoga practice.

There is some chanting in the class and at this time I am not participating. I may in the future but its a comfort thing as well as a realization that this is borrowed culture without the actual culture. This is an ongoing challenge that I will be analyzing.

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Create your own relationships

Really interesting post on relationships and how they are all in our heads. This is really useful for sales where you project the conversation. If you think that you are being annoying then you are being annoying. Stay positive and smile, even if you are on the phone:

Where do all your relationships exist?  They exist in your thoughts.  Your relationship with another person is whatever you imagine it to be.  Whether you love someone or hate someone, you’re right. : Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog

Understanding Human Relationships

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Watch what you eat – cutting down on energy bars

The energy bar has become the band aid for our awful diets. More and more I find myself eating an energy bar instead of a piece of fruit. Well that has stopped as of last night. I read this great article at active.com and it points out some good facts about the energy bars:
Active.com – Food variety: The spice of life:

Snacks: Be creative and bypass yet-another rice cake, pretzel or energy bar. How about almonds and dried fruit, yogurt with granola, apple with low-fat cheese, vegetable soup with rye crackers, graham crackers with peanut butter? Target two foods per snack (and three+ foods per meal). Consider cutting back on energy bars for routine snacks. Many are little more than sugar coated vitamin pills with a little added protein. They commonly lack fiber and phytochemicals — the important components of the fruits they tend to displace from the athlete’s snack menu.

So last night I went and bought 4 cantaloupes, a bag of oranges, a bag of apples, 4 pears, strawberries, and almonds. Now I have to eat this stuff before it goes bad, so I am going to be eating a lot of fruit which should help a lot.

Now I just need to cut the beer!