Still here, mostly alive.
All posts by Brent Seehafer
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I have a hard time with resolutions of the new year’s variety because, in general, if there’s something I should be doing to improve myself or make my life easier, wouldn’t I have started that already? There are plenty of things I should be doing but am not doing for one reason or another. Well I suppose the start of a new year is as good a time as any to make some changes in order to better myself but I’m not going to put down an exhaustive list since I don’t have a solid plan on how to achieve any of my goals and that’s where I’ve failed in the past. Putting “make a plan” as the first item seems to make sense.
A lot of what I’m looking to improve on is health related and hinges upon a few things going on this year, which is significantly more than I’ve taken on in any other year but I’m not getting any younger and am already starting to feel like age is going to be a bigger factor in achieving certain things than it ever was before.
Everything else I should be doing but am not is my own damn fault because lazy. Happy new year!
Here I go again!
I registered for Grandma’s recently and am super excited. I’ve got a much better idea of what it takes to train and what to expect while training, as well as what’s going to happen during the race itself since I ran Chicago last year. If I can meet a planned goal time of 4:15 for this I’ll be really happy. That’s a super aggressive time when you look at my previous time of 5:28 but that was running/walking in extreme pain just hoping I’d make it to the finish line before they closed the course. It was rough and I know for sure I can do better. 4:15 was my previous goal time and I’ll be happy if I come close.
If a red panda can do a muscle up so can I dammit.
In the Zone (diet)
Have officially start counting blocks and macros and all that silliness today and I can tell (at 10:00am on the first day) it’s going to be HARD. I pay very little attention to calories and overall diet with the exception of knowing I don’t eat terribly and can say that with relative certainty. That mentality isn’t going to get me very far (or lighter) any time soon, so here I go.
I have done the calorie tracking thing before in addition to exercise and it paid off. I lost about 30 pounds altogether and have kept it off since. At this point I’m dealing with a bunch of things I haven’t dealt with before like wanting to lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass and being over 40. I also used cardio almost exclusively for long stretches to burn calories (1 hour or more) and I don’t have that kind of time now. I’m not even sure if that would work at this point or if it’s the right thing for me. Thankfully my coach will be helping me with tracking my diet.
I haven’t finished the zone diet book yet or figured out a formal plan for the diet so that needs to happen before I can even say I’ve officially done anything but I have a general idea to keep in mind for the next few days before a plan is in place. Looking forward to how it’ll change the way I approach a daily routine since I’m just kinda winging it from day to day. I wake up, go to CrossFit, eat breakfast, go to work and eat whatever then go home and eat whatever. Not a great plan for weight loss.
Hugs
I’ve largely stopped paying attention to news cycles, specifically local and regional news and opt to stay informed via social media, specifically Twitter. My disgust with television news began about ten years ago when my wife and I lived in our last apartment in Chicago and literally everything reported on was death. Non-stop death and pain and I just didn’t see the point in turning on the tv to that every morning. I couldn’t even watch the local news if I wanted to since I’ve been without an active television signal for about six years now. I’ll not turn this into a rant about how much cable services suck on pretty much all levels as this is largely a rant about sensational news reporting and my extreme distaste for it.
Life is hard, people get hurt, people die, bad people get away with things that they shouldn’t get away with, I get it. To wake up every morning and have someone smilingly read you those very same points over and over again day after day is very tiring. I dared not become desensitized to it and just turned off the tv. For good.
Entertainment delivered to me via a large glowing panel of liquid crystal are now mostly fictional tales about people who run fast or have some other sort of superpower. I like it this way since the death and dismemberment news cycle is still spinning, faster and more furious than ever before.
When I do occasionally catch a glimpse of the cold world outside that feeds the mass media all I want to do is go home and hug my family until they get sick of me, which is sometimes pretty soon if I haven’t shaved in awhile or someone’s in the middle of a video game. And my wife just thinks I’m trying to get fresh so I can’t really catch a break when there are hugs to give out.
Oh yeah, this happened.
Took the boys out for an official run. Jimmy made it a half mile and Charlie went 1.11 miles only slowing around .85 for a brief second. Always proud of my boys.
Over the weekend while visiting my parents, my dad asked me “why do you keep trying to kill yourself?” Now, out of context this might seem like a pretty horrible question and something I’d need to seek help about but it’s really the opposite and in reference to how I was sore from running a lot the previous week. I don’t intentionally hurt myself but by slowly pushing my limits I get sore from time to time. I’m running faster than I have in the past six years (by a lot: avg running pace down to 8:30 vs. 11:00), lifting considerably more than I have since I started weight lifting (recent 1RM deadlift PR of 345), and the injuries that have plagued me in the past are no more. I’m confident that the combination of weight training and aerobic exercise in equal balance has contributed to my progress.
This year’s running goals aren’t as aggressive as last year but the calendar is pretty full. Why am I killing myself? Well, this year I’d like to: run a sub-2 hour half, run a 21:00 min 5k (or at least very close) and try something different (tri, obstacle race, whatever). I’m learning what it is to diligently train for these events with hard goals in mind and it’s not easy nor is it quick and steady. There’s ups, downs, setbacks but best of all, little victories that give you hope it’ll all be worth it when the time on the clock is THE time.
I’ve also got the wife doing some strength training to help with her hip issues that have kept her from competing in years past. So far things look good and she’s anxious to keep going. Have the first few bits of our garage gym sitting in a box at my house, just delivered today. Mats next, weights and squat rack last. Then onto victory.
And probably some donuts.
Death of the pizza
I’ve been making pizza from scratch for a good long while now. I started when Ginger and I were living in the apartment in Chicago and I got a bread making recipe book that had a really good pizza crust recipe in it. I would up serving that pizza at parties and for guests to many favorable reviews and continued to make it when we moved out to the house in the burbs but eventually started using a pre-made dough that a local grocer offered. It made things much easier and didn’t taste all that different and I’d actually grown to like it even a little better than the recipe I started with.
Eventually it became a tradition to make it for the kids, one I very much enjoyed. It’s really nice to be able to make something for someone where that’s their favorite of that thing, I was always happy to do it. Well, just recently my oldest decided that my pizza is no longer his favorite, even so much as he didn’t eat any of it when it was served and opted eventually for something else that night for dinner. At first I was a little rattled, wondering the whole time if I’d somehow screwed up the recipe or maybe did something slightly different that would throw him off. He’s actually very sensitive to little changes in food and has been for a long time, it would not have surprised me if it was a small misstep that I was unaware of that threw him. At least I hope it was that, until it happened again.
With Charlie’s relatively recent expansion of his palette, I can’t take it too personally and really shouldn’t even if that wasn’t the case. My tastes have changed over the past few years to include things that I wouldn’t have ever considered eating previously so I understand how it all comes around eventually. I do hope I can find something that he enjoys me cooking for him but with as much as I cook lately it’ll probably be a bit before that happens.
Old
Other people make you feel old, sometimes just by existing. It seems like taking notice of all the things that can make someone feel old is the first step to actually noticing that you’re getting older. Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid as I read it but I haven’t really taken notice of things like that as they might apply to me only until the past year or so … after turning 40.
I suppose 20 years is a good amount of time to look back on and most of what I’m referring to are instances where people refer to songs that were popular “TWENTY DAMN YEARS AGO” like that’s basically some horrible span of time and that it all would have been forgotten about without some sort of shocking reminder. Really, songs that were popular during my senior year of high school still get air play so I’m not sure how much shock value one gets from all that.
Noticing that the other people around me are pretty much half my age isn’t all that bad, until the culture shock. Yesterday someone whim I work with didn’t know who Demi Moore was. Honestly, that’s not huge since she’s been out of the spotlight for awhile but not even knowing her existence was a little bit shocking to me. I haven’t even really processed it yet but it’s not the first time this has happened with some of the younger folks around me and when I take note of how one of them was born the year I started college leads me to believe that I might be aging just a bit, as time just keeps moving and there are gentle reminders all around but until you’ve got more time behind you than possibly ahead it doesn’t nag at you so much, or you don’t even notice it at all.
Honestly, I can’t say that I feel any older. I’ve been taking much better care of myself in the past couple years and my body isn’t all pissed off an achy like I might have imagined (if I thought of that sort of thing) when I was 20ish. Not exactly remembering if there were ANY aches and pains back then makes it easier to think not much has changed, so I’ll go with that.