Cross Fit Workout #1

I managed to combine two of my favorite things on Thursday night - a first shot at Crossfit and Slacker Bookclub.

Myself, Lott, Wu and Sarah gathered at 15th and Pike to do a fairly common, and unusually tough Crossfit workout - sprint one mile, do as many sets of 5-10-15 pull ups, push ups and squats in 20 minutes, then sprint another mile. I think that everyone enjoyed it :) Running the first mile was fun. We created a single loop course between Union and Columbia and between 15th and 19th. Sarah almost broke 7 minutes (7:01). I was able to run about 5:45, on a somewhat hilly course, with Lott and Wu close behind. This is reasonable enough for a mile, especially one with streets to cross and pedestrians to avoid. Then we jogged to a play ground for the middle part of the workout. Nobody could do the exercises for a full 15 minutes. After 3 sets I could no longer do 5 pull ups. After 5 sets I could barely do 1 pull up. So I did assisted pullups on a low hanging bar on the playground. After 16 minutes I'd done 8 sets of this, and decided we would push on and start the last mile. This was hard. I did a good job of keeping my pace high, not cruising too much, and came around the corner for the 2 block uphill finish. Brian cheered me on. I pushed up the first block and was ready to keel over. I shuffled across the street and struggled to stride through to the finish, at about 6:05. A pretty sweet workout, one that I need to do again sometime soon.

Incidentally, for bookclub we discussed "Player Piano", Vonnegut's first novel, a dystopia not dissimilar from Brave New World. I believe that everyone enjoyed the read, and it provoked good discussion. I thought it was fairly poor - with simple stiff characters. We ate corned beef and cabbage. That, I loved.

My favorite book from 2009 was Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

A part of my 2009 goals, (thanks to Eric Mattson™), was to read 20 novels. For the most part, I accomplished this, (a couple were non-fiction), and loved the process and outcome. I don't think I've read this much in a year before.

With the Slacker Bookclub I sunk my teeth into several classics that I never approached while a slacker high school student. Being in a bookclube provided a great opportunity to get together for dinner and drinks to discuss the book, as well as motivation to get through the books. And mostly, I was very pleased with the books, really enjoying or appreciating several of them.

Here is the list for 2009:

• Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham
• Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammet
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
• This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Sound and the Fury, William Falkner
• Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
• Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
• A Widow for One Year, John Irving
• Sieze the Day, Saul Bellow
• Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
• 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway
• The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K Dick
• Ubik, Phillip K Dick

I was happy to get into several of these authors. At least half of the above list were extremely interesting and/or thought provoking for me, and I would give hefty recommendations for them.

Picking a best of is not easy and I would probably pick a different best of on a different day. I thought For Whom The Bell Tolls was fantastic. I thought the Corrections was a great novel. And I am excited to re-read or read more from Bellow, Falkner and Fitzgerald.

I'm still thinking about my reading goals for 2010, I don't know if I want to make a specific target. The list is still large, but at least I knocked a little chunk off it in 2009.