Charlie Syracuse

Here I am on a business trip to Germany really wondering what exactly has happend to my great country.  From sea to shining sea or something like that the saying goes, but now we have elected a man that many will admit cannot even find a proper birth certificate that would put him into office.  A man who has noted ties to corrruption and militant muslims.
But not to be outdone the conservative right trotted our a hair brained gun toting soccer mom and her boss a Vietnam Veteran whose greatest claim to fame was getting shot down in a dispute that can’t even be classified as a war and then interred for five years.  So will our next republican candidate hail from Guatanomo Bay Cuba.  Who knows.

These are just the thoughts of an everyday man with way too much thinking time on his hands.  So the Germans ask are you happy with Obama, I say no.  Then so you supported McCain, I respond with no.  So what am I everyone asks.  I am a red blooded American who is quite honestly fed up with the current political system and the current politician.  I want change and the only way that I see that change happening is if we start electing Libertarians.  Yes that little know party that quite simply is what it is. Most conservatives are Libertarians at heart I must say.
The repubs just have to get by the little live and let live situation.  Yes my new party supports smaller government and troop moves back to the US.  It also doesn’t care about personal choices.  If you want to be gay then be gay, just don’t talk to me about it.

The Libertarian party is the way to go and I think that we all need to be All in and support this small party for the betterment of America and the elimination of a lot of political corruption.

Man have something under your name and occassionally you just forget about it. Well that is what happened. I finished my last race and then started into Triathlon training and totally forgot about my blog.

Well the training is going great at this point. I have decided that I will train for an Oly “Olympic Triathlon” and then race the sprint four weeks prior to the Oly.

This should allow for me to really run a good training run at the company event and to then complete an Oly which is this years goal.

Then I will start thinking about running greater distances and possibly pushing up to a 1/2 Iron.

As far as my running goes I am currently plugging along at a nice 7:30 or so pace on most of my training runs. This is allowing for me to properly gear up for a good race in Sept. Hopefully by then I will be down in the 6:45 pace or so for the race.

SImply to put things straight I have had one of those impossible situations. My computer ground to a complete halt and I needed to reinstall the operating system.

We have to simply reformat at times, but saving your overall work to date is very very critical to the operation. Since I was a linux Mint user I had to find all of my files and save them. The ordeal started out very nice and I put the files on my little bitty 80 gig USB backup drive.

All was going very well at that point, but things aren’t always what they appear. I then had to decide what exact operating system I was going to move too. Ubuntu had just released it’s latest version. But honestly it is becoming way to common, so the search was on.

I downloaded no less than seven seperate live CD’s and started playing. Consuming two days of my life I figured which one was the way to go. Drum roll please.

I am now running Fedora. The red hat system. It is running absolutely great. to date. Hopefully more updates are coming soon.

With all the stress and physical abuse we put our bodies through on a daily basis it is good to know that there is an alternative. Yoga is an ancient form of art that has been practiced for many centuries to improve the overall health and well being of a person. It includes many exercises or positions to help the mind and body heal and work in unison.

Different exercises work on different areas of the body. This allows you to pinpoint certain areas or work on your entire body. Examples of postures would be stretching exercises like the Downward dog, this strengthens muscles and can help with joint problems like arthritis. At first these exercises are a little difficult but as your muscles become stronger and you become more experienced they will become easier.

Yoga is a discipline that encompasses your entire body and mind. In order to be able to carry out your exercises or postures you will need to learn the art of breathing correctly. As you learn Pranayama, or breathing exercises they will help you to relax and energize your body to keep it in balance. This promotes good health and a sense of well being.

There are many benefits of this type of Yoga exercises:

The correct way of breathing: surprisingly enough most of us normally use just a small part of our lungs when we breathe. Pranayama teaches you to use your entire lung capacity. This will allow more oxygen to get to your body and especially your brain; this will contribute to an improvement in your health. Here are a few ways this will help you:

Correct breathing will help you to reduce wastes and toxins in the body.

This in turn will improve health and digestion.

It will also help relieve stress and tension by helping you relax.

Will help you have more control over your physical well being and emotions

Helps you think better.

There are two types of Pranayama exercises. One set will calm and cool your body. An example of this would be Sit Cari Pranayama. Other exercises will warm and energize your body. Examples of these are Kapalabhati Pranayama and Ujjayi Pranayama. Different conditions of the body will require different exercises.

This is a skillful discipline and proper guidance with knowledge is required to do Pranayama exercises. Children below the age of 16 are not advised to do these exercises. In fact these exercises can be detrimental to your health if not done correctly.

There are certain circumstances when this discipline should not be done: If you feel that you are having any breathing problems do not continue with Pranayama exercises. It should not be done if you are hungry or directly after food. You should not do this if you are depressed.

There are different types of this discipline. Each type has different effects on your mental and physical well being and is aimed at a different purpose and goals. Some exercises are performed with open nostrils, for example Ujjayi and Viloma and others are regulated with the fingers.

To really benefit from Pranayama or breathing exercises it is necessary to do the other exercises or postures in Yoga and to take advantage of the complete discipline. In this way you will be able to take care of your overall health and well being.

About the Author: Zach Thompson is a Glyconutrients Rep. His clients range from actresses to pro athletes. You can get a free Glyconutrients consultation by visiting Glyconutrients.

I am sitting tight and waiting on the race on Friday.  Should be a good one I have my legs getting back in shape and we are working through the pre-race situation.
I will have the stuff together and post my results via the watch and pod.  Should be overall a total blast.

Got my foot pod and heart rate monitor. Now hopefully I can get this Suunto T4 hooked up and putting up some true interesting data.

Today was the first day after a long layoff and just in time for the race this coming friday.  After today I am going to start more detailed analysis in my blogs.  Like my overall times and my breakdown for heart rate and running rate.  Hopefully all of this analysis will allow me to improve my fitness and my overall performance.

Currently I am scaling in at 206 lbs and chugging my 5k’s at a paltry 26 mins or so.  Breaking lower is going to take work, but I think that by the end of summer I can do a 5k in the 20 min range.  Then it is on to the teens and who knows from there.

We need to talk about the overall slacking off I have been doing this past week.  Work has torn me away from my running regime.  I need to roll on and get back in the groove.  One week to a super duper 5k and I am stuck in a rutt and have only run once this week.

If I don’t pick up the pace my weight will be rejoining me and I will be lagging behind everybody this Friday.

Well here we are going to review my training plans and training runs heading up the 18th of April’s.  Take back the night 5K.

I am planning currently on Running the following sequence:

Mon – Speed Work, Hills or Track

Tues – 3.5 miler at super slow pace

Wed – 4.23 miler at slow pace

Thur – 7 miler at normal pace

Fri – no run

Sat – 4.23 miler at super slow

Sun – 3.5 miler at slow pace

Sometime during the week my HRM watch and footpod should arrive.  At that point I will be more than ready to switch over to total HRM training and get away from this just go out and run.

Today was a great example as I ran with my sister and she complained the whole time that I was running too slow.  My cheapo reebok had me at at HR or 150 – 168, when the run should have been in the 130-140 range.  Now this monitor also will routinely throw up my resting HR at 85-90 BPM and max rates in the 200+s so I am not overly confident in the accuracy.

At any rate the speed for the run was 9:25 pace or so, but I could easily carry on a conversation and even yell at the daughter unit for over lagging on her bike while she went with us.  Tomorrow will be the true test as I do 2 miles of hill training mixed in with about 2 miles of warm-up and cool-down.

First time in the last six years that I have went on what I consider to be a longer run.  This time it was a mid-week 6-miler.  Total elapsed time it was 57 mins and very little on the change.

Now I am looking at finding a cheap HRM and stride sensor set-up to begin training with .  This should help me with the total speed and not overtraining as I have been so found of doing.

At this point I am on target still to hit a 24 min or less 5k on the 18th when we run as an office.  Keep involved and watch what I can do long term.

Well my three and a half mile run today went quite well slow.  As outlined before I finished up a 5k on Sat in Clemson and it wasn’t my best ever effort by far.  However it is getting better and my legs are continuing to strengthen up and get quicker.
But today was simply a very slow running day. Ran the course with my wife and was just hoping the whole time that it would be done.

So what are you doing to get in shape?