In which a milestone is reached, (maybe two), a feast is eaten, and a damn fool mistake is made.

o, I have achieved a milestone: this morning, I weighed in at 240 pounds. I'm not sure when I last weighed this much. My children may remember me at this size, but they certainly don't remember me well. This is approximately 20 pounds off since the 12th of February; 31 days, just about four and a half pounds a week.

     Immediately relevant question: can I maintain this rate? I think so. In the past month I've gone through two time changes, which is a big deal in itself; as someone with precarious sleep patterns, like the old lady in David Copperfield, "I feel it more." The next two months I will, according to all signs and portents, remain in the same time zone. Better sleep should mean less hunger, and less eating, and better (in this case, crudely, more ) training. 

     Now, my starting weight is a bit vague: it could easily have been anything from 258 to 262, but I'm taking the average. 240 is therefore a nice round number, and calls for a celebration. In my case, I went down to breakfast and had two! (2!) cups of decaf, and extra lettuce! Then, gorged with this gluttonous start to the day, I hobbled Quasimodo-like to the couch to flop out and read Elizabeth Moon for a while.

     (Elizabeth Moon is, in her own right, several perfectly adequate reasons for a celebration, but that's another story, and a celebration for another day. In any event, I'm running low on lettuce.)

     So, asks the sharp-eyed reader, why does y'r o'b'd't correspondent do his comic bell-ringer imitation on such a glad day? The answer, my friends is, "stupidity." Those who know me well, please, at least try to look surprised.

     The basis of the training plan right now is volume. Do more. Then do more than that. Come next week, see if I can't do a little more. In a couple of weeks, see if I can push a little more volume into the workout.
 
     At what point in the previous paragraph did I use the word "intensity?" You're right! I didn't! Ramping up the intensity of work plays only the tiniest, wee, subordinate role in all this.

     So, what in the name of cowboy biscuits was I doing in a Spin class at 6AM yesterday? How did I ever conclude that this was a good idea? By what tortured logic did I figure that, (in the middle of a programme based on huge volume of work, spread over as much of my body as possible,) doing an hour of intense work, all on the same three muscle groups, was somehow going to make things better? I woke up this morning, feeling like I had been run over by something. Something large, and slow, which kind of lingered as it stepped on me, like a meditative, wool-gathering rhinoceros with no place that it had to be, any time soon.
 
     Which leads me to the second near-milestone. There are several sequential goals in this programme:  

• be under 210 by the end of April; 
• fasting blood sugar below 5 by May; 
• rehab the shoulders to they don't clank when I do bench presses;  
• hit 2-3-4 (200 pound bench press, 300 pound squat, 400 pound deadlift)by the end of next year. 

     All of these goals are in the future, and aspirational, but there is one goal which I have already reached: My consumption of Advil is now at normal powerlifting levels! 

(Advil -- the official vitamin of powerlifting!) 

     Seriously, if I'm not hurting somewhere, at this stage of the programme, I'm not working hard enough. From recent evidence, I'm working hard enough. However, thanks to carefully following Roguszka's Rule (You can put up with a lot more crap in life if you own a really comfortable chair.) even today I'm more or less functional by noon. 

     And, being functional and mobile, it's time to go bust some sets in the gym. More on this come Monday, Lord willing and we don't get washed away in the spring runoff.