i hate sick

Yech, up most of last night with fever and chills. Nasty congestion as well. Loaded up on vitamins and loads of liquids and off to work today. Almost didn't head up to Cabra for lax practice, but figured as I dragged all my gear in to work, I might as well.

Was good though, as I was able to spend some time on my shooting speed and we ran through a lot of the plays we'll be using over the next couple of months. Hopefully I'll be back to speed tomorrow and can get back to the gym.

Lead Legs..

We all went to see Eragon on Saturday, and just kind of hung out at the house, playing games and stuff. Nice lazy day. :-)

Sunday I thought I'd have to work all day (on-call this weekend), so hung out at the house and washed the bikes between maintenance scripts, getting all the nasty winter sludge off. Turns out one of the folks from Redmond went ahead and handled some of the stuff that was scheduled to go past 2pm, which allowed me to head down and catch the Dublin-UCD game.

First full-field game I've played in months, and it showed pretty quick. My legs turned to lead within the first 20 minutes. Shows how out of shape I am for a mid-fielder at the moment. I did win just about every face-off though, so I know my hands are still quick! :-)

We all went to the gym last night after I got back and verified everything was working properly at work. Chris worked on Cardio, and I worked with Jaidon, having him do squats with a light medicine ball, then pushups and assisted pull-ups. He's got great natural form for squats, but we'll have to work on the push-ups and pull-ups. Only did a few sets of each with lots of stretching before and after. The kid is Super flexible!

Unfortunately, there were no kids in the Fitzone area, and J didn't want to play there by himself, so he and I just hung out until Chris finished up. Turns out it was probably for the best I didn't get in for a workout as last night I came down with a nasty cold. I've been feeling like I've been fighting off a cold for a few weeks with lots of water, vitamins, etc. It looks like the lax game in the rain finally did me in. :-( Going to skip the gym today and load up on vitamins and water, and hopefully kick this thing out before it sets me back.

Halifax Here I Come!

So, got the news this morning. I'm on the team!

Time to get serious for real. The games are May 14-20, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This leaves me 11 weeks to prepare. I've been hitting the gym pretty regularly, and I've already noticed an improvement. I'll be making a more concerted effort going forward though. Chris has been awesome in supporting me the last few weeks during the tryouts and such, and has been making sure I get stick to a clean, high protein diet. She's my secret weapon. :-)

I setup the plane tickets for Prague last night, April 19-22. This will be the only Box practice we'll get before heading to the world games, so I'm really looking forward to it. We were originally going to go as a family and take a couple extra days off to be tourists, but instead we decided to save the cash in order to visit Jennifer, Courts and their family in July before they head off to Russia. Russia? Yep, their whole family is going off to work at a mission there for 2 years.

I spoke to my bro Cedric in Seattle the other night, as I knew he was from the Halifax area. He's actually from Halifax proper! He even went to college at the same University that the games are being held at. Can you believe the odds?

Elizabeth

So, slacked all day and didn't hit the gym. But! Finishing up work and heading over afterwards instead. What better way to spend a Friday evening? Get Some!!

"Elizabeth"
21-15-9 reps of: 50kg Clean
63-45-27 reps of: Dips
35min, 50sec

Lots of dips? Yes, as the WO calls for Ring Dips, and I don't have any here. x3 regular dips is the sub. Completely wrecked afterwards. I broke down and used the dip-assist machine after num 48 on the rack , using the lowest setting to push out 3-4 at a time. I swear pukie was hiding out in the gym somewhere, I could feel it. Spent a good 10 minutes on the floor afterwards. Did I mention tend to get odd looks at the gym? :-)

OneNote Blogging?

Testing the 'Send to Blog' feature in OneNote. Does it work with Blogger?

...yes, yes it does. OneNote has got to be one of the best Apps we've ever shipped!! :-)

Baseline Achieved

Well, missed the gym yesterday. Both my colleagues here in the office were out sick, so I couldn't leave the fort undefended. We should be back to full strength today though. :-) My abs are still aching from Monday's workout. I'm sorely out of shape compared to just six months ago. Terrible...

Received an email from the ILF team physio this morning with my testing results from tryouts:

Body Fat: 17.5-19.5% - Rank: N/A
Bench: 4 reps @ 80% bw - Rank: 16
Shuttle Run: 30.0 sec - Rank: 14
% Height: 122% - Rank 11

Not too shabby I think, and a good baseline to improve on. My upper body had lost a lot of power. I'll need to focus on that area directly in the next few months.

No official word yet on whether or not I've made the team, but I'm hopeful considering that he's taken the time to send me the above info and some guidance on where to improve.

Today's WO:

Warmup 8 min on C2
2 x800m runs 75%
Tabata squats: 146 reps
3x10 shoulder iso lifts

Monday Update

Well, another Monday, another week to go. Jaidon's out of school this week for his Mid-Term break, but of course he's picked up a cold, so is not the happiest camper at the moment. :-( We mostly hung out for the weekend. We're walking a thin line at the moment, so trying to keep the budget tight over the weekends. I did re-arrange the office room at home, as I felt bad that it was all used up by the PC, and Chris had no where to work on here beads and other projects. So, we re-adjusted the shelves and stuff to cleare off the whole desk, but still keep the PC accessible. She's pretty stoked. :-)

Beautiful weather here in Dublin this last weekend, sunny and clear. Not quite warmed up yet, but getting there. :-) J and I drove up to Tyrone on Saturday to visit a breaker yard looking for parts to fix up Chris' car. Nice drive up through some very beautiful country.

Haven't heard back from the ILF folks yet, so don't know if I've made the team or not. I'm still hitting the gym though, just in case. The team trainer/physio gave us a training plan, but I haven't really focused on it much, rather utilizing the Crossfit style workouts instead for now. I'll most likely combine the two shortly, as his plan focuses heavily sprint and interval training, which I definitely need to work on if I want to get my speed back.

Today's WO: 1/2 "Barbara"

Three rounds, each for time of:
20 Pull-ups
30 Push-ups
40 Sit-ups
50 Squats

3 Min Rest Intervals

1. 6' 10"
2. 9' 08"
3. 11' 02"

* Had to cut it short today (should be 5 rounds) as I had to get back over to the office for the afternoon team meeting.

Hard Rock Valentine

I've got these Good4All gift cards that have been gathering dust, so we decided to splurge a bit and headed down to the Hard Rock Cafe in Temple Bar last night. Chris, Jaidon and I all headed down on the Dart, which J was very excited about, and had great time. I don't remember the last time the three of us where out together and had such a wonderful time! :-) Food was awesome, very down-home american style Hickory smoked chicken and ribs, plus as a started we ordered up one of the biggest plates of 'real' nachos we've ever seen. Topped it off with some giant ice cream and brownie deserts and we headed home fat and happy. J was quite the trooper, and was very good all night, even though it was after 10pm by the time we made it home. All in all, a very nice evening out to with the family for Valentine's day. :-)

Oh yeah, no word yet on the Irish team roster. Hoping to hear from them soon. In the mean time, today's workout:

Deadlift : 70kg
Bench : 40kg
Clean : 30kg

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for time: 34min (including time waiting for people to get off my bench every time I turned around...)

Wrecked me. I've got to get focused and back into shape.

Knackered

Completely, utterly, knackered. Ran 100% from 9am to 6pm on Saturday during the Irish Box Lax championships. What a great day. The coaches who came out from Canada and the States were first class. We started off a bit slow on the drills, but gelled pretty well by the afternoon and were all doing pretty well I think. A few Americans and Canadians also came over for the tryouts. Made for a pretty full turnout, with about 50 guys I'd say.

Anyhoot, I think I did pretty well during the run, not too many mistakes. ;-) I'll find out later this week if I've made the team or not...

Go Time

Hard to believe it's already the 9th of February, but it is! Tonight's and all day tomorrow I'll be attending the tryouts for the Irish National Box Lacrosse team. A bit nervous, as I haven't had the time lately to really focus on preparing, and I know there's a bunch of US lads over with some proper box history. I'll give it a shot though and hope for the best. Wish me luck!

Bits and Pieces

Not much exciting going on here at the moment. Still head down at work, trying to get caught up on things. Thankfully we've got a new hire in last week, and he seems really sound, which should help a ton with the workload.

Been thinking more about the Athy triathlon. Jaidon asked me about it again yesterday, and I told him I wasn't sure I'd do it, to which he replied, "You'd be like Superman though!" How can I argue with that?? I'll look into in next week I think. I'd need to get a new bike, as my old one is missing half it's pieces, and Chris' was stolen a couple months ago.

Ended up not attending the 3rd match on Tuesday between the Riggers & Young guns. Just too much going on and didn't have time. :-( Looks like the Young Guns pulled out their first ever victory over us old boys in a tight, low scoring game. Gibby has a nice writeup over on the Dublin Lacrosse website. Looks like I earned myself an award for my goal time. I thought I had some good games, but wasn't expecting anything like that!