Two weeks and counting...

It has been two full weeks now of early morning workouts at the local Crossfit gym. I have to say that unlike my previous experiences with physical fitness starting with the 'Chicken Fat' record in elementary school (remember that?) on through Phys Ed classes in Jr. and Sr. High School and military fitness training, there has always been some element that stuck out in my mind as a reason not to participate, one thing that was too hard, something that no matter how hard I tried I would just never be good at. This kind of thinking is self-defeating and wrong. And how long has it taken me to figure that out? Well, it doesn't matter, as it has been said, a man learns from his mistakes but a truly wise man learns from the mistakes of others. You can learn this from me right now, "The voice in the back of your head that says you can't is a liar." Have a dream, make a goal, decide to attain that goal and move in the direction of your goal until you achieve it. The decision is the hardest part, it is the commitment that you have to make of your time and energy and attention toward that goal. The actual leg work is a lot easier, it is broken down into smaller, simpler steps. Small steps, taken several at a time and frequently will speed you towards your goal. Crossfit, for me has been a life-changing experience. It is something that I look forward to each and every day. I plan my day out so that nothing gets in the way of my getting to the box so I can get my Crossfit on. The things that seemed hard when I first started are now getting easier, and being replaced with new hard things, which is why I keep coming back. I started all of this to lose weight and the weight is coming off, but what I hadn't realized from the start was just how my whole attitude would change as a result. I am getting healthier, I feel better, I sleep better and my flexibility is better than it has been in over 20 years. I am a believe that if you really want something you will find a way, if you don't want it you will find an excuse. Time will tell but for now I am thinking that time will find me in a better health and a more positive attitude and continuing to grow and continuing to go to the box every day it's open, 3 on, 1 off, 365 days a year, no off season.

The Fog of Fitness...

I wanted to describe the plethora of feelings that I am getting from my new fitness/wellness program and fog seems to be the word that fits better than any other right now. I am being bombarded with so much information that it is hard to keep it all straight, in fact general mental sorting of this bit or that is pretty much in chaos as well. When I began to travel in healthier circles I had to learn an entirely different way of communicating, speaking in terms of goals, goals that were the top of the next hill, the next plateau, the next benchmark, the next personal best. Hopefully I will be able to maintain the really salient points of what I am learning long enough to establish a foundation or a sort of health habit, I am getting a taste of what some well earned endorphins can do for you and I want more. Getting up, getting dressed and getting to the morning workout is becoming routine. My day is started and I am off in it before I have a chance to roll over and hit the snooze bar. By the time the glare of the sun through the bedroom window would be forcing me to get up, I am driving back from my morning WOD, (Workout Of the Day in CrossFit-ese), clicking through a mental list of what else I have to do that day and seriously enjoying the way I am feeling about me, spiritually and physically, something new for me. Don't get me wrong, this hasn't been some stroke of lightning type epiphany, I didn't see any bushes burning, I made a decision to get better, to get thinner, to get stronger, to take control of my immediate surroundings, the body I live in and this is me doing just that the best way I can, until I find a better way. As far as just getting started, I cannot imagine how empowering it is to feel this way every single day of your life, but I am willing to try and find out. I keep hearing the phrase 'personal best' and I am really attracted to the way it sounds. I don't feel like I have ever done anything long enough to have a personal best at it but that may be changing. I found that I could touch my knee to my chest the other day, I haven't been able to do that for at least 15 years. Last night before bed I was sitting on the couch watching TV and stretching, instead of eating. I beat the alarm clock up this morning and that hasn't happened in a while. Progress not perfection. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The voice in your head that says you can't is a liar. It's 5 til 5 in the morning, I gotta go.

Intro : My name is Brian Rudy and this is the introduction to the 300 Challenge. The 300 Challenge is composed of 3 parts: I am challenging myself to lose 100 pounds in 100 days and cap it off by riding the Hotter than Hell 100 bicycle endurance race. This project will follow me from day 1 all the way through to the end of the Hotter than Hell. The money I am trying to raise will help pay the people that will be helping me with all of the aspects of the project that I cannot do myself, quite a bit of my time will be spent on the seat of a bike and there is very little else I can do in that situation. Now it might sound a little extreme to ride a bike for a couple of months and then enter a bike race but consider, the object isn't to win the race, under no set of circumstances no matter how bizarre would that ever happen. No, the object of entering the 'endurance' race is to finish the race, the time is not important. In fact, time plays an interesting role in this race, in order to finish the race at all, you have to make the halfway point in a predetermined time, that time is actually my goal. If I can make it to the Hell's Gate checkpoint in Electra, Texas before it closes then I will consider the whole thing a smashing success. I am going to be fighting 30 years of bad habits and that is going to be an uphill battle but I used to be a competitive runner when I was young and I know quite a lot about training for a goal. I will be using some old fashioned methods and some new high tech gizmos to get me to my goal, I am using a personal GPS to track all of my riding, it will calculate not only distances but it will also calculate both maximum and average speeds which will make tracking the intensity of my workouts a lot easier. Most of my training diary entries will be made on my smartphone, both what I eat and my cardio, and it tracks my weight and let's me know if I am eating the right amounts and the right kinds of food. I don't want to do this alone, I want to show everyone that you can do something good for yourself, that it is possible to take control of your life and your body and get back in shape and get back in control. I will track everything that I do and everything that I eat on my Facebook and Twitter accounts, it will all be there for everyone to see. I will have friends follow me on my training rides occasionally and I will post a detailed riding diary so that you can follow me day by day and week by week as we get closer and closer to the race. The money that I raise here will be used to pay the people behind the scenes, the ones that do the things that I cannot do my self, it pays for chase cars, camera operators, video editors, computer time, gas and food for the help, in short, it pays to finish the job and get the video out. That is what this is all about, I take the challenge as far as I possibly can and the result is captured and edited and rendered and digitally saved for posterity and those who wish to can see the entire ordeal boiled down into an hour or so of awesome.

MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

When I was young there was no Internet, if I wanted to check out the world I would get on my bicycle and ride around. I was thin and in great shape and could ride all day. As I grew into adulthood my bike disappeared and was forgotten, work replaced everything in my waking hours. Slowly over time, I lost my thin and the days became longer and longer, harder to make it all the way through. Now I am at a crossroads. The skinniest kid in elementary school is now so fat that he can barely stand up. My BMI is a three digit number. The salesperson at the sporting goods store where I was shopping for workout clothes told me that they don't make spandex in my size. I am most likely diabetic, if I were thinner I would probably have a job with health insurance, as it is I have to do the best I can. I have to ride a bike every day to lose the weight that is killing me. When I was small I couldn't wait to get on a bike, now I can't stand the thought, I wonder what happened?

SCOOP is coming this weekend on Pokerstars...

The other day I was practicing a little on my short-handed game and after waiting and waiting through several sets of blinds for a hand that had cards higher than a eight, yeah, I have those days too. Finally I catch big slick in the small blind and someone in middle position makes a small raise. This couldn't be better, the other players fold to me and I reraise all-in. The big blind calls and the original raiser calls, both of whom have me covered. The flop brings two spades one of which pairs my ace and causes both other players to shove their remaining chips into the middle. The player in middle position showed a pair of tens and I breathed a sigh of relief, compounded by the four six of spades the big blind turned over. The turn card was another king, giving me aces up and the beginnings of a warm fuzzy I'm fixing to triple up feeling until the river came a third spade.

As I looked back and tried to figure out how someone calls an all-in with four six suited I had one of those fleeting thoughts where I wished I knew how to play Pot Limit Omaha! Obviously I was going back to the books and see if there was a section that I had missed in my hold'em education that explained the how and why of playing six four suited in the big blind. I will have to fix this hole in my game or else I may have to learn how to play 7 Card Stud or take up bowling or tennis or jenga. Does anyone else lose this much sleep on seemingly simple problems? I hope not. Good luck at the tables and see you at SCOOP!!!!

The SCOOPs are coming, the SCOOPs are coming...

Wanting to play well in the upcoming SCOOP Poker Tournament I have had to make some adjustments to my game. An interesting phenomenon that has come to my attention is that of counterfeiting, an example of which is below:






Now, I am in the big blind and get dealt T6off, no biggie, no one raised so I am priced in to see the flop. I flop middle/bottom pair and bet out, I get one caller so I figure the guy is playing Kxsuited or some lower pair, if he had hit trips he would have raised, if he hit kings up he would have raised, I am 99% sure that I still have the best hand, my 2 pair against his kings. I am OK with the Ace on the board because I already have him on a hand that does not include an Ace and I bet again. However, when the second Ace hits the board on the river I am totally beat, my two pair were just counterfeited by the Aces. Time to fold and regroup.

In looking back on the hand I don't think that I could have won this on any street by changing the way that I bet. No way was I raising pre-flop, I could have shoved post but I am pretty sure that he would have come along on the strength of top pair, he could only reasonably have been beaten by Aces and I would have bet them regardless of position and he knew that.

I am trying to vary the type of tourney that I enter, buy-in, field size, turbo or non, knockout or not, to develop a more easily adaptable playing style while still maintaining enough aggression to move forward in the field. Patience is paying off slowly, isn't that just about right. Positive thoughts and pro-active adjustments are the things I am working towards, let's hope that the work pays off.

See you all on the felt.

Some thoughts on recovery

Almost four months ago I took a step towards a better life. I began to think about things that could be rather than how my life had been or how to keep things the same. The status quo was a sinking ship, doomed from the start to be tossed about by the smallest perceived slight and easily swamped by an honest look in the harsh light of day. I found the rooms of AA out of desperation, I literally could think of nowhere else to go. I sat quietly neither moving or looking around and listened as one by one people came forward and shared their stories. I got no insight, I had no revelation, no divine intervention but I came back again the next night. There was something there, some impression that I got that first night, that brought me back. I do remember stopping to re-read the sign just inside the door, a quotation that said "I am responsible. Whenever anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA to always be there. And for that I am responsible."

The second night I sat and listened and one man came to the podium and began to talk of a plan of action. He said that he had been lonely and that he believed that if all of your friends and all of your family had written you off and all you had was God, then God was enough. He went on to say that in the depths of his own despair he had prayed to God and he got an answer. He said that God didn't give him what he wanted but he got what he needed. He said that you should pray for miracles because you can't get what you don't ask for. I went home that night and in the darkness I knelt and prayed like I hadn't prayed since I was a child, with the earnestness and innocence of one who had nothing else. I prayed for a miracle and the next day God answered my prayer, he gave me hope, the miracle would come later. I carried that hope inside of me to meeting after meeting. I carried that hope with me when I asked that man to be my sponsor and then I received the miracle that I had prayed for, he said yes. I thank God for Bill every day, without him I would still be lost.

One of the recurring ideas in AA is to approach the program of recovery with an open mind, I heard this said over and over and I couldn't quite understand the concept. At rest I cleared my mind of all conscious thought and rewrote the first step in my mind, "I am an alcoholic, and my life had become unmanageable." Focusing on this thought alone I looked at it from all sides, saying it to myself over and over and testing it with different scenarios each time the same, I was convinced or rather, I believed that I was alcoholic and my life was unmanageable. The thought had become a belief as I opened my mind to it, I no longer merely thought that I had a problem, I believed it in my heart and knew it to be an absolute truth. This was the beginning of a profound change in the way that I could approach my everyday life, this simple exercise had empowered me to evolve a way of thinking or rather believing that would propel me forward in all of my endeavors.

The shell that I had placed myself in to protect me from the world was softening. From an early age if something frightened me I cowered inside myself and waited for it to pass. If I felt hurt I would ignore the pain. If I felt threatened I would turn away. To protect myself from hurt feelings I refused to feel anything. I couldn't grow in a vacuum, inside a shell that I had built to protect myself from pain and insecurity and hurt feelings. Once I could open my mind, without fear, I could begin to grow emotionally and learn to deal with life head on. Alcohol that had been used for a crutch, a cloud to hide in, was less and less on my mind. You don't crave what you know that you don't need.