Fucking Pierre

My work out schedule has remained fairly un-interupted. I'm making it to the gym six, maybe five days a week. I was pretty enthusiastically checking in to 24 Hour Fitness via Foursquare in an attempt to oust some dude named Pierre as the mayor. But I suspect there's some kind of shenanigans going on with the way that Foursquare determines mayorship. For at least ten days straight the app told me I was one day away from becoming mayor. Sure, Pierre could have always been one step ahead. But after a long weekend he'd still be one day ahead. We can't be on the exact schedule.

Anyway, turns out there are two different 24 Hour Fitness GPS tags and I suspect that Pierre's is the unofficial one. So now I'm chasing some other dude and am a week or two away.

Workouts are good. My knee is better so I can hack the eliptical trainer. Been making the most progress with my upper body routine -- gradually adding weight to my exercises. I went to a couple of yoga classes and will probably stick with that -- though I kind of miss the hippie-dippie spiritual stuff they did in all the Los Angeles yoga studios. Here it's all about stretching and one "namaste" at the end.

I broke 85 with Eufaula, my Death Knight. Our guild, The Velvet Glove, just got to level 2. Not bad for a guild of maybe ten or so. I'm gonna start working to get Anikulapo up to 85 next. Gotta learn how to heal again. At one point the scale in the house said I weighed 259, but now it reads 262.

Cheats

I failed to mention that I cheated twice over the New Year's holiday. It is easy to come up with excuses. We had snow and ice, which is rare for the part of the desert I live in. But that didn't stop me from playing World of Warcraft -- I felt like I had obligations there too.

As soon as I logged in Phil asked over guild chat, "Did you go to the gym today?" He totally busted me. But that's the point of me doing this semi-publicly. I need that secondary motivation. Phil didn't say anything else afterwards, which was exactly what I needed. I don't need lectures, just encouragement to stick to my promise.

New Year

To my amazement I haven't fallen off the wagon. According to the scale I have dropped five pounds. Foursquare says I've been to 24 Hour Fitness 12 times (not counting times I forgot to check in). So I'd say that this whole thing is working.

I have, though, stopped logging my meals at DailyBurn. It's too much of a pain in the ass to keep up with. I think I'll check in every week or so to see what my calorie intake is, but I don't think I need to keep tabs that closely. I'm already making choices -- forgoing casual stops at fast food places in favor of the occasional rich meal from someplace I actually like.

My only difficulty with exercise so far has been with my knee. I feel stiffness and pain in my right knee. So I'm trying to lay off the treadmill and do more of my cardio on the eliptical machine.

Warcraft is going great. My Death Knight just dinged 83 (the Joust sequence in Mt. Hyjal was rad). We recruited my friend Jason (a serious raider) to help us run The Nexus on high difficulty so my brother-in-law could get a Red Winter Hat. That was fun, but I realized that after a couple of years as a casual Shadowpriest I suck ass at healing. Need to do something about that.

Most of my time has been spent fooling around with our guild's new lowbies -- a gang of Worgen now six or seven strong. I'm having fun revisiting old dungeons and earning guild achievements for the effort. I'm not sure, but I'm getting the itch to grow this guild a little more.

Freak Out Day

Miraculously, I made it to the gym today and didn't play World of Warcraft. So that kinda makes up for my breaking the rules yesterday.

I'm kind of surprised I made it because I woke up with a headache and was in a shitty mood. I wound up drop kicking our crappy vacuum cleaner and throwing it in the trash. I'm not sure what is going on, but I felt like I was at the end of my rope today.

I think more than a little has to do with feeling trapped. Trapped by work, living situation, my health. Maybe signing up for DailyBurn and starting to count the numbers inside my food made feel cornered.

After my temper tantrum I went to the pharmacy to grab a prescription I had allowed to lapse (I take Amitryptaline to regulate headaches that stem from my back pain).

I felt like I needed a work out, which is a good thing, I suppose. I ran for about twenty five minutes and felt worn out and less on edge afterwards.

I haven't logged any of the food I ate since breakfast, though. Not sure I want to know.

First Cheat

Today's the first day I played World of Warcraft and didn't exercise. I have an excuse. And it is not a terribly feeble one. We're getting a shitload of rain, which to most places isn't a big deal. But in the high desert that means lots of flooding and other bad stuff.

So I bailed on the gym. I did, though have lunch with the wife at Red Robin. That probably won't be happening any time soon. Because at the suggestion of my friend Chris I started using DailyBurn to log my calories. And I'll be damned if I'm going to waste half my daily allowance of calories on shitty chain food.

My WoW cheating was with my Worgen group. Only three of us could make it so we used the Dungeon Finder to hit Deadmines. The first group was a bit of a clusterfuck, but once the moron dropped things shook out a little better. We made it through (a little hastily for my taste) and all got at least one blue.

I'd still rather play with friends, but I think I can accept a PUG every once in a while.

Week 2

I almost lost my momentum. After a weekend off I was able to get myself motivated to work out on Monday and Tuesday. But work got the better of me, distracting me all day. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were no exercise days. I guess I did alright because I didn't play WoW either.

I got back on the wagon Saturday and ran on the treadmill. Today I squeezed a quick upper body work out between playing board games and WoW.

Our five-man group of Draenai had a planned dungeon run in Auchindoun. These are characters we rolled when Burning Crusade came out. We're taking our time with them.

According to the gym scale I weighed 268 today. That's two pounds more that I originally logged. I'm gonna blame Outback Steakhouse for that. If I don't start seeing some loss I'm going to start adjusting my diet.

Hope to spend this week on my noob Worgen and my Death Knight. Eufaula is just about done with Vashj'ir. Apparently the last quest there is bugged. Lame.

Day 5

I can't remember the last time I exercised five days in a row. I'm terribly surprised that I've managed to stick to my routine this long. And after five days at the gym I feel like I should earn an achievement or something.

Today I hit the treadmill again racking up very similar stats to Wednesday. 2.46 miles, 232 calories over 35 minutes.

Today, again, seemed like an easy day to skip out on. I started my morning with an interview for work. I spent thirty minutes grilling J. Allen Brack from Blizzard on the history of Warcraft (see a future issue of GamePro for the results of my interview).

As soon as I hung up the phone a couple of friends came over to play board games. We pushed bits around until six o'clock, leaving me only two hours to hit the gym before my scheduled get together with my guildies.

I planned ahead a little and made sure to eat a good lunch so that I wasn't too hungry to work out when the evening rolled around. That way, when the board games were put away I could walk my friends out the door and haul ass to the gym.

The run was good. Only a little bit of complaint from my left shin at the beginning of the run. I listened to Doomriders while I ran, which kept me pumped and angry.

I made it home with a half hour to spare, washed my face and logged into WoW. Our group ran Drak'Tharon one last time (finally finishing the quest where you-know-who shows up at the end) and ported back to Dalaran to do the Violet Hold instance. It's amazing how much you can get done in two hours now. Remember when instances took an entire evening? I love that you get in and out of two in just as much time.