There were a few awesome things that happened this weekend. I saw my girlfriend almost all day on Saturday, I ate about 3 times more food than normal, I shopped at Whole Foods, and I worked out both Saturday and Sunday. I usually tend to sit around and be lazy on the weekends, so that was something different for me. I’ll break down my weekend for you, then leave you with a awesometastic video of me kicking my own ass. Yes, that’s a made up word.
Cardiac Hill was awesome, for me at least. Saturday morning I drove my girlfriend to SUNY Old Westbury to take the CST’s, and needed to kill 4 hours while she stressed out. So, in advance, I planned on meeting up with one of my favorite people from Adelphi to go for a run. By now you know that I think jogging sucks, so our run was hill sprints. Since she lives in Guam Huntington, I had no idea where we could find a hill to run. After asking around, I found out that Cardiac Hill is part of the 5k course at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park, NY. Clearly, reading that it’s one of the hardest cross-country courses in the nation and that running the hill sucks made it sound like a good idea to me. So, that’s where we went to run.
After jogging out to the hill, we I decided that the bottom third was the steepest and smoothest, making it the best for our hill sprints. After some stretching/mobility/jogging up in a few times, we were ready to sprint. All together, we ran 11 sprints. I ran 8. Caitlin ran 3. I’m proud of her though, because she ran so hard that she puked. I told her we’ll go back in a month and try it again, because hill sprints are the most awesome thing ever, except for deadlifting and scrambled eggs.
After the sprints, I had a big appetite. Psychologists and dietitians frequently recommend going food shopping after you eat, as you’re less likely to make impulse buys, but I went to Whole Foods anyway. My goal was to pick up a few items that I couldn’t find at the closer supermarkets, or that my mom would find too weird if I added it to the grocery list. I picked up a few great items; two different granola, one with almonds/peanut butter, the other with pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. I’ve already added the first one to steel-cut Irish oats on Saturday, and plan on adding the latter to the pumpkin puree/Greek Yogurt blend that’s become a favorite snack as of late. I’ll put up my recipe so you can give it a try!
In my Wrappers Suck post I recommended avoiding foods that come in wrappers, like granola bars. However, I stumbled across the Greens Plus Protein Bar, and decided to give it a try, after hearing great reviews about it from John Berardi, Ph.D., on The Fitcast. The peanut butter and chocolate flavor tastes so good that I didn’t even realize that it is a cold-pressed, protein-rich green food bar. It was tasty, and even though most wrappers suck, this bar is definitely great in a pinch.
Here are two pictures I took on my phone of the last three things I bought; Pumpkin Butter, Crofter’s Superfruit Spread, and Sky Top Farms’ Organic Grass-Fed Unhomogenized Milk. All three are amazing, and I’m going to try to stop back on Tuesday night and pick up more milk; it’s the best I’ve ever had.
This upcoming Tuesday I’ll be heading to the NYSAHERD Suffolk Zone Conference, and I’d rather rearrange my workout schedule than miss a day because I’m getting knowledgebombed. So, using my occasional foresight as masochism, I decided to go to Adelphi’s gym this evening for Tuesday’s workout. I train Upper-Body on Tuesday and Thursday, so shifting it to a Sunday wouldn’t interfere with anything else. Plus, if Tuesday works out, I can always do the same thing again. Monday will bring about the biggest deadlift party that Adelphi has ever seen, so lower-body was out of the question. After a band-assisted bench 1Rm of 455lbs that included the slowest concentric bench in history (Thanks for the awesome spotting, Ken) I moved on to my regular supersets and tinkering. The gym was empty, and after figuring out how to revive my sled-based circuits, I was in business. A simple towel wrapped around four 45lb plates did the job well; the floor was safe, the sled was heavy, and the TRX was in use; everything was great. Here’s a video of my 2nd of 3 rounds with the following circuit; 10 Chin-Ups, 2 ‘laps’ of a plank/army crawl hybrid, 2 laps of a 180lb TRX Sled One-Armed Row (10 reps each side), and 30 Push-Ups. I’ve never done the sled row before, which would explain that feeling of queasiness that developed halfway through and lasted for about 45 minutes after it started. Without further ado, I wish you a Happy Halloween, and enjoy the worst best idea I had all weekend.
Harold Gibbons 
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