100 Pushups – I’m Recharging

Someone noticed I didn’t add an update for this week, and left a comment in an older post asking for one.   Basically I’m taking the week off, doing a few sets of pushups 2 or 3 days this week just to keep some rhythm, and I’ll attack Week 5 again starting Sunday night.  I suffered from a bit of burnout after doing Week 5 three weeks in a row and not really making much progress.  Last week I still couldn’t finish Day 1 in full, and barely finished days 2 and 3.  I was planning on doing it again this week, but when it came time to do it Sunday night I just couldn’t dredge up any motivation, and this is the first time in the program that happened.  I could have forced myself, and maybe I’ll regret this decision, but I decided to embark on this course.  I expect I still might have to do Week 5 two more times before I’m ready to move on to Week 6.

I’m reasonably confident it will not lead to an abandonment of the whole project.  We’ll soon see.

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Review

A few weekends ago we took our 2 daughters to see Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.  I’m not sure whether the movie is even still in theaters, so this review is late, but might be interesting to people once it is released on DVD.  Our older daughter, 8, is a big American Girl fan.  The 3.5 year-old is pretty much interested in anything the older one likes.
I would recommend this movie to parents with children in this age range, and maybe up to 10 or so.  Also, although it is clearly a movie designed for girls, I think boys would enjoy it also.  You might not make it your first choice for a boy, but if you have both boys and girls in your group, it should definitely be on your list.
The  story is set in Cincinnati, a few years into he Depression, right around the time that previously secure people started losing their businesses and their homes.   As such, it is a useful vehicle to start talking to your children about economics, responsibility, poverty, and related issues.   On such issues, the movie presents a vaguely liberal point of view, but nothing that should get leftists too excited or righties too agitated about.  I thought it presented good teaching moments.  For example, a few people lose their home or business when they cannot make loan payments and the bank forecloses.  In many movies, I would expect them to demonize the bank, but they didn’t do that here.  This gave me the chance to explain to my daughter that in the depression, a lot of banks failed because people didn’t pay back their loans, so it is necessary  to understand why the banks had to foreclose, so they could try to stay afloat and to be able to pay back money to the people who deposited it.  Of course, I also told her that the people who didn’t pay back weren’t bad people either.  This then led to a larger discussion about how some poeple end up poor because of a bad economy, or because someone gets sick and can’t work, or other reasons out of their control, and yet there also are people who just don’t want to work or make bad choices.  You can’t generalize, or assume anybody is in one camp or another based on assumptions.  I’ll spare you the rest of my basic economic musings for 8-year olds, but I hope I conveyed the point that the movie is a useful vehicle for addressing such issues with your children.
Apart from that, the movie is a pretty basic kids mystery, with a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys element.  Somebody is committing crimes, and manipulating evidence to make it look like vagrants are doing it, leading to fear of a nationwide hobo crime spree.  Our heroine Kit solves the crime, saving a friend, her house, and her family in one fell swoop.  The actual wrongdoers turn out to be a rather bumbling lot once they are identified, so there is not much to scare the younger ones.  I would definitely recommend watching this one with your children, and discussing it afterwards.

Watkins Bleg: Why is it bad to pit in a caution?

I’m watching the race today at Watkins Glen, and they keep stating that it is bad to get stuck having to pit during a caution, but they have never explained why, at least not while I have been watching. It just happened to Junior Earnhardt a little while ago, and it pretty much ruined his day. In almost every other race venue, it helps to pit during a caution. Why is it so different at the Glen?

100 Pushups – I’m Repeating Week 5

Actually, it might be more honest to note that I didn’t even finish the Week 5 program last week. There were several reasons for this, including that Week 5 is another significant step up from the previous week, travel, and others, but I both had trouble finishing individual sessions, and I only did 2 of the 3 sessions for the week. I redid Day 1 of Week 5 last night. I still can’t quite complete it. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.

100 Pushups – Week 4 Wrap-up

Thursday night I finished the Week 4 program on Level 2. Last night I took the exhaustion test and did 50 pushups.  This puts me off the charts for this point of the program: 31-35 pushups puts you in Level 1, 36-40 in Level 2, and 40+ in Level 3.

NB: I just noticed I’ve been using, and I will continue to use, terminology different from the 100 Pushups website for Levels and Sets.  What I call a Set, (and I think most of thee world does also) he calls Levels.  And what I call Levels 1, 2, and 3 he calls Columns.  The columns terminology makes sense, but the odd use of Levels doesn’t work for me, so I’m going to stick with what I’ve been writing.

Now my 50 pushups qualifies me for Level 3 for Week 5, but after my Week 3 Day 1 fiasco, I’m going to stick with Level 2 for Week 5.  As it is, Day One is a significant step up in total pushups from what I was doing in Week 4, even if I stay in Level 2.  I’m not sure I can do Level 3, and I’d rather complete a scheduled workout at Level 2 than bomb out at Level 3.

Finally, while I feel pretty good about the progress so far, what’s left seems pretty daunting.  I did 10 pushups on my first exhaustion test, and 50 on last night’s test. (BTW, I turn 46 today for reference).  That’s an increase of 40 pushups in 4 weeks.  But now I have to add another 50 in just 2 weeks if the program works at its stated goal (to be fair, it acknowledges that it might take an extra week or 2 for some).  You can also look at it in terms of multiples, which is less intimidating.  In 4 weeks, I’ve multiplied my exhaustion test results by 5; now I have to do a double in 2 weeks.  I’m not sure which way of looking at it makes more sense.  We’ll see where I end up.

100 Pushups – Week 3 Conclusion

Thursday night I finished the Week 3 program on Level 2.  My performance was similar to Day 2.  I was able to exceed the minimum on the last set by just a few, but ended up doing 105 pushups overall in 5 sets, 2 minutes apart.  This is the first time I broke 100.  I’m still a ways from doing 100 in one set, but the progress is good.  Week 4 is only a slight step up from Week 3 in difficulty, so it is sort of a plateau phase.  Hopefully it will lead to increased production on the last set of each day, where you have to do as many pushups as you can, subject to a minimum.

Unless something unexpected happens, I’ll wait until the end of the week to report.

100 Pushups – Week 3, Day 2: Back on Track

Much, much better than Day 1.  Back in my Level 2 sweet spot, I did just fine on Day 2.  The program requires:

22
17
17
15
20 minimum
91 total

I did 25 in the last set, for 96 total.  The Day 3 workout is tougher than the Level 3 Day 1 workout I tried and did so poorly on.   I see three advantages going in to Day 3: (1) I’ll have 2 more workouts behind me, so I should be just that much stronger; (2) I will have 2 full days rest; and (3) the Day 3 workout allows 120 seconds between sets, and the Day 1 workout only allowed 60.  I’m cautiosuly optomistic I’ll do OK.