Weeks 12 & 13 - Side Effects & Plans in the Making

So we are 13 weeks into this thing now. That's 1/4 of a year, 3 months, 92 days. No matter how you count it, there's no denying that there have been a whole lot of pushups. So far so good.

The numbers:

		Pushups	Crunches	Kata	Sparring	Journey (Swim)	Journey (Bike)	Journey (Run)	Kindness	Journal	Video
Annual Totals:		12,300	12,300	243	80	0	244	274	246	11	0
						518
Annual Targets:		50000	50000	1000	1000	2400			1000	52	12
Percent of Annual Targets Complete		24.60%	24.60%	24.30%	8.00%	21.60%			24.60%	21.15%	0.00%

Still feeling confident about my numbers. They are consistent. I'm working some ideas on how to get my sparring numbers up. Hopefully I can make it work. Technically I'm about 80 miles behind but that doesn't concern me. The summer months are gonna be doozies! And... I Have some bike rides planned soon, registered for March's 1/2 marathon, and joined a team for the Golden Gate Relay (courtesy of our own David Brezinski). I hope to be a worthy Barbarian (that's the team name). 

Side Effects: 
I feel the need to share some side effects of this test. Because, in a way, they demonstrate how, if we continue to do the little things, they make big differences. I'm a runner. I think my dad had me running 5ks with him when I was 6 or something. I've never been a particularly fast runner, but I can run for a long time. Well, last weekend I ran the Getty Owl Foundation's 10k. I was shooting for 50 minutes. That's about an 8-minute mile pace. I ran the first 4 miles with my friend (thanks Michael Trotti), and then pushed a tad bit harder for the last two miles. I wrapped around the corner, maybe 50 yards from the finish line and looked at the clock... If I wasn't busy trying to keep my breath I think my jaw would have dropped. 


I crossed the finish line at 42:56, that's a pace just shy of 7 minute miles. Now, that's really not fast if you compare it to others, but for me... that's fast. For the first few days I was trying to understand where that came from. I've settled on the theory that it was 1/2 adrenaline (I'm very invested in the Getty run) and the other 1/2 is due to the fact that I'm in this test. It's due to the fact that I'm averaging 5.6 miles a day for 92 days. Those little bike rides on my trainer or short runs on my lunch break. Those sprints of kata, the overall conditioning requirements. Little things add up. And it's cool because there's a goal to get a black belt after all of this. But there are smaller goals being met every day. And those smaller goals are already adding up to bigger things.


The Plans:
I've also started planning my empathy training. Part of the test is 3 days of empathy training. One of those is a day in a wheelchair. I have a friend, Anjii, she was paralyzed from the sternum down after falling from a cliff. She's been in a chair for 12 years now. She is also a cyclist, a world ranked para-triathlete, and just an all around adventurous person. I will be spending a day with her, using her spare chair. We are planning a bike ride, a walk around down town Davis, some chores and I'm sure she'll come up with some more stuff. I just hope she doesn't try to teach me to drive her car because I still don't understand how the throttle works.

So far so good. 13 weeks down, 49 to go. It's like we're almost there! :)