Saddle Up, Spanky!

The other day I was sitting around eating my cereal and I thought, "This isn't as good as Space Ghost: Coast to Coast! It's not fortified with the vitamins and minerals that the average episode of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast has. Why am I eating this stuff???"

Watch Space Ghost: Coast to Coast on the one-and-only Cartoon Network! It's better than cereal!

-The Gneech

PS: All the above is a lie. It's a transcription of a commercial that is on the DVD of "Cartoon Planet" that lythandra is making from our old taped episodes of that brilliant but lost show. Nowadays, Cartoon Network is but a shadow of the greatness it once had. I hang my head in sorrow.

540 Crunches 0.o

That was Kung Fu last night, in case you couldn't tell. 60 reps each of nine variations ... owie. I didn't manage to do all 540, alas; the bicycles in particular I only did about half of. So I'd estimate my actual performace at somewhere around 300 ... but still, 300 is a lot of crunches. Especially when followed up by 60 pushups.

So as you might guess, I'm a little stiff today. But as punishing as it was, I still feel a lot better now than I did after going when I was sick last week. I was in good form last night, too ... my stances were nice and low, while my jumps were nice and high. I'm hoping that after FC is out of the way, I can get to Kung Fu twice a week more regularly, instead of the three times a month I've been averaging since October.

As I said to lythandra a week or two ago, I've reached a new milestone in my fitness path: I now look like somebody who was once in good shape but has let himself go. As bleak as that sounds, it's actually a good thing -- it's certainly a step up from "a ball of mush who was never in shape!" I give the lion's share (nyuk, nyuk) of the credit to the Kung Fu, thanks to its rigorous mix of both aerobic exercise (jogging, drills, forms) and strength training (brickwork, stances, crunches & pushups). The muscles in my arms and legs are getting quite hard now ... my only real problem area is the fat that's still lingering around the middle. That will probably require more dietary changes, alas, but not as many as it might seem. My body responds very well to exercise, so if I can make that regular 2x/week schedule, my improvement should accelerate rapidly.

Here's to a buff 2005. ;)

-The Gneech

PS: New Kung Fu icon! Although it's more of a Karate/TKD outfit and move... ;)