Sunday, January 31, 2010

Confessions

Confession #1:  Weight

I have had several comments regarding weight, and it turns out I have not been sufficiently scientific.  So today I weighed with and without clothes and learned that the clothing amounts to 4.5 pounds.  For my Level Zero blog entry, I had on a complete outfit including shoes, the scale said 214, and I guessed 212.  That was a horrible, unnecessary guess and my geek character has been severly reprimanded.  The blog has been corrected.

My geek character has also been seriously reprimanded for not taking into account gravitational anomalies: the earth isn't truly spherical or uniform in density.  Fortunately, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), conducted by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, produced a map:

Luckily, there isn't much gravitational anomaly on USA's Eastern seaboard.  The largest souce of error is certainly in my cheap, department store scale.  My athletic character, as it moves up levels, will focus on running-related bling, so I confess an on-going uncertainty in the weights and measures category.

Confession #2: Chi


My first exposure to things Eastern was probably a few days in 6th grade social studies class and watching Kung Fu.  I confess that I'm not going to be very accomodating of any mystical theorizing - Eastern or Western.  I'm just a chubby guy trying to find a stride and cadence that is less jarring and exhausting!  That being said, there are a lot of good things in my Chi Running book to work on.  More on this later.



"The perfect stride?  Find it you should!"

2 comments:

  1. So, do you recommend reading the book? If so, I'm thinking I'll go ahead and pick it up used on Amazon.

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  2. Yes, I think there are fundamentally good things in there. Something I really need to work on is cadence. I plan on doing a little class, advocating similar things, in April at a nearby running goods store.

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