Summer so far

Since a month has passed through the summer without an account to reference it, I will finish up my first third of summer summary:) My neighbor Jamie and I have decided that we want to get in really good shape this summer, which I guess I was already in pretty good shape from crew in the Spring, but I would like to focus more on lifting weights and running. Jamie was an excellent high school and collegiate runner, so I definitely have someone to push me.

I started weight lifting on June 1st, and have decided to revert back to my high school training techniques, in which I saw a good deal of success. I am working my upper body out about 7 times every 2 weeks, and my lower body about 3 times every 2 weeks. I have already seen some pretty decent gains since the start of June, mainly because we focused more on endurance training during crew.

We started consistently running on June 9th, and have since logged approximately 25 to 30 miles. We have a few different loops that we run, with most of them running on trails through an adjacent neighborhood of mine. I recently ordered some Nike Free 5.0's because I was in dire need of new running shoes, and I am pretty impressed with them.

Along with running and lifting, I have been road biking, playing tennis, and rowing. I used to play tennis for a club back in the day, and I am really enjoying getting back into it. As far as biking goes, it is pretty fun, and I have the intention of buying a nice road bike when I graduate. Since the end of May, I have logged 49.33 miles on my Dad's Bianchi with a total time of 3 hours and 22 min, keeping an overall average speed of 14.8 mph. I would like to be consistently around 16 to 17 mph towards the end of the summer, which I think is pretty attainable. I have not done much rowing......only twice have I been out in a rec single. I started driving out to the Birmingham Rowing Club with the intention of rowing a single once or twice a week, but I found the club to be highly non-competitive, which is just not my style. Oh well:(

The only other thing that I would like to do this summer is catch up on my reading. I am currently re-reading a book entitled The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, a book that I read for my Systems Design course but was not able to read as thoroughly as I would have liked. It is an excellent account of recent globalization and how the competitive playing field is becoming "more flat." I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys interesting information. Also on the list for the summer are Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller (also wrote Blue Like Jazz) and some Thomas Sowell works that I have previously taken dabs at, but failed to finish because of an increasingly hectic schedule. These include Basic Economics and A Conflict of Visions, and the possibility of a few more. I also plan on reading some literature on Visual Basic, because 1) I have already seen the need for it at UPS and I could have saved myself a lot of time and 2) I feel that I can significantly raise my stock as an Industrial Engineer.

I think this about wraps up my summer so far/what I want to do. Oh yea, I went to the beach for a week, that was nice:) For anyone that has ever been or heard of the Basement, an "intense worship experience" (for lack of a better description) out in Trussville, AL, I went for the first time the other week. My brother told me about it this past year sometime, but I could never carve out enough time to travel from Tuscaloosa to B'ham during the middle of the week. Anyways, I figured I'd go since I'm now in Birmingham for the summer, and it was pretty sweet.....about 500 people (this is a pretty rough guesstimate) on fire for God. Yea, that is pretty sweet.

As for today, work was........"a case of the Monday's." I ran 1.5 miles at a pretty decent pace, probably around 6:20 or so /mile. I then worked out a little bit, read, stretched, and ate. I'm playing the short course at Robert Trent with my Dad tomorrow, so that should be pretty fun. I promise that after today's 2 monster blog postings, I will most likely never have one half as long again. I just felt like I should enlighten everyone on my summer so far, or maybe I'm just bored.