PR and a First!

Today was all around good news. When I got to the gym, I was happy, despite the parking lot being full of cars and having to walk a half mile.

I'm going to pause right here.

There's a long time joke about people who have to park in the front row when they go to the gym. I just want to say right now that I do not drive around, stalking people as they go to their cars, hoping that they will give me a good spot. I usually drive to the far end of the lot and choose a spot in the dark because the Y is too cheap to turn on the outside lights past a certain point. I will say though that it has been fucking cold out lately, and it sucks ass to walk a half mile to your car when you're still panting and sweating and the water on your body instantly freezes.

Back to the story.

So I was happy, I ignored the throngs of people, children and even the fat man sleeping in the hallway (no, I'm not lying) as I went to the mat and did my warm-up. Halfway through I was struck by inspiration. The pull-up machine was open, so I walked up to it and eyed it. It stared back at me, mockingly, with its weight left by the last person in the heaviest amount. I decided I wasn't going to take it's shit, so I stepped up, lowered the weight to 26# and got on. That means I was lifting all of my weight, minus 26#. I did 4 pull-ups, then decided I was going to go for the gold. I moved the foot rest back, and stepped forward. I fell straight down, and when my arms caught me, I wasn't sure I could pull myself back up. But I pulled, and I got my chin over the bar. I dropped back down with the biggest grin on my face and decided to go for two. I got about 3/4 of the way there and couldn't pull any more. I dropped back down, stepped back and just about shrieked. I thought that would wake up the guy in the hall, so I lowered the foot bar instead and did a few more sets. Then I decided to try a different hand positioning, so I tried doing more pull-ups with a wider grip. That didn't work as well, but I got 4 of those out.

It occurred to me that if I lost 30 lbs, I would be able to lift my weight easily. Sad. I need to stick to the Zone diet and stop snacking. I really want to try to cut out refined carbs, but I'm having suuuuuuch a hard time with it. Every day I wake up and I try. I eat a Zone breakfast, but by 10:30 I'm hungry. So I try to eat a Zone snack. Inevitably, I eat too much. Lunch is hit or miss. Weekends are especially hard because most days I eat with Tony, and it's not easy to get a Zone meal from a take-out restaurant. Dinner I try again, but I get hungry about an hour after dinner.

Anyway, back to the good things. After my warm-up, I moved on to the WOD. Today was deadlifts. I decided to go all out, and try for as much as I could. I'll spare you the progression. My max was 115#. Insane. I was so excited. I hope I'm doing the move right. It gets way harder to keep form when you add weight. I was so overwhelmed by the amount that I was lifting that I had to add my numbers twice to make sure I had got it correct.

Oh, another thing. I have calluses on my hand. More my left hand than my right. They're from pull-ups. Proof that I'm doing something right ;)

I'll try to update with some of the struggles I've run into at work tomorrow, but no promises.