Call today a trap bar deadlift orgy. I did a total of 50 reps, almost certainly a record: 8 x 225, 8 x 265, 6 x 295, 6 x 305, 2 x 4 x 315, 6 x 275, 8 x 225. Whew. Also some SLDL’s, 8 x 225, 2 x 8 x 235. I ran one mile on the treadmill at 5.4 mph. This leaves me a bit behind in terms of reaching my quota, with only two miles done three days into the week, but I should be able to catch up no trouble.
Saturday, October 24
Not too bad of an upper body session. I had the foresight to start out with dips, so I’d be able to do weighted ones. 4 x 10 x bodyweight + 45, (later) 2 x 12 x bodyweight. Next came pull-ups, the usual grip with hands facing away, though an unusual set and rep combo. I began with a single set of six reps, then 8 x 4, for a total of 38 reps. I also ran one mile on the treadmill at 5.6 mph.
Friday, October 23
75% good
Today I came reasonably close to the Nirvana of having empty seats next to me the whole way. Close enough for it to be a pretty decent day, all in all. As has been my pattern lately I got the shuttle from Medford followed by the 7:04 from Ronkonkoma to Penn. No M-3’s were to be seen in the yards, but it didn’t much matter because the seat next to me on the 7:04 was empty the entire trip. My best guess is that the car didn’t get more than about half-full. I spent the trip reading more of the Making of the Atomic Bomb, not having played Tetris at all this week. Reading’s just more interesting. We got to Penn on time, though I had a fairly long wait for a 3 to Park Place. Probably close to ten minutes, though I hadn’t been timing it, and of course the car was hugely crowded.
No wait of any consequence for a 2 at Park Place after work, and no significant crowding either. The 5:41 was somewhat more crowded than the morning’s train, but not by much. An older, average-sized man took the seat next to me but wasn’t much of a bother, and he got off at Hicksville and no one took his place. Once again, I spent my time reading and the trip went by quickly enough.
Gym: day off
Thursday, October 22
A whole lot of nothing
Today was one of those days that basically slips below the commuting radar. Okay, that’s an awkward analogy, but you know what I mean. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The shuttle was on time at Medford, and as I’ve been doing lately I then got the 7:04 from Ronkonkoma to Penn. No M-3’s were visible in the yard, so I took the 7:04 even though it was using M-7’s. It seemed perhaps a shade less crowded than usual, though this could be because I was riding one car closer to the head end of the consist than I more commonly do. Hard to say. Anyway, there was nothing much of anything to complain about. There weren’t too many SCA’s in the car, and in any rate a slender middle-aged woman took the seat next to me at Deer Park and didn’t infringe on my space at all. As I said yesterday, most Asian women are fairly slim, with some chubby exceptions. This woman was not one of the exceptions. I continued my progress through The Making of the Atomic Bomb, getting past the 150-page mark, which is about 20% of the way. Speaking of slim people, I was amused by the description of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was to be the lead scientist behind the Bomb’s development; at six feet tall, he weighed no more than 125 pounds. You could chop the typical modern SCA in half and each piece will weigh more than that. Anyway, we got to Penn on time, and after a wait of three or four minutes I got crowded but semi-tolerable 3 to Fulton.
Getting home was similarly uneventful. A short wait for a 2 at Park Place, I actually got a seat, and then the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma. It wasn’t at all crowded and for a while I thought I’d have an empty seat next to me. Just before the doors closed, a woman in her 20’s took the seat, and though she was a shade on the chubby side she was no bother. Actually, were it not for my iPod she would have been a bother, as for almost 20 minutes she kept up a rather loud conversation with a man she knew who was sitting across the aisle. Fortunately, the music of Depeche Mode drowned out her yakking, and I did more reading. She eventually conked off and – yes! – did a classic bobblehead routine. We got to Ronkonkoma right on time, and the shuttle was on time as well.
Gym: some deadlifting tonight, a bit of playing around with the sets and reps. 6 x 225, 6 x 255, 4 x 285, 4 x 305, 6 x 265, 6 x 245, 6 x 225.
Wednesay, October 21
Back to Jakarta, perhaps
Not a bad day today, all things considered. For the first time this week the shuttle was right on time today. I knew that the chances of getting M-3’s once again on the 7:04 from Ronkonkoma to Penn would be slim, and sure enough it was back to M-7’s. There hadn’t been any M-3’s visible in the yards so there was no point in waiting for the 7:19. To my surprise, the woman who took the seat next to me, a minute or so after I sat down, was the same young woman of indeterminate ethnicity who had sat next to me on Monday and who had been reading some text in a strange language on her Black Berry. Actually it’s not all that strange, as people tend to ride in the same cars day after day. I got another look at the text on her Black Berry and now I’m not so sure if it was Indonesian as I had thought. My current guess is that it might be an Latin alphabet transliteration of a language normally written in a different alphabet, perhaps something like Tamil or Bengali. If she had been reading a magazine or something like that I might have come out and asked her (“Pardon me, but I don’t recognize that language, what is it?”), but I could scarcely admit to having looked at her Black Berry. I read more of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I’m now up to the development in nuclear physics in the 1930’s, and we got to Penn in no time. The ride on a 3 to Fulton was reasonably quick, the rail damage that caused troubles earlier in the week having been repaired for the most part.
The wait for a 2 at Park Place after work was a shade on the long side, but I made it to Penn in plenty of time for the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma. Yep, M-7’s once again. It was really packed, and I ended up in one of the seats in the last row by the vestibule. These seats are actually a bit narrower than the other seats, which of course are hideously small to begin with. It would have been disastrous if a large SCA took the aisle seat. A woman in her 20’s took it, and while she was hardly of SCA size it was a relatively tight fit. As I’ve noted, Asian women are usually slim but some of them can be chubby. She was among the “some of them.” Still, it wasn’t that bad, and I read another chapter during the ride. We got to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle exactly on time, 6:53.
Gym: I ran two miles on the treadmill at 5.4 mph, making ten miles for the week.
Tuesday, October 20
Of course it won’t continue
It’s always nice when a train pulls up to the platform and it’s using M-3 cars instead of the M-7’s. There’s the highly coveted single seat in each M-3 car, and more to the point the M-3 seats are somewhat wider than those on the M-7’s … okay, everything is wider than M-7 seats, but still. Today was a double shot of M-3 glory, though of course I fully expect things to be back to the usual tomorrow with M-7’s. After arriving on the shuttle from Medford, which like yesterday was a few minutes late, I was delighted to see that the 7:04 from Ronkonkoma to Penn was using M-3’s. Platform crowding was quite heavy and I wasn’t expecting to get a single seat, as noted there’s just one in each car, but I was very lucky and actually got one. So nice. I had a very pleasant ride into Penn, in a car that got almost completely filled, though unfortunately my subway ride on a 2 to Park Place wasn’t as enjoyable. It took nearly ten minutes to crawl from 14th Street to Chambers, with the conductor announcing that we were going slowly because of “train traffic ahead of us.” Sure. And the dog ate my homework. I had waited three or four minutes for the 2 at Penn and the platform already was crowded when I arrived. That means the train ahead of us was almost certainly at least seven or eight minutes ahead of us, which should not have delayed us. It didn’t help that the train was totally packed, it was hard enough to breathe let alone move. Getting off the train at Park Place was a huge relief.
I got a 3 from Fulton after work, following a wait of under a minute, and actually got a seat. When we stopped at Chambers, a 50ish woman entered the car and right away I noticed that she looked totally worn out, as if she’d just been through a tough stressful day at work. So worn out, in fact, that I was debating whether to offer her my seat. But then I noticed that she took out a tissue and put it in her hand when she gripped the pole, in other words to prevent her hand from actually contacting the pole and getting all these terrible germs. I find people who are all paranoid over germs and bugs and creepy-crawly things to be a bit, well, ridiculous, and I stayed in my seat for the rest of the ride. Hey, she’s probably be afraid to let her posterior make contact with the germ-laden seat … which on second thought is maybe not a totally bad idea. As for the rest of the trip, the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma was on Track 18 rather than the usual 19, and like the morning’s train was using M-3’s. No single seat this time, but a fairly slender woman of about 50 – the same approximate age and build as the germophobe on the subway, though not the same person – took the seat next to me. She was small enough that I would have been barely aware of her presence on an M-7; on the M-3, she might as well have been near the orbit of Neptune. As with the morning’s ride I spent much of the time reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It occurred to me that the story is so interesting that I haven’t even thought about playing Tetris. It also helped the ride to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle go by as quickly as could be hoped.
Gym: I started with pull=ups, once again the hands facing away version, 2 x 6, 4 x 5. Then I ran one mile on the treadmill at 5.4 mph, the short distance and slower speed due to my three miles yesterday. To finish the session I did some dips, 4 x 12 x bodyweight. I should be doing some with added weight, but after having done the pull-ups that would be a bit too much, even though the exercises target different muscle groups. Next time I’ll do the weighted dips first, pull=ups later.
Monday, October 19
What language was that?
Got the shuttle from Medford this morning, which was uncharacteristically a bit late. By “late” I mean about five minutes, which is all too typical on most of the LIRR but quite uncommon for the shuttle. Platform crowding at Ronkonkoma didn’t look too bad and I got the 7:04 to Penn. Despite not being too crowded at first, many people flooded onboard in the last couple of minute before departure and the car was at least two-thirds full by departure. A young woman of indeterminate ethnicity took the seat next to me and immediately began sending and receiving messages on her Black Berry. What made things a bit interesting is that I got a view of her screen and had absolutely no idea what language she was using. I’m usually pretty good at identifying strange languages from their writing, but this time I was stumped. After a bit of Google research later in the day I suspect it may have been Indonesian. Not a language one sees every day! Having given up on The Devil in the White City, I spent most of the ride reading a title I acquired over the weekend, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It’s 700+ pages and not what you’d call a fast read, so it’ll keep me occupied for quite some time … if not to the extent of War and Peace, which I read a couple of years ago (at the risk of sounding like a Philistine, I must say that I didn’t quite get all of the hype about W&P. An excellent story, for sure, but the Greatest Novel of All Time, as it’s been called? Sorry.) In any event, my reading helped the ride go by quickly. We got into Penn right on time, and I waited under a minute for a 2 train to Park Place.
During the early afternoon there was a “minor” derailment of a 2 train at Park Place and all service on the 2/3 line was shut down. It looked as if I’d be taking the Eighth Avenue line. Before I left work, however, I found out that service had been restored, and I ended up taking a 3 from Park Place. It was hugely crowded, whether that was a residual effect of the earlier delays I don’t know. I got to Penn in plenty of time to catch the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma. It was a bit surprising to see Mayor Bloomberg greeting people in the station, as only a relatively low percentage of LIRR riders (I’d guess no more than 10%) are city residents who can vote for him next month. It could be that he figured that the sheer volume of people using the station makes it a useful campaign stop even with these percentages. In any event, the 5:41 was moderately crowded, somewhat less than the morning’s train or what it was like last week. There were quite a few massive SCA’s boarding, I was fearful that one would plop into the next seat and squash me, but the Train Gods were smiling on me and a young woman who couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds (while they can be chubby, Asian women usually run small) took the seat instead. I spent the ride much like the morning’s trip, reading more about the making of the Bomb – I’m still in the early years of nuclear research, with Rutherford and Bohr, so the Bomb’s still at least 400 pages off. We got to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle right on time.
Gym: a 3-mile run on the treadmill at 5.6 mph.
Sunday, October 18
For today’s leg session I decided to substitute trap bar deadlifts for squats. Like last week, I wasn’t much in the mood for squatting, but that’s fine as trap bar deadlifts are a good substitute. 8 x 225, 8 x 255, 8 x 275, 6 x 295. Next came SLDL’s, 8 x 225, 2 x 8 x 235. For additional leg work I did horizontal leg presses, 8 x 430, 8 x 450, 8 x 480. I finished the session with the dip I’d forgotten to do yesterday, 5 x 12 x bodyweight.
Saturday, October 17
Another increase in my pull-up count, once again the version done with hands facing away: 1 x 6, 1 x 3, 3 x 5, 3 x 4, 3 x 3, a total of 45 reps. The reason why I opened with a set of six, followed by one of three, is that I was going for two sets of six but got a muscle cramp midway through the second set. Next came overhead presses, 2 x 8 x 125, 6 x 125, 8 x 115. I then ran one mile on the treadmill at 5.6 mph. As I was driving home from the gym I realized that I’d forgotten to do dips, but at that point decided against turning back.
Friday, October 16
Boredom
Another uneventful trip into work. I got the shuttle from Medford, then, as usual, the 7:04 from Ronkonkoma to Penn. It was using M-7’s today but because I had spotted only one M-3 consist in the yard I figured it wouldn’t be worthwhile to wait for the 7:19. It didn’t much matter, as the hipster-ish young man who sat next to me at Deer Park wasn’t large. The car got moderately crowded, a bit behind the last few days, as far as I could tell only a handful of the middle seats were taken. I was somewhat bored during the ride, as I couldn’t get into either reading or playing Tetris. Fortunately there were no delays, and I waited under a minute for a relatively uncrowded 3 train to Fulton.
I got a near-cattle train 2 from Park Place after work and then took the 5:41 to Ronkonkoma. In some ways my ride was similar to that of the morning: the car was moderately crowded, a slender young man (not a hipster this time) sat next to me, and most of all I was really bored. Neither reading nor Tetris-ing was an attractive option. Thinking back, it probably was because (a) the book I’m reading, The Devil in the White City, has gotten less interesting the further I get into it, and (b) Tetris is bound to be a letdown after the other day’s record score. I’ll probably acquire something new to read over the weekend. Boredom or not, the ride to Ronkonkoma and the shuttle went by quickly, always good on a Friday.
Gym: a decent 3-mile run on the treadmill at 5.6 mph.
