Well, things have taken a little turn since I last posted. Up until new years I was having a great time. I had worked up to about 8 miles training for the half marathon, I was excited because all the snow meant I would be going skiing soon, and I had gotten pretty good at rock band since it came out around thanksgiving. Then, this happened:



If you can't tell right away, there is a pretty nasty break in my left clavicle. It happened when I went skiing on New Years Day. It was a beautiful day. Lots of fresh snow, very few people on the mountain. We had gotten in a good 4 hours so far when it happened, so I'm not disappointed with the day overall, it just ended badly.

After it happened, I managed to sit in a car for 4 hours while my friend Nicki drove me back to Boston. My brother's wife invited me to her hospital for me to be taken care of. In 2 hours, I got that nice x-ray, was given a sling, and given drugs plus the possibility of more drugs in the future. Now I'm patiently waiting for the pain to go away. They say it'll be a couple weeks for that. Then a while longer until it's actually healed.

The result of this injury is, I'm probably not going to be able to train for my half-marathon. I'm not going to be able to play any ultimate frisbee this winter, and I'm definitely not going to be going skiing any more. All in all, not a fun injury. I should be healed in time for spring ultimate to start up again, so that's not a complete loss. And I'm hoping I can get some sort of cardio exercise in just to stay in shape for the rest of the winter. I'm going to try to find a half marathon to run in over the summer sometime. It wont be as exciting as Hyannis in February, but I'll have to try.

In any case, I'm trying to make the most of it. Playing plenty of video games (not rock band because I'm no Rick Allen) and watching a bunch of crappy movies. Let me know if you want to entertain me, I always need it.

As the Fall Ultimate Frisbee season came to a close, I found myself incredibly busy. I had been playing 2 or 3 days a week for the entire summer and fall leading up to the two Fall tournaments.

The first tournament was for the club teams. My club team is made up mostly of people that I work with. This is the team that I started playing ultimate with and that I have the most fun with. In the year and a half since we started playing, this was our first opportunity to play in a tournament together, and it was great. We ended up being 2-2 for the day, winning our last game in a triumph of stamina and skill.

The second tournament was the hat league. The hat league is called such because it is made up of teams that are figuratively "picked from a hat." You sign up alone, or sometimes with a friend if you want, and you're placed on a team with a bunch of people that you likely don't know. The day of this tournament started out with a steady rain. With everyones equipment in bags and under tarps, we played the first couple games soaking wet. The rain cleared up near the end of the second game, and the weather was nice the rest of the day. My team ended up being 2-2 for the day this time as well. However, we lost our last game in a tragic failure of stamina, but we had fun anyway.

After the second tournament, I found myself trying to plan a Winter training regimen. As I've been running some 5Ks this fall, I thought about trying to build on that and attempt to run a 10K in the spring. I also have plans to do a fairly long bike ride in June, and I'd like to start trying to build up my distance on the bike. Both of these things are pretty difficult to do outdoors in the winter, so my plan was to do a lot of treadmill running and spinning classes until it warmed up.

As soon as I had settled on these goals, and started my trips to the gym this past week, my plans suddenly took a turn... up a steep hill. I received an email this past week from a coworker stating that him and some other people were planning on training for a half marathon that takes place in February. They were looking for more people to join in the training. As I am not really good at turning down challenges that seem just out of reach, I decided to accept. This means that I'm going to be replacing my relaxing winter training with an intense running training that will last the next 3 and a half months.

Right now I can run 3 or 4 miles pretty consistently. Over the next 15 weeks I'm going to hopefully build that into the ability to run over 13 miles in about 2 hours. I'm going to be doing this mostly outdoors in the freezing, snowy, dark northeast winter. I'll be learning a lot about my tolerances of cold, and how I can possibly run while wearing several layers of clothing. It will be an interesting Winter.

So, here's my first random posting, let's hope this keeps up.

For various reasons, I threw caution to the wind and decided to go on a bike ride this evening. It started with a trip through Somerville, with me forgetting my helmet, so I headed home. From there, I took a trek into Medford, which brought me down into Cambridge, which sent me to the river. Along the river, I went to Watertown. Back on the river to Mass Ave. A quick trip into Boston to visit a friend and eat some delicious beef stroganoff and an eggo waffle (don't ask). Then straight up Mass ave. 28 miles later, I was home.

If you want to see how this ridiculously circuitous route looks on a map, go here.

There are two things important about this bike ride. One is that it was mostly effective in distracting me all evening and getting me some exercise. The second is that it shows me how much I've improved over the summer. I did a bike ride in June that was about 20 miles, and I did it much slower and was way more tired at the end of it. After 28 miles, I was tired, but not exhausted, and I did it a good deal faster on average than I could even do 6 miles a year ago. I'm excited about what the Winter and next year will bring to my exercise and health.

Well, it certainly has been a while. I'm not sure how many people still look at this, since it's been about a year and a half since I've added anything to it. I've had this urge recently to post to this because so much has been going on in my life, but I had a problem with the process of actually posting news, and I was much too busy/lazy to actually fix it. Well, I took the 5 minutes required today and fixed it, so here I am.

Lets see, what's happened since my last post? I'm going to try to cover everything briefly, and I'll expand on them in later posts (do you believe me?).

I've been working at athenahealth for about a year and a half now. I really like the job, and I have made a ton of friends there. My first week, someone told me I should play Ultimate Frisbee with them. I had played at summer camp and in gym class during high school, so I thought it would be fun. I quickly learned that I had never actually played Ultimate Frisbee. It's a huge amount of running and jumping and throwing and catching, and it's very intense. A lot of people don't understand how a Frisbee can result in so much exercise without actually doing it.

The reason I tell you all this, is because it has greatly contributed to the fact that I have also lost 50 pounds since my last post. Other things that have contributed to this, are that I have a very good deal on the Boston Sports Club gym downstairs from my work, and that I have been biking a lot recently.

I've also realized recently that I can actually run a 5k now. I ran my first one on Labor Day (9/3) with a time of 31:35. Considering I've been able to do a 10 minute mile, maybe one or two years out of all the time since elementary school, I think that's pretty damn good. I ran my second one on the 23rd with a time of 32:06 (There were 20x more people there, so my start was delayed and was running slow around all the people at the beginning). I'm running another one this weekend, and possibly a fourth two weeks after that.

I think that's enough for now. I'll try to cover more later. I can promise that there will be another post soon, but I'm not sure who will believe me.

In contrast to my last post, this one should be on a slightly lighter note. I have started working again. It took me 4 months to find a new job, but it finally happened. I am currently working as a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) developer for athenahealth.

I thoroughly enjoy working there. It's quite a different experience from TVGuide On Screen. It's a larger company, but everyone here seems closer than I ever was with anyone at TV Guide. They do some fun stuff after work like play games, and I've even joined the ultimate frisbee team.

Another high note of working here is the extreme convenience to a gym. There is a Boston Sports Club downstairs. One of athenahealth's benefits is a discouted membership rate there. I get a membership for almost one quarter of the full price. When I joined, I told myself that I'd go every day for an entire month as a jumpstart to my exercise routine. There have been a couple of bumps along the way, but I'm nearly to that goal. Once I get there, I will probably still go every weekday at least.

Another thing that I've started doing recently is reading. When I was jobless, I realized that I could probably get a lot of reading done in my free time. I got a library card and started with a couple books my family had liked (The Time Travelers Wife, Ender's Game, Ringworld). When I was visiting my parents one time, I grabbed as many books off of their shelves as I could. This is my current queue of books. I know it's agressive, but I'm happy with it so far.

My brother is living with me for a couple weeks. His wife and he are moving to Boston in a couple weeks because she is starting her residency at Boston Medical Center this Summer. My brother is living with me because he started his new job this week, and he needed someplace to stay before they close on their new condo. It will be nice having a roommate for a little bit.

That's enough for now. I think I might try updating this thing more often. However, I've said that in the past, so don't hold your breath.