johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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Chrissie Wellington
Spartacu: Gods Of the Arena went out with a whimper last night. Since it was a prequel, I knew who was going to live through it, and there weren't any topless women that I recall. Ufft!
Starz tried to make up for it by showing half of the pilot for Camelot. They managed four sex scenes with topless women in the first hour, which is auspicious, but I wasn't impressed with the series. Joe Fiennes, who I normally like in things, plays Merlin (with the obligatory bad hair). I'm not impressed. The one character I kind of like didn't even make it to hour two.
Their Camelot is a massive Roman ruin, so that's interesting. Arthur doesn't have Excalibur yet, but I have the feeling The Lady In The Lake will be a buxom blond.
I stayed up all night Friday because I'd been looking ahead at the calendar and decided it was time to start up the pre-dawn walks. I may or may not be shooting for 365 days in a row with the guy who ran 365 marathons in a year as inspiration. Anyway, I'd only gotten up at one in the afternoon Friday, so I found things to amuse myself until I headed out to walk at 4:30. The most I can say about it is I made the effort to get dressed and actually head out the door into the cold, dark morning.
An hour or so earlier, I was still negotiating whether I should do the walk, or head to bed for some sleep and then watch the Federer match. Chrissie Wellington turned the tides with a tweet with a link to a forty minute video of Ironman Arizona. In October, she was in Kona Hawaii to try for her third Ironman World Championship in a row, but she was way too sick to race when the day came. She went home to recover, but didn't want to waste the season and hard work, so she did the Arizona event, and beat her World Record by like ten minutes. Watching that, and seeing what I caught in this screen cap, got me out the door.
Since the crash, I read a lot about foods and supplements that might help get more oxygen to my brain. Looking at those two massive veins in Chrissie's neck, which popped out like this when she turned her head, made me feel sure that she doesn't have that problem.
There are tons of studies out there showing how being fit helps make people smarter (let's say closer to their potential), better able to deal with things, or switch from one subject to another, etc. There was one that had people walking half an hour a day for sixteen weeks, and their brains got larger.
It's hard to believe, but I used to be super fit. I definitely wasn't an Ironman, But I could go for a run and a bike ride in the morning, play half court basketball all afternoon, then play competitive singles and doubles tennis matches that night without even thinking about it. I was also pretty damned sharp mentally. If you want to be able to make quick decisions, doing it at the net in doubles where a mistake can get you hit with a 100 MPH tennis shot is a good place to do it.
Right now I'm at the opposite end of the fitness spectrum from both Chrissie Wellington and my former self. If I can turn that around, I can turn a lot of things around. I could definitely get my confidence, self-esteem, and I'm guessing, my cockiness and swagger back. So I should do that, then.
I've got ten hours to kill before my walk. Hulu just posted 111 episodes of Miami Vice, so I'm going to attempt a marathon of sailboats, unbelievably hot women, Ferrari Testarossa's, and guns. If I can't focus on that, I'll try Firefly, which is allover the news lately.
I hope you're having a great weekend.
7:07 p.m. - Saturday, Feb. 26, 2011
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