16 January 2012

Saturday

Our daughter baby sat for a neighbor Friday night, so my wife and I went out shopping for disk golf disks. The store only had three in stock, so we bought them all.

We went out to play in the Sat afternoon. There are two courses separated by a strip of woods so we play one round of nine holes at each. One of the course is where we went last weekend. There is a sign there that reads, "Disk golf is a walk in the park", which is what it is. The distances are around 150-500ft, where in regular golf in the distances are measured in yards, but similar numbers.

We did okay with the disks, some of the proper equipment. They travel farther on a throw than a play disk for catching, which means our aim, or lack thereof, gets us into trouble. My wife threw one up in an oak tree and it got stuck there about fifteen or twenty feet off the ground. There was a dead tree on the ground nearby so I brought over a long limb that I could hold up high enough to push the disk and get it down.

Earlier in the day there was a monthly tournament there that was two rounds each on the two courses. Turns out that the two rounds we did was a lot for my recovering shoulder.

Speaking of aches and pains. Friday's weight-training session went fine. Weights were not much more than the bar, half what I was doing before I tweaked my lower back, so it wasn't a lot of work, but the back didn't feel worse afterward. Still waiting for it to get better though.

exercise and burning calories

When I mentioned "Sugar: the Bitter Truth" a while back I should have added mention of one of the interesting bits from it.

He had a slide about exercise and weight control. Some of the points of this slide were:

- Working out to burn calories is not practical considering the number of calories in a "a candy bar, juice, or dessert". Not enough hours in a day.
- Toned muscles from "weight training improves skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity -- because insulin works better in strong lean muscle". Two or three times per week.
- Exercise also "reduces stress and the release of the stress hormone cortisol -- appetite goes down when stress goes down".

08 January 2012

catching up

We spent the last week of the year visiting relatives. I managed to get to a gym there twice, but then tweaked my back again. It's getting quite frustrating that I keep doing that ever since I started training again after the shoulder surgery recovery. Getting nowhere. No progress.

The fun part was that the day of our return flight I was increasingly nauseous as the flight time approached until I threw up in the airport restroom, then on the first (short) flight, then twice more on the longer flight. If I had diarrhea, now then it would have been a most excellent return trip. I went to work the following day (Tues) to get some material return for a telecon, but didn't feel too great. Stayed home the next two days. Stomach is still not 100% today (Sun).

I was cleaning up my office on Fri and found a frisbee, which reminded me of disk golf. Our department is changing buildings, so I have to pack up. We three went out and did nine "holes" late this morning, then had lunch. My wife and I did it once about twenty years ago in Baton Rouge. This course was in San Jose, about a 40min drive. Took about an hour to play with our three frisbees. Our frisbees were the standard throw and catch type. There were a bunch of guys on the course, one woman. They all had bags with multiple disk golf, well, disks. Sort of like regular golf, there are different disks for different purposes. The three broad categories are driver, middle range driver, and approach/putt. I think if we do it again, it would be nice to have a mid-range driver for each of us.