The Flinch

So, you're supposed to embrace the thing that scares/disgusts/etc you the most....

Darwin award performances aside, there is something to be said for accruing mental toughness.  Which I really need to be doing more often these days.  Although, I am honing mental agility, I think, or at least regurgitation.  I'm still adrift in the sea of Linear Algebra...ok, I fucked up.  I had the choice between calculus and algebra.  And Calculus scared me because somehow I forgot that I had gotten an A in OAC Cal eons ago (but isn't it like riding a bike?) and somehow I missed reading the word "basic", as in "Students should have a deep understanding of basic algebra and trig", which I have, and somehow I failed to notice that the course number for the algebra course is higher, and sometimes this doesn't mean anything, but sometimes it does.  There is a bit of calculus in this course too, and much much more.  Long story short, I really should have seized the Flinch with this decision because I might have ended up with the easier course. But now I have a new Flinch in my grasp, which is actually plumbing the depths, and I had a minor breakthrough earlier this morning while watching a Gilbert Strang/MIT lecture, and he had a matrix up on the board and was asking what was the basis, the dimension of the null space, etc, and the right answers popped up in my mind even though I still don't quite get the deal of all the different subspaces.  So now new Flinches beckon, and I keep reminding myself that the exam is open book and that I got an A on the midterm even though I did 2/5s of the units the few days before because I'm good at quickly-look-up-the-equation-and-plug-it-in...but the waters have gotten a lot deeper since then and I really really want to actually understand this stuff.  I want to read the numbers and see the space they encode.   I don't want to be left out.  I even want to take the Linear Algebra course succeeding this one because there's still more than half of my textbook to go.

Yesterday, the Flinch was running in a cold rain.  Hanging out with my husband and eating brunch won out.

Today, the Flinch was also running in a cold rain, and once my husband left for work, I throttled it.  Or maybe gave it a tentative squeeze.  My legs were heavy and the footing was wet, so we did only one pass through the Triplet--that first hill and its bed of pine needles is pretty slick.  45 minutes.

The second Flinch was doing a Zwow.

That didn't happen, but I got sort of close.  My weights are unpacked in the garage, and I found some gardening gloves, and so I decided to do some squats and deadlifts, as well as the deltoid raises (front and side) with lighter weights.   It's been nearly three months since I've done weights, apart from 10 pound deltoid side raises.  My heavier dumbbells (no bar) are at >25 pounds each, and I thought about taking some weight off because I was stronger in Kansas, but I've also been working on the single leg squats, etc, and doing 3 X 5-6 reps was fine.  I think I should have chased a bit more of a burn, although there were some pretty tough moments.  My squat form felt surprisingly more solid, at any rate. 

Maybe I'll put some more weight on next time.  I just saw a tech job posting; I still haven't applied because of upcoming exams and two family visits shortly after, plus shifting hours, weekend hours :(, excuses, etc, but my interest was piqued by the weight limit.  When I did my practicals, the weight limit was 40 pounds, I think.  For my job in Kansas, I was tested with 50: pick up a box from the floor, carry it, set it down.  I think a few of the ortho sets got close to 50 pounds, if not a bit over.  Anyway, the posted weight limit for this job is 60 pounds.  It's not a big deal carrying 50 pounds except when the tray is covered in polypro wrapper that will tear if the tray is dragged, and the tray has to be set into a cabinet handle out, not straight up or down or in.  Would 60 pounds be my breaking point?  Probably the heaviest cases are hard shell cases, no tears, but I get into trouble occasionally because though I can lift a fair bit--I can do a half squat or a few steps with my husband on my back, and he outweighs me by about 100 pounds--I don't have much to counterbalance with.  A few inches and a suddenly amplified torque and, whammo.

Well, long story short, I missed the weights.  I really missed the weights.  I dislike like breathing hard for an extended period of time.  The zwows are super, and they're about 10-20 minutes of hard breathing.  The weights require well-timed forceful inhalation or exhalation (depends on the particular movement), and stuff gets sore, but I'm not panting, which is a nice change of pace from pretty much every run I do here!  I still want to do 2 zwows this week, but maybe I won't get past the weights again.  At least I need to do one with pistol squats.

Saturday, my husband and I and the dog ran the horse country loop.  Let's call it the little horse country loop: I want to figure out a larger one with more road.