Snow!

Song of the Day: “I Want You to Want Me” by Cheap Trick

Yes, Philadelphia experienced it’s first day of snow for the season.  The temperature was just a bit below freezing during the day (it’s 28 degrees at the moment), so now much snow was sticking through mid day.  It was a beautiful day, the sun was not shinning bright but it was still pleasantly light out, and the snow was coming down in that slow lazy way that I love so much.  The city seemed almost muffled by the snow and the wind was not blowing too hard, a truly peaceful scene.

So what did I do?  I ran sprints.  I probably should have at least worn a hat, but being as stubborn as I am, I didn’t.  Nevertheless I think this just goes to show the dedication that I have towards this new exercise program I am doing.  It’s really exciting to be doing this; it seems like I am in a perpetual state of soreness which signifies that the program is working great for me.  At the moment my shoulders and neck are killing me.  It is a little more uncomfortable than I would prefer but at this point there’s not much I can do about it.

I think the main reason for this is that I performed Cleans for the first time two days ago.  I was really nervous about doing this as it is a very difficult technique to perfect, so much so that entire books have been written just on this exercise.  The clean is also on of the focal points for Olympic weight lifting.  Obviously I didn’t perform it perfectly, but I think I did pretty well.  I watched a couple videos before hand to give myself a good idea of how to do it, and I think that really payed off.  A classic mistake is to use your arms to lift the barbell from your thighs to your chest.  I noticed early on that my arms were not hurting at all, and therefore I was not really using them.  I quickly discovered that this exercise is a completely exhausting technique.  It requires explosive power in your shoulders to lift the barbell so your arms aren’t doing any work, and like I said my shoulders are killing me.

One of my favorite bands, The Drama Club, is coming to Philadelphia on the 15th.  They are a local band out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania that my cousin turned me on to.  I’m really excited about the opportunity to go see them play, I’ve heard they are a phenomenal live band.  Other than that, not much else is new.  Today was the last day of class for me, hurray!  Unfortunately, that means I’m at the beginning of the end-of-semester crunch for my upcoming finals and submission of projects.  Not so much hurray there.