In terms of total number of burpees we aren’t even halfway through, but the end is in sight. 71 burpees today and on up from there. Unbelievable the amount of improvement I’ve documented since beginning this physical training. My first round of 50 timed burpees was 5:35 back on February 20th. Fast forward to last night when I was feeling good and decided to do a 50 burpee sprint for time. Stop watch read 2:35.37. That is ridiculous jump in whatever you want to chalk it up to. Like I said, 1 month left and when that is over – a sigh of relief will be in order. Burpees are getting OLD!!!!

After the May 2nd “Manion” workout, I took several days off to recover before I got back to the grind of things.

May 7
Overhead Squats – 11 weeks into this and still turning up new motions on a regular basis. These jokers were humbling.
5 sets of 10 (45 x 55 x 65 x 75 x 75 lbs)

May 9
I did a repeat of the workout that threatened to undo my dinner only 10 days or so before.
10.9.8…1 Kettlebell swings, squats, and lunges
Time = 9:04 (1 minute and 1 second better than my previous best)

May 10
Every 4 minutes take off running for 550-600 m (the distance around the block). I cranked out splits of 1:39, 1:47, 1:41, 1:45, and busted my butt for a 1:36 on the 5th run.

May 14
Did 150 thrusters with 20 pound hand weights. First 75 with one in each hand, second 75 with just one 20 pound weight. Finished in 12:37.

May 15
First time for this workout of one-handed kettlebell snatches
21x15x9 (each arm) for time of 8 minutes flat.

Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer – by Tim Stark

It’s not often that I read for pleasure but there are a few things that do excite me and one of those, as I’m sure you’ve figured out already if you are a regular reader of the blog, is gardening and especially heirloom varieties of vegetables. I’m not a purist, but I don’t use sprays and I love seeing expressions of folks’ faces when they say “What! That’s a tomato?”.

I got this book off Amazon a couple months ago and once I started reading it, I polished it off in about a 2 week span. Doesn’t sound like speed reading, but considering more than 5 pages at a sitting reading anything puts me out like a light, I read it pretty quick.

I would highly recommend the book to anyone who considers gardening heirloom vegetables to be one of their favorite hobbies. It chronicles a guy’s progression from paper pusher in New York City to raising some experimental tomato seedlings to being a high profile supplier of beautiful produce to top New York City chefs and the general public at Union Square Greenmarket. He’s a great writer with a good bit of humor and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anyways, a bit of a random post, but that’s all I’ve got for today.

Hit the river Friday morning for a couple hours. Spent the first 2 hours paddling upstream a small tributary looking for the mythical shoals that we thought existed. Apparently, they were a figment of our imaginations and all we accomplished was getting some sore shoulders.

I did make a few casts at the point where we turned around and caught this tiny shoal bass.

When we finally made it back out to the main river, we ventured up into some shoals that held quite a good variety of species. We reeled in spotted bass, shoal bass, striped bass, redbreast sunfish, and saw spotted gar, longnose gar, quillback suckers, some other kind of sucker, and common carp. It was quite the smorgasbord and we had a great time watching fish inhale flukes as we worked seams in the currents and structure in the pools.

Pete had the fish of the trip on several times but ended up losing a 3 poundish shoal bass and 3 to 4 pound striper. He also landed a couple solid 2 pound shoalies and spotted bass.

I must have missed 8 or 10 shots on gar, but finally managed to hit this quillback sucker – my first ever of the species.

Minus the gully washer last night that put half my soil in the woods, my garden has been finally living up to expectations. I’ve got an Early Girl tomato already ripening, been eating banana/jalapeno/bell peppers for a few days, eating beets and carrots until I’m sick of them, picking beans every day, snatched my first yellow squash this morning, and watching zucchini and cucumbers that are on the verge of being picked. Produce is getting ready to hit its stride and I’ll be basically buried with veggies for the next 3 or 4 months once it does.

I’ve never planted green varieties except Blue Lake because I’ve always had great luck with them. This year I ventured into heirloom bean varieties a bit – Golden Wax Beans, Dragon Tongues, and a couple other varieties that are just out of the ground and needing trellised badly. The Golden Wax variety came highly recommended and they are delicious, but the Dragon Tongues have a very high water content that makes them the best raw snackers I’ve ever grown. The only bummer is that they lose their bold purple streaks when boiled.

You might also notice that I’ve laid landscaping edge as a barrier between my rich garden soil and my Bermuda grass lawn that creeps worse than the most noxious weeds in the world. Highly recommended for big future time and aggravation savings!