Hey guys, happy Friday!
Let’s start with my diet… and the fact that it’s an open question as to whether or not it’s working. I feel like I look better, but when I weighed myself on Wednesday before lifting weights, I came in at a whopping 197 lbs! That’s a pound heavier than I was when I started two weeks ago and two pounds heavier than when I weighed myself last Saturday.
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| I been eatin' a TON of this stuff. |
Now I know that weight—and specifically water weight—can fluctuate significantly over the course of a given day or week, but still, this is not the kind of progress that I was hoping to see here. I’ve been back in the gym for a couple of weeks now, so it’s entirely possible that I’ve lost fat but gained some small amount of muscle mass, but to be fair, I’d have thought it would take longer than two weeks to put on a measurable amount of muscle. So right now I’m stumped.
Either way, weight gain is not a positive for me. I mean, yeah, having more muscle mass is not necessarily less healthy than simply being slender, and it may even look better, but as an endurance athlete, I happen to know that the extra muscle isn’t necessarily helping, either. This is why I don’t typically spend much time in the weight room during the meat of the triathlon season. Because I tend to put the weight on in my chest and shoulders, and that makes it basically superfluous when I’m on the bike or running.
I’ve been tracking my calories carefully, and I’d really hoped to see some genuine weight loss. If that’s not in my future, I’ll be really sad. That said, I plan to stay in the weight room through the balance of the offseason one way or another. I feel like I need to get stronger, and in any event, I also know that I need a change of pace. Still, I do not want the outcome of my diet to be huge, ungainly fatness.
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Marvel announced this week that they’ve succeeded in getting writer/director Joss Whedon back on board for Avengers 2. That’s news because Whedon had supposedly said beforehand that he felt like doing these Avengers movies was an awful lot of work to put into what he felt was ultimately somebody else’s story. To handle that problem, Marvel apparently gave Whedon the keys to the kingdom. Not only is he writing and directing Avengers 2, he’s also basically in charge of the creative direction of the Marvel movie universe in general, and he’s gonna have some kind of a hand in Marvel’s new SHIELD TV show.
Wow. Not a bad gig, right?
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While we’re talking about Marvel, Fox announced this week that they’re going to miss the production deadline for a new Daredevil movie, meaning that the rights to Daredevil will now revert to Marvel/Disney. However, the rumor is that Marvel/Disney offered to let Fox keep Daredevil in exchange for the movie rights to Galactus and the Silver Surfer, both of whom appear in 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four 2.
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| A shot of the Guardians of the Galaxy from a recent issue of Avengers Assemble. |
Despite the fact that both companies have denied this rumor, I can easily believe that it’s true. First off, it makes sense. What with their showing Thanos at the end of the Avengers and then their announcingGuardians of the Galaxy as an upcoming project for 2014, it seems obvious that Marvel’s movie universe is headed in a distinctly cosmic direction. Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer in particular is an ongoing foe of Thanos while Galactus is probably the biggest bully on the block in Marvel’s more cosmic comic books. Both of these guys would fit well with what Marvel seems to have going on right now.
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| The Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil was awesome. |
With all of that said, I personally would like to see Marvel scrap the SHIELD TV show, add Adam Warlock to the Guardians’ roster in lieu of whatever they had planned for the Surfer, and then begin production on aDaredevil TV show. I’ve discussed my love for the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil in this space before, and like a lot of people, that’s a run that I think would be perfect for adaptation to television. It’s a dialogue-heavy character piece that’s light on wacko special effects-type stuff, and it went on forever. There’s plenty there to mine for an ongoing story. It’s also dark-and-gritty crime fiction, and that stuff is all the rage on TV these days.
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Readership on this blog still isn't back up to where it was before my month-long break during our recent crisis at work. I'm a little frustrated with that, but I confess that I'm not at all sure how to get the word out about what we've got going on here. I feel like this is a decent blog—mostly readable and updated every single day. But while I can get a spike in readership by reviewing something popular and then posting the review on the subject’s Facebook page, getting those casual readers to then stick around hasn't been at all easy.
I realize that one of the challenges with this blog is the fact that, bottom line, it’s not really about anything. It’s not, for example, your one-stop-shop for triathlon. Or comics. Or even craft beer. And “crazy mad science” isn’t even a real thing. Still, I like writing this blog, I don’t think of it as a get-rich-quick scheme, and most of the time, I’m reasonably proud of what’s here. And even on the days when all I put up is aYouTube video, at least you can still come here and see that.
So, loyal reader(s), have you got any thoughts on how we grow our readership? I’d love to have more comments and more discussion, but fact is, first we need a critical mass of readers, and frankly, we’ve yet to build that. That said, I’m certainly open to your suggestions.
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| One of the creepy Olympic mascots coming out of T1. |
On a related note, I've been asked to write for about.triathlon.com, and I've tentatively said yes. My first article is gonna be "How Do I Know If Triathlon Is Right for Me." I have an idea and a basic outline, but at this point, I still need to sit down and hammer the thing out, hopefully this weekend. I started working on it the other day, but I didn't like the first draft much, and I don't want to turn in something I don't love for my first piece. That said, the main reason I accepted the gig over there was to try to drive traffic here, so...
Y'know, I'm constantly amazed by how many folks are interested in triathlon. It seems like kind of a niche sport to me. Granted, almost everyone can swim, bike, and run, but even a Sprint Tri is gonna last more than an hour, and the number of folks who're actually good at even two of the three disciplines isn't huge.
Maybe it’s just the challenge of the thing? Or the sexiness? I don’t know.
I personally like triathlon because with three separate disciplines, plus nutrition and yoga, it’s something different every day. But that’s just me, and I hardly expect that the rest of the world is marching to the beat of my particular drum. And even then, I’ve been ready for a break from tri for more than a year now.
Are you a fan of triathlon? Why do you like it?
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Finally, a recent study shows that both men and women tend to be happier in their marriages when the wife has a lower body mass index than the husband. That seems like common sense to me when considered anecdotally, but I suppose it’s surprising in the context of a scientific survey. I mean, why should men be more demanding of their mates than women? Don’t women also care what their spouses look and feel like? Honestly, I’d have though that the best case scenario was relative equality in the marriage, with both spouses in at least reasonably good physical condition. But no, apparently the men want to feel like they’ve overachieved slightly.
In the same article, however, they reference another recent study that shows that men who’re under stress tend to prefer heavier women. Which is interesting, right? The article in question suggestions evolutionary reasons why stressed out guys might want women with relatively more fat stores on their bodies, but it then goes on to note that men who’re stressed tend to find all women relatively more attractive than do men without stress.
I take all of that to mean that when things are going badly, men will go where they can to find comfort. But when they’re fat and happy, they tend to be choosier and more conscious of societal norms than they would otherwise be.
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That’s all I’ve got. Have a great weekend!
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