I had a fantastic workout this morning so you know somewhere I hit the wall.

I got up like I do every morning at 2:30 by the clarion call of my Garmin to raise up my butter stein of coffee and celebrate another day of being ALIVE. After a bit of tidying up the dishes and kicking off the clothes queue, I went through my 16-point inspection of stretches and sun salutation sequence. For now, I only press deep into the maneuver a couple of times to just warm up and hit anything the prior stretches may have missed.

It was a Shoulders Day: 5x15 of Arnold presses, sitting rear lateral raises, and upright rows—this one is tricky in context to this healing forearm and specifically weighted to work—nothing close to redlining it! Unfortunately, the left forearm/shoulders just look out the window and watch the scenery pass.

But one element of this routine has evolved: I don't really rest between sets. I have that 1 minute between sets, but instead of resting (or cleaning), I turn the thing into supersets of Taekwondo. I slap in 15-30 kicks, forms, or just stances. I'll get in a front, middle, or back stance. One of the benefits of the stances is just to stretch and build my legs. In particular, a right back stance puts stress on my injury from August 2022 (below and to the left of my patella) AND my current issue with its related quad. Controlled stress is a wonderful thing!

I finished all of that and began my scheduled 5-mile cardio route. But a little bit more than a mile in I thought, "No, I'm going on an adventure."

As I walked on January 1, I thought to myself how I would like to walk down every road of MY Bartlett, the hometown I knew in 1996. Maybe I could skip cul-de-sacs. While I've been route driven in 2024, after plugging the KML data from Dec 8 to present into Google's My Map, my first thought of the amalgamation is Stranger Things season 2. And some of the roads come off as the cabling trunk leading to the backside of a network rack.

This morning, the last 4/10 stretch of the 5.4 miles was terribly hard, even if my heart rate was among the lowest of the miles. It's a good place to be because I was growing, but the fun element was lost. It's weird because I felt worse than in my 8-mile walks.

Why? I dunno. On my long walks, I don't lift prior. And maybe since yesterday was a fat focus day (239/14), it contributed something to it? I just know I reached that lovely place where I was happy to leave my mouth hanging open catching flies as I clumped home.

For the past couple of days I've been doing something new: behaving like a crazy person in the shower. OK, so that was my initial impression as I poured 6 cups of warm coffee over my head.

Yes, I'm trying out coffee as a shampoo! It came to me as I read this ingredient to my Old Spice shampoo: caffeine. Plus, there was that whole PAIN-FULL incident the other day of having a gel pop back onto my eyeball.

I have since learned that I'm not the only one that uses coffee. Apparently, it promotes hair growth and dyes hair darker—what 40-something-year-old man doesn't like THAT? And it leaves my hair oh so SOFT and FLUFFY!

While cheap, I cannot suggest going with old Folger's. That smell. But, a cherry from ALDI? I might have to try a bit of that egg nog coffee to fully climb aboard the crazy train.