A lot of eggs.

Workout today was good. 900 is a lot of jump ropes. I've been trying to break it down into sets of 200 instead of just 100 as that seems to make it go by a little faster. I can get through the first set usually without any trips. After that though, depends on how tired/eager I am. Somewhere around jump 400 I start to feel the burn in my calves, which incidentally, are already noticeably more defined than pre PCP.

The rest of the workouts are pretty smooth now. Not that I mean they are easy, they still burn like hell, but I feel like I have a good idea of what I'm doing, and I get a pretty constant burn through all of them. I bought a 5lb resistance band to do the davinci's and shoulder raisesas my 15lb one that I bought first, I couldn't even get one rep up to the appropriate height. I still use the heavier one for rowing/ovations/curls though. Speaking of which, the outside curls made that little bump on my elbow pop again. I found that if I just don't release the arm quite all the way down, it's fine. This also actually keeps the muscles more heavily engaged the whole time, so is probably better anyway. Later today I plan to install my new pull up bar, so I can start doing real pull ups.

As I was perusing my various Magic strategy sites after my workout (trying to play at the obscene standards that I hold myself to takes a lot of time outside the game as well) I stumbled across an interesting article. This appears to be the launch of a new column that I will probably follow quite eagerly. What struck me about this article is that it absolutely nails what I love about gaming, and why I feel it is relevant to far more than just my leisure hours.

One of the things that you'll notice is that he compares Magic, and games in general, to other meditative activities, such as yoga, as something that "stills the writhing mind." This is absolutely true for me. When I play magic, that's all I'm doing. My mind is not focused on any of my outside stresses, and is completely absorbed in playing the best game of magic I can play. This also happens to me in other games. When I play a fighting game that I know well (the best example for me is Soul Calibur II on Game Cube) my mind is almost completely blank. All the combos and maneuvers I execute are no longer coming from conscious thought and execution, that would be too slow to respond, but rather from some deeper intuition that does not take the time to verbalize itself in my mind. That is to say, there is no inner monologue, I am just in the game. This must be what people talk about when they refer to being "in the zone."

My point is that you should all at least look at this article because for me a lot of the things it points out, I see manifest when I am doing my workouts. I think I am also already seeing the effects of PCP in heightening my mental magic game. This weekend there is a sealed (that is you get a bunch of packs to build your deck from) Grand Prix Trial to earn some byes for Grand Prix Boston later this summer. I'll let you all know how it goes and if I think PCP helped me at all.

Also, I might finally be getting tired of eggs. They're still fine, but I'm nowhere near as excited to eat them as I was. 5 a day is a lot.