Pumping Irony

It’s definitely December now (a balmy 24 degrees this morning), so I’ve parked my bicycle in the garage for the next four…

Loyal readers of these pages (yes, you two know who you are) know me to be a bit random in my workout approach.

It used to be that the second day after basketball I’d really feel the pain (it’s called DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness),…

Well, of course I played basketball last night — despite a weird twinge in my left knee and a general whole-body soreness from Sunday’s tennis match/basketball shoot-around. (What did you expect?)

Craig Cox weighs the pros and cons of shooting hoops at the club.

I strive on a fairly regular basis to reduce my natural obliviousness to things (it’s a guy thing), but I do not…

My father died 30 years ago today, so some of my siblings and I (along with my daughter) will be marking the…

Just back from my fourth acupuncture session, during which I noticed that the cicadas between my ears had shifted slightly to the right (an ominous sign for the Obama administration?), leaving my left ear mostly quiet.

I’m sitting at my desk on my front porch this morning watching the October rain threaten to become snow, the kind of weather that correlates nicely with my current mood: Is the bug that hit me yesterday going to morph into something more serious today?

A gorgeous autumn morning for a bike ride. The trees along the Mississippi are beginning to turn and the squirrels in Minnehaha…

Back to the gym last night after a couple of weeks away, and I have to admit I was a little apprehensive when I climbed on the scale before my workout.

Before Monday’s workout, I’d been away from the gym for a couple of weeks (vacation + procrastination), and I’m feeling the effects today: sore shoulders and arms from lifting, mostly.

I put about 20 miles on the Schwinn on Saturday, running various errands with My Lovely Wife.

The holiday weekend lacked fireworks, though our neighbor outfitted his front yard with a red, white and blue light show featuring the music of John Phillip Sousa, Bruce Springsteen and Ray Charles (the latter singing his own stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful”), which debuted the evening of July 3 with much fanfare and, perhaps owing to a visit or two from less patriotic neighbors, did not favor us with an Independence Day encore.

So, as promised in my earlier post, I’m reporting back. And as I suspected, I haven’t been able to get…

It’s been about a week now since I made it downstairs to the gym (lots of evening work recently), so…

I was back in the Pit Monday, lifting and sweating and feeling generally OK about this fitness thing, when I ran into Robyn Wells, an LTF personal trainer who I met recently through my rugby-playing colleague JS. Robyn is a 20-something powerhouse athlete who specializes in teaching us lesser beings how to get the most out of their workouts. And she generously offered to help me out.

No offense, Tony. As promised, I’ve spent the last few days faithfully chronicling my entire food intake, an exercise that…

As previously noted, I’ve been avoiding the free-weights area in the gym because it’s just a bit intimidating — all those large ripped and tattooed guys hoisting megatonnage of iron.

This is fun. Really. Lots of fitness experts suggest that you “shake up” your workouts so they don’t get boring.…