After reaching 4000 pullups not so long ago, I had a patchy few days so I decided to set a mini goal. I aimed to reach 5000 by the end of saturday, which required maintaining a decent daily rate for 4 days, allowing me to take sunday off guilt-free.
As it happens, I managed 2 days of over 100 pullups so I decided to push hard on friday to see how close I could get.
I pulled off 175 pullups, beating my previous daily best by 25 and taking my total to 5001 (and giving me the chance to take 2 days off).
So that’s 25% of my goal. Perhaps a reasonable time to remind people to head over to justgiving.com/20000pullups and donate some money to my cause.
The last few weeks have been pretty disruptive, what with Hannah having her PFO closure operation at the London Heart Hospital and such. I’ve struggled to consistently maintain a decent number of repetitions as you can see from the graph. Fatigue and busyness have been annoying me, but I did make it to 4000 pullups a few days ago and I’m a few hundred pullups ahead of schedule so I’m still on target. It’s getting harder to keep it up, though.
I’ve had a flaky week or so, what with Hannah’s health and what not. I’ve kept the pullups ticking over, but missed a couple of days. Today I started out well with a couple of sets before breakfast and some more mid-morning.
When I updated my spreadsheet, I noticed I was within 53 of hitting 2000 pullups. I figured I could push on through and have just completed my 129th pullup today (a daily record), taking me to 2006 pullups so far.
10% feels pretty good, and I’m over 500 over my cumulative target so pretty pleased with that. I’m also improving how many pullups I can do in a set. A few weeks ago it felt like I was never going to be able to do more than 5 pullups (I could do at least 10 chinups, somehow they’re much easier), but I can comfortably do 7 now, so it’s improving gradually.
In terms of fundraising, I think I’m stuck by the fact that the Royal Berks Cardiac Care Unit isn’t a registered charity in its own right. The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is, but doesn’t appear to be registered with any online giving sites. Justgiving and others all seem to charge £150+ for registration and then Justgiving charges the charity a monthly fee AND a per-transaction processing fee. Hmph.
I’m looking at using paypal or google checkout or nochex to take sponsorship. If you have any ideas, please let me know.
What with all my research into barefooting and minimal shoes, it’s bothered me that many of the shoes that Oscar wears are kind of clunky and inflexible, or have a heel.
We know about Soft Star Shoes in the US, but there isn’t anywhere in the UK that does anything like that for adults that I’m aware of. Terra Plana do some nice shoes, but are on the pricy side.
Recently Hannah found out about Daisy Roots, who make the sort of footwear you see on toddlers, but do it up to a size suitable for 3-4 year olds. We ordered a couple of pairs, and they arrived today.
I put a pair on Oscar when he got back and he immediately wanted to get out of the car and try them out. Here’s a video of him:
He literally just ran in circles, laughing and shouted “Daddy, I love this!”. They might be a bit big, as he’s scuffing a bit as he runs but the next size down seemed a little too small.
We got two pairs:
All in all, highly recommended if unfortunately limited in the long-term. The largest size will be fine for quite a while, giving us a chance to find an alternative longer term.
Today I hit the target that I wasn’t aiming to hit until December! I managed 100 pullups in one day, in many sets, maximum set of 10 a couple of times.
It means I can relax a bit and take a chunk of a few days to recover, as I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated about how many I can do in one set. I can do a set of 10 pullups, but still only 5 chinups with the 5th generally quite a struggle. If I take 3 or 4 days of in a block I shall probably see some improvement.
Over the weekend, I quietly reached a little milestone.
That’s right, I’ve done over 1000 pullups. 5% of the way towards my goal. There are an awful lot more to do, but it feels good to have made that milestone. Especially since my shoulder was giving me some real gyp (cue ratholing into etymology of that term, I stand by it despite mild issues with racial slurs) and I was worried I was going to have to take real rest or give up.
Instead, I have been able to overcome the problem. I have taken great care with my form, and rested when I felt it was necessary. On good days, I’ve far exceeded my target so that I can rest on other days. My barefoot running has taught me well in this area. My barefoot running peers are always harping on about “listening to your body” and it seems to work in more general practice. I have so far failed to find the best resource for learning “good form”, but instead have just paid attention to what feels right, but avoids imbalances (like a limp, but in the shoulder).
I’m not much further forward with sponsorship. I contacted the Cardiac Care Unit at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, and I am awaiting some information from them. There is no dedicated charity for the specific area I want to raise money, but there is “The Cardiac Fund” which may be a registered charity. I may then need to convince them to sign up with NotJustGiving (i.e. somebody who won’t fleece them out of an annual fee IN ADDITION TO a 5% cut of the monies raised. grump
Over the last few days, my right shoulder has been feeling a bit dodgy. I don’t want to stop or cut back the pullups too much yet, but I did think a bit of rest could help.
Yesterday, I did all my pullups before breakfast, and today I waited until late evening, giving myself about 36 hours “off”. Also, this evening, I focussed almost entirely on chinups, as they seem to stress the shoulder less. They’ll also give me bulging biceps (did I mention I already noticed a difference there?).
Still no answer on how to actually collect sponsorship for the Royal Berks Cardiac Care Unit, but I’ll call them tomorrow and see if I can get anywhere.
For the last couple of days, my right shoulder has been grumbling. I think it’s from doing the Pullups “fully-extended” so I’ve been taking care on form and keeping the sets small; something helped by the fact that they’re really hard!
I’ll have to read up on correct form and shoulder anatomy. “Rotation Cuff” seems to come to mind, probably from misspent youth reading Men’s Health.
