I'm at a seven

Everyday when I come in tot he office, as well as sometimes at other parts of the day, a certain coworker asks me where I am. She is referencing my scale of contentedness v. disgruntleness. Recently i have been averaging around a 2.5 and I rarely break a 5. Today I came in at a 7.

I don't know if there is anything particularly great about today or if it that I worked hard yesterday and my workload today compared to what is has been recently seems manageable. This month has been crazy at work. I have been averaging one day in the office per week. The last week of April I worked in the office on Monday, but then had to go our annual in-service training for the rest of that week in order to keep my certification as a sworn officer. The following week I returned on Monday and spent the entire day catching up on email and paperwork regarding only one of my duties. Tuesday and Wednesday were normal, but on Wednesday Day I was told I needed to take the rest of the week off.

The North Carolina budget is way past it's normal deficit and we have been banned from having any over-time. My boss takes this directive very seriously and makes me take off any overtime from travelling to training, etc as soon as he realizes I have it.  So he made me take the rest of that week off in order to clear our books of all of my time. The beginning of the following week started with going out of town for two days of tactical training. I returned on Wednesday to be told to take the rest of the week off in order to clear the books again. I returned this week to go to training on Monday and will be sent home one day this week.

It has been tough to complete a week's worth of work in only a day a week, but yesterday I was on the grind all day and got caught up on all of my paperwork and made a large dent int he counselling contacts i have to complete by the end of the month.

Training has not been as productive. I did not have time to workout due to leaving early and returning late on Monday, on Tuesday as much as I needed to workout I decided to take the day off from training as all the soreness of from the weekend finally set in.

Yesterday, I refocused and decided that what I would do is change my rest day from Saturday to Monday and pull an extra two-a-day sometime doing the week in order to make up for Tuesday's swim. Easy Peasy. I got home lat last night from work, given the limited time I was still motivated to get in SOMETHING. I started into the brick that had been planned for Monday. Knowing I did not have time to complete the entire thing, I decided to cut each leg in half but push harder.

Since my bike is slated for the shop, I had to ride on a trainer at the Y. The ride was only 7 miles, but I pushed myself into harder gears shooting to stay as close to 300 watts as I could while keeping rpm's over 95. The run was planned for 4 miles with a 2mile warm up and 2 miles at 10k pace, instead I ran the hilliest route I could find for 2.5 miles as fast as I could. Although it was short, I felt (and still feel amped) and am looking forward to lifting at lunch today and a swim this evening, with a speed work run a possibility if I have time.

I could of things are coming in the future: I got a new Hydrapak to test from Devon at Outside PR and will be doing a giveaway for Peter Rabbit Organics. Lastly, lately i have been watching my weight but not as much as I did last year- I have been more interested in watching my body fat percentage. It is at 17%. According to the chart I looked at that puts me in the fit bracket. I did not realize I had bypassed average and moved into to fit. This would be the first time in my life I have been in either of those categories. I am HAPPY! I would love to get down to the athlete bracket. Body fat percentage aside I would like to set my targets on losing my last 15 pounds. In fact, I will settle for 10 putting me at 170. Weight loss has been very slow going, but consistent, since the beginning of the year. Does anyone have any suggestions for breaking a weightloss plateau?

Also, a few other bloggers and my wife have suggested that i change the name of the blog. I will do this when my eight drops under 170 lbs. I have no idea what to rename it and would love to hear suggestions. I am thinking something with "or Die" in it as an homage to "manly" Chris, but I am not stuck to this rule. Maybe I can even talk someone in to doing a custom header for a new blog for me too so i can be just like him.... on second though maybe not.