This Playoff Post is about Baseball and Youthful Exuberance

My son (far left) celebrates after his team's first tournament championship.

Sunday is my blogging day, but I don't have much to write about health and fitness today. I did squeeze in a good stairs workout yesterday and avoided eating out despite hectic schedule. But this weekend was a baseball weekend. We had three games today, and we had three yesterday. This is our life right now. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Saturday started with back-to-back Little League games, one for my nine year old, and one for my eleven year old. Then my nine year old headed to a local tournament. For the most part, he plays on this team in the summer, after Little League season, but this tournament happened to be in April. Thus a game Saturday night and three more today.

Long story short, my son's team won the tournament. They were heavy underdogs. In fact, they had already lost twice this year to the team they beat in the championship game. My son really grew through some pressure situations and I'm proud of him, and of all the boys.

My favorite part of watching the World Series is the replays of each fielder running in from their position after the final out to join the celebration. Another parent on the team captured this moment at the end of an eleven hour day of baseball in the photo above. Pure joy. Oh, to be a nine year old boy.

Quick Post on My Wife's IPad

We've had a very good weekend in Seattle, but it has flown by. Our family was at Little League fields from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Saturday. This morning, we had a 30 minute drive to be at a field by 9:00. Got home at 2:30 from that one. Ran some errands and then sat down to write a quick post. Within a minute, I spilled a full glass of water in my lap...and into my laptop! Fortunately, most missed my laptop and I immediately shut it down. So my laptop's airing out on our deck in the unseasonably dry and warm weather and I'm working on my wife's IPad. Basically, this was a good week. Tracking my calories, exercise, sleep, and inboxes on a daily basis has really helped me to focus. I lost another pound and a half. The biggest setback was Thursday night, when I stayed up late finishing my remarks for a big work related event Friday morning. I ate late that night, and Friday was a real mess with greatly diminished discipline. I'm working on a theory that a decent night's sleep is basically a prerequisite to disciplined eating. More on that later, I'm sure. My biggest disappointment was having my first softball game rained out. Bummer! I did OK on activity this week, but running out to my position and back, and running around the bases, is my favorite form of exercise. That's about all for now. If I'm back next week, you'll know my laptop survived a close call with H20. Water, it's good for you, not your electronics.

A Rubric for Tracking My Daily Effort

Warning: About to geek out here... ;-)

I had an epiphany recently. A spiritual epiphany? No. Something that will bring peace and comfort to the world? Unfortunately not. No, this was about how to measure my new CHRZ plan (calorie counting, high intensity interval training, reasonable rest, and zero in-box). A rubric!

Rubrics are a great tool to clarify what improvement and success look like. They are also a way to score behaviors. For your kids in school, often there's a four-point rubric in which a "3" is proficient. A level above is outstanding, while a level below falls a little short. A good rubric makes clear what it takes to move up in whatever it is your trying to improve.

So with CHRZ, a rubric could give me an easy way to track my daily performance, as well as quantifying what great and good enough look like in each area. Here's what I came up with:

What I do is rate myself every day on the CHRZ Rubric by identifying the descriptor that best represents what I did. I then enter the results into a notepad document on my smartphone, the date followed by the rubric score. Yesterday, for example, I recorded "0414 3341". That means on April 14, my eating was a slight calorie deficit, I did moderate exercise, I got a great night's sleep, but I didn't make any progress reducing my email in-box. It takes me about 15 seconds to capture all that information daily.

Here's a little more information about the rubric:

Calories: This is all based on finding my maintenance level of calories. There are lots of free websites that will tell you this, but I now use the My Fitness Pal app. The rule of thumb is that 500 calories per day below maintenance level produces a one pound per week loss and that a 1000 calorie per day deficit equates to a two pound weekly loss. Since I need to lose weight, I've place maintenance level calories as a "2". Since I really can't afford to gain weight, any level of excess calorie intake scores a "1".

HIIT (Exercise): This took a while to figure out, since I don't think I need to exercise every day to be healthy. In fact, that could lead to injury. The High Intensity Interval Training article I cited recently recommends HIIT 2 to 3 days per week, and even with moderate exercise mixed in, I'll need some off days for rest and/or a busy life. A "4" looks like at least 20 minutes of interval training exertion. A "3" is a 30 minute walk or equivalent activity. A "2" means that I took the day off, but got a 3 or 4 the day before. And "1" is anything less than the above.

Rest: This is the most straightforward. If I'm around 7 hours, I'm doing OK. But I feel my best with 8 hours. I can function at 6 hours, but it's best if that's not common. And below 6 hours is a coffee swilling survival test. I measure the night before (not the night after), which will allow me to study how my sleep affects my eating and exercise.

Zero In-box. This may feel like, "One of these things is not like the others," from Sesame Street back in the day. But I am convinced that the state of my in-boxes is a great proxy for my stress level. A "3" means that my main in-box is empty. For me, that's my work email, a constant mega-challenge. Likewise, I earn a "2" with progress towards emptying my biggest in-box. To earn a "4", I need all of my in-boxes to be clear. For me, that's both work (email and actual in-box) and home (family email, my blog related Gmail, my Instapaper reading account, and my DVR cue). You may recognize that zero is more or less impossible (email arrives all the time), so my rule is that one screen or less equals empty. For me, the stress comes from the accumulation of commitments and not knowing what you're missing in what you can't see in a stack, be it real or virtual. The one screen rule (without scrolling), gives me a grace period of about 25 emails, 7 Instapaper articles, and 6 TV shows.

I've tracked my daily score for two weeks now and it's helping me to stay motivated and reflective. Pretty soon, I'll have some interesting results to share as well.

However you track your progress, have a great week!

Stairs in San Francisco

Hi everybody! I've been booked solid the last two weeks, hence the lack of posting. Hopefully you've put all that extra time to good use. ;-)

Actually, last weekend, Shannon and I were in San Francisco for a short getaway and to see good friends who live outside Oakland. I can't imagine not having a good time in the Bay Area, but our day in SF was enhanced that much more by our recent stair training. There are many attractive climbs in the city - so many that there's a web site and a book about them - but we focused on two: the Filbert Stairs and the Greenwich Stairs.

We ascended about 350 steps from Filbert Street up to the iconic Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. You may recognize it from The Amazing Race, one of our family's favorite shows. While we didn't see the show's host Phil up there, we did find amazing views of downtown, Alcatraz, and the Embarcadero (waterfront). We descended the Greenwich stairs and toured North Beach, the "Little Italy" of San Francisco. I replenished after the hill and stair climbing (the hill climbing was worse, by the way) with a slice of pizza at the famous North Beach Pizza. Our day of sight seeing ended at a beautiful park a few stone's throw from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was windy at this point, adding some wave action to the above picture of the landmark bridge.

It was a great trip, and a whirlwind right through Easter Sunday today. In other news, I've been working through the CHRZ plan I introduced six weeks ago (calorie counting, high impact interval training, reasonable rest, and zero inbox). I've made some progress (and experienced some setbacks), but more importantly, I'm gaining a lot of perspective on how I need to live to be at my best. In the upcoming weeks, look for a series of posts on the CHRZ topics.

Hope you're all doing well...and Happy Easter!