Weekly reviews

Weekly Review 20/8/07

These weekly reviews are a just a small sample of what goes on in my life.  I am filling this site with articles to help you in your progress towards your life goals, but I am including these reviews to give you a closer look at my personal progress in action.  This week:

1. I have finalised the planning, and begun the execution of my Super Kanji Challenge.  My tools are : About an hour a day, Remembering the Kanji 1 (an excellent book and flash cards by James Heisig), pencil, paper, stopwatch and uncommonly focused attention.  I am learning the reading of the primary meaning of 2042 kanji at the rate of approximately one every minute.  I have been progressing at over 60 kanji each day and so I will be completing the 2042 in 31 days.  So far I have learnt 300 and I am on fire.  I love short, condensed goals like this.  My next decision is what to do next?  When this challenge is completed should I head straight into learning to pronounce the kanji that I have learnt to read? 
2. On the down side, I have suffered a minor leg injury which has slowed my training over the weekend.  I have had a mildly uncomfortable hamstring since soon after I ran on Friday morning.  Since I am training like an elite athlete, I decided that I couldn’t afford to take the sensation lightly.  I took it easy on Friday and woke up feeling a bit looser on Saturday.  I went out for a test jog and it immediately felt bad again, so I cancelled my run.  I usually spend half of Saturday training on my bike with my team and I decided that this was too risky, so I cancelled this as well.  Instead I took my son in his pram for an easy 8klm walk and then called it quits.  On Sunday, I cancelled my normal long run and just went for an easy 4 km walk.  Today is my rest day and so all I will do is stretch tonight.  I expect to be 100% fit by Tuesday morning.  So far it feels great.  Taking a brief break from training now will have saved me from taking a longer forced break with a serious injury.  That is how an elite athlete would train, and so that is what I do.   I have to look after small issues before they become big issues. 
3. This week I also plotted out my next few goal races.  Next weekend is the Tsukuba 8 hr enduro cycling race and the weekend after is the Kasama century ride.  After these I think the cycling season will be winding down.  I’ve decided to race the Tsukuba Marathon in November.  Next I entered for the Tokyo Marathon in February.  This entry isn’t certain because if the entrants end up over the cutoff of 25,000 people the qualifiers are chosen by lottery.  At the closing date, they had over 100,000 entrants, so I guess there is only 25% chance of getting in.  My next goal race after that is the Canberra Marathon in the middle of April.  So there is the time-line for my running.  Tsukuba will be a progress test, Tokyo (or another close to it if I don’t qualify) is my primary goal, and Canberra will be my second goal.
4. I will make this the last time I write about early rising in these weekly reviews unless something changes.  They are now a part of my life, that is all there is to it.  I get up at 5:00 every week day and usually on Saturdays.  I sit down at this computer and I get a significant chunk of my daily writing down before the world wakes up.  I love it.
5. Another big change began today.  Today was the first day back at work for my wife after her maternity leave.  This means that it is getting back to normal around our house with me working at home with the kids and my wife working away from home.  I will have to write a full article about what this means in practice, so I’ll save it for later

Today I would like to put out a call for comments.  How about taking a couple of minutes to write your own weekly review.  Write it down here for us all to read.  You will encourage us by your progress and you will also reap the benefits of  increasing motivation.  Keep it short and submit it as a comment and include what you are working on and what you have achieved this past week.  You’ll find that it will inspire you as much as it will us. 

Thanks

Tom