Training Log: Entry 3204

Alright, first, the boilerplate stuff: I trained today

(5) Axle Mat Pulls
10+5+4x405+chains

My abdominal circumference certainly grew a little, as my belt was tight, but that meant MORE strength on the pull, so that's cool.  Felt my right glute twinge just a little on the second set of pulls, but I think that was primarily ring rust.  Tomorrow we get back to DoggCrapp for earnest.

Now the fun stuff

**CRUISE WRITE UP**

I left on Friday, 8 Mar with WAY too many flight delays and didn't arrive in Orlando until 0130, and didn't get to my hotel until 0240.  Slept until about 0800, we walked to a nearby Denny's where I did a "build your own grandslam" of 6 softboiled eggs and 4 sunny side up, to kickstart the egg count at 10.  Boarded the Disney Fantasy at around noon, debauched myself at lunch with 6 lambchops, copious steak and all sorts of other meaty goodness.  I went through a 3 week famine phase before this and intended to rebound/recomp as hard as possible for the week I'd be on the ship.  Thus began my process of "eat until food sounds like a bad idea, walk around with a 8 month food baby until it goes away, repeat".  I was QUITE a site walking around the pooldeck with a bloated/distended gut and set of abs at the same time.  Suddenly the look of those pro-bodybuilders was making sense to me: to eat THAT much food to be that big is gonna mean having QUITE the gut.

Some "round 1" breakfast plates.  I ALWAYS got at least seconds

The Mrs and I had a special brunch together the next day (day at sea), which was something like 5 courses wherein I ordered 2 of just about everything there.  Because the meal stretched out to over 2 hours, I actually reached fullness early on compared to when I just sit and eat and eat and eat, and at the end I had to leave a few bites of steak behind, but everything there was delicious.

I won't go on too much more about food, as it's all about the same, but I'll stress just how much food I was taking in at every meal of every day, to include the copious amount of butter I was using with each meal.  It was taking a page from the Saxon trio.  But along with that, the dinning staff were absolute ballers, and they got concerned when I would order dessert.  When I explained to them that I preferred meat to dessert, they started brining me out TRIPLE portions of the meat on the menu.  So I got 3 servings of prime rib one night, 3 servings of strip loin, 3 servings of rack of lamb, etc.  Keeping in mind: I was ALREADY ordering two to three entrees each dinner, alongside double appetizers and occasionally a soup.  And, often, the servers would just bring me out something I didn't order, saying "we thought you might still enjoy this".

My kid documented my "steak and egg" total: I ended up at 102 eggs and 54 steaks for the whole cruise

Fun aside: I was eating a LOT of salmon on this cruise, and I one point said "I must have bear in my DNA, because I LOVE salmon", and my amazing Valkyrie of a wife said "Weren't berserkers supposed to have channeled bear spirits?  That would explain things".  I married up gets.

On the cruise itself, I got to explore Mayan ruins in Cozumel, wherein I learned that the Cozumel Mayans did NOT engage in human sacrifice: their population was so small that agriculture was non-viable, so they survived off hunting and honey from a local stingless bee (which I ended up purchasing...the honey, not the bee).  OG carnivores: I wanna learn more about them.  We also toured a Mayan chocolate company, that made chocolate in the traditional style.  That was fascinating to watch.

After that, we went to Grand Cayman, and basically just got off the boat so my kid could check another country off their list.  Walked around a little, did some shopping, went back. 

We went to Jamaica and did some ziplining.  That was a blast.  Also tried some jerk pork and chicken and found out I still have a decent spice tolerance.

Disney's Private Island was an absolute blast.  We started the day running the Castaway Cay 5k, which was the first time I'd run...in a year?  Maybe.  Speaking of, I have to run 10 miles in about 2 weeks, so that's cool.  After the run, we went parasailing, which is something I did once when I was 16.  All 3 of us got to go up at the same time, which was amazing.  I then did some open ocean swimming, which I no joke don't think I've swam since college, and I've become significantly less buoyant, so it was an AMAZING challenge.  My heart was going like a jackhammer.  I honestly got hooked on that: it was an absolute blast, so much so that, I did a bunch of it BEFORE we went to the on beach BBQ buffet and I ate almost an entire rotisserie chicken alongside 3 burger patties, a hot dog, some ribs (had to towel the sauce off it) and some brisket, then went right back into the ocean to try to swim off the food baby, since I felt like a beached whale.  

That beach photo is of me in the wonderful afterglow.

We had some incredible shows on the ship as well: Aladdin, Frozen, Disney's "Believe", and some other great performances.  My kid had a blast, the whole experience as magical.

I DID manage to get in some workouts too.  I'd start each morning with a killer tabata workout: 15 prisoner squats on the 20s and 10 push ups on the 10s.  When I first did it, I'd peter out around round 5, but by the end of the cruise, I could get all the way through.  We also ONLY took the stairs, never the elevators, wand frequently got around 15-20k steps a day that way, with our beach day being about 26k steps.  I snuck to the ship gym a few times, when we had downtime, and did 1 "GI JANE" WOD in about 17 minutes (had to legit jump to get the pull up bar this time), one bro pump workout of DB seated overhead press down to DB flat bench (taking the bench down an incline notch each set) and a bunch of lat pulldowns, and one legit DC Day B workout using machines and dumbbells, culminating in me doing the entire stack of the machine leg press for 10 reps, then knocking off 100lbs and doing a 27 rep widowmaker.  Otherwise, lots of walking on the pooldeck to get in some sun.

I honestly could write more and more, but it was just a great time all around.

Oh yeah, forgot: I bought the PERFECT shirt on the cruise as well