March + April 2025

hello! we’re back! decided to do 2 months together this time so there’s a bit more substance to it. love u

Life Events

Went to my first live rugby game and it! rules! let’s go Exiles, amen.

I’ve made it to a couple Red Sox games as well, one for an MIT event and one for the Patriot’s Day game. Nothing makes me love living in Boston more than the marathon and an 11am baseball game.

Training

rowing

We are back on the water baby!! It was very cold for most of March and I got solidly drenched on the bike ride to the boathouse a couple of times, not very fun. So nice to be around my teammates again. The early season is nice because it’s almost all returning + experienced rowers and we can get some solid meters in. It’ll also be fun to meet all the new folks joining later this year, but you get a lot more variation in the quality of boats. Hard to believe we’re already 2 months into this season.

lifting

Added an additional lifting day at the boathouse Tuesday mornings, bright and early. It’s been fun! Not pushing to failure by any means, it definitely falls into the more strength endurance side of the spectrum. But it’s a great chance to get eyes on my form and get some extra volume. It does mean I’ve needed to rearrange the schedule a bit from lifting Tues/Fri/Sun to Tues/Wed/Fri/Sun to still get my own lifts in. Every time we travel I get annoyed that it’s so hard to find a place to lift that isn’t class-centric, but I kinda get it now. Fun to yap with people while working out!

Here’s the progress so far on the Hepburn plan. The spike is from a deload week where I worked up to a heavy single (~9+ RPE). I’ve come to really like the deload structure from 5/3/1 forever, where these percentages are based off a submaximal training max: 5 x 70% / 3 x 80% / 2 x 90% / 1 x 100% and I add 1 x 110% if the last single feels too light.

My bench in particular has responded really well to the amount of volume here, I’ve been able to regularly hit a 130 overwarmup which was a 5lb PR, which is great to get moving regularly. (Hannah from May checking in as I finish writing this, bench is up to 135 now!). To be able to consistently load 200+ on the barbell for squats without seeing my life flash before my eyes also rocks. I think squat and deadlift both have a couple lbs waiting in the wings if I was to take a proper rest week. On the downside, my overhead press has felt pretty mid so may need to shift to a different progression for that.

This current cycle numbers: squat 200 (owu 220ish), bench 115 (130), deadlift 255 (~285), overhead press 70 (75 lol). You’ll see that the estimated 1 rep maxes in the charts above are lower than the numbers hit in overwarmups, those are estimations only from working sets.

Making

I sewed a pair of pajama pants! that’s crazy! made some real genuine clothes! Might try to replicate it with some linen to make a light pair of summer-y pants.

my main knitting project was finishing up a cape/sweater for my grandma. She did most of the heavy lifting, I just added a collar and made a matching hat to go along with it.

Don’t have any embroidery or cross stitch projects with major updates, I have a bunch of projects in the work but they’re all about 25% done.

Media

reading

Sorcery of Thorns, Margaret Rogerson 3.5/5. Charming little fantasy book. You follow a young librarian warden in training as she (gasp!) meets a sorcerer named Thorn.

The Maidens, Alex Michaelides. 2/5. Enjoyed the start of this, but the resolution of the mystery at the end was SO unbelievable to me that it just ruined the whole thing if we’re being real. Sorry Alex! Reading reviews, seems like one of his prior books, The Silent Patient, is much better received so may check that out at some point.

Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Philips. 2.5/5. Listen, anything with greek mythology in the modern era I will eat! up! and yet during this whole read, wasn’t ever having a particularly good time. It’s not a bad book, just felt fine?

The Poppy War, R. F. Kuang. 4/5, love R.F. Kuang. The main character Rin is definitely morally grey but you really do get invested in her arc and her drive to reach for what she wants. This didn’t hit Babel heights for me, but have already started the sequel.

The Life Impossible, Matt Haig. 3/5, it started better than it ended. Felt a bit as though the message was being smacked over your head towards the end. More elderly women as protagonists!

“it’s okay to want it”, substack by Julia Turshen. LISTEN! this makes me want to compete!

podcasts/videos

lots of Tipping Pitches now that baseball is in full swing.

Fergus Crawley on the TrainingPeaks podcast talking about hybrid athletics.

Alone in the Wilderness documentary. Dick Proenneke lived alone in a cabin he built himself up in the Alaska wilderness. He did get grocery deliveries occasionally by sea plane, but was mostly self-sufficient by hunting, fishing, and farming. Not quite as much of a “reconsider your entire life priorities” punch in your face as The Alpinist was, but an incredible story of a man so content to be alone with himself and the nature around him.

Games

dotAGE a roguelike city builder where you try to generate resources to fight various, it’s DIFFICULT but the turn based mechanic gives you time to reason things out. genuinely have no idea how people succeed on the higher difficulties.

Blue Prince listen. the discourse around this game is absolutely insane. i think it is a masterpiece and has had many moments where i was genuinely gasping and kickin my feet when a new puzzle emerges. HOWEVER! the rng can absolutely be frustrating at times and it seems like there’s a lot of sentiment calling that frustration a skill issue. be so for real right now sometimes a run just doesn’t give you the options you need and it’s okay to get a bit peeved. even so, PLEASE check it out i think this is one of the best games i’ve played in a hot minute

Wanderstop a video game about burnout and making tea. beautiful graphics, it’s from the creator of the Stanley Parable which I’ve never tried but now desperately want to. I’ve been playing it on the steam deck and the graphics perform reasonably well! Battery life is a bit short and you can really hear the fan working though

News Tower in early access. You’re tasked with running a newspaper, building out the physical working space and choosing which leads to follow. I was having a gosh darn good time, but my save was corrupted and I didn’t have the motivation to start from scratch. Such is the risk of an early access game!