Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting 2019 Fitness-Workout thread

Did 16.5 miles on trails on the bike on Sunday, and jacked up my back cleaning up the damage from the "bomb cyclone". Finally starting to feel better so hoping to get some miles in this weekend!

I see a road trip in your future to Oregon you and Jeff Obama will be shredding some trails

If you haven't yet tried it, modern road bikes might get your attention. They are the Ultralight of cycling. It's pretty cool to be powering something that is about as efficient as is possible. I'm not geeked enough to have the numbers at hand but good modern carbon fiber road bikes like my SL4 Roubaix Expert are LIGHT. Also, extremely refined, high quality machines. To quantify that a bit, when climbing I appreciate how they've engineered the frame to be really rigid in the ways that transmit power to the pavement; it feels like power in = power out, though obviously that's not the case. On downhills, the frame again is rigid where it must be and supple in other areas and the bike just carves 35 mph turns like it's on a rail.

It doesn't suck.

Back is still jacked. Worse today than yesterday as of this morning. Hot hands duct taped to my back and Motrin for the day.

I was able to fling a few arrows yesterday but still laying low. New bike came but I didn't even take it out of the box.

Yea.... no.

Treadmill, stair master, hike, pick-up heavy plates, pull on rubber bands.

5 miles with Tiny Elvis; we went earlier today and found the trails much more firmly snow packed, only a few spots where the snow was soft

Added a 3.5mile Merlot hike.
(Things were so much easier when I was the natural.)

Finally found a pair of LaSportiva Akasha’s in my size at REI. Almost as good of a price as Mike. $69.

Nice find!

Good week for me, got to the gym every day with some new workouts to do, courtesy of the trainer. Also finally got a good pair of custom orthotics built by a guy who really knew his stuff, including fused ankles. He pointed out how fusion changes the gait and differnt muscles that I need to work on strengthening, and some that need more stretching.

And shot rifles with a bunch of new hunters on their way to getting their HE cards.

I had to get a HE card to hunt elk in Colorado some years back. It was a strange and, to my mind, quite random and unsafe process. For example, the folks running it were basically a rural family who contracted with the state somehow; it was just set up on their property and was very informal. There was a frightening lack of muzzle awareness among the mostly-young attendees. Basically there was no range officer, just a whole lot of loaded rifles waving around, and as they tried to demonstrate different hunting scenarios, what constituted "down range" changed repeatedly and without clear unambiguous delineation. Hopefully it's better in CO and for that matter, better here now.

That does sound strange and nothing like any class I've been associated with. There's nothing random or unsafe about the classes I've seen. And it sounds like you got some bad instructors who didn't follow the program. Do you recall how many hours you spent in class?

First though, no one contracts with the state for this, all HE instructors are volunteers. Sometimes a paid CPW employee like a DWM will sit in and help, but HE is not their job or focus.

Second, all new instructors have background checks and attend a weekend-long new instructor course and go over the basics of the program. Plus, range safety. Then they get assigned to an experienced team and they go through an apprentice period, and have to attend more seminars to keep their status as instructors.

In class we can only spend about 3 1/2 hours on firearms and safe handling. We drill the four basic rules into the students and tell them that the best way to fail the live fire exercise is to point the muzzle in an unsafe direction. We have replica firearms (non-firing) with all the basic action types and the students have to demonstrate safe handling of those before we ever get to the range. I've taught over 1,000 studens and never seen a student point the muzzle in an unsafe direction, they know better by the time we get to the test.

When we do the live fire we are one-on-one with any students who are inexperienced with firearms. We do our shooting in an indoor range at a gun club and they have their own RSO looking over our shoulder, and they are sticklers. In fact, I forgot to put my glasses on before I walked into the range and he stopped me at the door.

Anyone who had poor muzzle control would be shown the door in a hurry.

well we were two hours and 10 degrees to late getting out today- 5 miles with some sloppy snow (not all sloppy, but most)

CNN was on at the gym today and I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Mueller determined that our president is not a russian spy.

Very motivating.

You've gotta be schitting me, I hadn't heard.

They don't show CNN at my gym, we're predominantly heterosexual.

Yes. Per Mr. Mueller, our president is without guilt.

Very motivating.

And I accept you as a brother regardless.

We are all brothers.

11 miles today. Mostly dry and mud with sections of snowpack/slush.

To be clear, I took the class in OR. It sounds like it's a more formal and MUCH better-run process in CO. Hopefully, what I experienced was the exception.

I think.... maybe 3-4 hours total? It's been a while. The folks doing it (a husband and wife, it appeared) certainly were well-intentioned. But I'm a stickler for sobriety and muzzle control when it comes to being around others with guns; the latter had me skeeved out more than once at the class.

Replica guns would've been AWESOME.

Got my card, and whacked an elk in CO so it was all good.