Facebook frenzy, Gory Olympus, Wicked wind, FGCU, Tarpons

So late last week I received an email from Facebook saying that I had just hit 100 likes on my Dufisthenics FB page. Dufisthenics is a bodyweight fitness oriented blog that I have had going for over a year. Anyway, Facebook said that they were giving me $50 in Facebook ad credits that I could use to promote the site.

I was kind of skeptical of the effectiveness of FB paid ads but if it wasn’t going to cost me anything I figured I might as well try it out.  I set up my ad and budgeted it to use $10 of ad dollars per day for 5 days.   It didn’t take very long till I received an email notification that I had a new Dufisthenics like.  Shortly I received another, and another, the flow of new likes was very steady.  All of a sudden Dufisthenics was getting in front of all of these people I had no connection to whatsoever.

Now 4 days into my ad campaign, I look at the stats for my ad.  The click through rate was a small 1/4 of 1 percent, but it was put in front of close to 7000 people. That tiny percentage has now more than doubled my total likes on the page which now sits around 225.   That is a HUGE response.  I am now a FB ad believer. The trick now is posting content that these new FB followers find interesting.

Saturday morning I had a race to time, the only event on the calendar that is actually held on the beach.  It is my least favorite event because of the clean up involved after the race.  Not only did I have to clean the very sandy timing mat, I also had to wash every timing chip that was used since they all had a a gritty coating.

Other than clean up, the timing of the event went smoothly.  I was off site a little after 9AM.

I made arrangements to go see a movie with Ali Saturday night.  In the back of my mind I thought it might be nice if I got a short nap in beforehand.  Unfortunately my workload had no breaks in it.  By the time I got done doing all of the post race clean up, weeding, mowing and weed whacking the property I had about 25 minutes left to take a shower and head out the door.

The movie we decided to see was Olympus has Fallen, starring Gerard Butler, the man who indirectly got me interested in bodyweight work outs after reading about the “300 workout” many of the actors in the film 300 participated in.  King Leonidas is one of my favorite characters of all time.

So anyway the premise of the movie is North Koreans manage to attack the White House and the only thing between them and success is Gerard Butler.  The movie had all of the ingredients of an action film I normally like, non-stop action, crazy special effects and violence. But in this case a rare thing happened, the film actually went a little too heavy on the graphic violence for my tastes.

There were way too many and unnecessary up close and personal shots.  Ok fine, if you want to show a few head shots to portray the brutality of a scene, fine.  But it seemed the film pigged out on head shots and was over indulgent in gratuitous violence.   Coming from me, someone whom has grown up on violent films, that is saying a lot.  For me it clearly stepped over the line, a line which I didn’t really know existed although the last Rambo movie probably crossed it as well.

The movie certainly didn’t do much to make me feel good about the fighting ability of the secret service.  I find it hard to believe the agents would come marching out of a narrow doorway revolutionary war style as human target practice when a North Korean heavy artillery machine gun is ripping holes into the front of the building.

Gerard Butlers character seemed like he was a mutant combo of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He killed Koreans like he was tying his shoes.  I love Gerard but damn it was a little silly, even for me.

After the movie I heard the mostly senior crowd making comments about it, some saying they thought the premise of North Korea launching a ground attack on the White House as ludicrous while others said after 9-11 nothing was out of bounds.  I was somewhere in the middle.

So anyway, overall the overuse of violence as a story telling tool took away from my overall enjoyment of the movie but it definitely delivered on excitement, drama and adrenalin. B+  I kind of expected Ali to be more turned off by the violence than she was.  She wrote it off as the way the world is, always turning up the (violence) dial until it hits the final detente.

Sunday morning I originally had ideas of doing a long approximately 25 mile ride followed by a swim at the water park.  However when I woke up the skies looked very stormy and the trees were getting blown around.  I also got a later start than I planned so I modified my plans down to the standard 12.5 mile ride and a 1200 swim.

On the ride out I had the ferocious wind at my back.  I enjoyed being pushed to speeds over 25 mph at times but knew I was going to be paying dearly on the ride back in.  I was right.  The ride back was brutal.

I spent the entire time down on my drops, trying to make my long frame as aerodynamic as possible.  At times gusts knocked my speed all the way down into the 11’s.  There were several moments where I just wanted to stop, my quads and hips were burning.

The lighting fast first half of the ride followed by the pulling a parachute second half averaged out to about 17.5 mph overall for the ride.  I was surely glad I opted for doing the short course, I was exhausted.  The 1200 swim went pretty well.  My speed actually wasn’t as strong as the week before but my endurance felt better.

Late yesterday afternoon I went to the opening game for the Tarpons.  My season ticket seats are in a nice spot although there were plenty of other open seats available.  If I were to guess the place might have been 20% full.  The game was close, something unusual when compared to last season when every regular season game we saw was a huge blowout win.  The Tarpons prevailed in the end, holding on to a narrow 5 point lead by snagging an interception in the final minute.

It’s been very cool watching FGCU, which is only 12 miles up the highway from us, have their historic run in the NCAA tournament.  The school only came into existence in 1997 and only become eligible for the tourney last year.  Their success is really going to put the school on the map and should have a huge positive impact on their future recruiting efforts.  Our entire area has Eagle Fever.