Robby Prenkert

After I finish my next half-marathon, unless I get very inspired and decide to register for the marathon in Indianapolis in November, I intend to do the full 90 days of my modified P90x. It’s been awhile.

This is how I roll with P90x with my modifications in the first round.

1. Chest & Back + Ab-ripper.
2. Plyometrics
3. Run 5-6 miles
4. Shoulders & Arms + Ab-ripper
5. 30 minute yoga (P90x3 or Sean Vigue), 3-4 mile run.
6. Legs & Back + Ab-ripper
7. 8+ mile run.

I add running because I don’t want to lose the ground I’ve gained from my running, but it’s only 3 runs per week and not particularly high milage. The long runs might build to 12-14 miles depending on how I’m feeling. I do a much shorter yoga workout because the marathon yoga-x session is over-kill in my book, and then I can run that day. I skip Kenpo because I hated it, and run instead.

If this ends up being too much pounding on my body, I will simply modify as I go.

I’ll document my progress with stats and photos here on my blog and, perhaps, on Instagram.

I went to see Baugo again on a Monday after work. He was sitting on his front porch reading a book; his dog rushed out to greet me, tail wagging. 

Baugo motioned me up to the porch with a smile, motioned at the rocker beside his own.

”Hello again. What brings you up here?”

”I had another question about my failure,” I said.

”You think too much about this, you know.” He looked off toward the tree tops.

”I know I do,” I said.

Then he didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time. We just sat there, I petting his dog, he contemplating the wind in the maples or the clouds. Who knows?


”Will it ever get any better?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me when he replied. He simply said to the treetops: “Seasons come and seasons go. You know the wind in those trees makes them grow stronger? Grow a tree in a windless place and it doesn’t spread its roots like these have. The weight of the snow in winter, too, makes the branches grow stronger.”

He paused, but I knew there was more.

”Sure, some times the wind or the weight is too much and branches fall. But even so, the tree is usually stronger overall after a bit of nature’s pruning.”

He stood up then. “I got some branches I neeed to haul from the storm last week,” he said. “Sawed them up earlier today. Just need now to put them on the pile, let ‘em dry out. Mak a pretty good fire later this fall or winter.”

I thought he might have some point in all this.

”You know ash is good to sprinkle on the garden in spring? Not too much, just enough. Rake it in, let it work. I use mine from the branch piles I burn most years. Better than fertilizers you buy in the store.”

He walked off the porch and toward the old pick-up in the drive.

”You coming?”

I followed him. I guess I could see his point.

I came to him with my disappointments.

They were all packed in a sack, slung across my back. Some were fresh and sharp, like broken glass. Others were old and dull, but heavy—like stones soaked in grief.

“I have carried these a long way,” I said.

He looked at me with compassion. “And what do you want from me?”

“Hope,” I said.

He nodded slowly, then led me to the garden. It was winter. Nothing bloomed, trees bare, earth frozen.

“Here,” he said, handing me a cracked pot. “Plant something.”

“But it’s not the season,” I said. “Nothing will grow.”

He smiled. “Plant something.”

So I took a handful of the ash-colored soil and put it in the pot. I placed in it a seed he gave me—though it looked more like a pebble. I watered it with a few of my tears.

“Now wait,” he said.

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

I waited, days, weeks. The pot sat on my windowsill, unchanged. I told myself it was foolish to believe. I began to resent the seed, then the pot, then him as well.

At last I returned to him. “It’s still empty,” I said. “Nothing is happening.”

He looked at the pot, then at me. “So it is,” he said. “But tell me—how many times did you check it?”

“Every day.”

“And what did you feel when you looked?”

I paused. “Disappointment. Frustration. But… also a little curiosity. A little wondering. A little… hope.”

He nodded. “Then it is already growing.”

“But nothing has sprouted!”

“Not in the pot,” he said. “In you.”

Today I learned that David Brooks writes from 8-1 each day, trying to produce about 1200 words. When he gets ideas, he writes notes on post-its, which he eventually photocopies onto full size paper, creating stacks of papers on the floor around themes of his notes. He says his composing process involves walking around the room, kneeling to look through notes, to help him develop paragraphs.

In some ways, it sounds like a version of storyboarding.

I’m always fascinated by the writing processes of successful writers. I continute to experiment with and hone my own.

You can listen to him describe his process in the early minutes of this excellent podcast interview.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

I teach (English) at a very large online University. The diabolical ubiquity of A.I. generated discussion posts and replies, marked by a laughable lack of human voice to them, is a depressing problem with no easy solution.

For this reason, I am hoping we might move away from written discussions to audio or video discussions and replies, with clear penalties for students who are quite obviously reading from a script (likely A.I. produced). Or better still, place students in groups of 3-4 and require them to schedule a time each week for a 20 minute live zoom discussion that they must record and submit, perhaps giving a one paragraph key “takeaway” from their discussion.

Something should be done. These discussions—not a great pedagogical practice under the best of circumstances—have now become a joke.