Lycopodium Powder!

OK. Everybody knows the coolest part of chemistry in high school was when your teacher stood at the front of the classroom and dropped solid sodium into water and you watched it explode, right? Right. So now about this? We (somehow) managed to stumble across this at work today. Lycopodium Powder. For the less botanically inclined that read this, the Lycopodiums are a Class (King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti, remember) of club mosses. Club mosses are between moss and ferns, evolutionarily speaking. Some people call them mini-evergreens. They literally look like a little club, like 6 inches high, that's green and mossy. Hence, club moss. So...apparently people collect the spores of club moss and sell it as Lycopodium Powder. Good for what? Who knows...but it has a MSDS sheet. MSDS = Material Safety Data Sheet. If you've ever had to work somewhere in the public service industry, your establishement was required to have MSDS sheets for each chemical on its premisis, and you (as an employee) were required by law to know where your MSDS sheets were kept. Whether or not you did, well...different story. See the Lycopodium Powder MSDS here...
Hummadah what? Flammable? Spores are flammable? Well, kinda. I guess the real topic of conversation at work was grain silos. They're demolishing one for the new MN Gopher football stadium (my company did the environmental permitting for it). Which got us on the topic of grain silos exploding because they literally have enough dust in the air which makes the air so dense with carbon in a quasi-pressurized environment that a little spark from loose wiring inside (or a farmer's cigarette) makes the air flammable. From there it's like gunpowder exploding inside a shell, and sometimes the roofs of these exploded silos are propelled some hundreds of feet away. Anyways...despite the advanced ventilation systems these things have nowadays, they still tend to go boom. The MN locals tell me you see one on the news every 5 years or so. What does this have to do with club moss, you ask? Well check out this experiment. This is so badass...If I was a kid and saw this I would idolize whichever teacher performed this experiment in a classroom. Makes you wonder whether this kind of thing can be done with other things...flour, for example. Don't think I've ever seen an MSDS for flour. But then again, I'd never seen one for Lycopodium Powder either...

So goes the throwing...

So I've been lifting pretty hard since August, and throwing the 35# weight (I lost count of the times I've had the following conversation with less than intelligent onlookers: 'What is that?' 'A 35# weight. It's the indoor version of the hammer throw.' 'Cool. Can I hold it?' 'Sure.' 'It's heavy. How much does it weigh?' Riiiiight. One of these conversations was at Rochester Airport when I flew to nationals in Wisconsin my senior year of college. I had to convince they guy that it was less than 50lbs and I shouldn't have to pay more to check it. End aside.) since the beginning of November. I've met some people out here who are training for the Olympics in hammer, and we threw together a few times last season. I picked up some new tips, and really tried to work on them over the fall. Longer double support phase, if you really wanted to know. Anyways, I've been throwing pretty well in practice but I never like to measure so I don't know exactly how far they were going. I also have a tendency not to throw far in practice just because. It's not that I don't try, I just don't really get as psyched up as I do for meets. Speaking of...

I went to my first competition on Saturday. Throwing unattached (as in not for a team and not affiliated with a sponsor) makes you actually think about what you want to wear to compete. In college they give you a uniform. Now I have to come up with something on my own. It can pretty much be whatever I want, but it can't imply any affiliation so I couldn't wear my red SLU shorts....either pair. So that leaves black shorts, or navy blue. Both knee length, come on now, I'm no short shorts thigh showing runner. I like black. Issue though, cause I wanted to wear my new 'ReNew Orleans' shirt. Call it a statement. Whatever. But it's black too. The problem here is you never want to be that guy in black. You just don't do it. Cause then people are like, whoa...he must be NASTY (nasty is good). And I'm not nasty. Same thing with crazy long socks. You can't wear knee high soccer or rugby socks when you're throwing or running. Also implies nastiness. And for women, whatever your event, and stomach baring top means nasty. I saw a women throw in a quasi-sports bra once. But she was nasty. And went to the Olympics a few years later. It was OK for her. The moral is to go plain. But I can't wear navy blue shorts and a black shirt, cause then you're a walking bruise. Oh well, in the end I thought I'd just put off the nasty vibe. I gotta find a pair of maroon shorts though, cause I like my ReNew Orleans shirt.

In the end I drove 2 hours to throw, and did really well. I threw my best by a little more than 5 feet, which isn't really supposed to happen in this event. It was a flow experience. What is flow? Call it getting in the groove. Want to read about it? Here you go...It's a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He's got to be smart with a last name like that. We learned about him in a sports psych class I took at SLU, and I remember it goes "Shick-Zent-Me-High-L-Yee." End coach/nerd talk. So my new technical efforts paid off. Good. I'm also still in the volume part of my lifting, and haven't peaked yet. I hope. So as long as I get through Christmas break - when lifting becomes a little harder - without losing much I think I'll be OK. Then I have to do it again. My throw was on the bubble for the US Championships, so if I can throw a bit farther consistently I will probably get in. Well, the mark will likely get me in (knock on wood) but the consistency is the tough part. You see guys who get lucky and hit one who go and get embarassed by the people who really know what they're doing. I'm not convinced yet, it's still a fluke in my mind. So we'll see. But then I have to buy a plane ticket to Boston...

So after all this I sat around and watched another girl I coach with run the 2 and 400, watched some women throw weight, watched some shot put, and suddenly it's two hours later. You know what happens when you let your body go nuts for a bit (ie. swinging a 35# weight around a bunch of times) but then sit around and do nothing? Oh yeah...legs, back, shoulders stiff as a board. Suffice to say that the 2 hour drive home was less than fun. After a great Saturday I went to lift on Sunday with some of my throwers. We warmed up, then somebody suggested that we play 21 (the 3 person basketball game) for a bit. Because we all had pretty much the same ability level, the game took an hour. During the game I rolled my ankle but just kept playing....adrenaline, you know. Coach triumphs in the end...muahaha. So we go lift, which for me Sunday was mostly just squating 275 as many times as I could. I guess you could call that an off day. Less intense, anyways. I get home and while I'm enjoying Subway Sunday (2 footlongs for 8.99 = fantastic) I kinda realize that my ankle hurts. Then I wake up this morning and can barely move it. It didn't hurt at all during basketball or afterwards while lifting. I don't think the squating helped down there. Poor ankle. Oh well...At least I didn't hit it with a hammer like I did freshman year. I won't be on crutches for 2 weeks from this. Guess I'm taking an off week this week.

So yeah...enough writing to keep you (few) readers good for another long time until I post again.