I am few weeks behind my blog but here is the Mt Baldy hike that me and few of my friends did 3 weeks ago. The hike was about 11 miles we took the lift back down and the elevation is from 6000ft to 10000ft, which it was a decent practice for out Cactus to Clouds hike next month. Here are some pictures of the hike.

This was the 2nd time I been to My Baldy. The last time I did it was 2 years ago... in the winter. It was a bid different, because none of us were really prepare to hike in the snow. As you can see in the picture, the hikers behind me are well equipped and the only gear I got was my sunglasses. At this point we really through we would just turn around and call it a day.

Here are my people that did the winter Mt Baldy hike with me.

But then we decided to charge up the hill and see how far we got. Here are the rest of the pictures. We actually drove down a bit because we through it was too dangerous to hike at that elevation without the proper equipment, however we just kept on going and past every hiking groups we saw. We did got very near to the top, however I think we couldn't make it to the peak. I guess I completed the mission 2 years later.

It was more fun doing the hike in the winter, because we didn't know how far we could gone, we kept getting the wtf are these guys doing look from the hikers that we past. I will update the blog on the hike we did in the Bay.

Chino Hills State Park Hike

I drafted this blog 2 weeks back, but since the new update with the Google Blog pushed my update a little behind so let me finish this blog now. Ok so me and my friends are planning to do the Cactus to Clouds hike, so we are trying to prep for the hike by doing mini hikes in between. So we decided to start somewhere local and easy at Chino Hills state park, the trail was close because of construction, but we decided to take a look whats inside anyway.

It was a good starter hike, and we started a bit late at around 5pm. We hiked for 2 hours and covered around 4-5miles. Since it was started to get dark, we decided to turn around and head back. My friend Wayne hiked with us. Don't let his look fool you, he is an unbelievable good hiker. Whenever I see him hike, I got a feeling that he can hike forever.

After the hike, we went to a local spot Mimi house for a quick bite of dinner also we went to play some basketball afterward. Overall it was a good Sunday.

Chino Hill State Park - http://www.yelp.com/biz/chino-hills-state-park-chino-hills#query:chino%20hill%20state%20park

Mimi House - http://www.yelp.com/biz/mimis-house-diamond-bar

Push up log

I been having a pretty good balance of weight lifting and cardio but lately I been lacking on doing the basic exercises such as push-ups and pull-ups. I decided to start a push-ups log and make it public, I hope it will motivate me and people that decide to join the log to do few more push ups, also it will keep track of my progress. The file is public, learned about sharing file from MBA, One of the many useful thing I learned from school. Here is the link feel free to join. Just enter your name on top and log in whatever amount of push ups you do.



Here is the link for the file. You can make yourself Anonymous too!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhwmVmyTvq2KdFk0QjU4cGFBNHVmeFJQZzgwZ0tkQkE
(Don't mind Nick, he is just a GRT buddy of mine that does 600 push ups daily) Also thanks to BEN for keeping up with the log.

Event update, signed up for Long Beach half marathon on Oct 7th. Aiming to beat an hour 35! wish me luck. I post some pictures and publish my time. Also just started my crossfit training. Most likely I will blog about in 2-3 weeks after I get a few classes in.

Ok it is time to get in shape!

I am finally done with school, so guess what? No more school gym access for me. I through about buying the pass for a semester, it would come out to be around $145. I have been debating myself if I want to pay for it since I am not sure where I am going to be in fall. It was a hard decision, but I am going to skip it. I sure will miss the Stairmaster and the Indoor basketball a lot. In the mean time I will try to replace it by playing outdoor basketball again and do more stadium.

I just signed up for Crossfit in Brea. The price was $200 for 45 days, it is a bit steep but I always want to try it and I think it will push me a little bit. Not sure what few weeks of Crossfit would do for me, however hope it will prepare me for a great time in a half marathon, and help me jump higher so I can reach the basketball rim. I did a try out session yesterday, but my official start date is next week. I will for sure update my experience with Crossfit.

Took another step.

I been extremely busy the last month due to school and because of my injuries, I stayed away from weight lifting over the summer. However I will mention that I finally completed my MBA. It took almost 2 years; with some luck I am now officially done with school. MBA was a bit more challenging than I expected. Compared to undergrad, I definitely had to put in some effort, and sometimes I had to spend a week just to prepare for a midterm. My MBA gpa was decent, around 3.15 just a bit over the 3.0gpa requirement for the degree. I didn’t care too much about getting good grades, since I am 99.9% sure that I am not going to pursue a higher degree.

This is my capstone group for my MBA program.

A lot of people been asking me if the MBA was worth it, well I am not sure yet. But I think it is like everything in life, it depends on how you present yourself with it. I can see there are students from the program that won’t benefit much from it because they are extremely shy to express themselves and they won’t try too hard to sell themselves, however there is other group of students that I think benefited from the program greatly. Hopefully for me I can use the MBA to find a career that I want and I can use the degree as an advantage in my career.

The leader of my MBA group also my workout partner over the summer. OK now that school is finally over, I can focus on my fitness goal again between now and my career start. I will update this blog more frequently this month.

Tough Mudder 7/7/2012

Just completed the famous Tough Mudder over the weekend. It was a little bit harder than I thought, maybe because I didn't expect much from it. It had a lot of hills, however pretty much everyone walked it. As I mentioned before, I had a sprained ankle, also torn my shoulder the week before the event so that didn't help. However we got a good group of guys and we stayed though out the whole event.



Team Alpha Dog! at 13 strong. We all looked fresh and ready to rock.




That is me staring at the wire and was wondering how can I get by without getting shock. One thing I fear the most is getting shock. Long story short, I once had a nightmare and that is how I go, and I truly believes it.



This is one of the more challenging obstacle we have to overcome. I failed on my first few attempts, I blame it on my weak friends that wouldn't pull me up. Just kidding all my friends Eric, Steven and David from the Bay did well during the TM. I thought about quitting on this obstacle after I re-injured my shoulder and my ankle from this obstacle. However I saw my friend David made it up the ramp, so I knew I could do it too.



This was a interesting obstacle. It was not that difficult however because my shoulder was hurting, I couldn't swing myself. So I was just hanging on the ring and thinking how am I going to get to the other side without falling into the water. I thought about just jump in the water, but I saw my friend Steven on the other side already looking dry, so I know I can't drop. I think a lot of people was worry about me, but I was pretty confident that I would find a way to make it across.

One of my option was pull myself all the way up to the wood and monkey bar my way across or I would try to go side way and maybe find a way to get across. Anyway I got an assist from my fellow Alpha dog, he kicked me and gave me some momentum to go across.



After the finish line we got a free beer!! Tough Mudder was a great experiences however I don't think I will do it again. Most of the obstacles wasn't that challenging and I think it was a lot of grinding on the body from all the up and down of the hills, however I do recommend people to do it once.

Difficulty I would rate it maybe a little easier than a half marathon, depends on how you approach it. The course is around 12 miles, with obstacles, water and hills in between. however like I said most of the people walked most of it, and with a sore ankle and shoulder I did it and I wasn't that sore after the race.

Here is a video link of the Alpha dogs going though the last obstacle before the finish line. Last Obstacle!!

Quote of the week

Just call the foul, I don't need to hear a police report.

Maxed out 275 6/24

I haven't been blogging lately, I been pretty upset at my injury of the sprained ankle. However a good new is that I finally maxed out 275, every time I go to the gym I try to get this locker "275" to remind myself what my goal is. My bench have been stuck for the past few months (wouldn't benched 270 for atleast 2 months before that) and I was getting pretty upset at myself over the whole "weight room" deal, I even though about taking a break from lifting weight for a while.





I pushed it up pretty easy maybe because since I can't do any much cardio with a sprained ankle, I been spending more time focusing more on lifting weight. Since I can't do legs, I been spending time working out on my triceps and shoulders. My old schedule was - day 1 chest/biceps day 2 legs/back, and follow a full day or two of cardio(basketball) and that was the cycle. I think spending more time on the triceps helped me with the maxing out a lot. Also I got a new workout buddy that is also in my class, we been hitting the weight room twice a week. Big up to him for pushing me hard in the gym. Got a workout buddy makes workouts much more effective.

I think seeing "the goal" every time I go to the gym, helped me though the tough time and I am glad I pushed myself though it. Now I am aiming to hit 300 and I will try to upload a video of it if I can push it up anytime soon. My ankle is still hurting when I jump, I been shooting around in the gym but I am not ready to play yet. Just got my ankle brace today, hopefully I can start playing after few more days.

How to deal with injuries

Ok I been playing a bit of basketball, maybe a bit too much but I just love the feeling of running up and down the court and get my cardio in, and most importantly the chance to play to win. Like I mentioned before I put in a good 10+ hours each week on the court, I haven't got hurt for a while and finally injuries cough up to me, and I sprained my ankle pretty badly yesterday. I been doing the RICE thing and but it is not looking too good.



Well atleast I scored a point on the play I injured myself. Hopefully my ankle will heal quickly. I already scheduled an appointment with a doctor, hopefully it will help my ankle heal a bit quicker. I really can't see myself sitting out for a week on running and basketball. But am I going to sit around while waiting for my ankle heal? Of course not, I already set a goal of completing 2000 push ups and 200 pull ups today. If I can't get my cardio or lower body in atleast I can get some workout in. Maybe I can get something done for school too.

It's always too early to quit

Lately I been stuck on my bench press(currently still benching around 270), but I am glad I been playing basketball pretty well lately. By the way I raged pretty hard at myself when I wouldn't put up 275 yesterday, however made 2 game winners on the 2s later on the court so it kinda balanced out.

This blog I want to talk about fitness, I think if you want to get in to a better shape, you must find reasons why you want to get into better shape. I know it might sound stupid, but I know many people that workout for a week or two and just quit. The main reason is because they didn't have a reason to workout.

In my opinion looking better is too weak of a reason to help someone to focus and stay in shape. I am competitive so besides wanting to look better, I always have a drive that pushes me to workout, whatever it might be like going to the gym or do a session of insanity. When I want to step off the StairMaster before the time is up, I think about times that I loses in basketball. Yeah by the way currently Basketball is my thing, I put probably 10+ hours on the court each week, either from shooting around, drilling or playing.

There are other reasons why I workout too, but looking good and being competitive I would say are the two of the few main ones. So if you want to get serious about getting in shape, find reasons why you want to do it. Took this picture at a local pizza joint "Pieology" though I should share it. Oh yeah went there for the first time, I do eat cheat food once in a while but I spitted a pizza with someone else, so wouldn't be that bad . ... right? You can read my review on yelp also. http://www.yelp.com/biz/pieology-fullerton#hrid:AJ76knZMExtvj-L9cScy4A

Road Bike! Scored!!

I always wanted a road bike and I finally got my first one off Craigslist. Scored this bad boy for $145, I think is a pretty good deal. The road bike is pretty smooth itself and I might need to get new tires down the road. So far I only had been riding it to the gym and back, still got to get a hang of it before I start hitting the road with it. Of course there are reasons of me getting a bike, the main reason is I want to do a triathlon sometime this year. Now I just got to think how to take care of the swimming part(I guess the simple answer is to start swimming).



Also it is always good to add in extra workout to the routines, plus it doesn't hurt to ride in the nice Southern California weather. I might have to many on my plate at the moment, I would say my workout routines are weight lifting, basketball, cardio(running/StairMaster) and insanity (just started also would do a blog on it maybe a bit later) plus few other things like stadium/yoga that I try to do atleast once a week. I will keep this routines til the July ToughMudder, I will give a more detail blog on each workout and explain the pros and cons of it and I will do an after picture to match the before picture I did last month.

One week vacation - Part 2 Bay Area

Last week on my 2nd part of the vacation I went to visit my home Bay Area. I stayed the 4days and the main reason of the trip was a “camping” trip that my friends and I planned a while back. It was a trail by Mission Peak and the hike was 18 miles each way. I have to admit we didn’t prep for the hike that well, I would say my conditioning paid off, and the hike was somewhat challenging but it was manageable for me. There was few additional up and down hills that I didn’t though of when I prepped for the hike. We manage have just enough water to make it to the camp site and we finished all the food we bought with us.



We spent one day hiked out there and we spent about 12 hours resting. We didn’t bring a tent so that was the only thing I was worry about. The camp site was pretty wet, we were above 3500ft and we were in the middle of the clouds majority of the night. There were some raindrop but we were lucky enough that it didn’t rain hard on us. We didn’t really get to enjoy the camping experience from this trip; however I think it was a good conditioning and gut checks especially for my friends that are not too active. Maybe next time we will give ourselves more time and get to enjoy the camping experience.



I know I been lagging on my blogs, and there are many things I want to share. I just bought a road bike, and I am sure I will do a triathlon sometime this year and I will make a blog on how I plan to train for it, and also I want to make a blog on my daily diet. I plan to complete these 2 blogs within the next week.

One week vacation - Part 1 Chicago

It’s been a while since I did a blog, I just been extremely busy with school last month with finals and took a week off and traveled to Chicago then the Bay Area. Even though I was busy with school during that month, I still hit the gym almost every day. However my diet has gone really bad during the week of vacation especially when I was in Chicago, by the way there is nothing overhyped about there deep-dish pizza. By far the best pizza I had, and the look of the pizza could be deceiving too. The deep-dish is a must have if you ever visit Chicago, however I think you can pass on the famous Chicago Hotdog. It was ok, and I was not impressed at all. Overall it was a great trip out there, since this is not a vacation blog, I will keep my experience in Chicago short. I will make another blog for my trip to the Bay.

First goal achieved. 30 Pull ups

Quick update

I finally achieved my first goal, on 5/9 just did 30 clean pull-ups. I always been able to do 18-20 but the past few months I really focused on breaking into "30". However my other goal bench press is not progressing as well as I would like. Kinda stuck around 265-270. Final is next week. Hopefully I can get 275 by then.

Also I might make a video of completing 30pull ups, I might uploaded it on YouTube.

OC half marathon 5/6/2012

Completed the OC half marathon yesterday, it was the first one I did in the past 2 years. Even though I been training pretty hard, but I didn't really ran outside for a while and I wish I could of prepped for the race a little more. I did hit one of my goal which is make it the top 8% overall finisher. I finished 417 out of 8755 which is the 4-5% tile. However I didn't crack an hour 40mins, I think it would help if our group got to the race a little earlier and had a little time to stretch. Also the pacer helped a lot, if I started on time and stayed with the hour 40min pacer, I think I would finish the race a little bit quicker.



This is the first time I ever ran a half marathon for a time. I did 6 half marathons before, but all of them I ran with a friend that slowed my time a bit. I felt pretty good about my time, but I really want to set a goal for my next half marathon which is the Long Beach half in October. That is about 5 months from now I want to aim for an hour 30mins. Maybe is a bit far reach but after the last race, I really want to set my goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon. To qualify I need to complete a marathon under 3hours and 5mins, so completing a half marathon with that pace would be a good start. I am not sure when I can complete this goal of qualifying for Boston marathon, but I think it will help me with my training when I have an end goal in my mind.

So here it is, I officially listed an hour 30mins for a half marathon and qualify for Boston marathon is my goal.

Before Picture 4/25

Hi this is how I look on 4/25, weight in at 175. Wish I took a shirtless picture earlier but is better late than never. I am in decent shape right now been working out pretty hard the past few months, I will take an after picture around early July.

Education

Ok many things happened in the past few weeks, been pretty busy with my school. This blog I want to talk a little bit about my education. Currently I am in my last semester of my MBA (Still got one more course in the summer), but I am a bit excited about the whole education achievement. School was never easy for me; I always lack the focus with school work when I was younger. Anyway I am sure getting my MBA would be my last degree, maybe I will take some other courses here and there, but I really don’t see myself getting a PHD.

Last week I achieved something I have never done before, which is to get the highest grade on a midterm in class. It is extra special because it was a midterm in an accounting class (I have no idea how I did it), and it is the last midterm that I will ever take. I got decent GPA during undergrad around 3.4, but never got the highest grade. Today the girl next to me found out I had the highest midterm grade, and she told me she would never guess that I am the type of guy that studies and I look like someone that would study 2 weeks before the exam. No respect at all, and I told her I studied the midterm for 4nights.

Anyway school is wrapping up, I still been spending a lot of time in the gym. I failed to max out 275 few days ago; I will give it a try again a 2weeks maybe after the OC half. Also I know it takes pictures to make a blog alive, I will take a before picture next post like one of those before and after picture people usually take in their fitness blog.

My Fitness Path

One of the main topic of this blog is about fitness, and I been brain storming on how I should approach this. First I am going to list my fitness goals, then I will update my progress.(I will go into details on why I picked goals later) Also I will share on how I approach each goal, and methods I use to achieve it. If you follow my post you might find something useful or you can leave comments and let me know what works or what not.

I want to achieve all these goals by July 3rd, because that is my birthday and is on the week of Tough Mudder that I plan on doing.

My fitness goals, I also list them with difficulty at my current fitness level.

-Drop weight to 165 - Currently 175
First goal I want to achieve is to get my weight down to 165 – Currently at 175, I will try to achieve this by cutting down my body fat, and also it will help me achieve other goals that I am going to list.

-30 pull-ups level 1 – Currently 26
I like to use pull ups use measurements because it is difficult to cheat on this exercise. This test your body strength and I think able to knock out 30 will really put me on the top 5% of fitness level.

-1 arm pull-ups 2x level 2- Currently 0
Ok I just added this goal in this week when I was watching people doing them on YouTube, I feel like this will really separate a fit person to a poser. I can never do them, and I just started doing pull ups with weight and hopefully I can 2 one arm pull ups by July, why 2? Because I think the first pull ups never really count even if you start at a dead hang position.

Bench Press 300 level 1 – Currently 250
Ok this test my chest muscle and the reason I don’t use pushups as measurement because I think it is really easy to cheat on pushups and when you max it out the last few is never right, also there the faster you do them the easier it is, so I just want to use beach press as measurement.

Touch the Basketball rim level 3 – Currently not even the backboard
Ok this is jumping without a running start, same reason I choose this is because you can’t really cheat on touching the backboard. I feel like this is my weakest point, I am around 5’10 but I am not able to touch the board yet, I don’t think I will achieve this goal by July3rd, but I will try to achieve it sometime later on this year

3 Miles – Sub 18mins
Ok I haven’t ran a timed 3 miles since 2005 maybe, and 18mins is the perfect score you can achieve in the Marine PFT, it is also the hardest fitness test for Marines to achieve perfect score on. I will time myself sometime next week and post my time on here.

These are my current goals, I am sure I will add more in as time go on. I will go into more details and progress in later posts.

After the long wait, here is my blog.

Hi my name is Peter, I always wanted to create a blog but I finally made the time for it. I am a Marine, veteran, student, achiever, gamer, learner those are just few that pops up fight now and I will go into more detail about my background in later blogs. Mainly I want to use this blog to share few things and keep track the progresses, from wealth, fitness, relationships, career, emotions and educations, but I will focus more on my fitness path with this blog.

There are few reasons why I want to create a blog also for you to follow it. First I think I have a pretty interesting life in some people's eyes and I also want to use this blog as a journal to keep track of events and tasks that I achieve and complete. Second I will mainly use this blog to post and keep track of my fitness and financial goals. I think these are the two biggest things that men wants to achieve success in. As you can see in the title "Road to the top 10%", I don't think is reasonable for me to want to be the richest person or the fittest person in the world(Also it is hard to measure what the fittest person is), but I do have my goal set on being the top 10% tiles. (To be honest my goal is more of being the top 5% but I want to be a bit humble with my goals, also being the top 5% is my goal on everything I do.)

Also I think my friends will learn something about me from this blog. I will share things that I would not normally share in person on here. Not that I don't trust my friends, sometimes I just don't know how to express myself in person. Lastly I will share on the things I do and find that works, I will focus more on the fitness part, but I will try to share some financial tips that I think is useful also.

Hopefully this blog will help me achieve my goal and you will find this blog informative and learn a thing or two.