Week 3, Training Day 3

I finally hit my mark today, but with an intense amount of effort. I felt nauseous with exhaustion afterwards. I'm knocking out well over 100 total, but broken up over several sets. I still don't know if I can complete 100 push ups consecutively, but I've been upping the overall number I do while shortening the time between sets.

I'm a little worried about my shoulder. I have an injury in my right shoulder from when I tore a bunch of soft tissue in it playing football in high school. The coach made me play on it for the rest of the game and it never healed properly. It built up scar tissue and hangs lower in the socket than my left shoulder. Back in February of this year, I tore some of that old scar tissue doing some improper stretching. I went to PT for a few weeks, but it still clicks and crunches during certain activity. There's no pain, but it feels gross. I'm going to resume the strengthening / tightening exercises the therapist gave me for my shoulder, and do them on the off-days between push ups this week.

Theoretically I only have one more week to go, but I'm seriously considering extending it another week. Aside from the week of training that got screwed up, I just haven't come near to raising my goal amount.

Most of the pledges have come from people who don't even write poetry. While that's pretty cool that they're interested in supporting this cause, I think it speaks pretty badly about the hundreds of poets I know, that know about this project, who haven't pledged a cent. For the record, aside from training I am throwing my own money into the pot as well--and it's more than $100.

So, from here on out I'm offering a free hardcover edition of Black Ocean's newest title--Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg--to everyone who makes a $1 per-push-up pledge. This is retroactive, so if you've already pledged that then you can expect to receive a copy. These books are very limited and are only available directly from Black Ocean, normally for $30. I hope this will serve as an added incentive to the poets out there who have been hemming and hawing over donating money to Poets House. In my opinion they are one of the greatest advocates we have in America, and they deserve our support. All you have to do is email me at pushupsforpoetry@gmail.com and make your pledge.