Turtle With A Weight Problem

Slow and steady wins the race. I’ve been mentioning my weight loss periodically because it’s the only way I can stay positive about it. I have to remind myself of where I started so that I can see the forest for the trees. I think I’m like everyone trying to lose weight. I expect it to fall off in a steady predictable manner, and most importantly, quickly. Every week I challenge myself to lose ten pounds, which is ridiculous. That’s what people weighing 450 pounds lose on The Biggest Loser. I’m not one of them. I’m not morbidly obese and I’m not on a fat farm. Real life doesn’t work like that. I’ve also mentioned that if I was on that show I’d be an awful contestant. They’d have to change the name of the show to Jillian Michaels Biggest Sexual Harasser. Anyway, the incremental, snail’s pace my body fat has been taking has been nothing but frustrating. I run ten miles, I eat like a rabbit, and I lose a half pound. Fortunately, there are mornings like this morning. I stepped on the scale and broke through an arbitrary benchmark. It’s not even a round number. It’s a number that stuck in my head because it’s what I weighed when I got married. I’m in a lot better shape and I look a lot better than I did then, but it’s a weird number and it made me feel good about myself. It also means that I’ve lost thirteen pounds since the beginning of the year. Back in January I expected to lose a pound a day and to have been done with the weight loss a month ago. Like I said, I’m not on a fat farm and I’m not in a NFL training camp. Those expectations are absolutely ridiculous and I know that they’re ridiculous when I first expect them, but it’s like my Spanish professor used to say when someone asked him about a word, phrase or idiom: it’s not logical, it’s psychological. It sounded cooler when he said it Spanish.

Rough Exercise Week

I hadn’t exercised since my late recovery run on Sunday. I just couldn’t get my schedule situated. I forced in a short run this morning and I’m glad I did. I could already tell the difference. I’m not as fit as I was last week. The difference wasn’t huge and it was compounded by the heat – 60 degrees is not 40 degrees – but I struggled more than I thought I would. I’m going to try to fit in a long run this weekend, heat or no heat. I don’t want to slack off in my training just because I don’t have any races coming up in the near future. I’m thinking about entering some, maybe one a month, just so I have a carrot. I’m glad my new tracking software displays my weekly and monthly mileage a lot more prominently than my old software does. I’m still 90 seconds a mile faster than I was at this time last year and I haven’t put on any post race fat. I’m still losing weight despite not having a chance to exercise much this week. Looking at it from this glass half full perspective, I’ve managed this “slide” week pretty well. I’m still not acclimated to DST, but next week can’t be anywhere near as difficult as this week has been. Plus, my schedule isn’t as full next week. I don’t have a board meeting and I don’t have any pre-sunrise client meetings. There shouldn’t be anything standing in my way of getting to the gym next Monday morning. I think I might get my bike set up this weekend and start riding to the Y. They’ve got a bike rack. That way I can ease into cycling time, which I’m not really looking forward to. I’m afraid of the traffic, but people ride bikes all over the place so I might as well do the Nike thing. It’ll save gas if nothing else, and I’ll be able to look down my nose at all you size 15 carbon footprinters.

Celtic Pride

It’s St. Paddy’s day, and I’m lazy
The green beer has made everything hazy
But I refuse to slow down
Till passed out on the ground
Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah daisy.

A DST Bump In The Road

I’m blaming today on daylight savings time. I’m not acclimated yet. I was all set to run long this morning. I was out the door. Then I turned on my watch and it told me the battery needed to be charged. These are the little details that are caused by an abrupt schedule switch. I swear it has everything to do with DST. I got plenty of sleep the past two nights but I’m just not sharp. I’m really bummed because I was looking forward to running ten miles, but I’m not running them if I can’t keep track of them. I probably should have, after all the exercise is the thing and not the numbers, but I wasn’t willing to. That threw my entire day off schedule. It was like falling dominoes. I’ve been dragging ever since. I could have gone to the gym but my motivation had been sapped and it wasn’t until I was taking a shower and getting ready to go into the office that they gym even entered my mind. Technically, I got to work early because I skipped my run, but my biorhythm was off so I wasn’t as productive as I should have been. Yesterday, MJ offhandedly mentioned that Tuesdays after DST kicks in is when she has the hardest time. I didn’t really think anything of it as we sat in a DST caused traffic jam on our way to My Gym. I was out in front of the malaise wave or I thought I was. Now my workout schedule is messed up for the week and I’m going to have to get a run in on Saturday. I don’t want to run on Saturday. I want to go to the beach on Saturday and stare at the sea. Oh well, there’s nothing to do but make the best of it. I can run tomorrow if the weather holds up. If it doesn’t I can go swimming, if I can remember my swim trunks.

Non Sequiturs For Christ

When Jesus stepped inside the cage of life to take on the cross, human legs did not kicked his out from under him. It was not human hands that broke his arm during the arm bar of adversity. It was not a human fist that knocked him to the mat for our sins. It was not a human that kept him inside the triangle choke of suffering. It was not the fighter’s sent by Satan to tap him out that beat him.

God gave him strength while on his back being pounded in the face by the elbows of sin. Those same hands that formed the universe.

This made the early part of my day. After getting to work before the sun came up, I was dragging more than a little bit. I found myself staring out the window with my brain not working, and decided to take a break. One of the blogs I read put together his list of top 10 UFC sponsors that make him embarrassed to be an MMA fan. He has a problem with the low brow advertising towards what he feels is a high brow audience. I don’t know how high brow the MMA audience is, me included, since the basic premise of the sport is that there aren’t very many rules and the rules that do exist are only there so it won’t be illegal to show it on television. F**kin liberals. Anyway, the above quote is taken verbatim from number three on the list, a company named Jesus Didn’t Tap. I guess Jesus didn’t grammar check either. This is a real company. It’s not an internet hoax or skit. They sell a lot of crap too. I see retards people at the gym wearing their t-shirts. “The arm bar of adversity” made me chuckle. “The triangle choke of suffering” had me squealing like a dolphin as I tried not to disturb my coworkers and have them wondering what I was doing. I’m sure a few of them would have been offended because I’m sure a few of them wear Jesus Didn’t Tap stuff. Who the hell saw this “paragraph” and thought it was a good idea? Grammar issues aside, what does it mean? I’m not a theologian or a biblical scholar, but I’m pretty sure Jesus was executed. I don’t think he lost a fight. God gave him strength while on his back being pounded in the face by the elbows of sin. Those same hands that formed the universe. What is a non sequitur, Alex?

It Got Late Early

It’s 9:30 at night and I’m just sitting down to write. The time change coupled with a busy weekend is killing me. I’m beyond tired. It’s not the mimosa and 14 beers I had this morning with my ma’s birthday brunch. I slept those off. I didn’t really have 14 but beer in the morning is a wonderful thing. If Jacksonville had decent public transportation I’d walk around with a permanent three beer buzz. The River Run and birthday brunch were a blast, and I would do them every weekend if I could, but it’s Sunday night and I’m worn out. What’s worse is that I have a 7am meeting tomorrow. At least I’m going to make a little bit of money. I did really take a nap this afternoon, but it was a catch up nap because I didn’t take one yesterday after I finished the race. I woke up from the nap still tired and shocked that it was so late – daylight savings time. I moped around for a bit until MJ suggested we get out of the house for some exercise. We thought about going to the track but chose the duck pond instead. We had a lot of old bread. LMJ was the only one who got any exercise feeding the ducks, even the ducks were too lazy to swim over and get the bread. It was cool and windy and my mood wasn’t improving. Once again Pablo MJ had the idea of taking LMJ for a walk in the stroller while I went for a short run. I did my little three mile along the river thing and the run really improved my mood. I needed to do get the lactic acid from yesterday moving anyway and the endorphin rush was a bonus. I put a load of laundry in the dryer. My clothes for tomorrow are already ironed. I’m focused and ready to start training for next year’s River Run. It’s going to be a good week.

It Gets Hot Today?!?

Well, I have mixed feelings about today’s River Run. On a positive note I finished six minutes faster than I did last year and had a fun, comfortable race. Everything else was further evidence of a cosmic conspiracy against me. It hasn’t been warm in three months, until today. The sun came out at about mile three and forced me to slow down after mile six. I passed the mile six marker at 58 minutes and some change, and I had to back off the gas. I could tell that I was getting overheated. It took me almost forty minutes to finish the last 3.3 miles, killing my race. That’s better than killing me, but I didn’t feel that way at the time. One of the reasons I got overheated was that I was wearing an ear covering headband to keep my ear buds in. I’m growing to hate my Shuffle. Not only was it a contributing factor to me blowing up, it stopped working right after mile six. I don’t know what causes it – probably sweat – but sometimes when I’m exercising it will spontaneously pause a song to tell me the title and artist, repeatedly. This is beyond frustrating, especially if an Iron Maiden song is playing because then it gives me the unwanted, already known information in Portuguese. I kid you not. I know Maiden is huge in Brazil, but so what. They’re English. As I was ripping off my headband and looking for a storm drain and congratulating myself for choosing shorts with pockets, I saw a guy on the side of the road messing with the mandatory ghetto ass timing chip every runner was forced to wear. I looked down at my shoes and saw that I had lost my chip, so I don’t have an official time for this year. I screamed a curse word. I shouldn’t complain too much. Everything went perfectly two weeks ago. Expecting this race to go perfectly was being greedy. I have a new personal best, and I had a lot of fun participating in something that’s special about Jacksonville – in a good way.