24 days to race day

Last week was horrible: out of town to hospitals about 3 days (very early in the a.m.) - long hours at work - out of town to St. Louis a couple of days - family reunion - holiday celebrations/cookouts.

BUT -

I've not given up. Back in the gym today

(I should explain here that I DID in fact have some tendinitis and was in some major - ok, maybe an overstatment - but some pain and did have to break from the treadmill for a while)

and lessons learned. I did get back on the treadmill for about 10-15 min. Just walking - but high incline to get the heart rate up for fat burning. Then on to the upper body weights. But I felt terrible. A week of no gym, bad eating, and going back made me realize how far I'd come. It made me realize that it is just not worth it anymore to treat myself badly. No matter how fun it is - at the time - to sleep in, miss working out, and eat the wrong kinds/amounts of food.

So, with new determination, I am back "on the wagon" and working toward that 5k race just 24 days from now. I WILL enter I WILL finish - just no guarantees on the time! :)

31 Days Left

Back in the gym today. Knee feels pretty darn good. Very little pain. Icing and Nsaids worked wonders - mainly ice!

Today just did upper body. Increased weight and increased reps on the crunch and oblique machines (combating anniversary celebratory eating!). Also added the machine to work on my quads today. Need to build up muscle around the knee to help stabilize the joint and help the tendon below with it's strain.

I'm going to continue the regimine through the week, be more careful on the food intake, and get back to doing some running next week.

Anniversaries and gym breaks

This week marks two milestones for me. One is my wedding anniversary. The other is one year of serving with Son-Rise here in Marshfield. Both events have their highlights, both have had their rough spots, but both are reason to celebrate.

Besides the commitment and dedication it takes to get to each anniversary milestone, they are also important because within those years are what I’d call “defining moments”. There are decisions that are made and occasions in those twelve months that take you down particular and specific roads. Roads you may never retrace again. They become part of your make-up. They make you who you are. They are “defining moments”.

I remember visiting with a young man several years ago who had experienced a terrible tragedy in his life. He was driving his car home, following his brother who was on a motorcycle, when his brother lost control of the bike and wrecked in front of him. He was unable to avoid his brother and ran him over, killing him.

When I visited with this man, several years removed from this tragedy, he himself was the wreck. His life was shattered. He still lived at home with his parents – unable to hold a job. He was addicted to alcohol. A misplaced feeling of guilt was holding him hostage. For him, that one awful experience had become his defining moment.

As I talked with him, I was able to share that God wanted to offer him a new defining moment. God wanted to offer him a moment in time that he could point to where everything about him changed. God wanted to meet him at a place of belief and surrender – in the waters of baptism – and redefine who he was and why he was living. Unfortunately, he wasn’t ready to see that, and our paths in life eventually separated. I still think of him occasionally and wonder if he is the same man.

While not all of us have experienced the heartache and personal trials of this man, we can all point to places in our lives that have scarred us. Sometimes, as if we need help, others point to those places for us and remind us. Still, God offers all of us a new defining moment.

If that idea appeals to you, I’d love to hear from you and help you define yourself by a moment you spend with God. It will be a moment that will keep you celebrating a lifetime of anniversaries in your friendship with Him.

I'm taking a bit of a break from the treadmill/5k prep this week. Last week, trying to decrease time and increase speed and distance - I think I gave myself a nice bit of patellar tendenitus. PAIN! So, I'm taking it easy on the leg this week. Icing, NSAIDing, resting, etc. Already feels much better, but just going to watch the food extra close and keep up the upper-body work.

I'm not giving up!

One More Encouraging Thing...

According to fitday.com... I'm no longer "extremely obese"! I'm only "obese"! Woohoo! LOL

37 days to the real thing!

I ran my first 5k today. OK, well, that's a BIT of a stretch. I didn't actually RUN it all - and I did it on the treadmill - but I went the distance. Still a lot of work to do, but I'm encouraged to have gone the distance.

It took me 44 min, 20 sec. However, I think I'd gone faster by going slower/steady. I started out trying to reach my goal of 4mph for 1 min/6mph for 2 min cycles. I could only do that for the first 12 minutes. My knee began hurting some and I didn't want to push, so I went quite a bit slower for the rest of the first 30 min and actually had a slower time that I've had for 2.5 mi. SO, all that to say, I'm going back to a little slower and steady pace for a week or two and see where I'm at.

Also, I didn't use any incline in the first 30 min. However, I used 4% in the last 14 1/2 min. Never went below 3mph. I feel good. Upper body workout. And cook for 30 min at 140 degrees.

Down one pound to 310.75 today. I'm satisfied with that. I can still feel my body changing shape for the better - so that's good.

Today, I'm going with my wife to KC to enjoy some time celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary. I probably won't eat very well - celebrating and two MLB games.... but hopefully, at least, I'll make use of the hotel gym and pool.

38 to go...

My knee was stiff when I got up today and was hurting me last night, so I decided to eliptical today and give it a little rest. I did over 2 1/4 mi on the eliptical in 30 min. - between 4-5 mph the whole time. Felt good. Easy. HR was at a good fat-burning level. 450 calories burned. 30 min. at 140 degrees infrared heat... ahhhhh!

On the spiritual side, here is a thought from my devotion from "Streams in the Desert" this a.m.:

I have oft quoted, relied upon, and taken great encouragement from Ephesians 3:20 which states that God is able to do "...immeasureably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us,". Awesome.

But somehow, I've always imagined (and keep in mind that this does say that God goes BEYOND our imagination - so I guess it should be no surprise!) that meant God going to do more wonderfully ENJOYABLE things for me and my family and my church, etc, etc - than I could ever ask or imagine. The idea of my devotion today that - well, maybe the ways that God does "immeasurably more" are things we don't necessarily like.

Ie. - I pray for people to be won to Christ. OK, He'll do more than that... He'll go beyond my greatest plans and imaginative ability... but He may bring them to Himself through great tragedy in MY life. Get the picture? Sometimes God's best for us looks a whole lot different that our best for us.

In the last stanza of today's accompanying poem, it says:

"I thank You, Lord, You were too wise to heed,
My feeble prayers and answer as I sought,
Since these rich gifts Your bounty has bestowed,
Have brought me more than all I asked or thought;
Giver of Good, so answer each request,
With Your OWN giving - better than my best."

- Annie Johnson Flint

40 & counting...

(Today is one of 3 days off from the gym - Sunday, Monday, & Wednesday. But my goal this week is to achieve - by Saturday - the ability to run 6 mph for 2 min/then 4 mph for 1 - that cycle over 30 min.)

Here were my thoughts for the paper this week... the workout regemine makes me even MORE ready for heaven!
...............

It is the season for graduations. People across the nation are completing one stage of life and entering a whole new world. Here at Son-Rise, people are graduating from all different levels of schooling. We will even have a round of graduates from our first Dynamic Marriage Seminar.

The funny thing about graduation is how monumental it seems, and in some ways it is. There was surely a lot of work in twelve years of public schooling, four years of college, or even eight weeks of marriage therapy. We are so happy to have it all behind us and “get on with real life”. However, those of us who’ve donned the cap and gown, walked the line, and been handed the paper know that it’s just the beginning.

Awaiting us is, in fact, the real world. And most of our “education” has really only prepared us to be tutored by life. The most complicated math and science problems have only been the building blocks of further discovery and innovation. There is much more to come in the much longer segment of our lives in “the real world”.

Have you ever thought that our whole life is really much the same way? Life seems so long. By the end of it we think we’ve learned so much. But we don’t realize that our death is only a “graduation” of sorts into the real “real world”. In eternity, what we’ve come to learn about life in a short eighty or ninety years will be so elementary. What we often trudged through with varied success will only be the preparation for what God has in store for us in a never ending life of new discovery, fulfillment, and joy.

Are you prepared to graduate?

Some people do manage to leave school with diploma in hand – yet unprepared for the real world. Many more people leave life itself – unprepared to meet God in eternity. And, perhaps, the daunting thought is: we never know when our name will be called to “walk the stage” and enter eternity.

42 to go

Today I hit the gym early before going to Lori's folks to celebrate Mother's Day.

I ran 21 of 30 minutes with a 5 min. cool-down. One less minute than yesterday, BUT I increased the incline to 2% - so it was harder. Half upper body workout, sauna. Protein shake & granola bar.

Bad Mother's Day lunch - ate a little too much. But it'll be ok.

Still at 311.75 today.

A Journey....

Here it is. I've decided to chronicle my journey into fitness... or at least my ATTEMPT into fitness.

I'm scared to be too commital. Somewhere along the way, I've always given up. I've done better for up to 3-6ish months - and then gone back to old ways and habits. I'm wondering if I can really ever defeat myself. My thought the other night was that if ever I could defeat SELF I could conquer anything. It is ME who is my biggest foe. And that goes for many areas of my life. But that is the subject of many, many blogs! :)

Where to start...

At the beginning of the year I determined that I had to lose weight. I weighed more than I'd ever weighed in my life. OK - right here on the internet... I started the year at 358.75. Yeah, closer to 400 lbs than to 300. Depressing.

Having had the 2008 that I'd had, I was experiencing, from time to time, what I believed to be panic attacks. If I was self-diagnosing, I'd have to say it was probably a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome. But enough of my "Jr Psychologist" - suffice it to say that I felt like crap a lot of the time. Acid reflux was my dearest friend. I was in the chiropractor's office every three weeks with back spasms, muscle adhesions, and in need of spinal adjustments and alignments. My blood pressure was a bit high. I was experiencing a lot of carpal tunnel symtoms - hands falling asleep at night - both fingers that were in the carpal tunnel and fingers that were on the nerve that goes outside your elbow (can't remember what that one's called).

So I began slowly, at my mom and dad's doing 15 or 20 minutes of tread mill a few days a week. Nothing stellar to be sure. 2.5 - 3 mph. And a little bit of nutritional change. Then the new season of Biggest Loser came on.

I've always been a fan, but did more eating ice cream while I watched than losing weight. It was always a strange combination of inspiration and depression. It was incredible to see guys - more overweight and out of shape than me transforming physically from week to week. Yet, I was always depressed that I had not been able to defeat my old foe - self.

But along came Ron. A lot of people don't like Ron. But the reason that Ron is disliked is that he has played the game PERFECTLY from beginning to his end - which will probably be this next week. His love for his son and desire to see his son, Mike, in the final has propelled him to ALMOST certain victory (watch out for Tara!). But Ron inspired me.

Bigger and older than me, Ron went to the Dr at the beginning of the show. When they did an MRI - he could hardly fit in the tube. But the results were frightening. The image showed that many of his internal organs were twice their normal size or greater. Once your skin becomes so saturated with fat - it begins to attach to your organs. Eventually, fat will shut your body down. Ron was over 400 lbs and on more than a dozen drugs - including ones for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Not only was that gross - but it was scary. Though a little smaller and 10 years younger than Ron - what did my insides look like? How close was I to killing myself.

So I joined a gym that a lot of my friends go to and began to get serious about losing weight and getting into shape. I soon began losing weight quickly.

Along the way, one of the talk radio guys I listen to decided to have his own Biggest Loser contest - complete with prizes! You make something a competition and I'm all over it! I was accepted and began going to weigh in at the radio station weekly. However, it was pretty depressing. The scale they had there was not for folks of my girth! It was a digital scale that would not even register my weight. Way to encourage fat people, Vince! So, they found another scale, but it too was inaccurate. My parents have a medical scale in their home so that I knew very accurately what I weighed. Their scale, like mine at home, didn't show anything over two weeks while I KNEW I WAS loosing weight (by the medical scale at my folk's and the gym). I figured that having them haul in a different scale every week that didn't even help me win was not very motivating - so I quit showing up for that after 2 or 3 times.

But the good news is that I did not quit on myself. Before the end of March I had lost 40 lbs. My goal was another 40 in the next 3 months.

However, lots of stuff has slowed me down a bit. Life happens. A mission trip that took me out of the gym one week and had me eating a little more than usual. A conference to Florida, etc, etc. Also, I tend to come to a place where I have quickly seen great change - and feel so much better that I become satisfied. I quit being so picky about my eating habits. I'll have a sunday at the DQ, a good bit of pizza on a night out. But you know - that's life - I'm just doing better not to eat like that all the time.

However, I've only kept going down and now - as of today - I'm at 311.75. 47 lbs down. I wish I'd done better, but in some ways I have.

I now can run 23 of 30 min at 5 mph. I'm going to the gym and burning about 600 cals on the treadmill 3-4 times a week, doing upper-body weights 2-3 times a week, and hitting a 140 degree sauna for 30 min 4 times a week.

I've changed my shape in the last month, even without losing a lot of weight. I'm down a shirt size (at least in t-shirts - probably more in dress shirts). I am probably down two pants sizes (though I haven't bought any - I just keep putting more holes in my belt). My blood pressure is normal. My resting heart rate is 62. I have much less carpal tunnel sypmtoms. My chiropractor hasn't seen me in about two months (sorry, Doc!). No more panic attacks. Better attitude. More energy. No acid reflux.

So - here it is. My whole story. Now I'm accountable. You know. Everyone knows. I'll will be a huge success - or a huge failure. It's risky.

My next goal? I am continuing toward my ultimate weight goal which is 190 lbs - however, I'd settle for 220 lbs. But in the immediate future it is a 5k run. I'm pretty close to being able to do it now in around 40-45 min - but I can do better. My plan is to run my first ever 5k on my 40th birthday, June 20. I've got 43 days to train.

The rest of my blogs will not be so long. Promise. But I will try to daily keep you up on my progress toward being able to run 5 kilometers.

Thanks for joining the journey.