My Training Partner

Today I walked a mile for the first time in 11 days. But I didn't do it on my own. I finally found a partner I can train with.

Molly is our ancient Golden Retriever. She came to live with us after a perilously long stay at the Lexington Humane Society. We don't know how old she was when Mrs P first saw her, but judging from her teeth, her level of energy, and her increasingly stubborn nature, she is about 83 years old. She goes at her own pace, and if you try to make her go too fast, or in a direction she doesn't like, she will fall down on her side and pretend to be dying. I swear I can hear her giggling under her breath sometimes.

Molly gets a walk after breakfast and dinner every day. Over the years, those walks have grown shorter and shorter as her joints troubled her more and my belly got bigger. This trend has had a pretty negative effect on our conditioning.

So tonight the weather was cool and the sky was clear and Molly and I started off on our walk. She was looking strong and I was feeling cooperative, so we just kept walking. We took a long route that we haven't walked for a long time. By the time we were done, we had gone a mile. We were both limping a little, but we made it home.

Two weeks ago I was worried about my time in a 5K. Last night I was writing about the glories of lifting hundreds of pounds of steel. Today I'm pretty pleased to have toddled around the park with my old dog in under an hour. And I've found a runner I can keep up with. It's good to be alive.

Peace,
Pennsy

Time for a Day Off

I’m taking tomorrow off, but first, I have some business to attend to.

Shameless Plug

Hey, please check out the link to Step Out, the American Diabetes Association walk here in Lexington. I will walk it, may even run some of it. Diabetes has come to the house of Pennsy and I would like to see a stop put to all this nonsense. So cough up a pledge, pardner. Do it and the Fat Man will hoot your name during his historic first public walk. Maybe Mrs P can video the moment and we can figure out how to post it.

Weight Report

My weight did not change last week, still 366, but my body fat percentage is down from 33.1 to 32.8. Not much of a change, but the readings are consistent, and I am still building muscle, especially in my upper body. I hope I reach the tipping point soon and start another big fat burn. The plateau is not a fun place to hang out.

Injury Report

The ankles are improving a little after my big run on Sunday. I’ve learned that Achilles' Tendon pain is pretty common when treadmill runners go out into the real world. I have not run or trod the mill since then, but have been doing bike, steps, and elliptical to keep up my cardio conditioning. I wore elastic compression braces on my ankles today and was pain free. I am doing calf presses every time I encounter a staircase to strengthen the muscles around the Achilles. I really don’t want to see this turn into a chronic thing.

The shoulder (left) just plain hurts. I jerked it somehow during an errant Ball Slam yesterday and the Gremlin is having a field day in there. Other than rest, there’s not much for me to do with it at this point. I’m hoping a couple days off from upper body resistance training will give it a chance to heal.

Fashion Report

I bought some pants that fit yesterday! They are actually a little tighter than I would prefer, but they won’t be for long. They’re pretty ugly, but again, I won’t be this size for very long either. Just passing through the neighborhood of fat-guy pants, on my way to those groovy styles with waists below the half-century mark.

Best Laid Plans

I was going to try to repeat Sunday’s run this weekend, but I may go for something less ambitious. A mile at a reasonable pace will probably do me more good than another pokey 5K that leaves me lame for a week.

I’m also going to start moving from machines to free-weights. There are few movements the machines allow that can’t be done more effectively with dumbbells or barbells. Free weights have the added advantage of working more than one muscle group at a time. While your arms are working to execute a shoulder press, the rest of you is working to keep from tipping over. Having to control the weight with 360º of possible directions is more work than controlling weight that can only move in two. so I’ll start translating some exercises from the machine floor to the free weight floor.

I’m going to try the following program.

• Day one (Monday) - upper body, and moderate cardio (run or cross train)
• Day two - bands, and moderate cardio
• Day three - lower body, and moderate cardio
• Day four - rest.
• Day five - Bands and a long, easy run,
• Day six - long, heavy lifting, and
• Day seven - intense run (pace or endurance)

I’m going to avoid the treadmill for a while. My ankles need to learn how to cope with Mother Earth again, so I’ll try to do the bulk of my running outside.

I’m also realizing that my reluctance to track food is probably more denial than avoidance. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get more serious about nutrition if I want to replace those last pounds of fat with muscle. If I find myself stuck in a plateau that just won’t give, I’m going to have to break down and do it. For now, I’m just trying to avoid junk and binges. “Those last few pounds” are still buried a long way down.

Peace,
Pennsy

PS>>Hey, don't forget Mother's day! (The cats want me to take them shopping tomorrow night.) Maybe we'll just pile Molly the Dog, Mo, Buddy, Kizmet, Maggie, Sniffy, and Dennis the Nervous Fish into the Honda and go out to IHoP on Sunday. Kizzie loves international cuisine. (Molly just loves farting in the car.)

Pax,
p

Caught from Behind -- for a Day

The Boogerman got me.

I am determined not to write a mental health blog or a depression diary or anything like that. There are plenty of great ones and my voice won't add much to that river of information.

Still, I am running for my life and that means acknowledging the things I'm running from now and again.

I am running from a bipolar disorder.

Yesterday, it caught me.

My reaction to my meeting with Brad really surprised me. Everything he had to say was good news, but it hit me as if he had said, "Give it up, Fatboy. You're going nowhere fast." I knew something was wrong in my head, but the Bipolar Boogerman has been so quiet since I started working out that I guess I dropped my guard. I've been taking my meds, and combined with the well-documented mental health benefits of exercise, I guess I figured I had the old man licked.

Looks like he can still catch me from behind when he puts his mind to it.

My mind was racing Tuesday night. No way I could have gone to sleep. I was up until 2:30 reading and writing. Mrs P made an appointment for us to take Molly to the vet Wednesday morning and by the time I woke up, I was certain we were taking her in to put her to sleep. She's a very tired, old lady and like so many big dogs, she has a lot of trouble with her hips. I latched onto the idea of losing her and crashed into the trough of the emotional wave that had kept me up so late the night before. I was a bear to Mrs P all morning, and by the time we were in the exam room with the doctor, I was breaking down sobbing as I told him about Molly's troubles. He and my patient wife discussed the science while I held my Golden Retriever close and prayed. It turns out I was the only one in the room with euthanasia on his mind. Doc and Mrs P arrived at a plan after considering several options, then Molly had some blood drawn and got her nails done. We pulled out of the parking lot with our little old granny dog happily gazing out the back window of my car.

I had lost all sense of emotional proportion and I knew I was screwed. I went back to the house and instead of just dropping the ladies off and going on to the office, I got my computer and went inside. In the living room, my heart was racing and I called in sick for the rest of the day. I had a good lunch, a Healthy Choice® frozen thing, then went to bed and slept for about nine hours. When I woke up, my dog was still alive, my wife hadn't left me, and I had been suitably humbled by my old nemesis - the Boogerman isn't melting away any faster than the fat man is.

This morning I feel much better. I'm sure my knee will appreciate the day off, and my thoughts and emotions are much more clear. Nobody is dying here. Not today anyway.

The fact that this episode hit so hard comes as a real surprise to me. I usually notice the warning signs and am better prepared. On the other hand, the fact that it passed in about a day is something I take as a very good sign. The old man may have knocked me down, but this time I had a really good reason to get back up, and that's what I've done.

The truth is, I have always had those reasons. A wife I love and who loves me beyond all reason. A job that challenges me every day. A house full of animals who teach me about affection and honesty. A workplace full of talented colleagues who teach me about honor and perseverance. Only now that the fat man is running, I realize that I might actually have a role to play in all that as well. I can be a person who is worthy to stand with all those people and even benefit them once in a while.

A fat man running is a fat man who has decided to stay alive for one more day.

It's good to be alive.

Eat my dust, Boogerman.

Peace,
Pennsy

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

OK, my biggest concern with working out is that I will injure myself and

1. Be unable to exercise, or
2. Get frustrated and give up.

Well, Mrs P and I are both hurt, but it has nothing to do with the gym.

The Bluegrass is experiencing a fearful kind of winter weather today - ice with no snow. it has been raining since yesterday afternoon with the temperature hovering around freezing. The good new is that it may be slowing down. The bad new is that walking around is downright perilous. We have both fallen on the ice while trying to get Molly outside. Mrs P whacked her arm and has a nasty raspberry on her hand. I sprained, but am pretty sure I did not break my big toe. Not that we could get to the gym anyway - but it looks like I'm going to be relegated to the weight room and she may be stuck on the exercise bike (her preferred cardio workout.)

On the other hand, I'm giving credit for our relatively minor injuries to the stretching and strengthening we've been doing. It could have been a lot worse.

God bless the folks who have to be outside today. Roads are pretty clear, but everything between the road and the building is a slippery dance.

We're getting ready to limp out the the car and go to work. Everybody be careful out there!

Peace,
Pennsy

DANGER: Fat Man Talking (but you didn't hear it from me)

I really like research. When I was an actor, I would pour over stories, biographies, works of art, histories, anything to learn more about the character and the world where he/she lived.

When Molly came to live with us, while Mrs P was carefully combing out the mats in her coat and bonding with her, I was reading books about Golden Retrievers. So naturally, now that I am interested in losing weight and getting fitter, I am all over the internet learning about nutrition, routines, equipment, machines, books, dvds, balls, mats, weights, pedometers and heart monitors.

The other night at the gym I saw a commercial where Lance Armstrong was running on a treadmill carrying dumbells. "Hmm," I thought, "should I try that?" So I did some googling. Here are the top six hits for a Google search using "Walking with weights".

Do it.
Maybe do it
Carefully do it
Never do it.
Do it, it's great!
Don't do it, it's bad!

Heavy hands, dumbells, wrist weights, weighted vests, slow walking, fast walking, longer walks, morning walks --- it doesn't matter what I look for, I find at least four convincing sounding theories about everything related to fitness. And don't even try to get a definitive answer about diet and nutrition. The experts all sound like they know what they are talking about and they rarely say the same thing about anything.

This morning I was reading about joint damage caused by the same weights that another site says helped a man to lose hundreds of pounds. I started to worry. What if someone should stumble onto my blog and think I actually know what I'm talking about? That would so suck for them!

So I've added a disclaimer to the top of the page. I don't know jack, Jim. I know what hurts, and I don't do that. I know who I trust, and I try their suggestions unless they hurt. That's all I know about fitness.

I have only ever recieved one brilliant piece of advice in my life, and I try to apply it to everything I do, including workouts and internet research:

Say your prayers and do the next right thing.

I try to keep my heart pure and my judgment clear - then I do what seems best. If you're looking for fitness advice, then take that.

But if anyone asks, you didn't hear it from me.

Peace,
Pennsy