Derby Day

If you don't recognize the big red champion in this photo, stay out of Kentucky.

Seriously.

Maybe you’ve heard. We’re having a little horse race in the Bluegrass today. After a loud, blowing rainstorm last night, the sun is out, the roses are red, and the grass is as blue as as Bill Monroe’s mandolin strings.

I’m no racing fan. I don’t understand the language and watching Barbaro break his beautiful leg made me wish I’d never heard of horse racing. I’d much rather watch people risking their own necks in stock cars.

Still.

These horses are just about the most beautiful athletes in the world. I’d rather see them in the pasture than the paddock, but I’ll be watching them today, praying that no one gets hurt and the bravest one wins.

My friend Alex likes Pyro, I’m leaning toward Eight Belles, but only because I think it would be a hoot to see a lady dressed in roses. Mrs P agrees with Alex. Molly likes Big Brown - draw your own conclusions. The cats think the whole thing is just stupid.

I hit the gym ready to go this morning. After two days off, I wanted to get back to work, but I wanted to start easy. I did 10 minutes on the Step climber, getting better every day. I took another shot at the resistance band workout that I failed so badly on Wednesday. I finished, but I still cant believe what a workout they give me.

The run felt really good. 2.25 miles in 30 minutes. The fastest I could walk was 4.5 mph. Today is the first day I ran faster than I could walk. It seems like every day is a new milestone.

Now, where did we hide the good bourbon?

Peace, y’all
Pennsy

Adding Sleepy Back Muscles to my Workout

Did I say I did about ten minutes on the stair climber Tuesday night? That was obviously a lie. I may have spent ten minutes figuring the thing out, but tonight I did three minutes (a new personal record, by the way) and my butt was certifiably kicked. I felt like one of those guys behind old Judah Ben Hur. I spent most of my post-weight-lifting cardio on the elliptical, followed by a long slow stroll on the treadmill, just to see if the knee would stay settled down. It’s been a little over two hours now, and It feels pretty good.

I introduced a couple of new exercises into the weight regimen. Brad suggested that my program was imbalanced, placing too much emphasis on pushing (chest and arms) and not enough on pulling (shoulders and back). My back has most of the history you might expect from an obese middle-aged man, so I’m eager to do whatever will strengthen things back there. I tried a couple of new machines. Both are rowing machines. On one you pull handles straight toward you horizontally and on the other you lean forward with your chest on a bench support and pull up diagonally. I was able to pull a reasonable amount of weight, and completed my sets. Sitting here at my keyboard, I am feeling (yes, I’m going to say it) muscles I didn’t know I had. High in my back, between the points of my shoulder blades, I can tell that something was working that isn’t used to it. It isn’t sore, exactly. Just kind of alive in that jolted suddenly awake way that Molly gets when you sneak up on her during a nap.

I'm going to try the cable rowing machine next time.

Saturday morning, Brad is going to teach me some free-weight exercises, just to change up my routine a little. Maybe that will get the fat furnace burning again.

It feels good to wake up sleeping muscles. But not as good as running that first full mile is going to feel. Patience. Patience.

Peace,
Pennsy

You Talking to Me? - or the Tale of the 300 lb Chicken

I worked cardio tonight. About 7 minutes in the stair climber, 30 on the elliptical, 30 on the recumbent bike, and another 15 on the treadmill to cool down. The left knee and right Achilles' tendon both felt better afterwards. Still trying the stretchless workout. I haven’t noticed any ill effects yet.

Are you talking to me?

Tonight, I feel stranger than I have since I started working out. I met with Brad, the owner and head of Promatx today for my quarterly progress review.

We talked about nutrition, of course. I have some things I can do better now. Need to work harder on eating more small meals throughout the day. Right now, I have carbs in the morning and fats and protein in the evening. I need to even that out some.

Having a trainer tell me that I need to eat more was a real shock. But there was an even bigger one.

“What is your goal?”, Brad asked.

“I want to lose 200 lbs.”

“How would you feel about changing that?”

We had just measured my body fat,and it turns out that in order to reach my target weight, I will have to lose almost 50 lbs of lean muscle along with the fat. I was confused. So what should my target be?

Based on my current lean body weight, if I get my body fat down to 18% (not bad for a man of 47) I would weigh 304 lbs! Were I to get down to 10% body fat (pretty fit for anyone of any age) I would weigh around 277.

These numbers have really rattled me. Especially when I consider that since I started working out, I have gained 19 lbs of muscle and lost 53 lbs of fat.

See what’s happening there? My lean weight (in red) is increasing almost 40% as fast as my fat weight (blue) is going down. I don’t have the patience to work the figures at this hour, but it appears to me that if my muscle weight keeps increasing at this rate, I will be at 10% body fat at right around 300 lbs.

I am going to be a trim, muscular 300 lb man. That sentence freaks me out for reasons I can’t even begin to explain. The words seem so incongruous - me...fit...trim...three-hundred pounds -- I can’t even picture what that will look like. It certainly won’t look like anything I have ever imagined myself being.

It’s one thing to count your chickens before they’re hatched, but I’m starting to realize that there’s a very big chicken waiting to peck its way out of this blubbery shell and the bird scares me a little.

Jeremy Likness has posted a series of before/after pictures of himself as he reduced from 30+% to 10% body fat. (245 to 188 lbs)

Frankenpennsy will be 6 inches taller and 112 pounds heavier. - It that even possible? And will I really look that imposing in robin's egg blue underpants? This may send me to the shrink a few months early.

Peace,
Pennsy

Running in the Dark

Fat and depression have been my companions all my life. I am determined to part ways with both of them, but they are stubborn bedfellows.

I’m bummed this morning. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up this time.

I’m not sure I would call last night a work out. I was scheduled for a cardio day, but couldn't really get it going on any of the machines. I started on the recumbent bike, but after about 10 minutes the knee felt a little weird, so I decided to try something else.

I’ve never tried the stair climber before. It seemed like an exercise with very little pounding, so I checked it out. I made it about 2 minutes. Not because my knee hurt, but because it is one mother of a workout for a fat man. I decided to try something else.

The treadmill was a washout. I did about 15 minutes at 3mph. My heart rate never got above 108. I guess that’s a good thing. That’s what my heart rate was the first time I stepped on the treadmill after walking to it from the locker room. Still, it felt more like a good sweat than a good walk.

The elliptical was my last choice and turned out to be my best effort. I did 10 minutes and finally got my heart up to 131 bpm. Then I bailed.

I had intended to take a yoga class last night, but my “warm up” had taken all the wind out of my sails. The depression that exercise has been battling down rose up and grabbed the back of my shirt. I changed my shoes and came home.

The knee isn’t painful, not really. I don’t limp or anything, but the threat of injury has triggered a real fear that I will get hurt and give up. Irrational? Sure, but depression isn’t a rational disease. I’m not at the stay in bed with the covers over my head stage - haven’t been there for years - but I am in a pretty dark place right not. The place where Mrs P asks “Are you mad at me?”

When I left the gym last night, I decided to take today off. That decision was what put my emotional state over the edge, I think. I may go in and do a light weight workout, just to keep the wolves in my head away from the door of my heart.

Peace,
Pennsy

Post Script: right after I finished this post, I went to my Google Reader to look for a reason to lighten up.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over. - Edna St Vincent Milay

Sometimes just knowing that you're not alone is comfort enough.
pax
p