Happy Holidays: Daily Accumulations

Dec 21
I got home from work and I got lucky. The weather was great and my wife didn't mind waiting for me to go grocery shopping with the fam. We'd had a few days of sun with no precipitation so the roads were free of ice and snow. There was a time in my life when getting lucky had nothing to with running outside, not anymore. Well maybe it's a shared euphemism, at least. It felt really good to be back out on the roads. With the treadmill being broken it was kind of a double treat, since I have no idea when that situation will be rectified. I abandoned my starting walk and decided I'd just start running like the old days. I felt slow as I was plodding along. I didn't feel like I was running (but I was), more like I was power walking. I tried not to think about speed as I know some of my abilities will be diminished with all the recovery time I've needed. I was only running the 1.8 mile course on my road because I didn't want to over extend myself. I reached the last mile mark 10:42 which surprised the crap out of me. Only twice have I run that stretch of road faster, and that was right before my injury. The last mile went well as usual coming in at a ridiculously quick time of 12:43. I did not expect to be turning in my second fastest mile at home today, but I'll take it anyway. I was glad to see that I didn't lose what little speed I have over this injury. Assuming the treadmill gets fixed soon I probably won't have a run this great (read: fast) for a long time.

Dec 22-25
My wife's cousin never did come pick up the treadmill during the weekend. I weighed 297 lbs the morning of Dec. 24. That is a loss of 6.6 lbs for the week, bringing my total weight loss to 70 lbs. I felt damn proud to be below 300 before Christmas. I treated it like a Christmas present to myself. The best damn thing I ever got myself. I got the exercise bike on Christmas Eve, so once I put it together I'll have something to work out on. Christmas day was nice with the fam. Got some running stuff: A sweat wicking hat, a nice set of wind/rain proof coat & pants, yaktrax (ice crimps for running), some pants, and a few other things. One pair of pants were size 42 and they felt a little big so we are going to take them back and get 40's (this still blows me away). Christmas afternoon, my father in-law helped me get the treadmill over to my wife's cousin. This was helped by their family gathering being held at his house. The cousin thinks it will only take a few minutes, it's just a matter of actually doing it.

Dec 26
After shedding the last of our holiday company I finally got around to putting the exercise bike together. Not too many pieces, more packaging and waste than bike parts. I had to wait for my wife to go buy some D cell batteries because that is what the thing runs on instead of a power chord (brilliant). Once she got back I got my first ride. It has a few programs but I was reluctant to try those on my first voyage. I set the resistance at 2 with a goal of 30 minutes. Since the bike isn't downstairs yet, I took advantage of the television. After about 20 minutes or so I could feel my nether regions going numb. Getting used to a bike seat will clearly be the biggest hurdle here. I finished my 30 minutes having pedaled 7.745 miles. I never changed the resistance setting so I'm not certain it was a great workout. I was sweaty at the end, but not out of breathe.

Dec 27
I decided to try out a program on the bike today just to see how it works. Most of the programs run for 30 minutes. Every minute is considered a segment and the segments range in resistance and target speed. Sometimes the resistance and range stay the same for a few segments in a row, and sometimes they increase or decrease. Like going for a ride outside with a friend who you are trying to keep up with and then finding a few hills. I chose program 1 for today. I was able to stay at least a couple miles an hour faster than the target speed through 95% of the ride. The portion near the end when the resistance goes up to 8 for two minutes, it was all I could do to be barely above the target of 11 mph. Again a little after 20 minutes in everything below my waistline and above my thighs went numb, definitely an odd feeling. Then also to know that it will be numb until I get done and then be all prickly while the feeling is coming back for another 10 minutes afterward. Today's ride felt like a butt kicking. Definitely more of what I was looking for, out of breathe, legs hurting, sweating all over the place. I didn't mention it yesterday but I am doing my running stretches after bike rides.

About 9:30pm or so the phone rang, we were entertaining relatives. It was my wife's cousin, he had just finished welding the treadmill and wanted to know if he could drop it off then. I was shocked, the good kind, and said yes please. A half hour later the treadmill was back in my basement and I was trying to figure out how to make our company leave. Unfortunately our guests stayed till late into the evening and I was unable to make it downstairs, but at least the ball is back in my court (so to speak).

Dec 28
I had made plans earlier in the week for the morning today. So I had to wait till after the kids and I got back from lunch at my mom's house to get downstairs. Once downstairs I was tasked with the chore of remembering how in the heck I'd tore apart the deck of the treadmill. I took a few minute to admire the weld job that had been done. My wife's cousin was nice enough to cut a couple extra pieces of metal and weld them onto the plates that he'd already welded back on, to act as braces. That area looks gaudy with strength now. Most of the putting back together went easy. The toughest part was getting the rear axle back on and inside of the housing on each side. After some failure and some thought I figured it out. It just took a little percussive force on some of the relatively low tensile strength plastic and snap it was back in place. After that I just had to tighten the belt. Which is easy to do but I was unsure how tight to make it. I ended up trying it a few times until finally I had it tight enough so that it wouldn't slip when I ran on it. I don't know if you can have it too tight, so it's not tightened all the way just in case.

Once my wife got home I got a chance to take it for a proper test drive. It felt good to have it back even if it is still a treadmill. Yet another case of you don't what you've got till it's gone. I didn't do any walking as I haven't even felt a tightness in my foot in awhile, let alone pain. I started out running at 3.7 and then took the speed up .1 every 5 minutes. By the end I was running at 4.2 mph with a total of 1.972 miles in 30 minutes. A nice little run. I checked out the welds after the run and everything looked tip top, the metal didn't even feel warm, very good news.

Dec 29
Not wanting to over do things now that I seem to be exercise equipment rich, I've decided to alternate running and biking for a couple weeks at least. Actually it will probably be 4 days run and 3 days bike, but that won't be any different until next weekend. So that made today a bike day. I liked Program 1 so I did that again today. It kicked my butt again. I felt a little vomitous during the segments when the resistance goes to 8. I went numb again at about the same time, I hope that goes away as I get used to the bike.

Dec 30
It being a Sunday and me having a treadmill, I figured I'd try a long run. Since the last long run I did was 40 minutes long, my goal for today was 50 minutes. I ran the first 10 minutes at a speed of 3.8 mph then I ran the next 30 minutes at 4.0 mph and the last 10 minutes at 4.2 mph. It went well and I ended up running 3.332 miles. I got to thinking though as I was nearing having run 30 minutes at 4.0 mph. The difficulty of wasn't bad it felt about as easy as when I start running at 3.7 usually. I think my problem with getting faster on the treadmill is just that I start too slow. I think if I started a little faster and progressed at my usual rate from there I wouldn't notice that much of a difference. This particular realization may seem trivial or obvious to you dear reader, but at the time of my originally thinking it I bet you could have seen the meta-physical light bulb over my head.

Dec 31
I weighed 292.8 lbs this morning. That is a loss of 4.2 lbs this week, bringing my total weight loss to 74.2 lbs. Eating throughout this little holiday break has been held very much in check. I think in the last week I've consumed exactly two cookies, one piece of pie, and one piece of cake to total out my holiday sweets. Honestly though this weigh in was timed perfectly as I'm sure the liquid calories I consume tonight alone will effect next Monday.

I rode the bike on program 1 for 7.74 miles. My butt and stuff still goes numb. I may try one of the other programs this week just to see what they are like. Program 1 still leaves me huffing and puffing, but not sweating as much, at least today.

Jan 1
I was really quite hungover from last nights excesses. The plan was to run but I felt like such crap I just laid on the living room floor and let the kids use me like a jungle gym. Later on in the afternoon I felt much better so I did end up going for a run. I put the plan into action that I was thinking about during my last run. I started things out at 4.0 mph and every 5 minutes I increased the speed .1 mph. I ended up running the last 5 minutes at 4.5 mph, the fastest I've ever run on the treadmill. For my 30 minutes I ended up running 2.12 miles total. I think today's run was the biggest ego boost I've had since back to Dec. 21 when I unexpectedly got to run outside. It wasn't as fast, but it showed me how to push myself better on the treadmill.