Yes 2K

So, after yesterday's failure, I attacked the lane with some extra motivation. Rather than repeat Friday's 300 yards on thirty second break approach, this morning I decided to swim 300 yards at a faster pace, followed by 50 or 100 yards slow. I did this for 1,000 yards and took a minute break. Then I did it all again. My first 1,000 took about 16 minutes; my second, took about 18. After last week's not quite 2K, I did a very easy 200 yard cool down to make the entire workout an official 2.01168 kilometers.

The workout took me about 45 minutes, and I got out feeling really good. By the time of the Lake Travis Relay, I'd love to be able to swim a mile in 20 minutes. That's ambitious, but totally doable, especially given lots of time to recover after my shifts.

Looking over my notes, I find that in the three weeks since I started lap swimming again, I've swum 11,500 yards or roughly six and a half miles. That's farther than my drive to work. Which means, if Al Gore and Kevin Costner are right, and global warming leads to the melting of all the polar ice caps, and the world becomes completely covered in water, I would be able to swim to work...over the course of three weeks. I better call the boss and tell him I'll be late.

In summary, working out feel good. Instead of guilt, I feel pride. Instead of feeling lazy, I feel like I'm training again. For now, I don't even feel that sore.

A Case of the Mondays

I didn't workout this morning. I don't know why. I set my alarm. I got out of bed...then...what? Somehow instead of sweating to a DVD, I ended up pouring myself of cereal and watching TV. What is that?

It's bad enough that I still haven't managed to work anything resembling a workout into a weekend routine. Now, I'm messing up my Monday mornings?

I would have thought that seeing actual progress (15 pounds since the beginning of May), motivation would get easier. What's my problem?

As much as I've said I dread the Friday I have to report a weight pain, I can't afford to skip workouts. Tomorrow morning I will do better.

Weekly Weighin: 06/26/09

Well, it's Friday and that means another dreaded trip to the Summit's scale. By my count this is my ninth time aboard the scale since I started this journey, my eighth since I began working out regularly.

This week my diet has been good, but between a busy work schedule and my baby daughter decided to regress a tad in her sleeping schedule (if only I could burn calories making excuses), I didn't get in the number of workouts I'd like. I had a very, very quick DVD workout Tuesday. Wednesday I swam a really easy 1500, and this morning I did my Not2K.

Sufficed to say, I was nervous, but I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm under 207 pounds now. I say "under 207" instead of "206" because there are decimals on the scale, and, truth be told, they were closer to 207 than not. Still, in fairness, last week's weigh in was a little over 208, so I can comfortably say that I lost about a pound and a half this week. This takes my overall weight loss up to 15 pounds.

By next week, I hope to no longer qualify as a heavyweight but instead be a natural light heavyweight. We'll see.

Why (not) 2K?

So during this morning's swim I decided to change things up a bit. Rather than swim a nice even pace for the duration. I broke my workout into sets of 300 yards. After each set I would rest 30 to 45 seconds. The result was surprising.

Despite the fact that I was pushing harder for each set than I normally would for one big swim, I was able to keep up my pace from 300 to 300. Each swim averaged about four and a half minutes give a take a few seconds.

By going faster, I was also able to swim much further than I normally would, even with the regular breaks. When all was said and done, I'd swum 2000 yards. That's the farthest I've gone in a long, long time. What's more, even with all of the breaks and a very slow 150 yard cool down, I still swam that 2000 in a little more than 40 minutes!

I was so proud of myself having swum what I thought was a 2K that I didn't realize until I hit the shower that it had really only been 2000 yards, which really only equals 1.8288K. Darn you metric conversion!

If only I'd had my graphing calculator poolside, I would definitely have swum the extra 187.22659667542 yards to make it official. Heck, I may even have made it an even 200...of course that would give me a 2.01168K, and that just seems sloppy. What's a fella to do?

Past the Point of No Return

Up until this point, for some reason I've been avoiding talking about the size of my clothes. This seems a little irrational when you consider that I've spare no detail in the matters of my weight and overall laziness. Sufficed to say, when I started this journey in May, I was wearing size 36 paints. For those unfamiliar with men's sizes (AKA rational sizes), that means my waist was about 36 inches around. I use the past tense because I'm definitely not a 36 anymore. This week I fit easily into an old pair of khakis I found that were 34's. This morning I managed to get myself into a pair of 33's. To be fair...I think I should be in the 34's. All the same, this raised the question of what to do with all my old pants. What do I do with all the 36's?

The cheapo pack rat in my head screams, "Hang on to them, you never know when you might need them again."

I've decided to ignore the inner pack rat, though. Keeping my bigger pants would be like accepting the fact that someday I'll be fat again. Forget that! I've worked to hard in the last few weeks to give up. I started in May with a one year commitment, but I now realize that one year isn't going to be nearly enough.

I want to be a fit dad to my baby girl, not for a year but for a lifetime. I want to be able to keep up with my beautiful wife, not until April 2010 but until April 2090 (call me an optimist).

I'll be donated my bigger clothes to Goodwill. Hopefully it will be the first of many such donations over the next few months. The message I'm sending to my inner cheapo? "Hey you, if you don't want to be wasteful, don't let your waist go back to being as full."

A Face for Radio

I'm not sure I've mentioned it before, but I am blessed with a very cool job. I'm the Marketing Coordinator for the City of Temple's awesome Parks & Leisure Services Department. That means I get to brag about all the great things the Department does for the people of Temple. That's how I got roped into this blog as part of our community wellness campaign, Commit 2 Fit.

This morning, as part of my gig, I was asked to do an interview on a local news morning show. It was a great chance to talk about some of the exciting things happening in Temple Parks & Leisure Services right now and display exactly why I belong behind the camera.

I'm attaching links to the video here and here for anyone interested in the Temple Parks Bond, the NRPA Gold Medal or watching me look uncomfortable. For the record, I wasn't nervous...I always lose bladder control at 6:35 in the morning. It's my thing. Friends think of it as my signature move. Actually, it's probably why I don't have many friends who see me before 7.

Aaah, Portion Control...Oooh

I didn't do a lot of working out this weekend. I played a little tennis with some friends...really bad tennis, and Saturday I spent the better (or much worse) part of three hours mowing and trimming my yard. My real success, however, came on the dietary front.

Sunday being my first Father's Day as an actual father, my wife let me pick lunch. I'm a sucker for Buffalo wings, so I named a place in Waco (we were there for church) that we used to frequent. I opened the menu and felt my mouth fill with saliva. I knew with certainty that I could give our waitress an order that would have the cooks out back throwing up their hands in surrender. Instead, though, I asked for just one order of wings.

At one point last year, I split 50 such wings with a could friends of mine. Sunday I looked down at just 8. Part of me felt gypped, but I knew that if I ate slowly, it would be more than enough. Indeed, after just five wings (FIVE MEASLY WINGS!) I felt pretty full. The waitress came by asking if we needed anything, and before I knew what I was saying, I asked for a doggie bag.

I don't know if my stomach has shrunk or maybe just my eyes, but I really did feel full all afternoon, and now I get some wings for lunch. I've never been the kind of person who could leave food on a plate, but I guess I'm slowly becoming that guy. Which is good, because diet or no, I'll never be able to swear off wings. I can just swear off gorging on them until I lose consciousness.