I hit the scale last Saturday after a fairly physically strenuous day of outdoor work (OK, strenuous for me at least), a time when usually the scale is nice to me (hey, I know how to work the system), and I was not happy at what I saw. It wasn’t Garfield’s “one at a time, please”, but it was a few pounds higher than I thought it would be, and a solid 7 or so pounds higher than it was when I was at my low point back in February or so. Eesh. I haven’t been just totally letting myself go, I guess, but I have been snacking too much lately and well, we do all enjoy dessert.

So I declared this week to be “No Excuses” week for me when it came to exercise – I needed to do something every day. With the gym only 1 mile down the road I don’t really have much excuse anyway; in general, my natural laziness + staying up too late at night = not getting up to work out in the morning. So this week there hasn’t been anything compelling to stay up and watch on TV (World Series starts tonight, though… uh oh), I haven’t been involved in a really engrossing book (my other late-night weakness), and so it’s been better.

• Monday: 2 miles on the treadmill.
• Tuesday: 1 mile on the treadmill, some weights. I have only recently discovered the bench press, and it’s frightening how little I can press. Something to work on.
• Wednesday: 2 more miles on the treadmill, with a better time than on Monday.

My other good accountability tool in this is an online calorie tracker. I’ve been using The Daily Plate off an on for a while now… this week it’s back on. It lets you enter your height/weight/age and a weight loss goal, and then gives you a calorie-per-day target. It has calorie info for pretty much anything you’d eat, so you can just look it up, indicate how much you ate, and it gives you a nice nutritional summary.

So that’s my big push for this week. It feels good, too. Hopefully the scale will be a little friendlier to me next time I get on. Then the challenge is continuing. I think long-term it’s unrealistic to think I will hit the gym every morning every week, but if I could hit it 3 times a week plus play basketball one night? Well, that will be a big help.

Yesterday morning I was awake early so I went to the gym and hit the treadmill and the weight machines. I have been doing at least a bit of running, so the treadmill part wasn’t bad; however, I haven’t hit the weights in two or three months, so this morning I find myself pretty sore. It’s a good kind of soreness, though – feels good to know that I actually did something.

I’ve pretty much been a slacker the last couple of months in going to the gym – time to get it cranked up again. Need to break the weight plateau I’ve been at for the last 4 or 5 months and get to losing some more pounds.

I just filled out the entry forms for two 5K races in upcoming months: the Marion Arts Festival 5K (May 19) and the Hog Wild Days Squeal’n'Run 5K (June 16). The latter, happily, starts and ends at Gutheridge Park, only 4 blocks or so from my house. While I don’t expect to be competitive in either of the races, they provide some good motivation for me to keep training. I’ve been getting lazy these last few weeks. Can’t let that continue!

It’s true, I love free food.  A little too much sometimes.  I’ve had a plethora of free food this week.  Yesterday my team lead took us out to Biaggi’s for lunch.  Then today my boss took us out to Ruby Tuesday for lunch.  I had the smokehouse burger, which has BBQ sauce and fried onions on it…  soooo good!  Now tonight our project is having a celebratory supper and drinks at Carlos O’Kelly’s Mexican Restaurant.

I’m sure this can’t be good for me.  In addition, the time I’ve spent eating out at lunch is time that normally I’d have spent at the gym instead.  So it’s a double whammy: no exercise, too much food.

Next week I’ve gotta get back in the workout groove.  And try to keep it up when I travel the following week.

If only to get my scary pictures off the top of the blog.

I’m finally back to work today after a 2-week holiday. It was great to be off, but now good to be back to a more normal routine. The last couple of days we’ve had visitors; my brother Andrew and his girlfriend Heather have been down here and so we’ve enjoyed time with them and getting to know her. They’re headed back to Wisconsin this morning.

The basement is pretty well cleaned up from the great flood; the last big task required to restore normalcy is to purchase a new printer. Thanks to my brother Aaron, I have a BestBuy gift card just waiting to be used! I think we’re going shopping this afternoon.

Last, but not least, it will be good to get back to the gym after a couple weeks of being a lazy bum. Somehow I managed to not gain any weight over the past two weeks, which is a cause for rejoicing. Now I need to work on dropping some more…

The past two mornings Laura has decided there was a need to wake up about ten minutes to five; both times she had lost her pacifier and couldn’t get back to sleep. (We need to find the little attachment device for it again.) Both days this has been about 20 minutes before my alarm was set to go off anyway. Amazingly I’m not too tired yet from the lack of sleep.

What has been nice is that it’s had me up and ready to go hit the mini-MAC in the mornings. The MAC is our local athletic club, and while they chintz on their website (it’s hosted for free on… wait for it… Tripod! What is this, 1996?), their club locations are nothing to sneeze at. They just opened an “express” MAC about a mile from our house. You get a key card and 24/7 access. There are 8 or so each of treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes, and then a full Nautilus weight set. Each of the aerobic machines has a 13-inch LCD TV attached so you can plug in your headphones and choose your own channel. So far it’s worked pretty well to start the morning with a quick trip over to the MAC and a half hour on some machine. I did the elliptical this morning and I’m starting to feel it.

It’s now approaching 7:30 and the office is finally starting to wake up. I love getting in at 6:45 and having some quiet time to work in the mornings. I also love the fact that it facilitates my leaving work around 3:15 in the afternoon. Having two girls under 3 years old has pretty much prevented any sleeping in these days, but I’m learning that it’s an OK thing – a morning is a terrible thing to waste.

I got out for a run yesterday afternoon – probably the first time in 2 weeks that I’ve run. It feels good to be a little bit sore this morning. It’s going to be hard to get too motivated to run these next few days – it’s gonna be cold and windy. But we just got a membership to the MAC (a local gym) so I’ll be using it instead.

Within the next month they should have the satellite MAC complete and open; it’s going to be only about a mile from home. And my good friend and former associate pastor John Wilbur will be co-managing it. Excellent. They are also bragging about individual 19″ LCD TVs on every treadmill and elliptical. Almost sounds like overkill… almost.

I guess my 5K race running is done for the fall; the only ones remaining around here are on Sunday mornings. Grrrr. I’ll have to keep busy on the treadmills over the winter and then I’ll be ready for some spring races. I could get into this running stuff.

Last Saturday I ran in my first-ever 5K, the Solon High School Spartan Fund Run. They had a few hundred folks show up, many to do the half-mile and mile walks, another 83 for the 5K, and mabe a few dozen for a 10K. My sister Rebecca had agreed to run it with me, so we got up early and headed down on the 30-minute drive to Solon.

The race was done well; the organization was good, the t-shirt design was pretty decent, and they had procured a bunch of donated food which was good as a late breakfast after the run.

The one thing this 5K had that I hadn’t trained for was hills! I didn’t realize how flat my neighborhood course is until I got out there and had long uphill climbs at both the beginning and end of the race. And the last half-mile not only did you have to go uphill, but you were running directly into a 15 mph wind. But, we toughed it out. There were 83 competitors in the 5K, and I came in 53rd in a time of 31:12. Rebecca came in 69th in about 35:00. (Reba, leave your exact time in a comment and I’ll fix it here.) I didn’t get under 30, which had been my goal, but at least it was a good test.

I think I’ve got the bug; I’m looking for another race around here yet before the season is over. The one that’s reasonably close and on a day I could make it isn’t a 5K, though – it’s a 5-mile. I’m not sure if I’ll be ready for that by November 12 or not.

Well, my last training run before the Solon 5K on Saturday. I woke up before my alarm this morning (no small feat when the alarm is set for 5:10 am!) and headed out on my usual 3.2 mile course. It was a beautiful early morning, chilly and brisk, the sky bright, clear, and full of stars.

For not having run much the past two weeks, my times were ok:

Mile 1: 7:38. A nice brisk pace.
Mile 2: 9:59 (total: 17:37). Slowed a bit here, was starting to feel it by about the last 1/4 mile.
Mile 3: 10:38 (total: 28:16). That long hill the last quarter mile gets me every time.
Total time: 30:39. Didn’t quite get in under 30:00.

My goal for the 5k on Saturday is to get in under 30:00. Should be a fun test.

After being a slacker yesterday morning, I got up and did my 5k distance again this morning.

Times:

Mile 1: 8:18
Mile 2: 9:55 (total 18:14)
Mile 3: 10:46 (total: 29:00)
End: 31:29

This was about 20 seconds slower than my Monday run. In fact, that’s the exact same time for my first mile, and only 8 seconds slower for my second mile. I guess I’m at least consistent. Now one of these days I can focus on kicking up the pace a little.

The Solon 5K is only 24 days away…