And there goes June

June will be over in two days. This is significant because this was the month that I "stepped up" my exercise plan. The detailed plan of exercises that I made at the beginning of the month sort of went out the window when I decided that I'd much rather run than go to the gym. And so that went.

I originally set out to run 72 miles (I believe) for the month of June. Currently I am at 94 miles and will definitely cross the 100 mile mark for the month by the end of tomorrow night.

I will finish my Nike+ challenge comfortably in 4th place. The top 3 are all approximately 40-50 miles ahead of me but I'm pretty far ahead of everyone else. The challenge lasts for two months and I finished it in one month. I find this satisfying.

Running has gotten much, MUCH easier. I ran 8 miles last Thursday. This was easily the furthest that I have ever run. The amazing thing was that I was less tired and ran faster as I went. My 7th and 8th miles were the fastest. I honestly think I could have made it to 10 miles but I started the run at 8:00pm and it was dark out by the time I hit 8 miles. I don't run very fast, you see.

There was a time, only a few weeks ago, where a 5 mile run was a "long one". Those days are done now.

Starting this morning I switched my morning run from 2.8 miles to 4.2 miles. I just added in a stretch by the cemetery that I usually incorporate in to longer runs. I have to wake up 15 minutes earlier, as I'm cutting it close as it is. I think over the next three months this extra boost to my 3-4 weekday morning runs per week will pay huge dividends.

It rained very hard last night, which was unfortunate. I planned my run for later in the day and was not able to execute it. This prevented me from going over 30 miles in a week for the very first time. No matter. It's only a matter of time.

Final mile tally: 27.1 miles

As for my weight, well, I'm under 210 pounds for the first time since 2002 and it's starting to show. My face has thinned considerably to the point where my constant self criticism has relaxed a little bit. Obviously I am not content, but things are getting better.

I put all my bigger and rattier clothes in to four large garbage bags this weekend, which I will donate whenever I get around to it. I have a leaner closet as a result. This is fine, because I was one of the few men that I know that probably had close to 100 different shirts. I think in the future I need to relax a bit.

After my weight settles down - I can focus on putting together a solid wardrobe of quality pieces, but for now I have to make due with what I have that still fits. I've bought a few things now and then.

Weight loss this week: 2.2 pounds
Weight: 208.6

200 pounds will be a major milestone for me, although the goal is 185. I have not been under two bills since high school, so this is going to be huge. I get frustrated sometimes with my decision to put my entire life on hold to attain this goal but when all the hard work starts to pay off - well, then it becomes worth it.

It's all very exciting, actually.

Here's to an even better July.

a life less ordinary

I'm having one of those days today.

It happens every so often; a day where I wish I could change every single thing about my life.

The fact that this is a monthly occurrence makes me wonder where exactly I went wrong.

I wish I had more adventure in my life. I wish I could travel. I wish I met quirky people and we did quirky, exciting things together.

My life is boring. I own a home, which has me trapped in a place that I'm not in love with. I actually kind of like Syracuse, but it's definitely not my dream destination. My personality and interests tell me that it's common sense I should live in a city.

Aside from six months in Melbourne, I never have.

But here I am, and here I will be for years.

It's hard to reconcile the smart decision and the decision you want to make when there is a disconnect between the two. I always make the smart decision. Prudent thinking says that obviously I have been living my life the right way, but every once in a while I just want to let loose and do something crazy.

I'd love to just drop Jack off at my moms and travel the world for six months. That would be superb. I don't have the balls to do something that is so counter-intuitive to everything I have been working towards my whole life. Get a good education, get a good job, accumulate wealth. This was the life plan and I'm living it. But I yearn to just go off the grid and do something crazy. I haven't even been on a plane in 4 years! This is very depressing to me.

The same goes for my relationships. I always end up in the "safe" relationship and grow complacent and bored over time. I never really meet interesting people, who I feel I would do better with. Why is this?

I don't know. I imagine that by tomorrow this will pass, as it always does and I'll be back to working on my goals and trying to do the right thing to plan for a smarter, easier future.

But doesn't the fact that these thoughts creep up with regularity indicate that I'm going to have to do something about it sooner or later?

I just can't shake the fact that I should be doing something more with my life.

The inevitable march...

"There are things that fade away, like our endless numbered days" - Iron and Wine

So, I've reached one of those milestones in your life where you can officially call yourself old.

Despite being at or near prime, the signs of age creeping in and stealing time away from me has been happening for the past year or two, in small doses. A medical condition here, more frequent sickness there; nothing too serious.

But, as a man, when you are bald. You are bald.

So what? you might ask. You've been bald for over two years now.

This is correct. But this was by choice.

I made a decision two months ago to grow my hair back out, to try something different. You know, trying out this new thing that's the same as the old thing. Two days ago I had to abort said mission due to a very large and noticeable bald spot on the top of my head as well as thinning and receding parts in the front.

When I shaved my head originally, none of these were present. It's depressing in a way. If I had known that my hair and I had such precious few years left to share with each other, I might have treated it better in the interim.

So, it's an entirely different ballgame, right now. This is not my choice. This is how I'm going to look for the rest of my life, whether I like it or not. Luckily, I sort of like it, but my options are limited.

I enjoy barbeque chicken, too, but I wouldn't be thrilled to death if you told me I had to eat it every day for the rest of my life.

It's depressing, but what can you do? Luckily for me, being bald is in fashion now and has been for some time. Let's just hope it stays that way.

This kid is my hero

Oh, absolutely, he is. The BALLS this takes... to approach the hottest woman on the planet with a single rose at a movie premiere.

God bless him.

The hottest girl at his school should make out with him tomorrow, no questions asked.

Your life should not be like Jack Black's career

I saw "Year One" yesterday. I happened to think that it was worth every dollar that I paid to watch it. I got in for free. The movie wasn't awful - but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Unless you were the world's biggest Arrested Development fan, because Michael Cera and David Cross are the only two people in the movie who made me laugh, even for a bit.

I used to love Jack Black. For a time there, it looked like he couldn't miss. Tenacious D was brilliant, and he was the crazy hilarious record store guy in High Fidelity, and then he was rocking out with a bunch of kids in School of Rock, or being the loser brother in Orange County. All hilarious and awesome.

Then there was Nacho Libre, and this may have been a turning point. I loved the movie but most hate it and find it to be boring and tiresome. Maybe too silly. But really, it's just Jack Black being Jack Black. And it's been that way in every shitty movie he's put out since.

And I guess the point is, don't live your life like Jack Black's career. Even if you do something and it's really, really awesome at first. It gets tiresome after awhile. It's like that uncle you have who tells the same joke at every family gathering. You might have laughed your ass off the first time, but by the 30th time you hear it it just elicits a groan.

I constantly try to evolve and be a better person but I don't always succeed. But at least I'm trying.

I wish I had a more salient point to end this with, but I don't.
So here's my weekly fitness update:
Miles run: 18.5; couldn't run on Saturday because it rained fairly hard all damn day. I think I needed the rest, anyway.
I also managed to run my first 10k yesterday, which was difficult and rewarding. I finished with a long, fast sprint and I legitimately thought I was going to throw up all over my driveway when I stopped. I had to sit down on the concrete for a solid five minutes before I got up and moved indoors. This was a good feeling.
Weight lost: -1.6 pounds
Finally down below where I was last summer, which officially makes me at my lowest weight since 2003. Gotta keep on truckin'.

(Also - Michael Cera is heading down the same path as Jack Black but I still find him hilarious)

i'm a sucky blogger

So I took a look at a few other people's blogs and it came to my attention just how sucky I am at blogging.

Other blogs show some obvious effort and time invested, including photo edited pictures and little graphs. On a good day I'll throw a picture up on photobucket and link to it. My usual blogging process consists of me realizing I have 15 minutes to type out a blog post, sitting down and typing whatever comes to my mind, and hitting publish.

I never claimed to be the hardest working man in show business.

It's giving me some pause for reflection, though. Maybe I should think about what I'd like to compose and put some time in to it before putting it on the web? Perhaps construct a draft and work on it slowly over a period of hours?

I don't know, maybe.

Total time spent on this blog post: 3 minutes or less

What to do with my first generation iPhone?

I'm one of the people who paid a lot of money for a first generation iPhone, before they decided they wanted to take over the world and subsidize the price heavily so 20,000,000 people could be using iPhones and sucked in to buying overpriced computers that look oh so pretty.

(Note: I was already one of these people)

That was two years ago and I'm due for a new phone so I originally told myself that when the 3rd gen iPhone came out that I would buy it no matter what. But then it came out, and underwhelmed is a pretty accurate description for what I felt. It was pretty much a faster 3G with an improved graphics cards and a better camera.

The iPhone 3.0 software update gives you most of the features that you get with the new phone. I'm just missing out on taking video.

Living in the US with AT&T means that I can't use MMS until the end of summer anyway, and well, I'm not even interested in tethering to begin with.

So I decided to stick with my old friend and forget the shiny new toy. I can live with the EDGE network and I'm also pretty happy with the extra $120 I'll save every year by not upgrading to 3G.

But the reviews are out and like most positive reviews they have me craving the new toy, but I think I'm going to hold strong and hang on to my phone for at least another year.

Me and first gen, going steady for another year. She doesn't know that as soon as the homecoming queen shows up next year (I hope!) that she's gone. We'll get along just fine until then, though.

Weekly Update: June 15th

I ran another 21.7 miles last week, punctuated with two separate 5 miles runs on the weekend. I had a glimmer of hope to make it to 10K yesterday but just couldn't do it. I ended up stopping at 5.5 miles.

Only made it to the gym once last week on top of the running, so I ended up with 7 workouts.

I actually had 8 planned and skipped a trip to the gym in the middle of the week. I don't feel great about this, but not terrible either.

My co-worker, Sudha, had her last day last week. On Wednesday we went to the Indian restaurant and it was buffet style for lunch. I love Indian and I wasn't even aware there was a good place in Syracuse (there is!) and I ate two plates. Thursday was cake and ice cream and I didn't skip out on that either.

Bad news on the Monday weigh-in, right?

Nah - still lost 3 pounds last week, although on Thursday night I was riding a + weight into the weekend.

It was pretty hot this weekend and I had to work both days, so both days I treated myself to iced frozen coffees but for the most part I was a good boy. Small healthy meals, as well as the running.

I just need to keep this up.

Getting so close to a major life goal is exciting, but with weight... you can't rush it. I still need to lose in the neighborhood of 10 pounds (ok - 12) to make it to my first major goal. Hopefully in 5 weeks or so.

Avoiding overkill

Yeah, so talking about my workout routine every day isn't going to happen.

It's very boring to write. I can only imagine how boring it is to read.

I think I'll just provide a weekly summary on Mondays or something like that and maybe mention any important milestones.

I have nothing else to add, so I'll just post this music video.

Song rocks. That is all.

The fun of Nike+

I already posted a screen cap from Nike+ a few days ago. Go ahead and scroll down to take a look at it if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

I have the Nike+ sensor for my iPod Nano and, to be honest, it's everything I hoped it would be and more.

For those unaware, it's a $29.99 sensor that you can buy for the two latest editions of the nano, the 2nd generation iPod touch, and now the upcoming iPhone 3GS (what a letdown,by the way!). You plug it in to the device and place the sensor chip underneath the sole of your specially branded Nike sneakers, and off you go.

It transforms your outdoor runs into treadmill sessions, at least data-wise. You get your time, your distance, your pace, and calories burned. I don't even need to explain why these are useful things to have.

But more than that, you can run specific programs. Say, for instance, that you want to run a 5K. At 1K and 2K, it will simply interrupt the music briefly to let you know that you made it an additional kilometer. From there, it will let you know that you're halfway there. After the half way point, it counts down. This really helps psychologically. It's much easier to hear you only have 1K to go, then hearing that you've run 4K, even though it's the exact same thing. After 400 meters, it counts down every hundred meters until you finish, giving you just the extra motivation you need to finish with a flourish. How can you stop or let up when you know you only have 100 piddling meters left to run?

Like I said previously, it's a great motivational tool.

After you are finished, it will send your workout data to nike.com/nikeplus while you are in the process of your normal iPod sync. From there you can set goals for yourself. My current goals are 160 miles in 16 weeks, and 30000 calories over 16 weeks.

You can also join challenges, which is where the screenshot I posted a few days ago comes in. One caveat, don't expect to win. I ran 22 miles last week, which is EASILY my lifetime best, and people are doubling me. I also think that in some cases cheating is afoot by people who feel the need to win an online competition amongst strangers is more important then bettering yourself and doing something to be proud of.

Anyway - another small issue I have is that the sync from the iPod to the website does not always work perfectly. It usually sorts itself out but I want what I want when I want it and sometimes when it doesn't work for a few hours it makes papa bear very angry.

Overall, though, I would recommend this product to anyone who is interested in running more or maybe getting started.

Weekend Update

Unfortunately, this weekend update is David Patterson free.



"That's very difficult, Seth. All choices are bad. Like judging a beauty contest in NEW JERSEY!"

Thursday I took the night off and assembled a grill. This was nearly equivalent to a workout as the darn thing came in like 400 pieces, about 390 more than I was expecting it to. I started assembling at 5 to eat around my normal dinner time but ended up eating at nearly 8:30 PM. But I can't lie - it was pretty awesome to flick on the gas and see the flame come out. I was, let's say, 35% surprised I did it successfully. I earned my dinner.

Friday I only worked out at night - I didn't want to go at all - but I did and I was glad for it. I had to go in to work and this helped get me to the gym because it ended up being one trip.

Saturday and today I had to go in to work 3 times per day. This is an annoyance but it helps to work out around. Both days I went in, got my experiment started, came home and ran... then treated myself to breakfast after all that.

I ran 5.5 miles Saturday (longest run yet!) and a 5K (3.12 miles) this morning.

I also went to the gym last night but I worked out very half heartedly. I was dead tired last night and didn't want to do it, but I went any way.

So - I did it!

10/10... I'm proud of myself. I ran 21.98 miles this past week, as well as 4 trips to the gym with 3 different lifting workouts and an additional 4 hours of cardio at the gym.

I'm down about 5 pounds from last weekend to boot.

Complete day off tomorrow with a Dr.'s appointment and back with double workout days on both Tuesday and Wednesday.



I sort of consider myself to be a one man wolfpack.

Yikes-a-roo

Did I ever think I realistically had a chance to win this thing? This is after SIX DAYS! Yikes!



Update of Thursday to Sunday tomorrow night.

Bally's Schmally's

I guess Bally's is losing money because right now, all over the entire gym, they have giant banners advertising $10 a month deals with no contract. All of you people here who have a contract? Yeah - you're still fucked.

So not only does that little annoyance bother me, but also it's CROWDED now. I hate crowded gyms, with a passion, so this is something of a concern for me. Luckily, the crowdedness (is that a word?) only really affects lifting and I'm mostly in a cardio mode right now, but it's all just very annoying.

Couple that with the fact that the gym takes about 2 hours out of my day and running much shorter, I decided to run last night instead of doing the scheduled 75 minutes of cardio at the gym.

I ended up running 5.0 miles, and to be honest, I could have run more. I ran a slower pace, about 10:30 per/mi instead of my usual 9:30 per (I'm never a speedburner) and had a lot more stamina. It took about 50 minutes and burned about 900 calories so I consider this equal to my scheduled gym workout.

Like I said, I wasn't tired... so I thought it would be a good idea to come home and jump rope a little bit. I forgot, briefly, that not being tired doesn't necessarily equate to your legs not feeling like jello and I tripped up at around number 3. I can usually do up to 200 before I start tripping and messing up so, that just didn't happen. It didn't help that Jack caught sight of me out on the deck and started crying that he couldn't join me outside.

This morning I ran another 2.8 miles and it was a lot harder than last night. I was dying around 2 miles in, but I kept going and finished out the run.

I'm currently in 3rd place in my Nike+ 100 mile run challenge at 13.37 miles, but I don't expect to finish that high. Who knows, though? Maybe I will. First place runner is already over 30 miles somehow, so forget about winning.

Off tonight! And tomorrow morning! Yes! So today I have to go to Walmart to pick up my thyroid medicine, anyway, so I'm also going to finally pick up a grill and propane tank that I've been meaning to get for like two months now. I have been really meaning to add a lot more lean meat and vegetables to my diet instead of all the frozen crap I eat now. I think this will also help to make a huge difference.

Without going to the gym tonight, I'll have plenty of time to play Fable. A sequel to a game I already loved, except this time you are followed everywhere by a dog that finds treasure for you and rips out the throat of bad guys? Yes, please.

Extra

Not much to report today. I ran yesterday morning and worked out last night - did extra in regards to what I had planned yesterday evening, 75 minutes of cardio at the gym as opposed to the scheduled 60 minutes.

This morning was scheduled as an off morning and tonight I have another 75 minutes of cardio.

I am reminded already why this is the only time I have scheduled 10 workouts for a week - because this shit gets tiring.

It's only Wednesday morning and I already worked out 4 times this week, and I work out fairly hard when I do it. If I aimed to do this every week, instead of only this week, I would fail spectacularly. Knowing it's only this week with 10 makes it much easier to push through it, though.

Found out that I will be working this weekend and next, not full days, but 4 hours a day when I need to come in for 2 hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon and an hour later at night. This still gives me more than enough time to complete my workouts.

Also, on Sunday, I'll be going to see The Hangover, for FREE because I got a free movie ticket when I spent a whopping $22 to see Up! in 3D last weekend. I'm almost tempted to see Up! again (<3<3dug<3<3), but I can't waste a free ticket on a movie I've already seen when there are so many good movies coming out this summer.

C'mon, Bradley Cooper, make me believe you can be a real actor.

Rocky start

Well - things didn't proceed as smoothly as I hoped they would to get started.

I wasn't sick very much as a kid, and as such, I never learned the valuable life lesson to never take antibiotics on an empty stomach. Or, more accurately, take antibiotics on an empty stomach and run 3 miles before you eat a very small breakfast.

By the time lunch rolled around yesterday I could barely stand. I kept reminding myself to focus on what I was doing and that's never a good sign, is it? I ended up having to go home early from work and take a nap. I must have looked horrible because Jack got into his protect dog mode (a rare sight, indeed) and was growling at everything that walked past the window.

Despite this I managed to fall asleep for a nap and felt much better when I woke up.

Maybe not the smartest idea but I figured it would still be ok to go to the gym at night, so I did. I did a brief 4 set chest/triceps workout and 60 minutes of cardio (45 minutes elliptical/15 minutes walking at an incline on the treadmill) and called it a night. I do have to say that my new running shoes felt much better even on the machines and I love the way they feel on my feet. Nike Pegasus 25 Year Special Editions... can't recommend them enough.

This morning I felt much better, although I did not sleep well, on either end. I had a hard time falling asleep and I was restless this morning from 5:30 or so onward. I blame the nap for the hard time falling asleep but I got nothing for the restlessness in the morning.

Still managed another 2.8 mile run, so I'm 3/3 so far.

Getting used to running in the morning, after a few weeks of sleeping in, has been the hardest part but it should be all easy from here on out.