One Hour Runner

My new running program is listed below. The key to this plan is the long run each week. I'll stick to my Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday schedule, and the long run will take place on Saturday.

Weeks 1 - 3: Run 30 minutes, x3, Weekly total: 90 minutes
Week 4: Run 30, 29, and 35 minutes. Weekly total: 94 minutes
Week 5: Run 30, 32, and 38 minutes. Weekly total: 100 minutes
Week 6: Run 30, 33, and 41 minutes. Weekly total: 104 minutes
Week 7: Run 30, 34, and 45 minutes. Weekly total: 109 minutes
Week 8: Run 30, 36, and 49 minutes. Weekly total: 115 minutes
Week 9: Run 30, 38, and 54 minutes. Weekly total: 122 minutes
Week 10: Run 30, 40, and 60 minutes. Weekly total: 130 minutes

Assuming that all goes well, and I don't have to repeat any weeks (I did repeat a week or two on Couch to 5K) this plan would have me running for an hour by September 12th. That means I could be ready in time for the Hope with Every Step 10K in Littleton, CO, on September 28th. It's not too far to drive to, and it's for a good cause.

This means that my Monday and Wednesday runs will take up more time after about week 5. I'll need to carefully budget that time, and make sure that it's not pushed aside to make room for other silly crap like sleeping or bathing. A man's got to have his priorities straight.

I imagine that I'll have to get acustomed to running indoors toward the end of the program as well, as it will probably snow at least once or twice before race day. As much as I hate the dreadmill, I hate the soggy clothes and pneumonia that always accompany sweating when it is cold outside even more. I have learned from several snow shoeing and cross country skiing experiences that I am not good at cold weather endurance sports.

You see, I'm the sweaty guy - the guy who loses 3-4 pounds of water weight in a two hour workout, and continues to sweat for 30 minutes after the exercise ends. All the well-meaning friends who have said "just wear Goretex and you'll be fine" have no idea how much I sweat. Goretex is great if you're a normal human, but my mutant power is sweating (not super handy in the danger room, but also unlikely to draw the attention of the Sentinels. It's a trade off...). In order to not get a chill and then spend several weeks with a hacking cough, I'm just going to have to run at the gym.

And I hate running at the gym. It's itchy and it smells like freshmen, but I am a man on a mission!

Symmetry

It started out as a crooked tee-shirt.

It was new one too, one that I had never worn. I pulled it over my head, then looked in the mirror. The printing on it was slightly crooked; the left side of the design was a tiny bit lower than the rght. Bummed, I hung it back up and pulled out a different shirt. Once I got it on, I realized that it, too, was slightly crooked. Once I tried on a few more shirts, and found them all canted ever so slightly to the left, it occurred to me that it might be my body, not the shirts.

After standing very still in front of the mirror for a while, I could see a definite difference between my right shoulder and my left shoulder. I'm right handed, so naturally my right side is a bit stronger, but the amount of difference was really surprising to me. I have also noticed differences in my hands, my biceps, and most notably, my forearms. I blame it on racquet sports. Mostly badminton. The lack of a racquet in my off hand is slowly turning me into a human fiddler crab. Soon my left arm will wither and become vestigial, like those bones in the tail of a whale that used to be it's legs.

My right and left forearms are so different that if photographed individually, you might not be able to tell that they belong to the same person. There is this muscle on the outside of my right forearm - let's call it the "badminton backhand muscle" - that appears to be absent on my left arm.

Initially, I was actually left-handed. Back in the late '60s, however, it was in vogue to gently "help" children who began to develop left-handed tendencies by taking the crayon from them and putting it in their right hand. Or gently putting the spoon in their right hand when pudding was served. Or smacking their left hand with a ruler and telling them they can't have any pudding until they "eat correctly". Or (my personal favorite) putting their art smock on them so that the left arm was not in the sleeve, effectively making them one-armed, and then telling them they can't go out to recess until they finish their painting. My all black finger paint compositions were not well received.

Of course, now we know that forcing a child to switch hands can cause all kinds of problems, ranging from stuttering to acidic sarcasm and bitterness. Luckily I was not so affected...

At any rate, that's all spilled tempera at this point. I'm just thinking out loud here, but the way I see it, I have two choices; 1) add more exercises to my training regimen for the left side of my upper body, or 2) embrace my lop-sided freakishness, and try to be like Reggie in "Lady in the Water." Perhaps I could even work my right mitt into something akin to Hellboy's "Right Hand of Doom"...

Ok - that settles it; freak it is. I'm buying a brown trenchcoat and a large caliber handgun.

Let the Torment Begin

As many of you already know, I've lost 50 pounds. That may sound like an accomplishment of sorts, but it's not so much when you start with over a hundred to lose.

If you Google "height and weight chart", the very first hit takes you to a nifty little chart that shows an expected "healthy" weight for a given height (I know that these things are not very accurate and everyone is different, but it's a starting point). I consulted the column for "large frame", because I'm not fat, I just have big bones... made of depleted uranium. If I cheat on my height by a 1/4" and call it 5'11", it says I should weigh between 161 and 184.

To be honest, I don't believe that the lower end of that range applies to me - I don't think that I EVER weighed 161 pounds. I'm pretty sure that when I burst forth from my mother's chest and scuttled into the airducts I weighed at least 175. For the sake of discussion, however, I'll work with those numbers. That means that at my heaviest, I needed to lose between 159 and 136 pounds.

Disgusting. And also not realistic. I will likely never see 180 again, but I do think 220 or 200 is doable. That is why I have issued a papal bull declaring this to be:

THE SUMMER OF FITNESS!

I have this grand plan, you see. When my Stats class ends next Thursday, I will have no commitments each day prior to 2pm, for the remainder of the summer. That's from 6/27/08 until 8/25/08; approximately 8 weeks, or exactly 59 days. While I could spend all of those days sleeping in, surfing for pr0n, and beating Mass Effect, I have something else in mind.

I want to see exactly how much I can accomplish in that time. I have goals for weight loss, of course, but also for meditation, running, badminton, kettlebells, handball, squash, and tennis. Those goals vary greatly - from "Run a 10K" to "Stop Sucking" (that one is for tennis). I plan to put together a workout plan that requires me to be up and at it from 9:00 to at least noon every weekday, and then we have our usual schedule of court sports after 5pm each day. I'm also allowing time in there to work on training my birds as well, probably about 30 minutes a day. I am working on charts and graphs to track my progress - weight, heart rate, body measurements, distance, duration, etc. Since I'm a complete internet whore, it will all be posted on my 100 Pounds blog for you to jeer at (hey, any hits are good hits...)

If you are one of the damned who live in Black Vatican City and would like to join me (or just point and laugh) let me know - misery loves company.

(Formal Grecian attire is optional...)