Milestone in the Medium Term

Well, it's been a while hasn't it.  Three long years and five longer months as I can honestly now tell you that I think I am in the worst shape of my life.

I haven't done a run of any length since the Spring, I haven't been on my bike since around Christmas, and the only swimming I've done is splashing around the pool or lake on my extended summer vacation... which is where it all went wrong.  Sort of.

You see, I was doing P90x, the well known workout series from Tony Horton.  I was doing it well, also, moving through the discs at the prescribed speed, eating well, and then April came.  I'm not sure if it is the craziest month of travel in my life -- I've had some crazy ones, but this one was extreme.  London, Bucharest, Mexico City, all within one month and all on separate trips.  Throw in a weekend trip to Minnesota and some May midweek travel throughout the Southwest, and the workouts disappeared.  Then, as we contemplate moving to the Bay Area, I got bogged down with the end of the school year and one of the busiest (and most profitable) work months of my life -- all of which led to poorer eating and less exercise.

June came and we were off to Minnesota.  The entire reason to take my family to the Upper Midwest for the month was to bring them with family so that I could travel to Nashville and Pittsburgh and have someone look after the kids.  The end result, especially when an eight day trip "to the lake" and six total days of driving a minivan from CA to MN and back, was a complete and utter derailment of the workout plan.

Oh, and I got fat.  I've never been small -- my playing weight in college was 206 and after college anywhere from 212-215.  My weight has hovered in the 230-250 range for the past few years, some of which time I was in a pretty good position to run a triathlon or a half-marathon.  Yesterday I stepped on the scale and chimed in at 258.  The mirror doesn't lie.  When I was 225, I could fool those guys at the carnival who would guess I was 195.  Now, they'll say I'm 250 and they'd be right.

Thankfully, I've already committed myself to a new workout plan and this blog is part of keeping my promise.  The short-term goals are more modest than they've ever been -- all the better to prevent injury.  The long-term goals, however, haven't changed.  It's to run an Ironman and, who knows, get the Ironman tattoo.

Ahhh, but the medium term goals are the most interesting.  You see, I'll be 40 in exactly four months.  I want to continue my modest training plan for a month, then do the full on P90x "lean" set for the following 90 days and see where I am on November 15.  I still have to circumnavigate some travel: London in August, Montreal and Buenos Aires in September, etc., but I'm motivated once again and hopefully can modify to my travel.

SO, today was day four.  Modest as I say: 30 minutes of plyometrics (the most challenging workout P90x has to offer -- cannot get through the whole thing yet), followed by 1/4 mile run at 9:00 pace.  It sounds like nothin' and it's not much, but it's 35 minutes of heart rate increase.  I'll ramp it up in short order and you're welcome to join me for the ride.

Talk to you soon... who knows? ,Maybe even tomorrow.