At Our Pace

Part 1:  Emotion

Let's be honest.  There's tons of reasons why someone should strive for health.  It shouldn't be something that someone has to think about.  That they have to rationalize, justify, or quantify.  I'm human.  I want to be healthy.  

I feel bad that I haven't had the motivation to post anything on here in a while.... I have been super busy this past spring, and also taking some time for myself... I have no current idea on how far over 200 pounds I am as I haven't been keeping track of my weight for the past 3 weeks while on a couple of vacations.

A velvety shell with miniature chopped peanut asteroids dispersed throughout it's tawny structure.  Replete with the slight teasing flavor of butterscotch, this is merely the outer coating.  Inside is the true delicious payload.  A sweet, salty peanut butter mixture, creamy, coarse and captivating, it melds with the thick membrane of butterscotch shell as you chew it.  Promoting a symphony of complementary and succulent flavors.

I finished my first week after starting over (yet again) and did surprisingly well.  I say “surprisingly” because if history has proven anything it’s that my success rate at finishing anything is not very high.  I think the Vegas Odds on my getting past Day One without blowing it was 150,000 to 1.  But I’m thrilled to report that I not only stuck to my healthy eating and exercise regimen, I completely exceeded all expectations.

Well, the Great Race will be here in less than three months.  I am no closer to being physically fit for it today than I was a year ago.  I am 28 pounds lighter, but honestly, that's a drop in the bucket to get me where I should be for this race.  So what am I going to do?  The only thing I can do.  Start all over again.

In my position at work, I have the opportunity to listen to music through headphones while performing my duties.  This affords me the ability to download all kinds of music and be exposed to many different genres of music throughout my day.

Lately, I've been into Scottish and English stuff, and music like that.  Kaiser Chiefs, Frightened Rabbit, Franz Ferdinand, the Fratellis, Glasvegas, Editors, the National, Stellastarr*, Placebo, Muse...all these are bands featuring heavily in my playlist.  

This is hard.

Much harder than I expected.  Especially after my initial success.  Don't get me wrong.  I expected a struggle, good days and bad days (not the Kaiser Chiefs song...).  I expected to fall down at times.  To dust myself off and get back up.  I fully planned on gut-check moments.  

I'm not going to be rah-rah today or talk about restarts or any other stuff like that.  I needed to get back into the workout.  Today I got back in.  That's all there is to say on that.  I started all the way back at week 1 on the couch to 5k program.

"Catharsis- (psychoanalysis) purging of emotional tensions, or purging the body by the use of a cathartic to stimulate evacuation of the bowels" wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The biggest obstacle I have found on this road to the Great Race is success. When this little project started...I was very committed.  I lost a bunch of weight right away.  When I started the couch to 5k program, I was able to get myself to a 30 minute run without much effort.  It was supremely encouraging.

Dear Jason,

I'm sorry I haven't been a very good running mate to you.  It's hard with our busy schedules.  You like mornings.  I hate mornings.  You have the kids.  I have an overwhelming desire to be stationary.  It seems that the universe has been against us from the very beginning.  This is really hard for me to do but I think it's time.  

I have a confession to make...