Inspiration

This has been discussed previously in this blog, but I do have one very important and defining characteristic: I'm lazy.

This makes for an interesting dichotomy for someone training for marathons and doing P90X.  It's a constant mental struggle to just workout instead of playing video games or run a bit instead of sleeping, when I have to work a lot it certainly doesn't make it any easier.  I still do a reasonable job but I need to do better...and I will.

The only real reason I keep myself doing it is simple: my wife is awesome.  She can wake up, do some P90X, drive to work, work all day and evening and come home.  Then she will go running with me, clean up, fix lunches, hang out real quick and go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.

I don't think I need to break down my day, but I will for the sake of fairness.  Wake up, maybe do Abs, head to work, come home, play video games, consider doing P90x, run if Mel is running with me, few beers, video games (assuming I'm not in classes), go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.

Personally, I like my way better...but those little caveats of me working out during the day wouldn't happen if my wife wasn't so amazing. So thank you Jean-Jacket Woman (tm), you make me a slightly less completely lazy and incrementally better man.....and no one else could.

Story Time

Before I became the road running monster that I am today, there was a time when I didn't exercise much. I know it's hard to believe there was a day when I wasn't mercilessly pounding the pavement, but I had more important things to attend to at the time (I'm sure anyone who reads this blog can guess).

Prior to getting married, I was still in the mode where we actually try to impress our partner, called dating.  My wife was going to run the half-marathon in Nashville and I said to myself...I used to be in shape, how hard can a half marathon possibly be?....so I said, "Sure I'll do it, I'm an idiot" (paraphrasing).  Now, there was still a few months till the race, so I had time to prepare and I swear I had every intention of doing so, but instead I chose to continue to attend to the aforementioned important things and maintained the status quo. I did knock out one solid training run a couple days prior to the race, that was maybe 2 miles.

We get to Nashville the day before the race, head to the Expo and get our race packets, which was an insane madhouse and then hung out with Mel's family, had a nice Spaghetti dinner, etc. etc.  After everyone else settled in, my future wife and I decided we would just go out for a quick beverage and then come back and go to bed.  As I'm sure many of you can relate to, this simple beverage magically multiplied exponentially and we found ourselves back at the hotel around 2:45AM, with a wake-up call at around 5:30.  Solid preparation.

Woke up a few hours later and I was still "feeling the effects" of our late night shenanigans, so I was still happy and felt decent heading into the trip to the race.  This feeling crashed and burned as we jogged to the race start and I knew we were in serious trouble.

I threw up by the sidewalk prior to the race start and people looked at me like I was crazy, but I'm sure they just thought it was nerves.  We found our place in the corral and I just started laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.  When that gun went off I had no idea what I was in for, but I knew I was going to try and approach it as slowly as possible.

Everything started reasonably well, the first couple miles went extremely slowly, but I completed them without too much trouble....then I fell off the proverbial cliff.  I was an absolute mess...my body began shutting down mile by mile.  First it was the side cramps, then the hamstrings, then my calves tightened up like baseballs.  I was eating jelly beans and drinking water, but it was no use.  When we reached mile twelve my wife's father tried to coax me into running again so that we could finish before they shut the race down probably...I slowly started my weird hunchback of Notre Dame herky-jerk run style and shambled my way closer to the finish.

The crowd was roaring as I neared the finish and I spotted my nemesis...an at least 85 year old woman who was ahead of me. I picked up my shamble to a trot despite basically having Lieutenant Dan legs at that point in my last ditch effort to best the near-centenarian.  There is actually photo evidence (I'll see if i can find it and post it) of me doing a sprinters lean across the finish line and still losing to this fossil by a half step.  Adding insult to injury, I injured my side doing when I threw my arms back in the sprinters lean.

Final Time: 3 hours and 59 minutes. Blazing.

Moral of this ridiculously long post:  If you are going to do a race, even if you don't compete, train.  If you are going to do an endurance competition, save the celebration until afterwards, or be prepared for a soul crushing period of time that takes at least twice as long as it should.

Significantly Delayed Post/Review

To say I fell off the blogging wagon is an understatement.  I'm not going to post any excuses, I just didn't feel like writing anything down, but I might just get back at it, so I thought I would provide some information I promised in my last post 7.5 months ago.

Before I get to that I will say that I am still doing P90X and training for marathons.  During my blogging hiatus I ran the Phoenix Rock 'n Roll Marathon, then stopped exercising for a bit, but I'm back at it running and rockin' P90X as well getting ready for the Seattle Rock n' Roll marathon on June 26th. P90X helps a great deal for marathon training and would help even more if I was a workout monster like my awesome wife.

I mentioned in my last post that I had just gotten a pair of the Bowflex Selecttech dumbbells (52.5 lbs variety) and I would give a review shortly.  I told the truth about the dumbbells, but lied about the time frame.  To preface my editorial, no...I do not receive money from any company to endorse any products, but if they saw the pair of cannons I have attached to my shoulders and my sculpted abs, they would probably be lining up.

Not much to say really, these dumbbells have been phenomenal.  They are vastly more effective than using bands, they take up very little space, are easy to adjust and provide a great workout.  I wholeheartedly recommend them...stop paying for a gym membership, get yourself P90X and work out at home with these...unless you made the ridiculous mistake of manufacturing miniature versions of yourself and then maybe work out at the gym to escape the hell that is your life for a few minutes a day (just kidding, Matt).  The only real downfall is they are quite wide, so they can be a bit awkward on a couple exercises where yours hands are close together, but that is a minor nitpick.

Anyway, no promises, but I'll try to actually add meaningful updates here on a regular basis and maybe add some more recipes to the blog in the near future.

The Price of Perfection

In my life there are some costs associated with fitness, but presently there is one cost in particular that is worse than the others: $400.

That is the cost of Bowflex Selecttech 552 dumbbells. Mel, with her Samson-like strength obliterated our red band over the weekend. For a while now I have been considering it, but it just seemed like too much of an investment. Now that I know I'm sticking with it (and my wife has participated as well) it doesn't seem as unreasonable. It will be a better workout and make some impossible exercises much easier to do from a form standpoint.

As far as the workouts, I've been pretty solid. The San Diego trip delayed me a bit, but I'm rockin' out week nine currently and feeling pretty solid about it. I'm much stronger than I was at the beginning of the summer and feel pretty good in general. My running will be increasing, so I will no longer be doing Plyo until the marathon in January. That leaves me with the three strength training workouts a week. Still solid, I might take it down to 2 closer to the marathon and run 4 days a week, cutting out legs & back. Not too much though, legs and back has really helped by muscular endurance while running, something I hope will help me decrease my marathon time significantly this time around.

I'll be updating again from time to time, no promises on regularity, but stay tuned for some new diet and exercise tips from my wife. Oh and a quick shout-out to my sister, who ran her first half-marathon this weekend in Chicago and is still standing....congratz.

Improvement

Last night I ran about 3.5 miles with the lady and was actually reasonably impressed with how I felt. I've ran maybe twice in the last 40 days, but have continued doing P90X (strength training at least). During the run I didn't feel like I was in marathon shape or anything, but I felt fine and only got stronger as time went on...maybe there is something to this P90X strength training thing.

I'm going to need it: This weekend I'm dong a mini-triathlon (200M swim, 6mi bike, and 5k run), considering I haven't swam in god knows how long and I use a mountain bike, it should be interesting.

Shout out to my good friend Mick out in Cali, heard about your unfortunate Softball accident, as long as your mended up in time for the labor day bonanza there will be no problems...get well soon buddy.

Day 4 - Runnin Fool

My wife can dominate me at running. I realize she has run 28 marathons to my 1 and that she has continued running marathons since we ran ours in San Diego, but I still feel slightly emasculated when we run. We ran for 35 minutes last night and then walked for 30 more just talking, but she crushed a hill to finish the run and I was hurting. Granted I've barely been running recently (changing now), but oh well, I need a couple more years of training and her weak female knees to break down a bit more and then I will be able to beat a woman. Time is on my side.

Legs and back tonight, followed by drinking....my favorite kind of workout.

Day 3 - Shoulders & Guns

I think I definitely need to get more sleep. I have had little energy for the workouts this week, although I have been doing reasonably well during the workout, it has been a struggle. Shoulders & Arms certainly seems easier than Chest, Shoulders and Tris, but it's certainly still a challenge if you put forth the effort.

Today I will do about a 5 mile run instead of the P90X action, to keep my base for the marathon training that will start again this fall. It will only be about 7 months since my last marathon when I run Phoenix, which isn't too bad...I think two marathons a year is more than respectable. That being said, Mel and her dad just finished a stretch of 12 straight months of one marathon a month, in all different states of course. Thinking about that is certainly humbling, so next time you think your awesome because you rode your bike 2 miles to the In n' Out burger and back and are feeling good about yourself, just remember that statistic.

That's right, compared to my wife and her father, we are all pathetic.

So....I ran a Marathon.

Marathons are long and they are certainly not easy.  However, I have now run one and I feel pretty good about it.  We finished in a little over 4.5 hours, which isn't great, but not terrible for a first timer.  Few points to make about Marathons:

1) They are very long.

2) Running 26.2 miles and eating nothing but basically sugar will bother your stomach.

3) Having friends and strangers to support you helps significantly.

4) What was I thinking?

I will run a few more marathons before I die I suspect, the next one being Phoenix in January.  But first I have to climb the mountain that is P90X.  Mel and I are already toning down the project slightly.  We wrote down everything we would need to buy for week1 on the meal plan and decided we didn't want to spend 400 dollars a week on food.  So we are going to edit the meals a bit, keep the same general calories and constitution, but use cheaper proteins and ingredients.  Shouldn't affect us a whole lot, but will also cut down on preparation time.

Have another crazy weekend coming up, full of floating on a river without paddling and drinking beer.  If we survive that, the day everyone has been waiting for is on Monday....we start P90X, but more importantly: Day 1 Photos.  Stay tuned.

Game Time

In less than 48 hours I will be frolicking along the streets of San Diego, California running in the San Diego Rock n' Roll Marathon.  Considering 6 months ago I weighed 30 more pounds than I do now and I could barely run 5 minutes without collapsing, I feel pretty decent about it.

I'm not exactly a Kenyan and certainly won't be breaking any records not based on futility, but I'm pretty excited about it.  To some it seems ridiculous ( I was one of those people 6 months ago and still cling to that), but the idea of accomplishing it reminds me of when I used to Mountain Climb or jump out of planes, I miss that rush.  

So feel free to check up on hourly splits or the final results online.  I might post Monday or something once I wake up from the hangover if I can crawl over to the computer and prop myself up in a chair.  Have a good weekend feeling pathetic and worthless while I do something extraordinary....and by that I mean have fun getting drunk and having a great time while I torture myself.

Crushin' It

Mel and I are tapering our training off here as we approach the San Diego Marathon on Sunday, but last night we ran about 3.5 miles after an 8 mile run Monday and I crushed it.  It felt solid and although it is a far cry from an entire marathon, I'm feeling better about the run.

The bottom line is simple; The San Diego marathon is going to break my will to live, but I will finish it and I will beat most (or at least some) of the 65+ female crowd in the process. If you go to the website on Sunday you can track our progress periodically, that is if you need a good laugh on Sunday morning.

Tonight I won't be running, but I will be doing one last P90X DVD before the race so I can look beastly in my sleeveless shirt.  I'm leaving the review portion for when the program actually starts, but I'll let you know tomorrow whether or not it was a good idea.  Feel free to leave comments here guys, and make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed at the bottom right of the page to get notified of all the magical updates on the page.

Here We Go...

So the official start of the program for my wife and I doesn't start until June 8th, but I thought I would get this rolling a bit early.  We have the San Diego marathon coming up on the 31st (which will ruin me) and I've already started dabbling in the P90X workouts in between runs (which have ruined me). 

I know you are all just waiting for the Day1 P90X pictures, but don't worry....2.5 weeks and they will be all yours.