88, 279, 127

Eighty-eight is a great number. Do you know why it's better than sixty-nine? Because you get ate twice. ;)

Eighty-eight is also the number that caused "Doc" Brown to make all time travel possible.

Uma Thurman laid waste to the "Crazy 88's" in Kill Bill:

And now, I'm 88 pounds down!

I now weigh 279 pounds. Which is less than I even imagined I'd get before my surgery. I used to tell myself "I'd be happy if I just weighed 285 pounds", because I couldn't even imagine doing better than that. But here I am.

I went to the doctor last Friday for a physical and to see why my knees can't seem to handle a lot of running. I've had to do just the elliptical for my cardio training for most of last week. The doctor told me that my diabetes has been reversed (something I already knew, but I'm happy that it's been made official), and that I now have flat feet. I had always thought that the whole "fallen arches" thing was a myth, but I guess it's not. I didn't have flat feet when I joined the Army back in 2002, so this came as a surprise for me. The doctor said I would need to get some new running shoes to protect my knees.

Which leads to the third number in my title. I had to spend $127 on running shoes. I'm a guy. A guy doesn't spend that kind of money on shoes. I am very mad about this. But nonetheless, the shoes do their job. I ran 3.5 miles yesterday and my knees are no worse for wear for it.

Í'm now just 39 pounds away from my goal, with 88 pounds down. Feels good!

5K Done! Now Onto The 10K!

Hey! I won a medal! For participation! Yay!

So this weekend was interesting.

My wife and I decided to use my 5K race as an excuse to do a dry run with our new camper, as the race was out in Dearborn and started at 8 a.m (about an hour's drive from me). Not knowing anything about how to set up a camper, I broke the hitch and almost couldn't attend the race because it was still halfway attached to my car. Fortunately another camper helped to get it unstuck and I was able to replace the hitch after the race. I also learned more about my camper than I ever thought I'd need to know. Turns out they're a lot more complicated than having a tiny house on wheels.

Anyway, moving on...

I did better than I had expected in the race, clocking in at 31:56. Still well short of my goal, but about three minutes better than I had done the previous Monday.

The best part of finishing the 5K is that now I get to train for my 10K, which will be in early June out in Owosso (also quite a way away from home, and probably needing another camping trip). The training is going to be getting a lot harder now, with me doing cardio at least five days a week. I've also decided to start doing weight training with my legs again, as I'm pretty sure that a lot of problems with my knees are due to the muscle that I had lost around my knees after my surgery. Gaining back some leg strength will hopefully do it some good.

On the cardio end, I'm doing Hal Higdon's novice program, except instead of doing 30 minutes of cross training on day three, I'm doing 60. I've been getting antsy if I don't do A LOT of exercise lately, so I wanted to push myself a little harder. Cross training is good on my knees, so I can spend more time on that than on running. On the anaerobic side, I've started level 4 out of my old workout book, The Truth, with the exception of the leg portion, which I'll keep at level 2 for now. Level 4 in the book is right about where most people scream "Dear God, why did I decide to do this?!", so I'm looking forward to it. :)

It still blows my mind how many things seem possible for me now. I'm going to be doing a half marathon later this year. I love running now. I look forward to going skydiving after I drop below 250 pounds. I have these big fitness goals that for years had seemed too far out of my reach to achieve and now I'm going for them. It feels so damn good.

Lions and Gazelles

When I was younger and I did martial arts, I remembered a saying all throughout my training: “The lion wakes up every morning knowing he has to be faster that the slowest gazelle. The gazelle wakes up knowing he has to be faster than the slowest lion.” I repeated it to myself throughout my training because I knew that I had to be better trained, better ready for battle than anyone that would ever try to hurt me or the people I care about. So I trained endlessly, for hours at a time, every single day.

A lot of people take that expression to mean that they need to be a lion. Of course they would. Lions are bad ass. They’re the kings of the jungle. They’re the predators.

But fuck that. I’m a gazelle. I don’t want to just be faster than the slowest gazelle, I want to be faster than the fastest lion. I want to be well trained enough to not just outrun the lion, but to taunt him. To tease him. Make him think he’s going to get me just before I burst off with another sprint. And then when he’s winded and out of breath, that’s when I’ll stab him with my antlers. And when the lion is laying on the ground wounded, he’ll look up and see me mocking him.

“Who’s the predator now, bitch?”

Plateau Busted!

I now weigh 283 pounds. The last time I weighed this little, I had just gotten home from my first overseas tour in the Army, "Hey Ya" was one of the top songs in America, the whole country was still worshiping George W. Bush like he was the second coming of Christ, the Iraq war was just starting to turn into a shit pile and I was wondering when I'd be taking a trip over there.

It was 2003, if you hadn't figured it out yet.

After last Monday, I got mad that my weight hadn't budged in about a month, so I took to the internets to get some advice. One guy said that I should lower my caloric intake by about 400 calories to see if that would help. It was an idea so simple you'd think I would have figured it out myself. So I did that. I also started a food log on myfitnesspal.com and have been maintaining it regularly.

The weight started coming off immediately after I cut back on the calories. Instead of getting my 200 grams of protein everyday through whatever means necessary (which was putting on a lot of fat calories), I started drinking a lot more protein shakes and limiting my meat to mostly lean meats like chicken or turkey. After a few days of this I started feeling dizzy after my workouts, so I have a couple of "carbo-load" days every week where I stock up my glycogen stores so I can workout hard without injuring myself. Those days I just drink Gatorade and eat some bread or potatoes with my meals.

Speaking of which, I had to stop running for a week because the treadmill was beating the shit out of my knees. Sadly, this has killed my run time and I won't have my 5K time down to under 30 minutes like I had planned when I do my race next week. It's alright, though. Eventually I'll get there if I keep working at it. In the meantime, the weather is just starting to warm up out here in Southeast Michigan, and I'm running outside now.