My New Gym (And Book!)

A few months ago, one of the old bedrooms in the house was cleared out and I decided to make a gym. It's a tiny bedroom, so I compacted as much as I could into a tiny space. Here's the end result:

Don't mind the cute kid climbing. It's kinda her thing.

Here's a shot from another angle:

In case you're wondering, the pallet is used for calf exercises.
Oh, you weren't wondering? Well, now you know anyway!

And I built my daughter her own weight bench. She's taken a liking to it so far, but hasn't yet learned the exercises She just climbs on it and picks up the bar and does whatever with it:

It's a nice little bench, where the foam weights and bar max out at about four pounds. It's more about getting kids interested in exercise and learning the techniques than anything else. I figure with proper training, my daughter will be able to press about 150-160 pounds by the time she turns four. But I'm optimistic.

My daughter has also taken a liking to hitting the punching bag. She'll be old enough for karate soon enough. :)

Anyway, this was a labor that took months to build, as I had to save up for various equipment, look for good deals on Craigslist, and finally get time to build all the stuff between work and school.

Now I just have to wait for my abs to heal up so I can lift again.

And just as soon as my gym was finished, a book that I pre-ordered six weeks ago came in. A wonderful little graphic novel called "The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances", by Matthew Inman, aka "The Oatmeal". The Oatmeal runs a great website with funny comics, and he's also a runner. He runs for the same reason I do. He's scared of getting fat again. It's why I keep training for my half-marathon even on damaged abs. I keep telling myself: "Fat people don't do half-marathons. Fat people don't do half-marathons. Fat people don't do half-marathons."

I need to do the half-marathon to prove to myself that I'm not fat anymore. When I weighed 367 pounds, you couldn't have got me to run a half-marathon if you paid me $1,000,000 plus a night with Jennifer Lawrence and Keira Knightley at the same time. I couldn't even run ONE mile, let alone 13.1.

But that's changed. And I need to see this through to the end. As The Oatmeal said:

"I often regard overeating as a drug addiction, and I try to imagine what my life would be like if that addiction got the best of me. I picture the years wearing on, with Earth's annual trip around the sun being marked by an increase in pant sizes and a decrease in self worth. I imagine my heart getting tighter and more flustered, until one sunny morning it shudders to a violent halt. I imagine myself wrenching forward, my face heaving into a pile of waffles. I imagine my last breath gurgling into a tepid pool of maple syrup.
I imagine all these things, and I think: 

I don't want to die face first in a pile of waffles. 

I want to die in an electrical storm.
I want to die wrestling a Kodiak bear.
I want to die in an EXPLOSION.
I want to die quietly at home, hand in hand with somebody who loved me. 

I just don't want to die by waffles. Anything but waffles."

I really can't say enough good things about this book. Go buy it on amazon.com for about $10.