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.

Three More Weeks!

Well, the half-marathon is three weeks from today.

And my running is...shit.

I started running again last Sunday, deciding that, my abs be damned, I'm tired of not training.

I also downgraded my training to Higdon's Novice 2 program. It's easier, so not as fun. But easier is what I need if I'm going to heal up.

Anyway, I started last Sunday morning by running 10 miles. It's probably not best to run 10 miles when you've only ran twice in the past month. I was sore as shit after.

My time on my shorter runs has gotten slow, too. It takes me over an hour to run 5 miles, and over 1/2 hour to run 3 miles. Eight months of work, all pissed down the drain because of a stupid abdominal injury.

My abs haven't healed up yet, either. They don't feel as bad as they used to, but I still can't lift weights.

Still, I know that I'm not going to get better at running by sitting on the couch. The only thing that's going to help is to eat right and train as hard as I possibly can. I just keep telling myself: "Fat people don't do half-marathons!" I keep repeating that to myself, over and over. It's my mantra. It's the reason why I keep going.

Three more weeks. I can do this. I have to do this.

"Welcome To Your Thirties"

So, my abs have not healed up. I decided to contact my surgeon and see what the story is. Do I have a hernia? Is it just muscle strain? No, it can't be. It would have healed by now.

I met up with him this morning. I really, really hate my surgeon, but I figured if anyone would be able to figure out what was wrong with my stomach, it would be him.

I told him about my abdominal pain and he examined me. After two minutes, he came to the same conclusion as the ER doc I saw a few weeks ago. It's just muscle strain.

When I asked "Why is it taking so long to heal?" He just said:

"Welcome to your thirties. It'll get even worse when you're in your forties."

Fuck my life.

The half-marathon is six weeks away. I need to heal up.

This Sucks

My abs are still injured, and I've gone five days without working out.

This sucks donkey dick.

You know when your phone is fully charged and it keeps warning you to take it off the charger, lest it get too much energy and ends up overloading?

That's me.

I am a ball of untapped energy. I want to run wind sprints. I want to pump iron. I want to do martial arts. I want to hang from the ceiling and do crunches like that guy in Deuce Bigalow.

Yeah, I want to do this.

But I can't, because I'm injured.

This is such bullshit.

My weight is also up to 252.

I Beat The Crim! Let The Final Countdown Begin!

I ran ten fucking miles today. And I hurt.

But before I discuss why I hurt, let's go to the photos!

This is me during my 5K, when I weighed 280+ pounds and thought that running 3.1 miles was a challenge (now, a 3 mile run would be what I'd call "rest day"):

Here's me at the 10K, when I weighed about 270:

And here's me at 250 pounds, just finishing the Crim:

I am svelte as fuck!

I even convinced my wife to do her first 5K, which she had to walk due to her being pregnant:

Say hi to the awesomest wife ever!

So why the pain from an itsy-bitsy 10 mile run? (And I say that non-ironically, I know people that have run marathons and triathlons who weren't hurting as bad as I am right now).

Remember that ab injury I mentioned a few weeks ago? It hasn't gone away, and here's why:

I finally got a doctor to check to see why my abs were still having consistent pain after three weeks. He said that it was simply muscle strain from overtraining (turns out that despite what CT Fletcher tells you, overtraining is not a myth). I asked him why I was still feeling it after three weeks despite not doing any weight training, and he said that my long-distance running wasn't doing my abs any favors. I told him I was running the Crim that weekend and he said to avoid any running until then. So I did, and went four days without doing any exercise at all.

So my abs felt fine when I started the run. I was crazy motivated to get started in the beginning. I carbo-loaded the night before and was hopped-up on pre-workout formula. I looked at the start line and didn't see a race. I saw a battlefield. This was war. I actually had Loaf's voice in my head screaming at the road "WE ARE GENERALS, YOU ARE THE ENEMY!"

I ran out the gate and started passing everyone, immediately realizing that I had seriously underestimated how fast I was going to run this race, so I started way in the back. I thought I would have a mile average of about 12 minutes. But for the first 3/4 of the race, my average was about 10:30.

Unfortunately in the middle of my seventh mile my abs decided to protest. It was like it was screaming at me "HEY, REMEMBER ME MOTHERFUCKER! THE ABS THAT CONSISTENTLY STAY INJURED BECAUSE YOU CAN'T STOP WORKING OUT FOR TWO GODDAMN SECONDS!?" So my average hit a downward trajectory of 11:11 minutes. I still completed the race at 1:51:48, well below my goal of two hours. But after the race, despite drinking large amounts of water, my body started experiencing heat cramps, which only exacerbated the injury. Just as I started considering hitting the first aid tent, my wife texted me and let me know that she was almost done with her race. So I soldiered on and afterward we hit up the Tropical Smoothie Cafe where I got a turkey sandwich and some liquified fruit and sugar into my system.

The ab strain still persists, though, and it's because of that that I'll be taking two weeks off of working out completely. It sucks, but it'll suck worse if I can't heal up. If I stay on the paleo diet (which I follow on days when I don't need to carbo-load for a long distance run or deal with passing out after the run), I should be okay. On Friday I weighed 250 pounds even. I'm sure I took out a couple of pounds on this run, which would mean that I'm less than 10 pounds away from my goal weight.

So anyway, bring on the half-marathon. It's the final countdown!

Kicked Ass, Then Got Sick

I did great on running this week, and on my diet. I got my weight down to 252 pounds by keeping on the paleo diet and by keeping up with my running.

The bad news is that I haven't been able to lift weights all week. What I thought was just fatigue up in Tawas City is worse. Every time I try to lift I feel an intense pain in my lower abdomen. I'll have to go to the doctor this week to get that squared away. I hope it's not a hernia and it's just strained muscle. Either way I hope this gets fixed quickly because my upper body muscles have shown a lot of atrophe.

I can still run, though, and I've been doing great at it. I ran five miles in under 50 minutes for the first time, and completed my 9-mile run on Saturday morning. I'm just one mile away from doing the Crim, which is in two weeks.

I made sure to prepare adequately for my nine-mile run so that I wouldn't nearly pass out like I had two weeks prior when I did eight miles. I drank plenty of water the day before, and ate pizza to carbo-load for the run (BTW-Carbo-loading for a long-distance run is the only acceptable time to eat pizza. Otherwise it's just empty calories).

On Saturday afternoon I started feeling sick. I'm blaming my wife for this one. She got sick a few days ago. We thought it was related to her pregnancy, as her symptoms were extreme fatigue, nausea, and vomiting. But I guess it was a real virus because I have the same thing. I've been sleeping all day and have avoided eating for most of the day. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Paleo Pasta!

I've been experimenting with various healthy recipes for a while and found one that was awesome!



This is an easy version of paleo pasta, with celery being substituted for penne noodles. (Forgive the generic directions, I've never typed out a recipe before. But it's as easy as making spaghetti, so just use common sense with your measurements).

Ingredients:
1. Celery
2. Chicken breast
3. Spaghetti sauce (make your own recipe, or just use store-bought sauce. I used Kroger's three cheese blend).
4. (Optional) Shredded mozzarella cheese

Bake your chicken breast according to directions on the label. While the chicken is baking, cut your celery into 1 inch pieces. Place the celery into a pot and boil until very soft. Heat up your sauce in a separate pot.

After your chicken breast is cooked, chop it up into small pieces about 1/2 square inches. Combine all the items into a large pot and serve. If you'd like to add a little flavor, sprinkle with some shredded mozzarella cheese.

It tastes delicious, and it's a lot healthier than traditional pasta. I made enough to feed a homeless shelter so I've been eating it for the past few days now and have yet to be tired of it.

If you don't like celery, you will after this. Trust me.