DAY 78

Okay today is my 78th day of training (287 days to go)

Update :
Oct 14 Stairs
Oct 15th swim 13 laps and run 1.5 miles
Oct 16th Stairs
Oct 17th - Nothing
Oct 18th - 1.5 mile run
Oct 19th - more nothing
Oct 20th Swim 15 laps
Oct 21st Stairs

On my 76 th day of Training I achieved a personel best by running 2 miles without stopping and then after a couple short walks of less than 50 yards I continued and completed the 3 mile for my total run. I did this the same day I swam 18 laps which is a half mile (plenty of rest in the pool). I think and feel like I am getting somewhere. Still not sure I want to go there. For the first time when I started the run my knee no longer hurts and I just felt strong. I can describe it best by saying I am not sure why but the first hundred yards I was not as winded as I usually am. Without my knee ache and my lungs on fire I looked around for the first time and noticed the scenery. Usually I am in my own personnel HELL by the 100 yard mark.  This time the decent into hell took longer and I now believe I might mange to complete that 5K without walking any of it. I really felt like my lungs are beggining to understand we are not dying here just exercising. The 5K is in 3 weeks on Nov 8th and I only have two more weekends and two more week nights to prepare, that is 4 more runs before I put this new found me too the test of an official race.

Speaking of the new found me I am still swimming and this was my 3rd week of it. I already broke my goggles once and had to tie them together. I think my oversized melon was to much for the strap. My experience in the pool is that while I might resemble a horrible swimmer I don't really see it so I am less bothered by it. Maybe I am too focused on trying not to breath water. I am not AquaMan ! Or rather I am half Aqua Man, I don't have his underwater swim skills but I do have the telepathy. Only my telepathy is without anyone listening. I have mental telepathy and I often send out mental telepathic commands to my wife and children but they are not tuned in. It is as if the telepathic radar waves bounce off them. If they were fish they might listen better? I will save my mental thoughts for the boys goldfish. We have two seriosuly tough goldfish so maybe I don't want to speak with them. They're like street thugs of the fish kingdom. They can go days without food and still live. And in a starring contest they win every time. In fact I imagine they are in their little bowl thinking too themselves.
"Hey Goldie, Come here. You see this guy ?"
"What Whitey, you mean the tall pale one in the red sweatshirt. Yeah see him"
"He still hasn't fed us nothin!"
"I know Goldie ! I am hungry and he is so cheap he hasn't even bought us a glass bowl. Instead we have to use this crappy blue plastic ! "
"Whitey, he isn;t cheap he is stupid. I see our food sitting in that little container right their next to us. He just doesn't remember to feed us. How can he miss us we are on the darn dresser for crying out loud. He comes in here every night!  I swear if he puts his fingers in this tank I am going to bite it off ! "
"Yeah buddy!  Me too! We will show him whose Boss of the bowl. Now if only we had some teeth"
.....I always let Amanda clean their tank. I think its fair. I clean up the dog poop and they are lot busier spreading that around.?

Learning the swimming is not as horrible as the running was. It is still a struggle and most the times I am not breathing enough or correctly or whatever because I am breathing heavy when I take my break at 25 meters. I have noticed that whenever I watched Amanda swim the lake and she comes back she is not breathing heavy or struggling, she just glides in all smooth and relaxed. I really try to be relaxed and let the water do the work of floating my body. I find myself working harder to hold myself up without even thinking about it. When I recognize how tense I am I relax and I can feel the difference. Swimming relaxed is not nearly as difficult as swimming all tense and panicy. As I think of these types of things I get moments of A Ha usually followed by swallowing a mouth full of water because I actually say "Ah" under water.  I am still waiting for the swim instructor to call me so I can schedule my first lesson instruction. I have no idea what I am doing but I think my self teaching is going great. I read a book and now I practice what I am suppossed to do based upon the book. The book forgot to mention "don't breath under water it makes you choke". If I were writing a swimming book I think I would not have failed to leave that one out. In fact I am sure I would have highlighted, bolded and underlined that one. 
How to Swim page 1
step 1 Don't breath under water it will not work for you. You are a mammal not a fish.

If I were to write a book on running I would start with
How to Run page 1
step 1 This is going to suck. If that is okay with you continue reading.

I am considering starting this challenge a co worker suggested. It is called the Burpee challenge and what it is = 1 + 1 burpee a day for 100 days so on day 2 you do 2 and on day 3 you do 3. What is a Burpee I asked and it was explained too me that a Burpee is when you begin in a raised push up position. Then hop your feet up to your chest and now you are in a squat like position from there lift up jump and clap your hands. Return to the lower push up position.
So do One Plus one for 100 days until you are doing 100.

I read somewhere this is how the Ninja trained to jump so high. They jumped over a stalk of corn every day and then when the corn grew they too tall they started again. Eventually they could jump onto roofs and such. They must have some pretty tall corn where Ninja come from.

"Donnie D's on the Backup
So put the Crack up
No need for speed
Im anti d-r-u-g-g-i-e my
Body is healthy
My rhymes make me wealthy
and the funky bunch helps me
to bring you a show with no intoxication
Come on feel the vibration"

Stay in your Lane

Tuesday
I ran on Saturday but only a mile and half because I have been healing from a minor cold and I didn’t want to get sick again. I did manage to run continuously farther than I ever had before by about 50 yards. Being able to run the entire 3 miles by the 5K in November is going to take more work. I just wish that didn’t mean so much more running.
Still haven’t done much Yoga lately. I really need to get back on track with my daily Yoga program. Hello 4 am wake up my ugly ugly friend how I so don’t want to see you again. Maybe I will try Yoga at night time before bed.


I swam today and it was a little victory just to get there and show up. This is the 2nd week and it is nowhere close to normal for me to go swimming so I really need to focus and get myself there. I went later today which made it hard to stay motivated. I struggle staying motivated as the day goes on. I find it easier to exercise earlier in the day. I think that is my natural Couch Potato shinning through.

I have to say I have been feeling like CP is losing his grip and the new and sparkly me is coming out more and more. The new me has a fresh chloriny scent.
So as I try to find times when there is not too many people swimming I learned that 3pm is not one of them. I had to share a lane and being that I am new I didn’t want to accidentally club someone next to me. Well it only happened once. I kicked the lady in the lane next to me. I felt bad but she said no problem as she ran out of the room holding her eyeball. He he he Anyway it is very distracting to swim next to other sucky swimmers, unless they are more sucky then me. Then it is not so distracting.


As I swim and try to get more relaxed in the water I am learning to like the taste of chlorine water. I am happy I did it for the 4th planned day in a row. Wahoo little victories matter to ME. Getting to the pool today was my victory even if I only swam about 500 yards.
“The thoughts in my head go Bing Bang Bong

Bing Bang Bong, Bing Bang Bong, All day long.”

My mini - Brick

Wednesday I walked the stairs.

Thursday I did swim for 30 minutes which was 15 laps = 750 yards and then I ran mile and a little more at night when I got home.

In Triathalon training when you do two of the 3 sports together on a day it is called a "Brick" Well really I think your suppossed to do them right together but that is not what I did. My mini Brick is smaller ammounts and sort of like a kiddy pool.



My Swimming focus is all about learning to breath and 8500 other things but then once I swallow some water it easily reverts to the one thing. Learning to breath, and I have discovered that I am not Aqua Man. Of all the super friends he was the most one dimensional. I am not knocking him because he might find me one day and play the panic game with me which is not a fun game. What is the "panic game" you ask?

That is a game my wife made up because when we are in the shallows at the beach I playfully threw her in the water when she may not have wanted me to. So she developed the panic game as a nice revenge because she is a strong swimmer and I am not. So whenever we get in water over my head she meanders over and pulls me down (under water) until I panic (because I am afraid of drowning). She finds this very amusing but me ... not so much. And if you were wondering fake panicing doesn't work.

Needless to say our relationship becomes very different at that point.



Where was I oh yeah I need to learn to swim a lot farther and without stopping. Amanda tells me I need to learn to swim twice the distance in the pool to prepare for open water. So 36 laps = a mile and I am currently doing 15 laps in 30 minutes. I also am stopping to rest every 25 yards. There is a lot of work to be done in this area. Yikes



Little victories keep me moving, like the run I currently do has a small hill just after the 1 mile mark and until last night I have only made it up 30 of the 40 yards and then had to walk. So last night I made it to the top and then another 50 yards before walking. That is the best run I have done so far. I felt really strong, I felt my eye of the tiger coming out. I imagine what it will be like to finish that hill after a 2nd lap.

I also noticed as I started to walk that it is not my legs stopping me, at this point it is my lung power. That seems to be growing but the lame part is to make it keep growing I have to keep running. I think this week makes 1 year of not smoking, I think it was October 4th that I had my last one.

I am now visualizing running the loop twice which is what the 5K will be in terms of distance. I hope to be there by November when we do that run in Seattle, I would like to complete the 5K without stopping.

I have learned to love my running shoes, I would marry them if I could but I am already married. My regular daily shoes are sucky, and I think bad thoughts of them every time I have to put them on. Bad shoes, uncomfortable shoes, broken shoes !

Sometimes I dream

I sometimes imagine I can be an athelete, I mean I want to be an athlete real real bad. What I struggle with is getting my body to move in the way those real atheletes move. That's the RUB! Well that and all the exercising involved.

I recognize now and admit that somewhere inside me is a Triathlete that wants to be born.
I mean I look at people swimming in the pool all graceful and fluid and what looks to be almost effortless form and I want to do that.
I see people jogging or running that don't look like they are about ot fall over and I want to do that.
I see bikers zoom by or talk to some who ride from Mukilteo into downtown Seattle on their way to work in the morning. I want to do that.

RUB when I try those things I don't look or feel like that. FARFIG NUGEN! I don't want to have this be so hard.

I swam today and after 30 minutes I realize the best thing about swimming is it is not running. Gosh running sucks. Oh yeah and as a result of all this running I now have this strange bump on the top of my foot that was not their before. It looks like a bone poking under the skin and I don't have one on the other foot so I know that it doesn't belong there. Now that sentence will not make sense to everyone only some people. My logic of if something looks out of place on one side check the other side is not an exact scientific formula. I did fail Chemistry in high school. Nobody told me about strange growths. That was not a part of what I signed up for. What is hard to know now that I am over 40 is what caused the strange growth? What causes hair to grow in old man ears? Why do eyebrows not grow for years and then suddenly sprout like weeds?

Back to todays swimming. It is difficult because I feel like a phony when I am in the pool and I imagine everyone thinks who is the dork swimming like an ardvark in the far lane. Then I remind myself everyone started sometime so no worries. Still this ardvark needs a lesson or two. I am trying to learn the Total Immersion style or method and I am looking like the Total Inversion where everything you are suppossed to do is going backwards. I swallow water instead of breathing air. I sink instead of float and when my top half is working like a dog my back half forgets to do anything. I tuck my head into my arm pit but then end up diving down. Ardvarks are not natural swimmers.

I am starting to ice my knee every night and I think now it will probably be achy forever. I am getting used to aching in some spot or another pretty much all the time. So this is FUN people? Okay I will play along. This is Fun!  Everyone should go out and run around. Hell do it with one shoe on and see if you can get you toe nails worn down to little bloody nubs. Ha ha Fun thats what my toe nails feel like lately.  After that ride a bike until you baunch is good and chaffed then jump in some salt water and swim until the fish nibble on your bloody toes.......Fun.

While swimming today I think I managed a 20 / 40. Sounds technical what it means is swim about 20 laps (25 meters)  while drinking 40 gallons of pool water.  The water level was half an inch lower and I had to pee real bad afterwards. Swimming is funner than running because I get to push off the wall every so often and feel like I am ZOOMing through the water like a shark. A shark with a lazer beam attached to his head.

"You will do what I say when I say
BACK to the Front!"

Every agonizing step

I am running and running and running and I am thinking I am thinking and I am thinking and I realize as that the only way to get better at this. Or rather the only way to used to this and build up the lung capicity is to keep doing this and that is not my favorite thought. In fact that thought is not motivational at all.

So on to my recap of the last week.

Sunday Oct 4th ran a mile
Saturday Oct 3rd ran three miles

Friday Oct 2nd walked the stairs at Quest field
Thursday Oct 1st (20 minutes swim) and a mile and half run that evening

Wed joined the Gym (committed for a year when really I should be the one committed after this year.)

As I was saying the only way to get better or to make running easier is to do more running so your body develops and gets used to it. Sort of like those old Kings and Queens who used to sip little bits of poison so they would be used to it whne someone tried to poison them.
My cousin made me some music to help motivate me during my runs and so I have been trying that. I am not real sure it does more than increase my chances of getting run over because I can't hear anything now.
Thanks for the CD's they are really old school.

So now that we are in October I have a only a MONTH or so before I run my first 5K (which is 3 miles). I have set my goal of running the entire time and as long as the entire course is down hill I might be able to do it.
Funny how the littlest incline can seem like a horrible mountain.

I have to be happy with the little victories and the hard part is I know after the little victory (of say one little hill) are just bigger and bigger hills.
I am in total awe of the course my wife runs regularly. Total awe of her and Candice and Jason and  Molly and Kathy and all you other fools who somehow managed to add me to your list. What am I doing here ?