Well training and my workouts continue to go well. I have been increasing my running miles to around 18-20 per week in preparation for my upcoming Tri on September 3rd. Really getting excited about this race and I think the excitement is translating into motivation to push a little harder in my training sessions. My bike rides are also going well and man I can really tell an increase in strength on the bike since mapping out a pretty brutal course I do 3x a week that is full of mammoth hills! I can't wait to see how well I stack up against fellow age-groupers in the bike split at this sprint tri. Right now the thing that I am trying to figure out is should I use my clipless pedals and cycling shoes for the 10 mile ride in this race, or switch out to my toe-strap pedals , so as to only have to change shoes in transition one time. I have used the toe-strap pedals in both du's this year I competed in and did fairly well against the others on road bikes. I know I can't hang with the dudes on the Tri/TT bikes regardless of pedals, but I want to put up a decent split nonetheless. I really feel strongly that I can place top-3 in my age group this race! I just don't want to make a stupid decision in regards to pedals and shoes!!! I will continue to think on it!!!! I guess right now I am thinking of keeping the clipless pedals on the bike. I have velcro fastening cycling shoes, so it'll go pretty fast in transition either way..... I also amped up my swimming this month, adding a mile-long swim in the mix each week. Still doing 3 weight training sessions per week as well, and throwing in yoga 5-6 nights a week to boot. All-in-all I feel really strong and relatively light going into my last real week of training before my taper week. Checked into a local triclub recently and saw that they get together for a weekly open-water swim. Man that would be nice, so I am really considering joining up with these guys next season, as my sights are set on a 70.3 in May!!!!! The one thing I really have dropped the ball on this year is open-water swimming...ugh...I got to make this a priority out of the shoot next Spring. The way my race plans for next year look, I will do an indoor tri in March, the Lake Junaluska Du again in April and then the 70.3 in May. Haven't thought much beyond that point.....my wallet will be pretty thin after those 3!
Oh random thoughts....hmmmmm? I guess I really don't have anything on my mind at the moment, but just wanted to throw out there how important it is to spread good karma into the world! Simple things like dropping a coin into an expired parking meter for a stranger or writing an uplifting message on random note pads or write-on boards that you see in stores where people write things, or even on community bulletin boards! People read these things and seriously as cheesy as it might sound, even if your message only moves a single person, trust me its time well spent! There is so much negative and toxic energy out there, its so relieving to see soemthing positive at times! So be a person that spreads that positive message........
Oh and one other thing I just want to say to all the idiots that think its soooo freaking funny to blow their horns at you from behind when your doing training runs....... grow the hell up! Seriously! Just one time I would love for one of these jerks to stop after they do this and I flip 'em the bird..... So lame! Just had to rant for a second :)
Peace, Love and Train Hard!!!!!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Losing Weight............
So thinking about and trying to decide where I wanted to go in this week's post, I decided to talk about something that I have a little (well ninety + pounds worth) of experience with....and that's losing weight. In our American society, we are consistently seeing more and more folks being classified in the obese category. Even more troubling is the amount of children that are overweight and obese. Obviously there isn't one single cause that's contributing to our ever-expanding waist lines. Many factors are often involved including socio-economic status, education levels, personal values, psychological factors such as self-esteem and percetions of self- image. Genetics can play a role, although I think that this has become a scape-goat (well maybe the more Punk Rock way of putting it would be cop-out) for many. I can buy into that some of us can be predisposed to a slower metabolism, have different body shapes and genetic abilities to either gain or not gain muscleat a given rate, and have a higher risk of developing things such as high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease, yet all of these things are not not certainties simply because you have a family history of such. Case in point, my brother is over 400 pounds, has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and issues with his joints. My mother is overweight, has had a stroke, 2 mild heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure and had to have a kidney removed. My father suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. I would also consider my father to be somewhat overweight. I will spare you the list of relatives that have health issues, but I'd say that all-in-all, I come from a pretty unhealthy family. With all this being said, I realize that there are risks that I have based on my family history, but instead of "folding" and resigning to some dismal fate of having cardiovacsular disease and being obese like my most of my family members, I use this as a motivation to get out and get healthy! I have always considered myself completely different from my family :) so I guess in order to be true to myself and Punk Rock ways, I'd better go against the family norm and be a health freak!
There is also another point to my writing all of this about weight loss and family history. There was a point in my life about 5-6 years ago that I really let myself go. Looking back on it and given my educational background in psychology, I can see that depression had a large part of it. Coming out of college I was in great shape. I'd played lots of soccer and football, and was a gym rat! Yet once the "party" was over and I was faced with thinks like family and working full time, my workout became shorter and shorter. If I only would have learned more about priorotizing and time management, I would have more easily been able to fit workouts into my life. I was very unhappy and depressed in my family life and work, so the downward spiral began. Food became a comfrt and my obsession. As my health declined, my need to rest and desire to eat increased. So if I would have stayed in shape, I could have used all that time I wasted eating and napping to improve my health and stay active. Ugh....youth! I guess that's why they say ignorance is bliss? I didn't realize what I was doing to my body at the time. Well ignorance can also be unhealthy and eventually life-threatening. Anyway I began to see and feel the impact that being around 90 pounds overweight was having on my body. I felt terrible, I looked ridiculous, and I was facing being put on blood pressure medication at 25 years of age, so I said enough to this..... I made the commitment to get HEALTHY, and that's the key here....getting HEALTHY. That's the point of this post. You see there is a monumental difference in losing weight or getting healthy. Getting healthy in many cases encompasses losing weight, but losing weight certainly does't equate getting healthy in all cases. Diet pills (which I have another story about these that I'll touch on later), ridiculous pieces of "fitness" equipment, hot towel wraps, too hard to follow diet plans, and endless other "As Seen on TV" routes to weight loss, drive into our brains that its all about weight loss. If you just lose weight, you've found a ticket to join an elite social group of the beautiful and enlightened....right? Well of course that isn't the case at all. We buy these things, we take the pills, we cook the bland boring foods that were promised to cause rapid weight loss, and all we end up with is a higher credit card bill and increasing frustration because it didn't work. Here's a Punk Rock Triathlete reality check: IT TAKES WORK TO GET HEALTHY, and IF YOU PUT IN THE WORK TO GET HEALTHY...YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT! I swear to god promise you will lose weight if you focus on getting healthy (meaning exercise, eating right, kicking heath declining habits like smoking and overconsumption of alcohol, etc. and paying attention to spiritual and emotional growth). It's easy to be fat.....it is not as easy to be fit and in shape, but it can be fun and its certainly rewarding! The journey from a fat guy to a realtively competitive age-group triathlete has been incredible for me! If getting into shape and getting healthy were easy, our society wouldn't continue seeing the rise in obesity statistics. It requires dedication, planning, paying more for foods, being open to preparing your own meals, getting down and dirty, sweating, being sore in places you didn't know you could be sore in....yet when you change your lifestyle and you make a commitment to live the healthy life, you will find a sense of inner peace and a rock solid willpower that gives you the courage to go out an conquer whatever it is that seems unattainable at the beginning to you! You'll have the energy to work, be a parent and spouse, maintain your household, be active in the community and also workout and train! I promise you that. Trust me if I can do it and so many other folks out there with even more "life" responsibilites that I have can do it, so can YOU!
Now back to the promised Diet Pills story: Just to drive home the point of how unsafe diet pills and weight loss aides can be, I want to share a personal experience that involves my deceased sister-in-law. 12 years ago this October, she passed away at the age of 29. She was a life-long sufferer of asthma and on the night of her death, she had a severe asthma attack that eventually led to her stopping breathing and having to have CPR performed on her to get her to the hospital, where she was then immediately placed on life-support. When the doctor met with the family, he presented a very interesting and troubling question..... had she ever taken Phen-Phen or any other diet pills containing ephederine? Immediately my brother agreed that she had taken Phen-Phen, along with other ephederine-based weight loss and "alertness" pills for quite some time. The doctor then went on to explain that her heart was severely weakened by the use of these drugs over the years, to the point that it could not handel the stress that this, what would be her last, asthma attack placed on it. He stated that because these drugs speed up the heart (which indeed does cause the metabolism to speed up, albeit in the most unhealthy of ways) it over-works the heart and can cause irreversable damage. Even being on life-support, her body shut down only a few hours after the attack and she passed away.......at 29 years old. She had just finished her nursing degree and began working as an RN, yet even with her knowledge of biology, pharmaceuticals, and the human body, it never seemingly occurred to her that these pills were dangerous. This doesn't occur to most people that buy and take them. Diet pills and the like were DIRECTLY linked to her death.
To think that so many people out there continue to use these "Fat Burnring" pills that have ephedrine-like ingredients in them is scary if not stupid. Commercials even have supposed doctors and health professionals claiming their safety. I just have to wonder about anything that you'd need a doctor telling you that it's safe and reccommended. If its safe, why try to fool me with a fake doctor telling me so? Reminds me of the old cigarette ad where it says "More doctors smoke Salems than any other cigarettes"!!!!! Just something to think about!
So just some final points to consider....not all skinny folks are healthy! Many measures that folks take to lose weight are dangerous and unhealthy. Lastly, make losing weight a sub-goal of getting healthy! Let health and having a healthy lifestyle be your goal!
There is also another point to my writing all of this about weight loss and family history. There was a point in my life about 5-6 years ago that I really let myself go. Looking back on it and given my educational background in psychology, I can see that depression had a large part of it. Coming out of college I was in great shape. I'd played lots of soccer and football, and was a gym rat! Yet once the "party" was over and I was faced with thinks like family and working full time, my workout became shorter and shorter. If I only would have learned more about priorotizing and time management, I would have more easily been able to fit workouts into my life. I was very unhappy and depressed in my family life and work, so the downward spiral began. Food became a comfrt and my obsession. As my health declined, my need to rest and desire to eat increased. So if I would have stayed in shape, I could have used all that time I wasted eating and napping to improve my health and stay active. Ugh....youth! I guess that's why they say ignorance is bliss? I didn't realize what I was doing to my body at the time. Well ignorance can also be unhealthy and eventually life-threatening. Anyway I began to see and feel the impact that being around 90 pounds overweight was having on my body. I felt terrible, I looked ridiculous, and I was facing being put on blood pressure medication at 25 years of age, so I said enough to this..... I made the commitment to get HEALTHY, and that's the key here....getting HEALTHY. That's the point of this post. You see there is a monumental difference in losing weight or getting healthy. Getting healthy in many cases encompasses losing weight, but losing weight certainly does't equate getting healthy in all cases. Diet pills (which I have another story about these that I'll touch on later), ridiculous pieces of "fitness" equipment, hot towel wraps, too hard to follow diet plans, and endless other "As Seen on TV" routes to weight loss, drive into our brains that its all about weight loss. If you just lose weight, you've found a ticket to join an elite social group of the beautiful and enlightened....right? Well of course that isn't the case at all. We buy these things, we take the pills, we cook the bland boring foods that were promised to cause rapid weight loss, and all we end up with is a higher credit card bill and increasing frustration because it didn't work. Here's a Punk Rock Triathlete reality check: IT TAKES WORK TO GET HEALTHY, and IF YOU PUT IN THE WORK TO GET HEALTHY...YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT! I swear to god promise you will lose weight if you focus on getting healthy (meaning exercise, eating right, kicking heath declining habits like smoking and overconsumption of alcohol, etc. and paying attention to spiritual and emotional growth). It's easy to be fat.....it is not as easy to be fit and in shape, but it can be fun and its certainly rewarding! The journey from a fat guy to a realtively competitive age-group triathlete has been incredible for me! If getting into shape and getting healthy were easy, our society wouldn't continue seeing the rise in obesity statistics. It requires dedication, planning, paying more for foods, being open to preparing your own meals, getting down and dirty, sweating, being sore in places you didn't know you could be sore in....yet when you change your lifestyle and you make a commitment to live the healthy life, you will find a sense of inner peace and a rock solid willpower that gives you the courage to go out an conquer whatever it is that seems unattainable at the beginning to you! You'll have the energy to work, be a parent and spouse, maintain your household, be active in the community and also workout and train! I promise you that. Trust me if I can do it and so many other folks out there with even more "life" responsibilites that I have can do it, so can YOU!
Now back to the promised Diet Pills story: Just to drive home the point of how unsafe diet pills and weight loss aides can be, I want to share a personal experience that involves my deceased sister-in-law. 12 years ago this October, she passed away at the age of 29. She was a life-long sufferer of asthma and on the night of her death, she had a severe asthma attack that eventually led to her stopping breathing and having to have CPR performed on her to get her to the hospital, where she was then immediately placed on life-support. When the doctor met with the family, he presented a very interesting and troubling question..... had she ever taken Phen-Phen or any other diet pills containing ephederine? Immediately my brother agreed that she had taken Phen-Phen, along with other ephederine-based weight loss and "alertness" pills for quite some time. The doctor then went on to explain that her heart was severely weakened by the use of these drugs over the years, to the point that it could not handel the stress that this, what would be her last, asthma attack placed on it. He stated that because these drugs speed up the heart (which indeed does cause the metabolism to speed up, albeit in the most unhealthy of ways) it over-works the heart and can cause irreversable damage. Even being on life-support, her body shut down only a few hours after the attack and she passed away.......at 29 years old. She had just finished her nursing degree and began working as an RN, yet even with her knowledge of biology, pharmaceuticals, and the human body, it never seemingly occurred to her that these pills were dangerous. This doesn't occur to most people that buy and take them. Diet pills and the like were DIRECTLY linked to her death.
To think that so many people out there continue to use these "Fat Burnring" pills that have ephedrine-like ingredients in them is scary if not stupid. Commercials even have supposed doctors and health professionals claiming their safety. I just have to wonder about anything that you'd need a doctor telling you that it's safe and reccommended. If its safe, why try to fool me with a fake doctor telling me so? Reminds me of the old cigarette ad where it says "More doctors smoke Salems than any other cigarettes"!!!!! Just something to think about!
So just some final points to consider....not all skinny folks are healthy! Many measures that folks take to lose weight are dangerous and unhealthy. Lastly, make losing weight a sub-goal of getting healthy! Let health and having a healthy lifestyle be your goal!
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Getting Focused
Well finally, I am sitting down to post something, as it has been a few weeks! Training has been going great the last few weeks and I have signed up for the City of Lenoir Sprint Triathlon on September 3rd. I am also signing up for the Bethel Community Half Marathon in October. With that said, I have really have been focused with training and its feeling great. I have been doing well with getting in at least 20 minutes of yoga in each day and I can already tell a difference! This just totally reminded me of how important and amazing that yoga is! Just allowing your body to open up, being able to shift energy into areas that typically get closed off, and to be able to focus on the present with an open mind and heart............ so healing!!!!!!
Anyway last week my swims were great! I swam a total of 3,250 yards and felt incredibly strong in the water. I am really excited to see how I compare with the other age-groupers in my upcoming race. I have also been slowly increasing my running miles. Last week I got in around 15 miles and hope to get up to around 20-25 by the end of the month. As far as the bike goes, I have been flat out hammering it. Yesterday I climbed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is around 3,600 feet. It was a 25 mile trip and as intense as it gts here on the East Coast in terms of climbing. It felt great and I dropped a guy that I caught up to (not to mention he had a fancy 2,000 dollar Cannondale). This ride was by far one of the toughest rides I have made given how hard I hammered it up the mountain. My goal is to do this ride once a week. Round trip, it took about 1 and 1/2 hours to complete. So my bike total for the week was around 60 miles. Living in the mountains of NC, these are hard hilly, mountainous miles so don't let the numbers fool you :) These are tough workouts regardless of the length. Lastly, I did 3 weight training workouts this week and have really decreased the leg workouts to lightre higher rep sessions, given my upcoming races.
So that's whats been going on here with me. I am finishing up my reading of the Traithlon Training Bible and just enjoying life with my family. My motivation remains high and I hope that anyone reading this will find the inner motivation to go out and do something amazing. Whether that's walking a mile or completing the Ironman, go out and challenge yourself. By doing so I promise YOU will become a motivation to those around you! Fear of failure so often prevents us from achieving what we are truly capable of....so go out and kick fear's ass!!!!!!!
Peace, love and happy training!!!! (Don't forget to add yoga to your training!!!)
Anyway last week my swims were great! I swam a total of 3,250 yards and felt incredibly strong in the water. I am really excited to see how I compare with the other age-groupers in my upcoming race. I have also been slowly increasing my running miles. Last week I got in around 15 miles and hope to get up to around 20-25 by the end of the month. As far as the bike goes, I have been flat out hammering it. Yesterday I climbed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is around 3,600 feet. It was a 25 mile trip and as intense as it gts here on the East Coast in terms of climbing. It felt great and I dropped a guy that I caught up to (not to mention he had a fancy 2,000 dollar Cannondale). This ride was by far one of the toughest rides I have made given how hard I hammered it up the mountain. My goal is to do this ride once a week. Round trip, it took about 1 and 1/2 hours to complete. So my bike total for the week was around 60 miles. Living in the mountains of NC, these are hard hilly, mountainous miles so don't let the numbers fool you :) These are tough workouts regardless of the length. Lastly, I did 3 weight training workouts this week and have really decreased the leg workouts to lightre higher rep sessions, given my upcoming races.
So that's whats been going on here with me. I am finishing up my reading of the Traithlon Training Bible and just enjoying life with my family. My motivation remains high and I hope that anyone reading this will find the inner motivation to go out and do something amazing. Whether that's walking a mile or completing the Ironman, go out and challenge yourself. By doing so I promise YOU will become a motivation to those around you! Fear of failure so often prevents us from achieving what we are truly capable of....so go out and kick fear's ass!!!!!!!
Peace, love and happy training!!!! (Don't forget to add yoga to your training!!!)
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