DaveGetsFit

I try not to live and die with what I see on the scale, but this morning was a bit of a shocker. I know I had a bad weekend—much ingesting of carbs while at the pool. At some point Saturday afternoon, the chocolate brownies just screamed at me and I couldn’t ignore them. Things went downhill from there. It seems my system does a real good job of converting excess carbs to fat. I don’t think this is just some topped off glycogen stores—I feel fat!! As I stated in a Twitter update, I have to overcome 50 years of programming and that is not easy. So once again, I climb back on the wagon and press on. I did a VERY LOW carb day to jump start my recovery.

Monday I got back on the winning side in my recurring racquetball matches with Neal. I won the first two games including coming back from 13-10 in the second game. Before starting the third game, Neal switched us to a racquetball he keeps in a pressure can. I hate playing with those things. They are way too lively and make hitting a decent ceiling shot almost impossible. I more or less went through the motions in the third game and maybe scored five points. We still had time so I asked if he wanted to play a fourth game. We did but I insisted on using a new ball from my bag. I won that one.

I stopped by the gym on the way home Monday and knocked out some pullups on the Gravitron machine. I did 3 x 10 with the weight stack set to 110. I’m going to drop it to 100 for the next set—at least for the first two sets.

Today I played Ron and did fairly well. I was 17 hours into a fast but I felt great. I scored a total of 26 points in three games which isn’t bad when playing Ron. We had some terrific rallies and I put out some serious effort. It was fun!

I haven’t jumped back on the bike yet this week. I just don’t feel like giving up the extra half hour of sleep I get when I drive. But I may ride in tomorrow—great weather for it now.

That should get me caught up. Hopefully the last entry in this post will change quickly.

Morning weight: 211lbs.

I find myself in catch-up mode again! So here goes:

Monday
My winning streak against Neal came to and end. I blew a 13-10 lead in the first game, fought back from 2-7 in the second to win, and was tied at 8 in the third before running out of gas. I really put a big time effort into coming back in that second game. It was a great workout—gotta start a new winning streak next week.

Tuesday
I played Ron for the first time in awhile and he put a whuppin’ on me. I really didn’t play all that bad, however, and hit a handful of really good shots. Earlier in the day I had walked to his office with the intention of postponing our match until Thursday because I wanted a break after the match with Neal. But it’s hard to turn him down—I just enjoy playing. As a matter of fact, I’ve scheduled a match for Thursday against another guy in our office that I haven’t played before—should be interesting.

Prior to playing with Ron, I did three sets of pullups on the Gravitron. I lowered the weight stack from 120 to 110.

Today I disappeared into the library stacks and did four rounds of pushups: 12, 10, 7, and 7.

After the ride home today, I’ll be three-for-three with the bicycle commute. The weather has been great but I may get a strong headwind going home today.

Nutritionally I’ve done well this week once I got passed the chocolate left over from Easter.

My morning weight has been 206 the last two days.

And with that, I’m caught up!

Got back on the bike this morning after an extended layoff due to my foot problems. No hint of pain now so hopefully everything is back to normal. There was a light westerly breeze which is rather unusual. Hopefully it won’t turn into a big southerly blow before I start home this afternoon.

The scale took a jump over the weekend–not unexpected considering what I ate. It occurred to me as I stepped off that my weight loss is like a roller coaster but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The thing about a roller coaster is that although it goes up and down, the “up” portion is less and less each time. So as long as my weekend “bounce back” keeps ending up at a lower point, them I’m doing ok. The big thing is make sure I don’t get reattached to the lift that takes me back up!!

Morning weight: 206

My website/blog server was inaccessible Friday afternoon so I was unable to post. I just wanted to do a quick update. Friday afternoon I did a quick workout in the front yard. I did kettlebell clean and press ladders, and some swings. Saturday I went to the gym (while my wife was a few hundred yard away grocery shopping) and did pullups on the Gravitron, and some pushups. Saturday I also walked for an hour around the hood.

Today was a do nuthin day—a lot of time in front of the tube watching golf. But I did manage to cook a rather primal meal. I made a stew from javelina meat. I came out quite well.

After a long layoff due to the foot problems, I’m back on the bike for the commute tomorrow.

It was a really great day for a ride.  We had a slight wind out of the north–not very common for this time of year.  This was the first time on the bike for me in three weeks since suffering the Agony of De Feet. After sitting out at the end of the 350 yard pier for a while, we rode to the base bowling lanes where my grandson proceeded to kick my butt in a game of 8-ball!

I figure my words on the web will out live me because Google will archive them somewhere. But what will really cause me to live on beyond the grave will be my grandson telling his kids about his Sunday bike rides with his grandpa.

I had my G1 phone’s mapping program on during the ride. For some reason it quit tracking when we got to the end of the pier. You can check out the track here. If you click on the end point (in red) it will display some statistics about the ride. Very cool!

The first Sunday of Spring turned out to be a beautiful day for a bike ride.  My grandson Dominic and I did our normal Sunday morning ride out to the fishing pier on the naval base.  There was a bit of a breeze but not too bad.  So with a mornng ride to the ATM machine, and the 14 miler with Nicky, I ended up riding 20 miles this morning.  The only downside it that it didn’t do much for my sore foot (the subject of another post).

I had every intention of writing a post last night that would detail my lunch time workout, and my ride home from work; however, there was a slight glitch that upset those plans.  For the last month, my granddaughter has been looking forward to going to see a band with some friends.  At the last moment, the parent of the friend that was supposed to take her bailed out, and it was up to grandpa to come to the rescue.  I left the house thinking that I really didn’t want to shell out $15, nor subject my ears to the sounds of Forever The Sickest Kids (what a name, eh?).  Fortunately the club had a setup that enabled me to sit at a bar (without paying) and watch basketball on TV while she was enjoying the show.  The bad news was that there were four acts so I ended up spending four hours in a smokey bar–nothing Grok ever had to endure I’m sure. 

So back to yesterday.  I had a short window to work out so I got in a quick workout on my notoriously weak upper body.  A couple hierarchal sets with dumbbells.  My memory is a little foggy on the exact weights and reps but I do remember that I started too high on one and had to modify the reps.

The ride home was really fun.  I left with the intention of taking it real easy because the kids are on spring break and I didn’t have to rush home to play taxi driver or homework monitor.  But after the first right turn, I realized I had a rare ENE breeze which meant a rear quartering wind for the ride home.  No time to take it easy!  I didn’t reset my computer so I don’t know what my average speed was, but everytime I looked down I was doing 18mph.  It was fun moving like that for a change.

No ride today.  I didn’t get to bed until after midnight after my evening at the House of Rock–I was in no mood for getting up early to ride the bike.  It’s taken me four cups of coffee to get rolling this morning!

Thursday mornng weight:  205lbs

Friday morning weight: 206lbs

Recumbent bicycles are sometimes referred to a lawn chairs on wheels so this is an appropriate title.  After  taking the prudenct course and not riding in the fog on Tuesday, and then missing a great riding day on Wednesdy, I hopped on the bike this morning for a good ride in.  There was little wind and the temperature was comfortable for shorts and a light jacket. I didn’t check my average speed but everytime I looked down at the computer, it was reading 15mph.  Not fast but I’ll take it!  It should be nice for the ride home this morning.

I’m heading to the gym for a little upper body work at lunch.

Morning weight:  205lbs.

First of all, I got in the match with Neal that we had to postpone from yesterday because he forgot his shoes.  The first game was a real close one.  I was down 12-9, got it to a tie at 13, but ended up losing 15-14.  It was very frustrating because I had so many unforced errors—mostly skipping the ball trying to hit kill shots on easy set ups.  So I changed tactics in the next two games.  Instead of going for kill shots all the time, I made passing shots to his backhand.  It worked as I won the next two games 15-9 and 15-4.  We had several really good rallies–it was a great workout.

Now to switch gears completely.  About a year ago, I was campaigning hard at a local supermarket to get them to start carrying some Greek yogurt.  After a lot of promises but no action for several months, they finally started carrying the Greek Gods brand.  But although they had the facings for several flavors, quite often they would only have one or two, or noting at all.  So I was really surprised when I walked in today and saw this:

Now they are carrying three different brands and one of them has an organic line! Unbelievable. I really like the Greek Gods Honey flavored. It’s something I have maybe once or twice a month because there is a high sugar content in the flavored variety but it tastes sooooo good.

And finally, I couldn’t ride my bike to work this morning because we were under a dense fog advisory.  I checked the weather report from the Navy base (my destination) and they reported visibility down to 1/10th of a mile.  The forecast is for more of the same tomorrow.  The really bad part of this is that after the fog burns off, we’re left with a beautiful day, but I’m stuck driving home instead of being on my bike.

Morning weight:  209lbs

Titled used without the permission of The Who!

I bought my first recumbent bicycle over 10 years ago.  It was a Lightning P-38—a performance machine that set me back over $2k.  But after a few years of riding in Corpus Christi, I grew weary of the intolerant drivers here, and after diving in a ditch to avoid getting hit head on by a turning car, I basically gave up cycling.  I sold the P-38 and that was that.  But a couple years later, I had a bad flare-up of plantar fasciitis so I decided to get another bike so I could get in some exercise.  That’s when I bought a Sun EZ-1 recumbent.  It was sold as an entry level bike—easy to ride and easy on the checkbook.  But after a couple years, it spent most of its time in the garage.  I would hop on it from time to time to cruise around the neighborhood or make a run to the convenience store.  Then one day I went out to the garage to ride it, but it wasn’t there.  Gone!

Fast forward a year and a half.  I started commuting to work on an old Schwinn hybrid, and after awhile, I decided I’d like to upgrade to a new bike.  I did some research and decided to check out a Jamis Commuter.  It turned out there was a local dealer so I went to the shop to check them out.  After checking out the bike, I left thinking I’d be back to buy it after I saved a little cash.  But as I left, something caught my eye.  Among a display of used bikes for sale in front of the store, I SPOTTED MY EZ-1!!!  There was no doubt it was my bike because it still had an airless polyurethane tire I had put on the front, and a piece of black electrical tape I had put on a chain stay to protect it against chain slap. I went back in to talk to the owner and he told me he had taken it in as a trade on another bike from a good customer.  I called the police and an officer came to the shop.  He made the owner put the bike in the back while they investigated.

There was no doubt it was my bike but unfortunately I had lost the receipt.  The police investigation traced it back to a pawn shop in my part of town, but the police said there was nothing they could do because there wasn’t enough to go on for a criminal case.  I had several people advise me that I could probably take the shop owner to small claims court to recover my bike.  I considered it but in the end I decided against it because he was a victim too.  He’s busting his ass trying to make his shop go, and he took the bike in on good faith from a customer.

While all this was going on, I did buy the Jamis bike but I got it online.  But after riding it for a few weeks, I developed some serious wrist pain.  I had trouble with numb hands ever since I had started commuting on the Schwinn.  It just got worse despite trying several adjustments to the bike.  So in the end, I went back to the shop and traded him straight up and got my EZ-1 back.  I sure didn’t like having to in effect pay for the same bike twice, but this is a super comfortable ride and I’m really glad to have it back!