Vim, Vigor, Vitality, Voom!

Many of you have been wondering about the dearth of posts on this site lately. (All right, only one of you, and he hasn't bothered to write; so, it's just a guess on my part.) While I can't personally speak for Stew (ed. note: golf and incessant RVing in parts of the country where Deliverance could have been filmed) or Nuffy (ed. note: planning the next big Disney holiday) my own seeming insouciance comes from my utter committment to the exercise program I described here back in February.

That's right, instead of blogging, (ed. note: cue dime store Forrest Gump impression) I... was... run - ning!

Unlike Forrest, I've not run consistently from the very moment I posted in Februrary until now. I've slept, eaten, gone to work, etc. in-between runs... erm, jogs. (Well, running will sometimes give you the runs or jogs, but that's not what I'm on about.)(ed. note: Enough with the parentheticals already! Oops!)

Anyway, I can imagine the three or four faithful readers of this blog chuckling a bit at the thought of me out on the road, maintaining something so wholesome and consistent as an exercise program since February. Well, I understand the scepticism, especially given my diet of mostly bacon, beef, cheese, chips, and salsa.

However, I should quickly add that I'm 30 pounds lighter than then. So, and I mean this in the most convivial way: "HA!!!"

Please allow me to add to that churlish outburst: "Double HA!" and a, "So there!!!!"

The running has been much more interesting since I stopped working out at the track. The track was comfortable but monotonous. After a few weeks I started leaning strongly to the left whilst walking about at work. Oh sure, I would right myself eventually, but 100 metres later there I was leaning left again, like a communist NASCAR driver.

Strange simile, I know.

Running on the road offers more variety. First, and ironically given the above simile, there's the constant fear of being hit by cars. I mostly avoid this by running through people's yards, open doors, patios, kitchens, bedrooms, lavatories and so on. (I usually have to do a small loop through the loos.) However, one must find their way back to the road eventually, if only to drown out the cries of "Help! Police!" and "Would you hand me my towel, please!" So, I stick to the side streets and always, always look both ways before crossing roads, in case Stew is in town driving at his customary 130 MPH. (The man parks at 45 MPH.)

Dogs are another interesting challenge. Many of them are harmless, looking for a little friendship, someone to slobber on, or whileing away the time until they can savage the local mailman again. Others are a bit more threatening.

One downside is that they're faster than I am. (Of course, at my age, small children on tricycles are often faster than I am, the smug little brats.) They'll also follow you into homes, so the only real choices for escape are up trees or steep playground equipment. Slides won't do as determined hounds will claw their way up and absolutely ruin the finish on the metal.

All of this really cuts down on the running time. Practical as I am though, I get a lot of stretching and dynamic tension exercises done in the branches.

There is much more to see running through the streets. Early morning jogs make for a fascinating sociological study. For example, you probably have no idea how many people walk out for their morning paper in the nude... and how quickly the national section of a thin local periodical can be converted into an impromptu pair of knickers at the words, "Beautiful morning, isn't it?"

One of the most unexpected challenges with running is heat rash. After a run on a particularly humid day in a sweat-soaked t-shirt my nipples are often bleeding like Jack Palance at the end of Shane.

I also like to pray as I run. There's nothing particularly funny about it. I just thought I'd mention it. I recommend it.*

The weight loss has been brilliant. I played footy this evening and whilst some of the younger chaps were still a bit faster than me I was able to keep up with some of the stouter lads, albeit mostly the ones with smoking habits.

It's being able to turn around and run hard again a few seconds later without throwing up all over myself that I enjoy. (In my fitter state, I'm able to vomit much further.) In the back of my mind I imagine some of the other players asking themselves, "I wonder how fast he must've been 20 years ago?" Well, not particularly so, but to paraphrase a line the Monty Python sketch on penguins, (broad Australian accent) and this is the point, I was faster than I am now!

It's been a real blessing, but I have had the problem of most of my trousers suddenly being too large for me. Without a belt, I'd be half-naked much of the day. Even with one, there's quite a bit of trouser-wrinkle at the waistline, as I have to pull back the front of them to keep the latch from coming undone. Belt or no, if people see you walking around with the front of your trousers undone they tend to think you're up to no good.

Since my day job requires me to maintain a wellness regime, I fully intend to keep up the jogging, football, and occasional beatings on the golf course from Stew (along with continuing to lose the rounds to him). It's good, hard fun. I heartly recommend it to all, with the usual warnings to consult a doctor before beginning your own program, and also, possibly, to bring along a taser if you live in a particularly doggy neighborhood.

*For those disappointed with this moment of pious solemnity, feel free to add the line, "Hard on the knees, though."

Crawling Back to Fitness

It's quite ironic that even as Michael J. Nelson is eating his way into bacon glory this month, I am climbing back on the fitness wagon.

Climbing is perhaps the wrong word. A more accurate description would be, "being lifted by a rather large crane, kicking and screaming all the way." Come to think of it, the kicking is probably an exaggeration as well, as my legs don't move so well anymore.

So, a completely accurate description of my retun to the fitness road would be, "I am gradually being hauled onto the fitness wagon by a extraordinary long and sturdy conveyor belt, twitching and whingeing all the way, inbetwixt bouts of near-comatose sleep."

I'm probably not in as bad shape as all that, but after two days of two-and-a-half mile runs (the half-mile being the warm-up), I'm quickly realising just how much the years have thrashed out of my body.

The worst part about beginning any exercise program, especially running, is the first two weeks. That's the period when your body is gradually adjusting to the cheerful new torture you're inflicting upon it. You body handles this adjustment in a highly sophisticated way: by sadistically torturing you right back.

It's incredibly efficient, if you're body's utimate goal is to develop an overall porridge-like consistency. However, if your aims are abs of steel, machine-like cardiovascular-capacity, and rippling musculature, then the effect is similar to a European Union seminar on democracy-building.

Moreso, the body stupidly fails to register that the brain that tortured it by thinking up the need to get up for an early morning run is the same brain that will send back agonised squeals of misery when the overtaxed thigh and calf muscles tie up during a sit down. It's rather like trying to convince your brain to stop beating yourself over the head by shoving red-hot pokers into your legs. After awhile, your brain says, "what's the point," and beats your cranium twice as hard.

I used to be a cross-country runner, or "harrier₁", in school, before university. I wasn't particularly fast but was good enough to be in the side and score for the team. Of course, in cross-country, all you have to do is finish in the top five for your team to score, so that meant staying ahead of two of the seven blokes in your own side. With the proper application of back-kicks and bony runner's elbows, this was a piece of cake.

Still, running seemed easy back then, mainly because at seventeen your body recovers almost as fast as Wolverine's does in the X-Men. Frequently, on days where our school had a meet, I would arrive home from the trip, have a quick sit down, and then hop on my bike for 5-10 miles just for a lark. This was usually after a massive meal at a restaurant on the journey back, most often a buffet or fast-food establishment well known for its infinite variety of cholesterol-themed dishes.

This week has been sort of a trip back through time to those halcyon days, only in extreme slow motion, and with live electrodes strapped all over my body. In fact, I definitively recalled the film Chariots of Fire during the experience. The film came out right before the beginning of my school running experience and was a constant source of motivation . The scenes of slow-motion running were exactly the sort of inspiring vision a young athlete could take to heart. This time however, my primary impression was the realisation that the actors running in slow-motion onscreen were going about twice as fast as I was.

It was of little help that I trained a bit with the Wii Fit in Janaury, mostly doing the jogging in place. A word of advice for those of you doing that exercise, who are starting to convince yourself that you could step out onto the track fly round it like a middle-aged Hicham El Guerrouj: A mile on the Wii Fit translates to about a quarter-mile on the track. Also, the Wii Fit doesn't account for wind resistance. The one similarity between the two expereinces is that a good, stiff wind can have you jogging in place again.

It's all different muscles too. Jogging in place seemed to be good enough cardio work; however, the moment I stepped out onto the track a completely different group of muscles than I had been using with the Wii Fit cropped up, as if to say, "Remember us?" It was rather like running into a group of old school bullies, who, instead of being impressed with your advanced degree, professional job, and nice salary, spent their time reminding you how easy it was to dump you headfirst into the cafeteria wastebins.₂

So, I stepped onto the track Saturday morning and began to jog at a nice, easy pace. For a moment, I wanted to burst out in a Forrest Gump voice, shouting, "I was run-ning!" However, I quickly realised that I couldn't actually speak. My lungs and voicebox were too caught up in the desperate business of gathering oxygen to bother with communication, much less the sort that didn't involve the words, "Please... summon... an... ambulance."

Mind you, this was only the warm up jog. The actual two mile hike was far worse. The stretching between the two was nice though, in that I got to sit down for a moment.

So, memory lane on the track₃ isn't all it's cracked up to be. However, after only a couple of days back in the running groove, I can safely say that I do remember exactly what the best and worst things about exercise are.

The best thing is finishing an early-morning workout, knowing that you're done for the day and that you've accomplished something that will build your body up towards health and divine service, strengthen your inner well-being, and improve your overall life experience.

The worst thing, of course, is the exercise.

1 Instead of being sleek and fast like the plane of the same name, most of us were scrawny and highly-excitable.
2 This actually never happened to me. None of the bullies were fellow harriers, so I could outrun them all.
3 The inside, shortest lane, of course.