Another Miss

No run today. I feel like I have COPD. One more night where coughing replaces sleep, and I'm going to pay a visit to the clinic. I can't have pneumonia, can I? Perish the thought. The fever's gone. My lungs just feel like a mucous conveyor belt. I don't have the wind for a run and I really need to let my body get better. I'll look forward to Friday to get Week 2 - and the whole program - back on track.

A Bit of Advice

Coughing is a great exercise for the abdominals. I recommend one set, all night long, for at least two nights in a row.

Weight Loss Champeen!!!1!!

Cindy (my medicine-ball-and-chain) congratulated me on losing more weight in the past week than Ben. She qualified that with the old "it's not a competition" lie. Of course it is! I'm gonna pwn that guy! I jest. I did notice the difference though. I think it's important to realize that in the first two weeks of his body project, he lost 15 lbs. So, in a sense, he pwned me. It's all relative though. He did the boot camp thing and ran a 5K right out of the gate. He was also carrying around 80 more pounds than me - imagine wearing a backpack filled with 80 lbs all day, every day. I, on the other hand, am taking it easy. Also, It's a lot easier to lose the first chunk of weight. Eat right and get off of the couch once in a while and the weight just sloughs off.

When you get down closer to your happy place, I think that weighing yourself is pointless. There are gentlemen out there who wear carbon fibre armour, toss a ball around and bash into each other most Sundays who weigh well over 300 lbs but don't have an ounce of fat on them. I doubt they're worried about their weight. We've all heard that muscle weighs more than fat. It's more dense. At a certain point, a scale isn't going to give you an accurate picture of where you are fat-wise. In the beginning, it's valuable to get that positive feedback from a scale, but depend too much on it and it will get discouraging. At some point you just have to look in a mirror or pinch your spare tire to get an accurate picture. It should be about looking good and feeling good.

When you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you look mahvelous! - Fernando Lamas (Billy Crystal)

Week 2, Session 1 (Week 2 Reboot)

2min Run, 2min Walk X 7 reps.
Playlist: WTFPod - Lucas Molandes

Sound familiar? Well skipping Session 3 and spending a good chunk of the weekend either shivering or having coughing fits was not very conducive to picking up where we left off. I went into this run wondering if I should tell my workmates to call the authorities if I didn't come back in an hour. You never know.

I don't blame that trepidation as a contributing factor. I didn't have the lung capacity to start Week 3. After a minute and a half of the first running interval, I knew I couldn't do 3 minutes. Well, maybe I could have, but it I would have really hated it. I can't afford to really hate it at this juncture. I made an executive decision to reboot the whole week. I'm still way ahead of schedule and my body likes this pace. I ended up equalling the distance I did a week ago today. No need for a map.

I really recommend listening to comedy while running. I think I'm going to continue doing that from here on. I can envision queuing up a tune with a beat that would play havoc with the natural rhythm of my running pace. I listen to a lot of crap with unconventional time signatures. I also listen to a lot of heavy, driving stuff that could push me to run faster than my body wants to. Comedy doesn't force my pace. Also, it's not so hard to laugh when you're running, even when you're seriously winded. And since it makes me happy listening to it, maybe there's some kind of subconscious Pavlovian effect going on that will make me start to equate running with good times. It could happen!

Second Weigh-in

You need to feel sorry for me today. That's your job for the next 30 seconds. I'm a hurting unit. I'm sick as a dog, achey, cold, coughing up oysters... you get the picture. No hike today for Daddy. Let's add the new weight to the table:

      19/11/11 - 279.0 lbs
      26/11/11 - 274.8 lbs

Not too shabby, all things considered. I've been mulling over a goal to drop 5 lbs a week. 4.2 is close enough. I'm still not ready to make a final weight goal. I'm thinking about the inevitable plateau that will come in a month or two. If that happens, I might have to kick the regimen up a notch just to keep pace. So far it's been pretty slacker-proof. I've just stuck to avoiding carbs and snacks... oh, and training for a 10k. I just wish I could get in 3 days of training in a week!

Week 2, Session 3

Though I've never looked forward to an unscheduled day off, I have a couple of valid excuses for missing my training run today. My eldest is home with a fever, and I'm here taking care of him, while my running shoes are under my desk a 45 minute commute away. I'm also under the weather a bit myself. If I was at work today I would have slogged through it, and probably would have been rewarded with clearer lungs at the end of it. I'm a bit worried about Monday though. I'll be jumping from a 1 minute interval recovery run right up to a 3 minute run without an intervening 2 minute day to prepare. Maybe the 4 day break will pay off. I should go on a hike this weekend once we've all gotten over our sickness.

Eat Shit and Die

"So you outlived the fun...That's the worst feeling."
-Marc Maron to Horatio Sanz.

They were discussing the legacy of fat guys on Saturday Night Live and their self-destructive lifestyles: "eat shit and die". Horatio spoke about the turning point where he was getting depressed about himself even when he was drunk. Yeah. That's a warning sign.

Carb Vacation

I used to have some form of starchy food with every meal. Fat Head got me thinking about carbs and what I would do to remove most of them from my diet. Being a vegetarian, the suggestion would seem ludicrous. Well, the experiment has begun. I'd like to have as much variety as possible, but I'm just as comfortable eating the same thing every day for a month. Well, so far, eggs have been a big part of my life. I've also lucked out in that Save-On-Foods has had Gardein meat-free foods on sale for the past few weeks.  I stocked up and have been experimenting. What you see above is their Beefless Tips fried with onions, mushrooms, peppers and frozen green beans. Pretty tasty, and no potatoes or bread or any of that crap. One plate full, no dessert - thanks to No-S - and away we go to nummer town (population num).

Week 2, Session 2

1 min run,  2 min walk X 7 reps
Playlist: WTFPod - Rob Riggle

My distance fell quite short of the Stanley Park bridge today. That was to be expected. Mid week runs are always lighter after a new time/distance is introduced. It was nice to have that break. I think I needed it.

I'm starting to get this dread where I'm walking down to the seawall for my run and I don't know if I'm going to have the gumption to finish. I used to get the same thing back in 2004, the last time I trained (successfully) for the Sun Run. It eventually went away and was usually weather related. Today was grey, but not too cold. My ankle has been bugging me. That may have contributed. Nothing to worry about yet, though.

It sucks being fat. The one key fat-guy issue related to my training is body aches. When you're carrying around more weight than your body is designed to, for years, the joints in your legs have a habit of stiffening up and feeling like you've broken something. I had a wonky knee a few years back. That killed my aspirations of doing the 2008 Sun Run. (I just noticed! Q4Years! A tradition is born!) I went to physio and got it sorted, but continued to flare up from time to time. When that happens, I draw upon the lessons that I learned in physio - exercising the muscles around a problem joint to protect the ligaments - and fix it myself. Right now my knee is great, but for the past few months, one of my Achilles tendons (I think) has been on strike. I can't point my toes on that foot without it hurting and I can't sit on my heels when I'm down on the floor playing with the kids. I focus my stretching on that heel, but the pain doesn't go away. It just subsides. Thankfully, it hasn't sidelined me. If anything, the running is helping to fix it... that or the stretching. Good side effects: I'll take 'em.

Today's run had a bit of a diversion. A Sea King was doing manoeuvres over Coal Harbour. I snapped this as it was landing on Deadman's Island: 

Sorry. It was dark and I just did a quick snap with the IPhone. I think it might have been taking cadets for a joy ride. I wanna be a cadet. Maybe I can convince one of my boys to join...

Week 2, Session 1

2min Run, 2min Walk X 7 reps.
Playlist: Polvo - Cor-Crane Secret

There's snow in the mountains, but it's a balmy 7° on the sea wall. Not too damp. I'm starting to get winded by the end of the running interval, but not to the point where I feel like quitting. Note, that I did skip one of the required runs for Week 1, but I felt pretty good last week and decided that I could progress to Week 2 without retracing my steps. Nearly made it to the rowing club. I calculated that if I can make it to the Yacht club and back, that's over 5k. If I can run that straight through, I'll consider trying a prep 5k race before April. I've fallen into the trap of over-training in the past in order to get faster... faster. I'd pack 4 or 5 runs into a week.This time it feels easier. It's still early days yet, but I'm optimistic that I can go from couch to 10k without destroying my willpower in the process.

Parge vs Ben

I've got a link to Ben Does Life in my links section and haven't said anything about it yet. I run the risk of having this blog be too much like Ben's. In reality, this blog was inspired by Ben's. My wife sent me a link to it after I told her my Sun Run plan. She has a way of bombarding me with information in a sort of vicarious enthusiasm for any health quest I set out on. So I read (most of) his blog and immediately related to the person he started out as. But there are key differences between what he did and what I'm doing, and also between who he is/was and who I am/will be.

• When Ben started, he was a single student, in his twenties. I, on the other hand, am a happily married, professional, father of two, nearly halfway through my forties.
• Ben had emotional/psychological challenges related to his weight that provided to impetus to start him on his path to health. I've adopted a battle-scarred combativeness around weight issues from a lifetime of dealing with weight problems. My desire to "be thin" has never waned. I've just become adept at knocking down criticism about my weight. My impetus is more of the "sure, why not" ilk.
• Ben seems to be a gregarious, jovial, positive everyman with a robust family and social life. I'm a bit of a hermit, thinker, half flippant/half sour sub-culture-ite. My extended family and social network are lucky to ever see me in meatspace.
• Some of Ben's key challenges revolved around money - specifically the expenses attached to his regimen. My key challenge will revolve around time - specifically finding enough time where I'm free to get the training in I need.
• Ben's starting weight was nearly 100 lbs more than mine, even thought we're nearly the same height.

The commonalities are a bit interesting:

• Ben's starting physique was very similar to what mine is like now, regardless of the 100 lb difference. I'm not sure if I just have a poor body image, or that I don't know what 100 lbs of fat looks like.
• Ben started out in the south and recently moved to Vancouver. I did a stint in the south and moved to the Pacific Northwest, eventually ending up in Vancouver (over 20 years ago now).
• Ben's a musician. I have called myself that at times.
• I have a shirt or two that I've kept just to one day be able to fit into.
• He thinks being called "big guy" is just as insulting as I do.

Beyond that, I hope that my blog won't be accused of being a copy-cat. If I achieve anything, it won't be near the scale of Ben's achievement. I have a single goal: The Sun Run (under 50 min) which is pretty big. I think that if I tie in a few subsidiary goals, it would help my chances of success. I'll hold off on any weight goals. Those are notoriously fickle and prone to demoralization. Maybe after a few weekly weigh-ins, I can plot a reasonable target. I'd like to dig out a shirt to fit in myself. I like that tactic. I'd just be satisfied if my gut disappeared. Again, let's see how it goes.

Fat Head

One of the benefits of being a strong atheist is that all of your critical thinking skills get a good workout on a regular basis. It helps to have a plethora of skeptics among your pack of associates to draw good habits from.

It is with this ammunition on board that I watched "Fat Head" a documentary by Tom Naughton. The purpose of the movie is ostensibly to debunk some of the myths in that other documentary, "Super Size Me", which it does, to a point. However, it comes at this task with a libertarian bias, which may tend to turn some more socialist audience members off. It doesn't help when Naughton uses some of the same unfortunate argumentative techniques that many other incendiary documentarians use to support their subject matter. Several times he hits the streets to interview bystanders, posing questions using false dichotomies as bait, like "If I buy fries, will you force me to eat them?" or asking others how many times they've eaten Pasta Alfredo and then how many heart attacks they had as a result. Several times, a cukoo sound was used to punctuate a few dubious opinions by vegetarian protagonists. The ad-homs and strawmen were flying. In the end, government gets the blame for regulating food industries in ways that make it easier for people to make themselves fat - quite a diversion from the initial argument that we only have ourselves to blame.

This is unfortunate, because there did seem to be quite a quite a bit of good scientific information related to lipids, saturated fats, cholesterol and insulin, accompanied by humorous, but helpful graphics. Though I can't speak for the veracity of the science, not being an expert myself, it did open the door to more paths of research to understand better why what we eat makes us fat.

I suppose that having an underlying agenda helps to inspire a more dramatic and entertaining argument. It doesn't help the cause though. I'm not a big fan of defamation, and I'm seriously trying to wean myself off of tribalism. If this documentary was created merely to clear up some of the factual errors, exaggerations, cherry-picked data, and biases of the previous one, it could have done it quite successfully without falling prey to the same tactics. Still, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you thought about seeing this, do so, albeit with your critical wits intact. If you haven't seen Super Size Me, you might want to watch that first though, again, taken with a grain of salt.

First Weigh-in

I think it will be useful to weigh myself once a week, just to keep track of my general health. The last time I was tracking my weight, which was a year ago, I maxed out around 280 and lost about 15-20 lbs adhering only to the "No-S Diet" - no sweets, no seconds, no snacks, except on days that start with "S". Good stuff, but I wasn't able to sustain it. I do consider that a bit of a failure, because of all of the dietary programs I've come across in my life, that seems like the easiest to sustain. Of course, I didn't have an exercise program to go along with it, at least not one that I had an incentive to keep up with.

So, now I have a goal: The Sun Run. I do have a sort of a bet going on with my wife. And yes, the natural competitive nature of us testosterone-riddled creatures makes completing goals like that for bragging rights an evolutionary imperative. Barring a soul-crushing injury like a bum knee, I have nothing stopping me from achieving it. So without further ado:

      19/11/11 - 279.0 lbs

Let's just see how it goes!

This week

Tuesday 3.25 Km
Friday 3.25 Km

Both run/walk - 1 min. run, 2 min. walk. I'm doing the "Learn to run 10K" program that they tie in to the Sun Run. The goal right now is to run the Sun Run, and to do it under 50 min. I've done it once and did it in 53 min. Beyond that? Who knows. If I can keep myself from getting injured I'll try a half-marathon. For now, any side effects are welcome. I'll keep my goals simple and rejig as necessary.