Category Archives: Workout

43 years = 43 kilometers and some goals

Posted on 9 July 2016 | Leave a comment

My 42nd birthday is coming up shortly, in about 12 days and 6ish hours. I was born at 2:26 AM on July 22, 1974 with fat cheeks, squinty eyes, and a full head of very dark hair. Given my disposition, it is very likely that I was crying, or at the very least, making noise. Lots of it.

I’m excited to turn 42, so, naturally I decided to set some goals for myself, things to accomplish between now and the age of 43. For some reason, probably The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 42 feels like some kind of magical year. Forty-two certainly can’t be worse than 41, or at least the last few weeks of 41 have been, and I’m banking on 43 being even better.

As I was thinking about what types of goals I could set for myself, I asked what was important to me. I came up with a few answers: running and fitness, compassion and leaning into my spirituality, making the world a better place, getting away from social media, reading, writing, and arting more, and moving toward a more healthy financial situation.

GOALS FOR THE 365 DAYS BETWEEN MY 42ND AND 43RD BIRTHDAYS

  1. RUNNING: I thought I’d be clever and set a goal for myself to be able to run a certain distance by my birthday next year, and I thought I’d be clever and make it however many kilometers I’ll be turning. I decided to commit to running 43 kilometers, which also happens to be roughly 26 miles, which also happens to be a marathon distance. And, as luck would have it, there just happens to be a trail marathon around Grand Island on Lake Superior in Michigan on my 43rd birthday. And that trail marathon just happens to have an early start for slow-ass runners like myself.If that isn’t Providence guiding my goal, I don’t know what is.
  2. COMPASSION: Compassion is an idea that comes easily to me, but a practice that comes much less easily. I talk a lot about being compassionate, and I practice it as well, but I could use a lot more practice, if you know what I mean. I especially find it difficult to feel compassion for people who I don’t think deserve it, which is entirely not what compassion is about.
    In order to work on the practice of compassion, I am committing to attending church as often as possible, to meditating each morning after I run and on my way home from work, and to using my time running to pray for those who need prayer.

    In addition, I plan to maintain a strictly vegan diet for the year. How can I practice compassion without thinking of the animals I love so much and consciously avoiding eating them?

    Finally, I am going to practice some self-compassion by working on my mental health.

  3. PAY IT FORWARD: In October, I plan to attend a series of training to become a sexual assault advocate. I am not entirely sure what this entails, but from what I can tell, I will help to intervene in situations where people have been assaulted and act as their advocate as they navigate the reporting of, medical care during, and figuring our the aftermath of being assaulted. My goal of making the world a better place starts here.I am learning that my worth does not lie in my job, but I can use my job as a means to make the world better. My vocation, grace, can be practiced anywhere with anyone.
  4. SOCIAL MEDIA and CREATIVITY: I am finished with Facebook. I’m hoping to use that time reading, writing, or doing some kind of art. My goal is to write something I am proud of, to read one book, and to complete one piece of art each month this year.That’s twelve chapters of memoir, along with twelve illustrations, and twelve new literary adventures in the 377 days. I think that’s doable.
  5. FINANCES: I need to work on paying off some credit card debt. My goal is to pay $4300 off of my credit card debt by the age of 43. That’s paying an extra $350 each month and not charging anything new, which I can do if I am really frugal, which will be really hard for me.This may be the most difficult of all these goals.

As part of this goal-setting for the year, I plan to check in on these goals every 22nd of each month until July 22, 2017. Hopefully, that last check-in will come after I’ve taken a dip in Lake Superior after completing a 26.2-mile run around an island.

Here’s to birthdays and the ways in which they require us to rethink our priorities. Cheers and peace.

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Posted in Birthday Crisis, Eating, Fat Runner, Fitness, Food, Gluten Free, Goals, Grace, Health, Meditation, Mental Health, Running, Spirituality, Trail Running, Vegan, Wellness, Workout, Writing

The Bad Waitress; Wellness Update

Posted on 12 April 2016 | Leave a comment

This morning my friend Stevi and I went to the Bad Waitress, here in Minneapolis, for breakfast. We both had the Heavy Pedal, which is a tofu scramble with whatever added ingredients the consumer desires. Stevi got some vegan sausage as a side, and I have to admit that it looked amazing. She said when she first tasted it, she thought they gave her the wrong sausage. If I can forego being humble for a moment, I am sure it tasted almost as amazing as the vegan sausage links I make. I haven’t made them for a while, but I should probably make it a point now that I’m vegan again.

I loved my meal, because it was full of good stuff like broccoli, mushrooms, curry powder, and turmeric. I also got gluten-free toast as a side and a delicious Americano to drink. Sadly, the gluten-free toast wasn’t vegan, but I ate it anyway, because it was already toasted, and I hate to waste food. Once I started eating the toast, I was pretty excited because it was the best gluten-free bread I’ve ever tasted. Now I’m on a quest to find delicious gluten-free and vegan bread so I can eat toast at home sometimes. I just love toast. I mean, I really, really love toast. TOAST!

After we ate, we walked down a couple of doors to Glam Doll Donuts, where Stevi bought some vegan donuts to take home to share with her fiancé. They seriously have a dozen different vegan donuts there, and surprisingly, the guy who helped us wasn’t pretentious. I prefer Mojo Monkey Donuts, because the women who work there are all kind and helpful, it’s closer to my house since it’s in St. Paul, and I’ve never had good luck with the folks who work at Glam Doll. However, this visit really bolstered my desire to return there to get some vegan donuts, because the guy was kind, funny, and helpful. Basically, he may have saved my faith in Minneapolis donuteries. Mojo Monkey is still my favorite, though.

On our way back to our meeting point, we stopped at Mississippi Market Co-op, where Bec and I are members, to get some Shea butter and turmeric. I ended up buying organic, fair-trade bananas and a container of organic, fair-trade Shea butter for my super-dry skin. I looked at some apples, but they were all $8-14 per bag, so I decided to buy those at our regular grocery store where I can get organic apples for $6 a bag, and I decided not to get the turmeric right now, because it was also very expensive. I get paid on Friday, so I’ll go this weekend to pick some up.

I have read and been told that turmeric can help to manage inflammation, but I am not a huge fan of the taste of it, unless it’s mixed with curry powder like in my tofu scramble this morning. I thought I would buy some turmeric capsules to help keep my joints from aching and my skin from itching so much. I have to admit, that short of some dry skin, my itching “from the inside” (as I like to think about and explain how my allergic itching feels) is all but gone. I have had one hive in the past two weeks, and I haven’t been taking my allergy medicine at all.

I don’t feel tired, and I don’t have pain when I go for a long hike. I’ve hiked as far as six miles on hilly terrain with no soreness in my joints. I’m at a point where I want to start running again, and I thought I would start again once May got here,  but I’ve decided to hold off until I get back from Indiana and start running again on June 1. I’ve lost 13 pounds since March 28, which wasn’t a real goal, but I’m pleased that it has happened, since being less fat will certainly make running success come easier.

I’m feeling content with my dietary decisions, and will continue them through May 25th when I visit Indiana. I am trying to decide how to manage life with being vegan full time, and will likely compromise with vegetarianism sometimes. As for sugar, well, I am hoping to be done with it, since sugar is neither good for me, nor does it help with my mood stability, and I’m just addicted to it. Once I start eaten M&Ms, I can’t stop until the entire bag is gone. I’m also planning to remain mostly gluten-free, but I have no desire to be insistent about it. Since food is an excellent way to bring people together, the last thing I want to do is cause people to be anxious about preparing meals in which I will partake. I am, however, planning to ask for a food allergy screening at my physical this summer, just to see what things may have actually caused me to feel so yuck all winter long.

Lastly, I got a great shirt in the mail last night. It says, “Eating animals is weird.” The more I think about it, the weirder is to me, and the sadder I am that I ever went back to it. Today, while Stevi and I were talking about speciesism and Danna Hardaway’s book When Species Meet, I was thinking about when I’ve shared the 50-wing platter at the Anchor Bar with Adam or Josh. That’s 25 chickens right there. The thing about veganism, or even vegetarianism for me, is that I feel so much more at peace. More kind. More compassionate. More loving. I’m not ingesting violence. And I feel it. Call me hippie-dippy, but I seriously feel more at ease in this world when I don’t have another animals blood coursing through my veins. And, I don’t have dreams of cows, pigs, and chickens chasing me at night.

25 chickens, dead for one meal.

25 chickens.

25.

Eating animals is weird.

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Posted in Abstinence, Addiction, Breakfast, Brunch, Coffee, Diet, Eating, Ethics, Fat, Fitness, Food, Friend, Gluten Free, Goals, Health, Joy, Mental Health, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Relationships, Running, Spirituality, Sugar Free, Vegan, Vegetarian or Vegan, Walking, Weight Loss, Wellness, Workout

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Jump Start This Thing, Will Ya?

Posted on 28 March 2016 | 2 comments

When I was little there was an exercise place in my hometown that was run by two of my friends’ moms. The name of the place was the “New You.” What I loved about it was that more than being a collection of strange 1970s exercise equipment—yes, they had the fat-jiggler belts—New You was a place where women like my mom could go to feel better about themselves and to be inspired by other women from the same small town. They could all find their New You together.

Once the “New You” closed down, there were a few years where the HC had no exercise facility, and then Tom and Kay opened “Main Street Gym.” Again, the endearing quality of Main Street Gym was the camaraderie of people who went there to make themselves healthier, to challenge and support each other in life’s  new journey toward health. My dad still has weightlifting trophies he won while he was lifting weights there, and the rest of my family still has the memory of going there for aerobics classes or weightlifting after school.

My point in sharing all of this is that health and the desire to be fit isn’t new in my life. I’ve ridden this horse before, which is what makes it a bit annoying to admit that I can’t just stay in the land of the fit. Instead I find myself where I was nearly 10 years ago when I started this blog, at around 250 pounds and unwell. More than I have been in the past ten years of goofing around with fitness and wellness, I am looking for a New Me and a community that will hold me accountable and support and challenge me. I want to learn to rock climb with my friends Travis and Angie, and I want to be part of the Mill City weekly runs when I can, and I want to be able to finish some bucket list races, and I can’t if I am fat, itchy, and inflamed.

After I wrote the entry last night, I was up for another several hours watching Ken Burns’ Civil War and pondering why it is I thought I needed to wait until April 1 to start this (renewed too many times) quest. I also thought about how many times I’ve failed at this before, and then I decided with exercise, I need to take it slowly, so no matter how badly I want to start running before May 1, I am forcing myself to walk. Why? I need to ease back into this, so I don’t injure myself and so I don’t burn myself out. Here’s to long walks and dietary abstinence.

Because I couldn’t wait to get started, I got up this morning at 8AM, walked the dogs, and then went for a 70-minute walk along one of my favorite non-state-park routes past the cemetery and the oil refinery. When I got home I made myself some breakfast (beans, rice, onion, garlic, garam masala, spinach, and mushrooms), and drank a big glass of water. Needless to say, I am feeling pretty good about how this day has started off, and I feel like the next 30 days couldn’t be more splendid. Of course, now I have to leave the house and face the real world.

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Posted in Abstinence, Cooking, Fat, Fitness, Food, Goals, Grace, Gym, Health, Joy, Mental Health, Nature, Spirituality, Vegetarian or Vegan, Walking, Weight Loss, Weightlifting, Wellness, Workout

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Hope and Goals

Posted on 1 February 2016 | Leave a comment

Hope

I received a text from my wife earlier this week that simply said, “There is hope,” to which I responded, “Always.” There is always hope if nothing else, but hope is a funny, tricky thing.

St. Thomas Aquinas describes hope in this way: “a movement or stretching forth of the appetite towards an arduous good.” And I’ve read a lot about how hope is first and foremost predicated by our eternal desires, but I know people who don’t believe in any concept of eternity, who seem to have more hope than those who do have a sense of some eternal life.

My questions to myself this week, after that text, has been what do I believe that hope is? What do I feel when I feel hope? How does hope fit in with my four guiding principles: peace, grace, love, and joy?

What is hope? I’ve meditated on this for a bit of each day, as I rest, as I read, as I drive, as I work. For me, I think hope is a bit like St. Thomas describes it, but it’s more than just “stretching the appetite forward towards an arduous good.” Hope is visualizing that good and picturing yourself as a part of that good, as if it’s already happened.

For me, hope is a bit like competing in an endurance event. I visualize myself completing the course, putting myself through the imaginary rigors, and then finishing the test in an admirable way. I revel in the fictitious completion of the event, so I can then begin the event with hope that I will finish. I’ve already owned the success of it.

Hope is much the same. I have hope in a future event or a present moment, because I’ve already visualized the success of that event, not giving room for any other outcome. I hope good things into being by imagining them as such. My hope is not always related to my spiritual life, but also it is an integral part of my corporeal reality. My body and my mind need to feel hope to make it through each day. Many of my dark days have been comprised of a lack of hope, my inability to imagine an arduous good, to taste it, to see it, to imagine it into fruition.

What do I feel when I feel hope? Well, for me hope feels like standing in a field of yellow and purple wildflowers, near some pine trees, listening to the breeze come up over the hill, hearing birds sing and the bees buzz, and knowing that everything will work out for good.

The sun is warm on my skin, and hope burns my heart.

Hope feels like owning beauty and growth and goodness, even before they are completely mine. Hope is knowing and resting in the fact that whatever happens will be worked into some good, somewhere in the world.

How does hope fit in with peace, grace, love, and joy, as my four main guiding forces in my life? Hope is what ties them all together. Hope is what help me see peace where there isn’t any. Hope is what helps me gives grace and receive grace in difficult situations. Hope inspires love, and love is, ultimately, the arduous good that is hope’s appetite. Finally, hope breeds joy. How can I not be joyful or experience joy when hope is the visualization of an arduous good?

The tricky thing about hope is exactly what St. Thomas points toward in describing the desire of hope as an “arduous good.” There is nothing worth hoping for that is easy to attain, since hope, in and of itself, implies that the object of that hope is something difficult to attain. Are peace, grace, love, and joy easy ideals to attain? If they were, each day would not be struggle to live out those values. There wouldn’t be whole volumes of spiritual and religious texts written about how to have hope, how to think positively of the future, how to live a “happy” life, how to prosper, who to not lose faith, and how to live with an eye toward the future. Even religions that focus on the present, like Buddhism, have sacred texts that refer to hope as a positive tool for life.

Today in my life I feel hope. For a better future. For loving others. For changing this tragic world. For giving grace. For my vocation. For living life forward.

Goals

Veganism This is not going so well, and, at the risk of sounding like I am making excuses, it’s because I love to have dinner with my wife. It’s incredibly difficult to cook food that suits us both, and since she cooks most of the time now, I find it rude to ask her to cook special food for me. We’re strictly vegetarian in the meals that we share, though she does eat bacon for breakfast.

Volunteerism I got an email from 360 Communities about being a sexual assault advocate , and I really want to do it, but this time around conflicts with work. I’m waiting until the next round of training in October. I am volunteering in March to help pack lunches for small children, so that will have to suffice for now.

Prayer and Meditation I am enjoying an increased level of quiet time to contemplate spiritual things. I am trying to make the St. Francis prayer a morning ritual, thereby working to commit the prayer to memory. In its entirety, the prayer goes like this:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Exercise I ran the Winter Trail Quarter Marathon again this year, and my time was awful, but I finished. I then proceeded to get sick again, and I have only run once since then. Apple’s Wellness Challenge begins tomorrow, and I don’t want to let my team down, so I’ll be exercising daily for the month of February, starting with an hour-long swim tomorrow morning.

Alcohol and Caffeine This one really isn’t difficult. I’ve had a couple of beer and a couple of coffees, but, to be honest, I’m not really even tempted by either one right now.

Do good. Do no harm. Stay in love with God.

 

 

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Posted in Abstinence, Coffee, Cooking, Ethics, Fat, Fat Runner, Fitness, Food, Goals, Grace, Hope, Joy, Meditation, Mental Health, Prayer, Public Servant, Religion, Running, Spirituality, Swimming, Vegetarian or Vegan, Weight Loss, Wellness, Workout

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Smooth Swimming

Posted on 7 January 2016 | Leave a comment

If you’re not a swimmer, you might not get this post. If you are a swimmer, you’ll have your own story to add.

I woke up this morning, got dressed, and headed to work. I ate a banana on my way to work, followed by some trail mix and decaf vanilla soy latte at work. The whole time I was making coffee for other people, I visualized my self-imposed 5K swim time trial.

I calculated how many laps I’d need to swim to do an even-ish 5K, which works out to 107, if you were interested, and even if you weren’t know you know.

I imagined my breathing and stroke pattern. I focused on my form, imagining that throughout the entire couple of hours, my form never wavered.

I counted my strokes from one end of the pool to the other end. My stroke count is uneven, which is nice since my semi-circular canals won’t allow me to do flip turns. I’ve learned that turning to the same side on each length makes that one arm sore form leveraging most of the turn.

I remembered my baptism and was grateful.

I even imagined how I might feel at the end of the swim. I imagined I’d feel accomplished, sore, and exhausted.

When I arrived at the pool, the water was a perfect chilly temperature (if the water’s too hot, swimming can be very uncomfortable), there was no one else in the water (sometimes the lanes are completely full), and I remembered to bring my counting coins. Counting 107 laps is a daunting task, so I broke it down into 500 repeats. For each 500, one pile of ten quarters shrank by one coin and a new pile grew by one. Getting change for tips sometimes comes in handy.

From the moment I kicked off the wall, I knew this was going to be a golden swim. Everything just felt right. My stroke was on, my breathing was on, my turns were as on as they can be in this pool, my goggles didn’t fog or slip at all, and I hauled ass for the first 2850 yards.

The swim was beautiful. I might even say glorious. Magical. Perfect.

While the last 2500 yards wasn’t as pretty or as painless as the first part, my body still felt sleek in the water, and my ego was boosted by the fact that I was swimming nearly the same speed as two younger, thinner, potentially more fit men, who hopped in when I was halfway through. I was also able to slow down just a bit to keep my focus on my form, which I think still looked somewhat passable even on the very last lap.

Each of my last 500s gained a minute on the one before, but I didn’t care. I finished 5350 yards solid, in good form, and without having to stop for longer than a minute between any repeat.

Apparently, visualization is the key to success for me, because I was elated with the way the swim felt. My goal of finishing was met, and my time wasn’t even awful, like I had imagined it might be.

I’m sure I will sleep long and hard tonight. Just after I eat everything in the house.

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Posted in Fat, Fitness, Goals, Grace, Health, Swimming, Triathlon, Wellness, Workout

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