Sore

Ok. Some soreness was expected, and I am comfortable that. I am still well within my limits, so it’s time to ratchet things up a bit. After the jog on day 2, it became obvious that I need to stick to the bike a lot more, at least at the beginning. Jogging is much more high-impact, and I want to get my muscles through this ‘start-up’ process without any more stress than necessary. Back to the bike I go.

Instead of plotting a course out this time, I decided to just hit the trail and let my legs tell me when I have gone far enough. About 25 minutes later I found myself staring at the metal-wire buffalos that we have here in Kearney down by the Archway. I turned around a headed home, throwing in a quick ½ mile slow jog at the end to work out the kinks and cool down.

A little research revealed that it was a 9-mile bike ride. 9.5 miles total. I think that I am going to stick with something in this range for a while. My body told me that I was riding that fine line between pushing myself, and injuring myself. I think that I will stick with this kind of distance until the ‘start-up soreness’ ends. I find myself terribly grateful that Kearney put this trail system in a few years back. It is turning out to be a huge blessing.

Day 1 & 2

Losing a lot of weight sure is easy to say. I’ve said it a hundred times in the last week. Now it’s time to get started, and I feel like I am standing at the base of a huge mountain struggling with how to take the first step. The real question is not what to do, it’s more how much to do. I haven’t done any serious exercise in years, and I have no idea how my body is going to react.

Start small, I guess, and find out how hard I can push it. I decided to start off on the bike. 5 miles sounded like a good place to start. A fairly quick bike ride from my house to Cottonmill, a local lake on the edge of town, did the trick. It was fairly uneventful, and I was doing okay the next morning.

With day 1 over with no major problems, it was time to try jogging. I decided to see what would happen with a brisk 3-mile jog. I had to stop jogging and do some mall-walking on several occasions. I remember when I weighed 165 lbs and I could run without stopping for 10 miles, and only stopping then out of boredom. Those days are over. I am hauling an extra 75 lbs down the road now, and 27 is a lot different than 17 was anyway. My body may be complaining, but my mind is still sharp enough, and I pushed myself through it. The cumulative effects of the bike ride on day 1, and the jog on day 2 have left me feeling, well, sore.

Sore really doesn’t cover it. I feel like I spent 45 minutes in a tumbler with a load of bricks. The good news is that I don’t feel like I have hit the upper limit of what I can handle physically yet. I feel sore, but I don’t feel like I have risked injury yet. I want to approach that line carefully though. Nothing puts the kibosh on a new exercise routine like an early injury.

Thus it begins... again

So here we go. Again. I've started and stopped this blogging thing about 10 times now. In an attempt to remove all of the complexities of the whole affair, and to cure myself of "tinker-itis", I have gone with the blogger account that you see before you now. Why start it up again you ask? Ah, now that's where the story begins.

I was diagnosed recently (after about 2 gallons of blood and a biopsy later) with a condition called N.A.S.H. You are more than welcome to google it and read all about it, but in a nut shell it means that if I am carrying any extra weight (anything over 15-18% body fat, my liver will be suffering the same effects as if I were an alcoholic. Leave it unchecked over years and you have cirrhosis. So there it is, lose weight or lose my liver.

I started an account over at www.fitday.com, which I am loving more and more everyday. I am using it to track my exercise routine. It is far more functional than that, and I am sure that I will use it more and more as time goes on, but for now I am happy having it record activities. I am using a spreadsheet to track several key physical measurements along with weight and body fat %. This blogger account will be my 'journal' through the whole thing, and hopefully over time it will grow to cover much, much more.

So here we go.

240 lbs.

30% body fat.

A long way to go.