Being out of shape sucks!

Welcome to my new blog site… blah blah blah

Here we go:

Being out of shape sucks!

Yup, no doubt about it! Today I had to drop my truck to get the oil changed. Instead of waiting for them to do it, I dropped it off and decided to bike home, since I never get out on my trusty steed because I am too busy working (and not to the liking of my family or Bob L.) or I have other excuses if you want to hear them (sorry I type 12 wpm; I’m not going to list them all!)

So I biked back – only 6 miles – no biggie or so I thought; I had an almost straight on head wind of almost mach one or about 700 mph (if looking straight ahead was 12 o’clock and straight to your right is 3 o’clock) the wind was coming from 11 o’clock so I have to lean into the wind a lot to make sure that I wasn’t going to get blown off the road and into the ditch. The shoulder on the highway was only 1 foot wide, at the widest - not the smartest place to ride :-( So I am biking home realizing that I am not in the biking shape that I was when I left off last summer.

You see last summer I was doing our bike rides with my buddy Stormin, and we would bike in our group and we would bike on the same country route that took us 34 miles and depending on who was with us our average pace was between 19-20 mph and that took us about an hour and 45 minutes or so; and when you got done, you were tired, but it felt good though, it was a good tired!

Now back to today, this wind was kicking my butt! And when the cars went passed me I felt their wind and I had to use my balance to stay on the road (read: stronger abs are a bonus) I couldn’t wait to get to the side street where it was safer (for those of you that don’t know I live almost in the country - 2 miles north of me and you are in the “country”) so the only way out of this place was on the highway for a couple of miles :-(. I was thinking that I was in better shape than this because I still worked out 3-5 days a week (once again too many excuses to list) needless to say this was my wakeup call!

I finally made it home in about 25 minutes or so, pretty tired! Inside my ears were cold [it was only 49 degrees with a wind chill of about a ka-jillion below (yes I am a freeze baby)] and so were my finger tips. I was feeling miserable :-(. The best part of the ride was when I got to make a right hand turn on my street! Now pedaling like the wind was fun! I could go 17 or 18 mph was no big deal even while I was sitting up! That ride just plain ol’ sucked!


Hold on a minute; I need to go eat.

Ok, now where was I? Oh yea, my average speed was 13.4 mph for the ride; extremely slow for me, but I was pushing fairly hard to get home and get some work done so I didn’t have time to lolly-gag around (even though it was finally sunny outside and not snowing any more.) In the shower I was thinking about what I did wrong and this is what I came up with:

• Not enough cardio during the off season (Can you ever do enough? Plus if I do too much, I am one of those people that you love to hate- I lose too much weight and get too skinny :-(; yea, I know, you don’t feel sorry for me-I’m used to it.)
• I’m too busy working; putting my work first too often in front of a lot of other things :-(
• I need to get in better shape fast
• I can’t be the owner of a personal training studio and be this pathetic!
• I need to start putting my workouts higher up the priority list and not make any excuses for “doing it later or even tomorrow.”
• If I am going to be leading all of my bike rides, this summer, I’d better be the leader that I claim to be and the one that my clients can look up to.
• Damn it, I’m not super human-just normal.
• Sitting in this stupid chair ain’t doing me any good as I take it easy- that’s the dumbest thing in the world.
• No good stories ever came from sitting on the couch all weekend long watching movies the entire time! (This has never been me) but I need to move it so I can get ready to create some good stories; because if you are not coming back with a good story, why go out at all right? Seriously, have you ever heard someone say that they had a great time all weekend long sitting on the couch with their buddies talking about how fast they were flipping through the channels, or that was a good save when they almost spilled their beer on the carpet after they had to go thru all the work of getting up to get it from the fridge risking their life as they had to navigate the clutter in the house? Or how about when you scream out loud “5 second rule” when the nacho’s hit the carpet when you fumbled the remote? Me neither.
• Being the owner of my own business, I have a lot to do that needs to be done yesterday!
• I could start up a pity party and we could sit around and complain to each other that it is a cold and cruel world out there and getting older is a part of life and I should just get use to it.
• I could even be the president of that club! Especially since I get hurt a lot doing all the stuff that I enjoy (and boy do I have the hospital bills to prove it) and now I have to start all over again – feel bad for me please :-(
• I could go on and on, but I won’t - you get the point.

The good news is that I do get to start all over again! And that is good news because I am still alive! (for those of you that don’t know, I am getting over a broken finger and just recently got the pins yanked out of my finger a few weeks ago so I was limited to what I could do and not do) but I choose to start all over again because I can! I don’t have to take it sitting down! I am going to start working out 6 days a week again because I can! And I enjoy the feeling I get from a good ass kicking when I am in shape! So if I have to go thru a little hell to get there, so be it! I can’t let Stormin get the upper leg on me for biking!

I got a framed picture from a couple of my clients for my 40th birthday that reads “life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside thoroughly used up, totally worn out and proclaiming , “Wow, what a ride!!!” Man I agree with that 100 percent! Give it your all! That way you never have to wonder “if I only” or “I wonder what I would have been like if I would have…” Do it and find ut!
Go out and create some good stories to tell me! Especially the ones that my mother would ask “What were you thinking?! Did that sound like a good idea to you!?!” to which my reply was normally “Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.” and my mother would only shake her head in disgust and disbelief - but she got used to it as I got older (thanks Mom! :-))

BTW, if your story starts off as “Scott, you are not going to believe this, this sounded like a good idea at the time” you are going to get my full attention! We can laugh about how stuck you got or how far you got thrown out or… because being an adrenaline junkie, I have probably done it myself or still want to try it (if my boss will let me off work to go play. Oh wait, that’s me.)

So how am I going to change from this healthy wakeup call? Start working out however small and inconvenient it is to my work schedule on a regular basis - I owe that to my friends & family and my beautiful wife; God has given me a wonderful life and I am not going to piss it away feeling sorry for myself (which I don’t) that I can’t do something.

Now that I said that, the hard part is applying it to reality; when am I going to do it today? Right now! I hear some 100 pound dumbbells calling my name! They are laughing at me, mocking, taunting and teasing me, calling me a little Sally! I gotta go and show them who is boss around here! After all, I’m not like Kevin (besides I need to keep up with my “little” brother!)