Heidi needs lighter furniture...

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

I love my daughter Heidi, but when she moves…like now…I dread the artsy, really heavy stuff she owns and the fact that she has to live on the top floor of wherever she goes and in places without elevators. She found two work benches at an industrial warehouse in Cleveland and paid $10 for the pair. They’re worth little more and weigh about 200 pounds a piece. She’ll make them functional and cute and use them as…well…something. I was charged with getting them from the van and up three flights of stairs. I enlisted the help of Dave, her most outstanding and fitness minded landlord, to accomplish the task. He is so particular about his building that I think he was more than happy to lend his muscle to assure that door jams and hallway walls weren’t bumped by the metal legs of the bench. I took the front…walking up backwards and by the time we worked the second table to her apartment, I had sweat through my clothes and was dripping profusely on his beautiful, hard wood floors. Additionally, Heidi had purchased a bed frame which came in two boxes weighing seventy pounds apiece. I had to bring those up…and assemble them. I stripped to my shorts and went about the project, losing 10 pounds in the process.

Dave pitched in with some advice and we when we got on the subject of bikes, I quickly learned he was training for a major triathlon and was also looking to perform an Iron Man triathlon in Lake Placid, NY. “Do you know anything about triathloning or upstate New York?” Dave must live in a cave. “I own upstate New York and I invented the triathlon,” I replied humbly. He was impressed to learn that I’d done the Iron Man twice and very interested in joining us for a tour of the Adirondack back country at some future date. He described his carbon-fiber, high-priced triathlon bicycle and I decided to hate him.

I had put in a hard Survival Workout before leaving for Akron to help Heidi and in combination with the move, found myself dragging by the end of the evening. Again…the heat made the difference, causing me to fatigue more quickly than I would have otherwise. I continued my efforts to rehydrate, drinking meals of smoothies in addition to the extra water. With no time to fix the bike, I may have to come up with something different for tomorrow’s workout.

Survival Workout duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 600