Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Not that I’m counting, but it is only 9 days until my 60th birthday. Over the past several years I have made a point of doing something physical, the birthday triathlon, that included uses of my age in the equation of how far or long I would travel. I had thought that this year would be particularly special and I would do something even more off the charts. That will not be happening.
As those close to me know, this has been a year of emotional upheaval. I saw the ending of a 39-year marriage to my high school sweetheart. I have come to grips with the fact that I need to sell the family home and find someplace else to live. I changed jobs from a disastrous experience with the Warren YMCA to something completely different and equally challenging. I’ve done a little dating, which only made things worse. And through all of that I was not the exercise nut that I have been for the past several years. Three winters ago I was able to spend over half my riding days outside because of the lack of snow, but this past brought record colds and plenty of snow. I didn’t ride outside after late November.
So…as my birthday approached I decided it was time to amp it up some. I started running following a cortisone shot about three weeks ago and that is actually working out. I managed to run 32 minutes Tuesday and with no heal pain. I followed it with 15 minutes on the trainer at home before I had to hop on face time to visit with Joanne from Washington D.C. She is a very interesting story and one upon which I will elaborate with the passage of blogs. A very humble, total fitness geek, which puts her in my cross hairs. I had to drag her level of running ability out of her; unlike me who brags incessantly about quite limited abilities.
“So…you ran in high school?” I asked her on a face time call a week ago.
“Yes – I was on the track team,” she replied, rather meekly.
“Were you any good?”
“I was pretty good,” she said with little interest in taking it further.
“Well…did you guys have a state meet (she grew up in Rhode Island)?”
“Yeah – we had one,” she replied, still not volunteering a thing.
“So – did you ever run in it?” I mean it is no mystery how I feel about high school track and field and particularly the state meet.
“Yes – I ran in it,” she said.
I was falling in love. “How did you do? What event did you run?”
“I, um, ran the 440 (a reference to yards and the old quarter mile as opposed to the metric 400 run today) and I, ah, took third,” she said.
Holy shit! Third in the state? Marry me – please! But I remained cool. “Holy shit! Would you marry me right now!”
Okay – I lost my cool. And then it dawned on me that if she was that much of a stud in the open 440, she probably anchored the 4x440 team, as well, so I asked her.
“Yes – I anchored and yes, we won the state meet,” she admitted. I think I’d only asked her to marry me in my head because she didn’t answer that part.
“I mean ‘holy shit, Joanne’ that is amazing! You were a state champ and you act like it was nothing! Hell – if I was the state champ I’d still be introducing myself like ‘hey – I’m John Rolf, state high school champ in 1973, nice to meet you’ or something like that,” I said. “Did you do anything else?”
“Well – I was captain of the basketball team and the…”
She went on for the next five minutes. She rocked every sport ever invented. She was a beast, for God’s sake. If she didn’t weigh 102 pounds still, she could probably kick my ass. She may have six black belts in something and can anyways. I’ll have to check later.
So that’s interesting and since she’s coming to see me soon, I know I’ve got work to do on this aging body. Since the last week of March, I’ve done something every day and feel I am definitely grooving again. I completely kicked my own ass on my last Survival Workout, hitting 24 stations and pushing the limit throughout. She has said that although she works out religiously still, she no longer has any interest in punishing herself – as I described doing to myself. “I’ll go with you as you do those crazy things, but I’m just hiking,” she warned.
Since I lift rocks bigger than her, at least I’ll be able to beat her at something.
Survival Workout: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100-150 bpm.
Calories Burned: 600.
