"I like even numbers..."

Thursday, July 16, 2015

As I suspected, Wednesday at the farm was all about cleaning up the disasters created when monsoon rains have water running everywhere except where it belongs.  It was a physical day of shoveling stone, moving downed trees, and clearing debris.  By day’s end, I was tired, but I had some staining to do for one of my after work clients, so headed there.  Three hours later, I was ready to call it a night without a formal workout.

I made up for that Thursday, though.  My normal partner for hay deliveries was not present, so I had 200 bales all to myself.  I’m guessing they come in around fifty pounds, so grabbing them from a conveyor and stacking them in the loft is a considerable workout.  It took about forty minutes to get it all in place and I felt like I’d made up for missing a workout on Wednesday.

I drove to Jefferson and my new charges, LuAnn and her daughter Kristen, to take them through a formal Survival Workout.  Once there, I discovered LuAnn had already done portions of the workout earlier in the day and had managed a bike ride, as well.  She was motivated and was not going to be an issue.  Kristen, on the other hand, was going through an unusual pre-workout warm-up.

“So just what is that you’re eating?  I want to know what to call it when you throw it up once you start working out,” I said.

“Work out?”  She looked surprised as she bent her head back to take a long swig from her ‘Mike’s Hard Lemonade’.

“Well sure a workout.  I thought you wanted me to help you develop chiseled abs and trembling pecs…along with the ability to run a world class 5K,” I said.

She seemed to remember hearing something about getting in shape.  “Yeah…I told my mom I’d give it a try after telling her I wouldn’t.  I don’t know about that running thing, though,” she admitted.

We spent the next half hour talking about the reason to bother with a training program at all.   She’s 23 and lean and although she had an interest in looking better, couldn’t come up with any kind of distant ‘goal’ to wrap her head around.

“I have always found that sticking to any program works best when you have something in particular to train to do.  You know…riding a bike across the country or hiking the Pacific Crest Trail like the woman did in the movie and book ‘Wild’.  Even picking a race to run, like doing a 5K in the fall, let’s say.”

“Would you do it with me?” she asked, sincerely.

And now I was cornered.  I’ve been thinking my running days are over after the horrible time I had with foot pain this past spring.  “Of course I will,” I said.  And of course I will.

We agreed to meet next Thursday when she won’t eat and drink before hand.  I think she will find quite quickly that she has hidden and untapped fitness potential and it is going to be fun to help her discover and hone it.

I left for home about seven, but was thinking I should drive straight to the Mayfield bleachers and get in a workout.  Now…part of my brain was saying ‘you did the hay thing and can skip it’, but it was fading as I approached my exit.  I drove up the gate of the stadium, changed quickly and grabbed my pack from the trunk.  It’s still holding forty pounds and I think I’ll leave it at that weight for a few weeks before adding more salt – my weight of choice.  I started up the bleachers with my goal to do two more sets than I’d done on the previous workout or 24 total sets.  There isn’t much to do while you climb, so I started doing a calculation as to how many steps I’d do.  Some aisles have 43 steps, others 41 and one has only 30.  I climbed and totaled and as I approached 1,000, knew I’d be squeezing in another set to break that number.  I ended with legs trembling and 1,015.  I texted LuAnn to let her know my achievement expecting her to be impressed.  She wrote back, ‘I like even numbers.  If you’d have done 1,016 I’d have texted ‘Wow!’ 

Even number next time for sure.

Bleacher work duration:  45 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  110-140 bpm.

Calories burned during workout:  500