Monday, November 5, 2012
I listened to the
land line ring and again, let it go to the answering machine. For the past month, I’ve given up on
answering it. It’s almost always a
recording with some political message designed to try and get me to vote in a
particular way on an issue after hearing 10 seconds of propaganda mumbo
jumbo... or bullshit, in other words.
I don’t know if this
year’s national election is different than in the past, but I believe I am
getting many more calls than in any previous election year. I heard Holly playing back one of the
recordings and it was Mitt Romney addressing her personally. “Hi Holly...this is Mitt Romney,” it
began. She deleted it. I’m sure there is some political marketing
think tank being paid huge amounts of money that decided figuring out how to
link up a candidate’s voice with actual name of the voting resident would
garner more votes. I mean, do people really
make decisions based on a recorded message that has the candidate using their
name? Are we that shallow? Apparently, someone thinks we are.
If I could, I’d vote
against ANY politician that calls my house and invades my privacy. The problem with that approach is I’d have to
stop voting since they all do it. How is
it that we were able to eliminate all spam calls from land lines, but not
political ones? I find them as offensive
and invasive, but have no way to turn them off.
I had numerous calls during the hurricane and said to one caller, “Really? You want to invade my privacy during this
storm to try an influence the way I vote?”
She started into her pitch, completely ignoring my question and I hung
up. I pray they never get the right to
hit our cell phones and I’m thinking it really is time to stop paying for a
land line.
I managed another
good Survival Workout in what turned out to be the coldest workout day I’ve had
since last spring. I wore gloves and a
stocking cap...and needed them. I also
managed to get through a workout without sweating. My knee has been responding negatively to my
increased activity of late, though I think it is the result of catching and
twisting it the other day while shopping.
I’ve found out that something as benign as catching my toe on a rock while
my leg moves diagonally can send pain through the knee warning me that although
I’ve had surgery and seem to be able to do most anything...it’s still not what
it was. I cut back on a couple of
stations for the lower body, but still managed 19. It’s good to be back in that groove.
Survival Workout: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100-150.
Calories burned: 600.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
I’d been driving home
from the park last night and seen a cyclist coming towards me on the road. He had a blinker on the bike to be seen more
easily and was bundled up against the cold.
I was thinking ‘what a nut’ to be riding in this weather and as he drew
near, I recognized Kim’s father. I
texted her that she had that same nutty DNA, but realized that what he was
doing is what I should be doing. It was
that or more stationary riding in my office.
With him inspiring me, I began to bundle up for a ride.
It was only
mid-forties, but the grey skies, barren trees and the breeze blowing made it
seem much colder. Not that mid-forties
isn’t cold on a bike for it surely is.
The wind chill makes it feel like the twenties and none of this was
psyching me up to go. I searched the
house for the proper gear...riding tights, under armor, gloves and a hat. I’d had them all together last spring, but
that was a distant memory...as were my organizational skills. When I finally had my ensemble together, I
looked like a ninja warrior or a cat burglar.
I was in skin tight black from head to foot, though I was warm. I’d put on two pairs of socks and was wearing
my black isotoner gloves to complete the look, which really was frightening.
I felt reasonably
warm for the first 30 minutes, but could tell my toes were not going to make
it. By the hour mark, I was thinking
about warm baths and hand warmers, neither of which would be available for
another 30-40 minutes. As cold as I was,
I took a slightly longer route to be sure I made it at least ninety minutes,
which included another downhill and climb.
I was actually looking forward to the climbs because it warmed me the
most.
I finished the ride
and dismounted. Moving around the
garage, I felt like I was walking on wooden feet. I know I need some booties if I’m to keep
riding further into the winter, so that’s on my to-do list. Later that night, I called John to brag about
riding in the cold and to plant the idea that we should head south sometime
soon and find a place to do a little hiking and camping. I know he feels cheated by not being able to
join me in the Adirondacks, and I’m getting cabin fever already. I’m thinking Great Smokey Mountain National
Park on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina...over 500 miles
south...might offer warm enough temperatures even in late November. The Adirondacks already have a foot of snow
and its dark up there by two in the afternoon, so they’re out. I think I can talk him into it. We’ll see.
Bike
Duration: 95 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories
burned during workout: 1325.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Sometimes, I impress
myself. Saturday morning was one of
those times. It was a cold, grey and
dreary morning…perfect for sleeping in…but instead, I got up, dressed in my
workout gear and drove to the park for a Survival Workout. Kim had texted me the night before and
reminded me that she’d be home soon for the Thanksgiving break and that she
wanted to do a workout or two. I’d been
slacking lately…making excuses like my foot and arm hurt all the time…and had
let the Survival Workout slip. Kim’s
text was a wakeup call. I needed to get
it in gear.
I started with my
reverse-incline push-ups and was surprised to hit 80. Maybe I wasn’t so bad after all. I ignored the ache in my elbow and did some
pull-ups, too. I started down the trail
and mixed in some high knees, ignoring the advice of my knee doctor to baby my
knee for the rest of my life. I’m hoping
that’s a long time and I have to be able to do some hopping and jumping over
the next forever.
Kim thinks the picnic
table hop is the toughest move...and she’s right...so I did a set thinking I need
to be able to do three by the time she arrives.
I karaoked up the hill from the picnic table and by the time I’d reached
the top, was beginning to feel the lower body workout. I met two runners there who were lost and
looking exhausted and a little worried.
They needed to get back to their cars and I had bad news for them. They were still three miles away and with
more than a turn or two to handle, might not find it so easily. I moved on having done the best I could.
By the time I
returned to the car, I’d hit 21 different stations and was completely
spent...and pumped. I knew I’d be
whipped for the rest of the day, though I still had a yard full of leaves to
move, but it was the jump-start I needed.
I didn’t waste any
time attacking the leaves. Rain
threatened again and the city pick-up crews were coming through, so I wanted to
get every leaf on the tree lawn. Over
the next couple of hours I completed that task, including climbing on the roof
and clearing out all the gutters. I
dragged the final pile to the front lawn as a crew with the most powerful vacuum
cleaner on wheels started sucking them away.
Get ready, Kim, because we’re gonna have some fun when you get home!
Survival Workout: 60 minutes. Rake duration:
90 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 1000-150 for SW and 80 bpm raking.
Calories burned during workout: 600 for SW and 450 raking.
Friday, November 2, 2012
I was always a big
fan of Halloween…or, more specifically…candy bars. Being a baseball man my entire life, I
suppose it was quite normal to consider the ‘Baby Ruth’ bar a superior piece of
chocolate as a youth. And I’m so old
that I remember the bars actually being about the size of a baseball bat,
too. I hiked quickly and covered as much
ground as was humanly possible on the streets of Bristol, Ct. in those days,
visiting as many houses as I could in the allotted time. My older brother would try to interest me in
vandalism, something at which he excelled, but as much as I’d like to say I was
a law-abiding citizen, it was all about the candy.
I knew I was getting
near the end of my trick-or-treat career when I hit the seventh grade, but felt
that one more time was appropriate. I
was joined by a friend who relished his candy almost as much as I did
mine. He arrived at my house and we were
putting together our outfits from stuff we found in the garage when he noticed my
hatchet.
“We should take that
along in case anyone tries to steal our candy,” he suggested.
I’d been
trick-or-treating for a long time and never had anyone…other than Jim…try to
steal my candy. When he’d tried, I’d
simply told my parents. It had never occurred
to me that it might have been better to hack him to death with a sharpened,
hand-held weapon. “Sure…sounds like a
good idea,” I said.
I knew my parents
would not go along with the hatchet idea, nor did I think carrying it out in
the open made sense. I don’t know if
there were laws about ‘carrying concealed weapons’ at that time, though it
wouldn’t have mattered much. I wrapped
it in a brown shopping bag and stuck it under my arm as we headed down the
driveway. I was packing against candy
thieves…and that was that.
There were no candy
thieves that evening and as we finished up our final house and were headed for
home, I remember being disappointed. I’d
wanted to have the chance to wave my weapon…have the moonlight reflect off the
sharpened, glistening blade and yell something like “go ahead…try to take my
Baby Ruths.” We were almost home when my
‘spider senses’ began to tingle. I could
see three or four large silhouettes approaching and talking. They were obviously boys and older and bigger
than us, though I was pretty sure none of them were packing. When they reached us, they did what bullies
throughout the world do…sized us up and decided all the advantages were on
their side and we would be easy pickings.
“Hey girls…whatcha
got in those bags I’d like?” the leader asked, pushing his hand into my friend’s
chest. We both went silent. I assessed the situation quickly and could
see it was bad. I’d been hiking the
neighborhood for two hours and now I had four goons in my face with the
objective of stealing my candy. It was
truly my worst nightmare. And then I
remembered what I’d been lugging around the neighborhood for the whole evening. So did my friend.
“He’s got a hatchet
under his arm and we’ll kill you guys if you try to take our candy,” he said.
Well…there it
was. I wasn’t so sure I was ready to
kill them all, but now what was I going to do.
If I didn’t kill them with it, I reasoned, they’d take it from me and
kill me…then eat my candy! “Go ahead…show
them, John,” he said.
The bully took a step
back as I reached under my arm and pulled the hatchet from the bag. I dropped my candy, crouched and began to
swing it back and forth. The moonlight actually
did seem to glint off the finely polished, sharpened edge. Suddenly, I wasn’t so weak and helpless
anymore. Bullies…cowards by definition…were
uncertain about me and what I’d do and no one wanted to be the first one to
find out if I was some kind of psycho kid killer or just a seventh grader ready
to pee his pants. I didn’t know myself
for sure, but I did know that I had a hatchet in my hand and a bag of candy at
my feet. I was going to have a cleaved limb
at my feet as well, should any of the bullies reach for the bag, of that much I
was certain.
Thankfully, the
bullies decided there were probably some easier marks up the way. My sisters were out, after all, and I was
sure THEY didn’t have a hatchet…though they probably had my 275-pound father in
tow. We returned to my home without
further incident, but with a story we’d be able to share for the rest of our
Halloween lives. I may have embellished
the telling over the next several years to include ‘never found again’ kids
from the hood.
I managed a 30-minute
run and some leaf raking before the trick-or-treaters arrived. Highland Heights had moved candy gathering
because of Hurricane Sandy. I had over
60 kids show up at the door and almost all of them remembered to say thanks and
most trampled through the garden on their way to the next house. I peered into their bags as I delivered my
treat and never saw a ‘Baby Ruth’ bar…or a hatchet, for that matter.
Run
Duration: 30 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 140 bpm.
Calories
burned during workout: 500.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
I was speaking with a
runner I’d coached during his high school career several years ago and asked
him how the running was going now.
“Well…actually, I don’t
have time right now,” he complained.
He went into an
explanation that included a heavy college load, work and life in general.
“Its school all day
and then work and by the time I get home and have something to eat, there’s no
time to run. I used to think people were
just lazy when they said they didn’t have time to exercise, but now I’m getting
it. I just don’t have the mental energy
to get it going after a full day,” he said.
His life had been
like mine. He was always part of a team
up to and including his first couple of years at Case Western Reserve
University. Running was programmed in…it
was part of the schedule. When I worked
in athletic facilities, I had the same kind of routine. Often times I was riding to work as a form of
transportation and then putting members through their paces, but joining them
in many cases. I had a facility at my
disposal and a ready shower…all on the job.
Then I went to work in the real world and struggled to find the time for
exercise initially.
“I like to run 100 miles
a week, John, and if I can’t put that much into it, well…I’m just doing
nothing,” he lamented.
I know that feeling,
too, and it took a commitment to the blog to get me back on track. I realized once again that the rest of my day
was off a beat if I wasn’t doing something, regardless of how little.
“There are days I’m
too banged up to run or exercise, so I’ll just go to the park and walk down to
the marsh with my camera and take advantage of the serenity. At least I’ve done something and it makes it
easier to do anything else I have to do because I’m right in my head,” I told
him. I think he needs to get out and run
a simple 30-45 minutes because I know it would make the rest of the day better.
I made it to the park
with a misty drizzle still falling. It
has now been raining pretty much non-stop since Sunday. When I witness the devastation along the east
coast, I know I have nothing to complain about so let’s call it an
observation. I tried a different trail
and found several more trees down. Some
have already been removed…the Metropark staff is awfully efficient in clearing
the bridle and paved paths. I stayed
away from the hiking trails I like to run so much because I was sure they were
nothing more than rivers of mud and would be offering hazardous footing. I can wait a couple of more days for them to
have a chance to dry out.
I arrived home and
went straight to the trainer where I put in another hour of riding. I suspect I’ll get a chance to get out this
weekend since the forecast is for sunshine, but if I do, I’ll be bundling up
since the high is forecasted for the mid-forties. That would seem warm after riding through the
winter…but I haven’t been riding through the winter and I’m still a freeze
baby.
Run
Duration: 32 minutes. Bike Duration: 60
minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 140 bpm running and 120 bpm biking.
Calories
burned during workout: 550 running and 850 biking.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
In the summer of
1938. We were still in the throes of the Great Depression and a crazy man named
Hitler had rearmed Germany and was making aggressive moves in Europe. But the biggest news was about neither of those phenomenons, but instead the
story of a horse named Seabiscuit and the match race he would run against the
Triple Crown winner, War Admiral. He was
small and awkward on the track and did not have the pedigree of the world’s
greatest horse, War Admiral. He did have
an owner by the name of Charles Howard; an extremely wealthy Californian who
had made a fortune in the automobile business promoting him and his underdog
status extremely effectively and to the point where he finally got what he
wanted...a race to determine the fastest horse in the country. It is a wonderful movie and I got my
father-in-law to sit and watch it with me the other night when his power was out
and his house was cold. He’s 91 years
old and was 18 at the time of the Match Race and said that he remembered the
hoopla. That’s not surprising since the
day they ran the race, most businesses across the country closed so their
employees could listen on the radio to the call. In all, 40 million people listened to the
broadcast...over a third of the population of the country!
I love the story for its
depiction of the four characters, down on their luck, but who never give
up. The jockey, Red Pollard, the
trainer, Tom Smith, the owner of the horse and, of course, Seabiscuit himself
all have climbed mountains to reach the day of the Match Race in this
incredible story and if you’ve never seen the movie or read the book, I highly
recommend both.
The rains continued
to fall all day. I stopped briefly at
the bridge to check the water level on the Chagrin River and it had reached
nine feet. I’ve never seen it close to
this high and wondered how much longer it would be before the river blocked the
road. I drove home and hopped on the
trainer for another episode of ‘Friday Night Lights’ and an indoor ride. I hope the show is not a true reflection of
high school sports in Texas (or anywhere for that matter) since every player is
drinking all the time and has been having sex since they were in Pee Wee
Football. I’m not sure why I watch other
than its sports related and I need something to sustain me through those boring
minutes on the trainer.
Bike
Duration: 45 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories
burned during workout: 625.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Schools were
cancelled throughout Northeast Ohio as high winds and rain pummeled the north
coast. Further south, snow was falling
and adding to the mayhem on the roads and in the communities. I made it to work, but my clients were
struggling to get there as travel issues began to escalate. By noon, I’d cancelled everything and was
heading for home. I gave serious
consideration to driving out to Mentor-on-the-Lake to visit my sister and watch
the waves crashing against the break wall that protected the bluff at the edge
of her back yard. Then I thought of all
of the requests by safety departments to stay off the roads and not become one
more person that needed assistance and headed for home. Though seldom, I have responsible moments.
We’d been without
power for about ten hours, but it was back on.
I spent some time reading and then went on-line where I was confronted
by reminders that this was the second anniversary of my brother Jim’s death. Not that I needed any since no day passes that
I don’t think about him. I looked out my
office window at the accumulation of leaves on the grass and remembered that,
after leaving the hospital two years ago, I’d come home and raked leaves in my
yard and my neighbor’s (they had lost their son one day earlier) until my arms
felt leaden. I put on some rain gear and
went outside.
Jim and I had the
responsibility of raking leaves from the forest of Oaks we had in our yard
growing up on Debra Lane. We
would put them in a pile for jumping, throwing and burying younger siblings and
neighbor kids before our father would begin burning our piles. How I loved that smell. I’d walk with him through the smoke so we
could have it on our clothes for the next several days. With six kids to monitor, my mom never seemed
to care how long we wore a particular outfit.
I don’t remember how Jim felt about it, but I loved raking and
everything that followed.
So, I raked in the
rain. I put them in piles and made no attempt
to drag them to the tree lawn, which was still full from the ones I’d placed
there last Friday. I just wanted to go
through the process of raking and remembering and it was quite
therapeutic...and even had me sweating.
After 45 minutes of this, I figured it was time to do a real workout and
since I was already used to the rain, changed into my running gear and headed
for the Metropark for a run.
I found that I had
the park to myself...go figure. I’d
expected to find numerous trees down and decided I’d stick to the bridle paths
to avoid the mud I was sure to find on the hiking trails. Though I did see many branches down, found
only two trees across the three miles of trail I saw. I had parked at the entrance on Wilson Mills
nearest River Road and upon returning to my car, walked over to the bridge
spanning the river to check the flood level.
The indicator next to the bridge said showed the water level had reached
seven feet which is about six feet above normal and running extremely
fast. With rains predicted to continue
for two more days, I wondered if this road wouldn’t be closed soon. I returned to the car and added some push-ups
and dips before returning home covered in mud and thoroughly soaked, but feeling pretty happy with myself and the day.
Run
Duration: 45 minutes. Rake duration: 45 minutes.
Training
Heart Rate: 140 bpm running and 80 bpm raking.
Calories
burned during workout: 750 running and 225 raking.
