This is probably the first time in my life that I feel a little sad at the changing of the season. Now, up here, there's nothing sad about the change from Winter to Spring. It is usually long overdue and greatly anticipated. Spring to Summer brings the end of the school year, and I am as happy as Logan is when he gets to shake off that mortal coil.
Summer to Fall? I don't know, but the cooler temps have got me wishing the Summer wouldn't end. That's a bit odd given that this Summer was way too hot, with no big thunderstorms. Making it not only grossly uncomfortable, but grossly unprofitable for my business. However, maybe I'm just getting to a point in my life where I truly feel in my soul that there are only so many Summers in a person's life and every one that passes is spending pennies from a jar that can't be replenished.
Or maybe I am, as always, acutely aware that my boy is only in my life for a short while. He's pretty much at the halfway point. In 9 more years, he'll be out of High School and if I can at all make it possible, he will be off to some school somewhere (probably Ohio State), to begin to live life on his own terms. Raising Logan is the best experience of my life and if I had my way, he'd never move out. Of course, that would put a bit of a crimp on his development. So, I know he has to go. Just not yet.
This year he's in 4th grade. Next year, he starts full-blown football in pads. After that middle school, then High School... ah, but one thing at a time. For now, he's 9. As always, I need to make sure to cherish each moment.
Funny thing, but my Arabic class is causing me to get my act together on pretty much everything... other than Arabic. This was a pattern I noticed when I was a student in the wayback days. If I had a test or assignment coming up, I would procrastinate by doing things that appeared to be of roughly equivalent importance. For instance, that might be the only time the carpet ever got swept.
This weekend has been incredibly productive for me. Go figure. I actually started "project e-bay" where I'm going to sell off anything I haven't touched in a year or more. I'll have to see how it goes. I'm a pack-rat and collector and it wasn't such a big deal when I was making huge coin, but these days, it makes sense to right-size my stuff.
My brother, Rob, helped me move my recumbent bike into the cardio dungeon of the cabin. (I'm going to start calling the new house, "the cabin" to differentiate it from "the house".) I'm going to need major help to get my treadmill over there. The thing weighs a ton and a half. I'm figuring a 3 man lift, at a minimum. It's not just heavy, but it's very wide, so it has to pass through all doorways sideways.
Once I've got all that, it should be enough that I have a capable cardio room in the cabin, and I will probably move my weights in there from the warehouse. I doubt I'll move my weight rack or bench. They're pretty junky and sort of worn out. For instance, when I do bench press, the bench wobbles like a mutha. I'd also like a bench that can incline. For decline, I guess I can use a sit up board.
I still have 5 personal training sessions left, and I'm just not sure how I want to use them. Maybe I'll wait until my college class is done. It's amazing how such a small committment sort of casts a shadow on pretty much everything else.
Today, Logan has a flag football game at 1:30, and a baseball scrimmage at 5:00. That doesn't leave much time in-between. I'll run either between the games or after the baseball scrimmage. I'm glad to see them scrimmaging in the Fall instead of having full-blown practices.
I know that Logan is fortunate to be on this Mavericks team. It's one of the premier organizations in the area and is his best shot at playing baseball at the highest possible level. I do worry, though. He's only 9 and I don't want him to get burned out or start thinking of this as work. I also am constantly concerned because he is playing up a year. (He should be playing on a 9 and under team next year, but because of the way the Mavs organize the teams, he had to try out for the 10s team.)
I know I whine about that a lot. I just know my boy loves baseball and I don't want to do anything that takes away from that.
As for exercise, I'd say I'm at a genuine plateau these days. I've been about 193-195 for over a month, now. Part of it is that I'm not following my diet very well. The other thing is, I think I just hit a plateau. I am a person who believes that it's hard to lose weight with one workout a day. I can still remember when I tapered for my first marathon and cut out bicycling and swimming. I actually gained weight.
I do think one workout a day is fine for maintaining weight. Might actually cause a person to lose weight gradually over a long period of time. However, for folks wanting to lose a pound or two a week, it's hard to do without making some pretty big changes to diet as well.
However, as much as I believe it's very difficult to lose weight with one workout a day, I also believe that it's hard to keep weight on with two workouts a day. Ultimately, I think I want to transition to a workout schedule of rowing and running 5 times a week, and recumbent bike 4 times a week. That's 14 workouts, which means twice a day.
The trick, of course, is finding that much time. I consider a workout to be about an hour.
The math works out pretty simply, too. If I run for an hour, that's about 900-1,000 calories burned. If I do two workouts like that a day, that would mean 2,000 calories just in exercise, alone. Throw in 2,000 more that get burned just by base metabolism, and that means I'd have to eat 4,000 calories a day just to maintain my weight.
I may get cable TV and internet installed at the cabin here, soon. I feel like I should try and get a TV down in the workout room. Whoever owned the house previously, finished the basement into 4/5 separate rooms. One of the smaller ones is where the cardio dungeon will be. It's still big enough for all 3 cardio machines, but not particularly spacious.
For space reasons, I'll probably put the weights in the furnace room. The nicer of the big rooms is where I have the pitching machine set up. I want to get some netting put up in that room so we can throw the yellow no-sting balls instead of wiffle balls. Not a huge difference, but they fly a little truer and give more realistic feedback through the bat.
I put a dehumidifier down there and it filled up in less than a day. I need to get a hose to attach to the side of the thing, so it'll drain automatically. The basement is sorta musty and damp, and drying it out will make it a lot more pleasant to be down there. Logan even noticed that it has a dank, musty smell to it. The basement is a bit humid and a dehumidifier is probably a good idea, anyway.
So, big sports day today with the most athletic kid I've seen in a long, long time. I will try to get in a slow 6 miler today. I ran 6 yesterday and one of them was at a 9 minute pace. All I'm gonna say is, it was hard. I had my heart-rate monitor on, and I was up over 170 bpm. That's just not a pace I can sustain.
I figure I'm 20 pounds overweight in terms of optimal running condition, though. That makes a huge difference. All I can do is just keep plugging away.
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