Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Helping

Gave a speech earlier about charitable service. Helping the less fortunate folks in our community. Modern spin on being our brother's keeper. Doing what we can. Anything better than nothing. Our Food Fight raised over ten grand in cash. And received tens of thousands of pounds of non-perishable food. Combined efforts amount to roughly fifty thousand meals for local charities. Couple of rounds of praise. Interview with WLOX. Good to have my efforts recognized. But apparently Ol Jon can help everyone else except his own family. 

Worked a little later than planned. Didn't train. (Wasn't going to, after yesterday's brick.) Get home too close to seven. Walk into a brewing storm. And bad turns into worse. Blossoms into the same old argument about contributions versus expectations. Lots of one-sided yelling. Previous efforts going completely unrecognized. Topped off with acidic comments intended to hurt as much as possible.

The rest is silence. Until the cycle repeats.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Indoor Brick

Terrible storms raging, horizon to horizon. Something like twenty (or more) inches along the Gulf Coast. Front yards turned into lakes. And me trying to train for an Ironman.

End up doing some indoor brick work. Sixteen miles on the bike in fifty two minutes. Then a half hour of running seemingly endless circles on the track. Chasing Jack and Chris. Who do it as effortlessly as it ought to be for me.

Slick with foul sweat. Breathing like an old nerd. Slowing. Step by step. Until the anger is almost gone. Almost. But it is never completely gone these days. Just hunkers down for a bit. Biding its time.

Bring on the next race!

Monday, April 28, 2014

Gonna Try This

Given the fact that my run has returned to previous levels of craptasticness, changes are in store. First order of business: strengthen the core. Going to try the 30 Day Core Challenge from Active.com. Four weeks of crunches, back extensions, leg raises, planks, and adding some clamshells and side leg raises for hip strengthening.

In the meanwhile, Ye Ol Neck & Ye Ol Back are recovering nicely. Less stiffness. More flexibility. And (maybe?) better performance in the water and on the bike. Done with multiple visits per week. Down to just once. Stretching and exercising at home ought to help.

But how often do my plans go as well as envisioned?

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Visiting Kimmer

Spent my Sunday visiting Kimmer & Family. They drove down yesterday. Staying in their favorite condo. Ethan breaking into his second year. Cute as a little bug. Wanting to pinch those pudgy cheeks of his. Full of energy and excitement. On the go, non-stop. Sounds like any little redhead in my life?

Here's the crazy orbit we spin through. My history with Kimmer goes back to the late 90s, when we worked at MindSpring. He had a grown son and my kids were still in the planning stages. We would hang out after work, eating incredibly stupid food, drinking insane amounts of alcohol, and occasionally going to the gym and pretend to train. Fifteen years later, Kim has a toddler, my kids have become teens, and neither of us drink or eat like we used. Neither of us ever would have predicted these crazy adventures. And we still talk almost daily.

Post food, Ethan (and Kimmer?) needed a nap. So we hit the beach for some open sea swimming, while Mommy babysat.Beautiful day for it. Touch breezy. Smidge over-cast. Interesting waves. But not brutal. wetsuit for me. Beach chair for Kimmer. He'd watch me do my version of laps. Out, through the breakers, maybe 200 meters, and back again. Much easier than Dauphin Island. (Thankfully!) Clearer water. Could see the bottom much of the time. But a stronger rip current dragging to the west. 6 laps. Maybe 1600 - 2400 meters. A good prep for Gulf Coast in two weeks.
Kim took a couple of pictures. If you squint and use your vivid imagination, you just might be able to spot the rare and elusive Aqua Nerd!

Afterwards, even more food! Some Mexican. (To offset the Cajun lunch we had at Stinky's Fish Camp!) And then Ol Jon had to hit the road for the long, lonely ride home to a quiet, sleeping house. Three hours each way. On the heels of my first triathlon of the season. Quite a task.

A great time, with great friends. Reminds me of what life is about.

If only it could have been stretched out for a week...

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Scattered

A shotgun blast of a day. High velocity pellets hitting from too many directions. Nearly non-stop at the office. (Though my new plan is to only open email two or three times a day and avoid it as a constant distraction.) Mom calls while driving, tells me she is trailing an ambulance and G'Ma is en route to the ER, for chest pains. Many worrisome hours later it isn't a heart attack, but possibly intra-cranial fluid. That particular issue may linger for days. Cindy keeps taking tests. A friend's sole server at work gets completely ransacked by a Russian crypto trojan that encrypts the entire system and holds it hostage until they pay an anonymous account with fresh bitcoins. And another friend has voodoo invade his home network after a rainstorm so now all the packets are soaked and nothing works consistently. Feels like Monday all over again. 

On a good note, Dr J popped my back so well yesterday that it completely stopped hurting, at least for now. My knee isn't hurting when walking. And a test run is on the agenda for tomorrow. Still time to train for the 70.3 in May. But it is going to be close.

Things are always close in my life.