Milestones

Last week was Father’s day, and also my 40th BDay, I can not believe how much better and younger I feel today than any other stage in my life. So well, that I did not feel any jitters as the day approached.

To celebrate my 40s, I hooked up with a few friends and we did our own triathlon, it was called The Big 4 “O” race. It was fun, fast and best of all, a BLAST. We’ll repeat the event in a couple of months and hopefully can gather a few more athletes to join us.

My wonderful wife threw a party with a bunch of friends, mostly relatives - even a DJ and great Latin food. It was awesome. Honey – I know you read this, so, I love you! Thanks for treating me like your king!

The last two weeks were business as usual in regards to food intake and workouts. I have been able to do at least each sport during the week and then repeat on the weekend. My waist size is down to 32 and my weight stable at 182 LB. It feels good to fit small in your oldest jeans. Yay!!!

The 4th week of the month proved to be a little more difficult but as I added my workouts into my schedule, they take visibility and have a better chance of getting done.

While traveling for business, I met with an old HS friend, we had some good times remembering other good times. I also had a few extra beers (carbs) which I immediately felt on my waist. But I also completed a 5.7 mile fast run around Ft Lauderdale's downtown area. Although a very bad lightning storm made me stop and take cover, the rain cooled the air nicely.

Then, on Saturday, did a 32 mile bike ride – it was done mostly at a slow pace so we would burn fats, not carbs; but also so the folks riding with me would learns the route and hopefully get their own chances to ride and train around here. As I came back home I had a chance to see the Kiddy - 4Th of July Bicycle parade at my community. Then it was family time.

Sunday morning was my first real set of running intervals training. This is a method of running to help you gain speed. In which, instead of running hard and fast for 3 miles you would calculate the time you want to be running at (ex. 8 minutes per mile x 3 miles = 24 minutes). At this point you would break your run into many pieces that include 24–1 min sprints, or 12–2 minute sprints, etc, plus a predetermined rest time between sets.

As my first workout of this kind, I picked 15 x 1 min sprints with 2 min rest intervals. As you can quickly figure out, this workout takes time to complete. The entire workout consisted of 1-10 min warm up, 15 sets of intervals, and 12 min cooldown. The last 2 sets were very difficult to get to the speed I was shooting for, which is very important for this type of workout as that is what we’re teaching the body to do.

All in all it’s been a nice couple of weeks. The clock might be advancing but I am feeling younger, I am training harder than I have ever done and keep moving towards my goals.

Not bad for a 40 year old man!

My next race is in 2 weeks and I have yet to get comfortable with my swimming. Next weekend is July 4th, so until then, train hard and God bless!