To satisfy your morbid curiosity

Here's a link to the final results of the triathlon on Sunday. As I said, my only goal was to finish, so the time is irrelevant to me. You can see by the results that there were a few people behind me, and many, many people ahead of me.

I finished behind 12-year-olds, physically challenged athletes and the elderly. Those finishing behind me included people my age running with their children, people my age running with their parents, and one shirtless Hawaiian dude with a long, gray ponytail who must have gotten a late start.

But I finished, and that's what counts.

The Official Triathlon Post

As an English major, words matter to me. And whenever I think about a triathlon, even though the etymology of the word is clear, the concept of the word still kinda cracks me up.

I picture some well-meaning but misinformed Stuart Smalley type, trying to motivate a friend by saying, "You're not a 'try-athlete' -- you're a 'do-athlete.'" I'm also reminded of something my old college roomie Sean used to say about former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Dave Kreig: "He's a triple threat -- trip, stumble, fumble."

Meaning, even though I'm doing three things in one day, it doesn't mean I'm doing them well. Still, when you decide to run, bike and swim, all on the same day, you have to call it something (besides frackin' insane), so I guess triathlon is as good as the next word. Here's a little photo essay of my day:


Still at the hotel, not exactly sure what I'm getting myself into. Double-checking to make sure defibrillator is packed.

The tools of the trade: the bike, the shoes, the running/swimming shorts, the blind optimism.

I'm in there somewhere. Probably way in the back. I heard that drafting works great in the bike portion of the race, so I figured I'd try it out in the 5K as well.



This is my first foray into the world of Blogger video -- look closely and you'll notice that flash of sinewy athletic brilliance is actually me finishing the bike portion of the event, with Fiona clapping for me at the very end.

It's a good thing the swim was in a pool -- had we been in an ocean, my presence in the water might have elicited some sea monster warnings. And yes, I am doing a modified version of the backstroke. I didn't care about my time. I just wanted to finish. And my arms felt like 50-lb barbells, so I just kinda basked my way around the pool. Whatever works, right?

Back in the transition area, mission accomplished, ready for the next challenge -- walking back to the car.

On the way home, Kris asked me what I wanted for dinner. My reply was, "Anything that goes well with Guinness." That was my frothy reward, and I enjoyed it. Now it's time to find the next challenge, which likely will be another tri, this time with Kris or perhaps with old roomie Sean (see comments in Sunday's post).

Final thought: Patrick Donnelly completed a sprint triathlon. The next day, it snowed in Las Vegas. Coincidence? I'll let you decide.

Success!

See that t-shirt? See that medal? See that look of satisfaction/exhaustion/exhiliration?

It's all over but the celebrating. I'll post more details and photos on Monday, but this is the smiling mug of one happy triathlete.

This is it

Yep, we're at T-minus 40 hours and counting. Hard to believe that three months of training have come to this. I've kinda stopped writing about the process lately, not because I'm not as enthused about it but because it's sort of become second nature to me -- exercise, eating better, just focusing on healthy living.

I'm excited about the triathlon as it draws ever near. A little bit scared, I guess, but as a good friend once said, "Pain is just fear leaving your body." OK, it wasn't a good friend, it was Jillian, the trainer from "The Biggest Loser," but I still thought it was interesting. I've had plenty of pain over the last three months -- sore muscles, mostly -- but there's still some fear, so I guess I haven't gone through enough pain.



I'll be sure to post my results on Monday ... either that, or I'll have my wife post the details of my funeral. But I'm hoping for the former -- as The Hold Steady says, "You gotta stay positive!"

Sick like dog

I've been battling a bug for much of this week so the training has been on hold a bit. I thought it was just a little food poisoning but I had the bad body aches and atypical exhaustion, so I don't know what it was. I felt good enough yesterday to put in 40 minutes on the elliptical and I did a half-hour treadmill routine today (walking at varying inclines -- 12 percent doesn't sound like much, but you do it for two minutes and let me know how you feel when you're done) so I think I'm back to normal.

Valerie gave me a new training regimen to follow -- we're going to cut down to two days a week with me filling in the cardio four other days on my own. We're going to train on Mondays and Thursdays with me running a mile before each session (or a half-mile before and a half-mile after). On Tuesdays, I'll bike for 30 minutes and add in other cardio options as I see fit. Wednesdays will be my "light day" with walking, swimming or maybe even some yoga if I find a class I like. Never tried it before but I'm willing to do anything once.

On Fridays I'm back on the bike and will mix in some stairmaster or treadmill work, and on Saturday I'll start running up to 2 miles for now, pushing that to 3 miles by mid-November and eventually 4 miles as my max for now. And on Sundays, I rest.

Anybody with advice or anecdotes they've gleaned from their own training regimens are encouraged to post.

Oh, and as for the baseball playoffs, I like the Dodgers in six and the Red Sox in seven. I know, that means both teams will have to clinch on the road -- not a problem for the Dodgers, very dicey for the Sox in the Tampadome, but it could happen. They'll either win it in five or seven games, and I can see Tampa winning at least one at Fenway, so let's go with seven. Should be a fun series either way.

Progress

Mad props to my trainer Valerie today. We did the second round of body measurements and while I'm still at 238, my body fat has dropped by more than 2 percent and I've lost a couple of inches in some problem areas.

If you watch The Biggest Loser, you know that the dreaded Week 2 Plateau is the bane of the dieters' existence. This is the middle of Week 3 for me, so I'm not surprised that I haven't lost weight this week. First of all, muscle is more dense than fat, and I'm adding muscle while losing fat, so the only numbers that really count are measurements right now. And with Nora at home the last couple of days, I wasn't able to pound out any cardio during the day, which limited my caloric deficit.

Anyway, we celebrated my success today by pounding the crap out of my body again. Actually, it wasn't anything excessively brutal -- just a good, solid workout, three times through a circuit that included 3 minutes of running, then some squats and some shoulder work. I got on the bike afterwards for a quick 12-minute workout and am feeling great.

2 down, ____ to go

A week in and I've lost two pounds. It's a start -- in fact, it's right on pace. My target weight for the triathlon is 215, which means I need to lose a total of 25 pounds in 14 weeks. So two pounds a week would get me there.

Today's training session included crunches, leg lifts, shoulder presses and lunges -- lots and lots of lunges. They're not fun -- but they do the job.

Oh, and I ran yesterday for the first time since the Reagan administration (I kid ... but not much). It was on the treadmill, and I was pretty much just dipping my toe into the water by running for one minute (5.7 mph), then walking for two minutes, and repeating the cycle for 30 minutes. It went well enough that next time I'm going to try one-minute intervals for both walking and running. Then I'll just extend the running periods while continuing to walk for a minute on each "break" until I'm feeling good enough to run 3.1 miles.

Or that's the plan. Anybody have tips for a beginning runner? Fire away.

Crunches

Time was, the only crunches I was familiar with were Cap'n and Cinnamon Toast. But now I'm finding out there are many more variations, some of them even healthy for you.

Yes, my trainer has introduced me to about 32 different varieties of crunches in our two sessions. We did them with a medicine ball, without a medicine ball, laying on one of those big bouncy balls, etc. And I have to say, the variety keeps it from getting boring. They're still painful, but it's not the same, repetitive motion, which means I'm working my upper and lower abs ("Hello down there, abs -- I haven't seen you in awhile!") and reducing the stress on different ancillary body parts. For example, some crunches make my neck sore, some make my hip flexors burn, some cause the old back to ache. But mixing up the routine seems to balance out the strain on the rest of my body.

So, the lesson for today is, "Crunches: They're not just for breakfast anymore."

(p.s. I promise I will get to some other topics soon. Like football gambling -- we'll post the 5-team parlay tomorrow.)

Sore

So I started up with a personal trainer on Monday. I'm going to be subjecting myself to her torture (I mean she's going to work me out) three days a week, one hour per session, for the foreseeable future.

We started on Monday with core-strengthening exercises -- crunches, step-ups, and a lot of balance-type drills that focus on keeping your core muscles tight. So, of course, I'm sore today. Very, very sore. But it's a good kind of sore -- the kind that you get when you've used your body in a different way than you're used to, and in the way that it was meant to be used.

I'm sure it'll eventually abate -- probably just in time to get drilled again on Thursday. But that's just part of the process. I'm not a big "no-pain-no-gain" guy, but I accept the fact that there will be plenty of discomfort in my immediate future. And that's OK, because too much comfort is what got me here in the first place.

First step

It all started in 1998.

I'd coasted along throughout most of my adult life, working out with decent frequency, eating pretty much whatever I wanted to, and maintaining a healthy weight of 175. Then my life went through a couple of drastic changes. I became a father, and I started a new job that was nowhere near my health club.

Suddenly, I was no longer free to use my time as I saw fit, and I couldn't swing by the club before or after work to get in 45 minutes of cardio. Plus, I turned 30, and my metabolism began the slow descent toward flatline. All this added up to a slow, but steady, weight gain.

Still, I topped out at around 190, then started watching my diet and figured out ways to fit in a little more exercise, and I settled back in the low 180s.

Then all hell broke loose. In 2000, I started another new job, this one requiring extremely long hours. Fun, but long, and many of them stretching into the wee hours of the morning. I "retired" from playing baseball after that summer, thus eliminating my one incentive to remain in decent shape. (Please keep your John Kruk comments to yourselves.) And my metabolism -- once fueled by decent sleep and regular exercise -- slowed to a glacial creep.

And the pounds came.

My goodness, did they ever. Before long, I was buying new pants, wearing baggy clothes and generally living the sad lifestyle of the fat guy. My eating habits went to hell ("Hey, I'm already fat -- might as well eat that donut") and ... well, if I were a little more touchy-feely, the phrase "shame spiral" might be invoked right about here.

By the time I tried to grab the reins the first time -- two years ago -- I had ballooned to 240 pounds. I signed up with the local LA Weight Loss chapter, because I liked their no-nonsense approach. It boiled down to this: write down everything you eat and drink, control your portion sizes, weigh in three times a week to encourage accountability, and watch the pounds fall away!

And it worked ... for awhile. I got down to about 225, then hit a wall that I just couldn't break through. I still don't know why it didn't click for me. My guess is that I still wasn't exercising enough and I wasn't sleeping enough (do a little research on the correlation between sleep and weight loss if you're skeptical about this), and as my frustration mounted, I just sorta gave up. A year and a half later, I was back up to 240.

Fast-forward to a month ago. I was back in Minnesota, reconnecting with my roots in my hometown. I noticed that my old baseball club had a home game that night and figured I'd swing by the ballpark to watch a few innings. When I got there, I discovered that night's opposing starting pitcher was ... my age! He was an old teammate and opponent of mine, and he was still out there getting it done. While I was sipping a beer and eating popcorn in the stands, he was battling "kids" 10 and 20 years younger than us in the heat and humidity of an August night.

And that's when it hit me. I had to do something, because there was no way I could have gone out there and even run out a grounder, let alone play three games a week like I used to -- and like my old friend and foe was still doing.

So, the day I got back to Nevada, I got online and signed up for a sprint triathlon. For the uninitiated (like me about a month ago), a sprint triathlon is like the junior version of the big event -- it's a 5K run, a 12-mile bike ride and a 150-meter swim. The one I chose -- the Tinsel Triathlon in Hemet, Calif. -- is actually held in reverse order. Usually you swim first, but I guess because their swim takes place in a pool instead of a lake or ocean, they have to swim last to stagger the number of people in the water at the same time.

I've long been interested in triathlons, because they seem like a great test of general athleticism, as opposed to marathons, which just seem twisted and cruel. I always said that I'd sign up for one "as soon as I lose a little weight" because of course 240 pounds can cause a lot of pounding on the old joints.

But there comes a time in life when you've got to put the cart before the horse, so to speak, and this is one of those times. So I'm signed up for a triathlon that will take place on Dec. 14 -- you can refer to my handy-dandy countdown clock to see just how much time I've got left before my Day of Reckoning. And the fact that it's three days before my 40th birthday ... well, I'm a sucker for symbolism.

Along the way, I'll tell you all about my goals, how I plan to get there, what this process will entail, who's going to help me get it done, and everything else related to this journey of self-improvement. And of course you'll still get the same riveting discussion of sports, music, politics and gambling on football that you've come to know and love from What Happens in Henderson.

T-minus 98 days and counting ... let's get it started.