What a Great Day!!!

Yesterday was one of the best days I have had in a long time. Can you remember the last time a bunch of small things went right to make your day awesome? Yesterday was that day for me.
As most of you know, my wife is a Personal Trainer. I have just recently completed my personal training certification and will be starting that journey soon. In an effort to become more familiar with the ways of the trainer, I decided to take my wife’s core and upper body class. The class started yesterday and will continue for four weeks on Tuesday and Thursday. I also saw this as an opportunity to get into the habit of using the early morning hours for Ironman training. The class is at 5:30 AM.

The alarm went off a 4 AM. I need to get one of those alarm clocks that is the shape of a baseball. You can throw it across the room without damaging it. The impact will activate the snooze alarm, and you will have to get out of bed to find it the second time. It would be an understatement for me to say I am NOT an early morning person. I am not grouchy in the morning, I just can’t get up and going. I would rather sleep until noon. If sleeping were an Olympic event, I would take home the silver. My brother, Rodney, would take home the gold.

The class was small, with just six total participants. Being that this was the first class of eight, I knew it would be the easiest class to get everyone warmed up and back into the routine. However, I did not expect an easy time. My wife is hard core and wants people to get the most out of there workouts. Most of my concern was from my lack of core and weight training. I can run for four hours or bike for ten, but I haven’t worked my core or done any weights since last October. I dare not admit how long it had been before October.

The class was awesome! I was in some pain, especially from the plank, but was feeling great. If you have never done the plank, you should give this a shot. You are basically in the pushup position, but resting on your elbows instead of your hands. You pretty much hold that position until your body starts shaking violently and you want to throw up. Take a master of pain, like my wife, and she can come up with a hundred different variations of the plank for real fun. I loved it so much; I will be attending all eight classes.

My plans after the workout were very exciting for me. I planned to head to another gym and take a nap in the sauna for about thirty minutes. I love the sauna. I had not been in the sauna during the early morning hours. I was concerned that it might be crowded and too hot. I don’t like the sauna to be too hot. I like to warm up slowly and enjoy the nap. I also don’t like sharing the sauna with other people. Its not that I don’t like people, I just don’t like naked men in close proximity of my napping zone. I have enough concern for other people that I choose to at least wrap a towel around me when I go to the sauna. I really don’t understand the desire to run around naked in a public environment, especially if you don’t have a "Publicly approved" naked body. Even worse is the naked guy who plops down beside you in the sauna, on the higher bench, and spreads his legs. This puts certain obscene objects at eye level. I get to the sauna to find it hasn’t even been turned on today. On top of that, no one joins me in the sauna. I had the slow warm up and the sauna all to myself. It was a great nap.

I had a rough day at work the day before, so I was hoping for some work miracles. I won’t bore you with the work details, but it was one of the most productive and pleasant work mornings I have had in a long time.

My younger brother, Rodney, calls me about 10:30. He is in town for a dentist appointment and would like to go to lunch. I am game, so we plan to go just after 11. I don’t get to see my brothers enough, so this is a rare opportunity. However, I know there is one problem. Rodney doesn’t believe in eating healthy. On top of that, he believes in quantity. He will only eat something green if someone hides vegetables on his meat lovers’ pizza. I quickly start running down a list of food options that could minimize the upcoming damage to my diet. We run through the list, and nothing really appeals to him. He has an epiphany, and decides we need to go to Hooters. This is bad; I love Hooters hot wings, curly fries and cheese sauce. This situation is made worse by the facts that I have not been to Hooters in forever, I worked out early this morning and I have only had 250 calories for the day.

We arrive at Hooters and grab a table. Before I move forward, I must clarify; I go to Hooters for the Hot Wings, not the Hooters. This is the only place I can get all drums. I don’t like the regular hot wings, they don’t have enough meat. They also have some of the best curly fries on the planet. Believe me; I take my eating seriously, now that I have changed my eating habits. If I am going to splurge, I am going to make it count. Now I will admit, I don’t mind and cute girl in short shorts serving me food, Is it just not the reason I choose to go to this restaurant.

When I come to Hooters, I don’t even need the menu. I order the same thing every time. I order a twenty piece all drums with curly fries and cheese sauce. Rodney makes the same order. This should be a fun outing. Rodney had a root canal an hour ago and the entire left side of his mouth is still numb. I promise to inform him when a river of sauce is dripping down his chin. I am sure you are all aware of how promises go when a sibling is involved.

The waitress delivers our food and madness begins. Keeping true to my old habits, I go for the curly fries first. I had actually thought about ordering three orders of curly fries and no wings. The fries are awesome! I move to the wings, and they are almost as tasty. We start devouring the wings like we haven’t eaten in days. The most challenging part of eating at Hooters is trying to not have sauce all over your face or stuff in your teeth every time the waitress comes around. I think this the universes way of playing a nasty trick on guys to think they have a chance to get frisky with one of waitresses. I am sure your chances are killed when you smile at the waitress with sauce running down your face and stuff stuck between your teeth. I can just see some guy in that situation winking at the waitress and saying "How you doing"?

Our waitress seems to be spending a bit more time on Rodney’s side of the table. The ladies have always thought he was a cutie and have given him a bit extra in the flirting category. I could give you a few examples of his cute charm, but I fear those long lost moments should be left in the past, especially the one in Dallas on his 21st B-day.

Rodney is faithful married man. That doesn’t mean that a man doesn’t enjoy a moment of flattery from a cute waitress. After a few repeating flirtatious moments, he starts to get that half embarrassed, half cocky smile, that a man gets when a women is flirting with him and not the other guys at the table. He has forgotten that the left side of his mouth is numb and that I don’t always keep my promises. The waitress returns to fill our drinks one last time. By this time he has some courage and decides throw some boyish charm her way. At this point, he has relaxed a bit, and his left lip is starting to sag. On top of that, there a nice stream of wing sauce running down the numb side of his cheek. He smiles at her and is telepathically asking, "How you doing". She obviously spots the cheek and the sauce and starts to retreat to my side of the table. I lean over and inform her that he has some mental issues and this is the first time he has been out of the hospital in weeks.

Funny, we didn’t see her again until it was time for the bill. It was a great day!

The Orange Quest

I have spent the last couple of months scouring the earth for apparel to match my CARVE team triathlon kit. The way I see it, I have three choices. I can be boring, colorful or hideous. Of course, I chose hideous. I figured, hey, if I am going to be in pain I might as well add some humor to the situation.

As you can see by the pics, I have found the shoes and the sunglasses. I am having no luck finding and orange hat. Well, I can find an orange hat, but not a dry-fit orange hat that I can race in for 5 hours of running at the Ironman. My wife is going to attempt to dye a white hat. If that doesn't work, I will just go with a white hat and the orange sunglasses. If I can find the orange hat, I will more than likely go with a neutral color for the sunglasses.

Hey, the bright orange can do two useful things for me. I can blind the competition as they pass me and the orange should make it easier for the medics to find me passed out on the side of the road during the run.

I took the first step into my future career this week. I completed a Personal Training certification. It was a very intense and detailed test by ISSA. Being in the Technology field, I have been taking certification test for years. I was a bit surprised, and happy, with the difficulty of the exam. It is nice to know the industry is improving the quality of their professionals.

My wife became a PT a couple of years ago, and she loves it! She now works out six times a day for at least six days a week, sometimes seven. She doesn't really work out that much, but she does workout a lot. I think her arms are more defined and bigger than mine. Several of our friends refer to her as "Pipes" or "Guns". She is part of the reason I looked into being a personal trainer. She really enjoys her clients and what better way to spend a day than at the gym?

I won't be trading in the dress shoes for running shoes just yet, but I hope one day to be able to be involved in fitness full time. We have some great ideas and some big plans, but it will take time. I should be able to start training clients in a couple of weeks. I am actually a bit nervous about it. I spend most of my day dealing with computers. It will be quite a switch to deal with humans. There is a big difference in knowing how to do something and showing someone else how to do it.

I had a great nutritional breakthrough with a friend this week. I was enjoying one of my HMR meals when my boss walks in. He ask about the meal and mentioned that he wanted to lose some weight. He had quit smoking a couple of years ago and put on a few pounds. He knows I am in to fitness and has watched me drop almost 40lbs in the last year.

He is a lot like me, in the way that you can't push me to do something. I have to hear the right words or have something catch my attention to get me motivated. I ended up giving him a few meals and recommending he try one, or even two, for lunch. At 230 calories meal, he could easily eat two and cut his lunch calories in half or even by 75%.

He liked the meals and ordered a stash for himself. He has lost several pounds in the last two weeks. He sat in my office today and started talking about counting calories. He had never counted his daily calories and was shocked by the number of calories he was consuming. He thought he was doing the right thing by eating a salad and soaking it in Ranch. After all, it was a salad, it should be healthy. Little did he know that salad had more calories and fat than a fast food cheeseburger.

He seems to be excited about this new discovery and motivated about losing weight. It made me feel good that I could help someone in a positive and healthy way. Maybe this Personal training will be easier than I thought.