The Beginning, or the smoke clears from the Trojan War on Sloth

Once upon a time, a guy named Keith was active, swimming, riding his bike everywhere, running, playing tennis, soccer, basketball, and generally moving the bod. Then, about the same time, he bought a car and discovered beer, with predictable results.

For a few years, now and then, swimming happened, or I had a physically active job, but gradually the spare tire around the middle got bigger and bigger. Then one fateful day I had a good look at myself sideways in the mirror. OMG! Enough was enough. A few years ago I realized I was dropping my wife off at work, then going to work myself and starting more than an hour early. That was nice in that I could then leave an hour early and beat some of the traffic.

So instead of being early, I started swimming again, and at first it was brutal. My body remembered sliding through the water with the greatest of ease. At some point in my late 20's I could swim 1000 m in 20 minutes, and not even get my heart rate into the aerobic zone. When I started again about 2 years ago, I could barely swim 100 m, but I had my eyes on that 20 minute kilometer again. It took much longer than I thought it would, but I got there on August 1 this year. My quickest 1000 m so far is 19 minutes.

I started riding my bike much more regularly this summer as well. And from somewhere, I don't know where, but I think her name starts with S, I got the urge to start running. That's been a cautious thing, since I'm a big guy, still carrying way too much weight.

All in all, I've slimmed down quite a bit; I get into pants I haven't been into for a very long time. And I'm feeling great about the whole darn thing. I have my eye set on completeing the Chinook Half-tri next June, and as soon as I get coaching arrangements finalized, I'll get signed up. Who knows where this will go? That's what this blog is about.

Today was a run day. Now, you have to realize I use the word run very loosely. Picture a very tired elephant trying to break into a trot in swamp and you've got about the right idea. Warm up walk, ran 2 min (gently, trying to place feet, rather than pound them into ground), walk 2 min to recover. Heart rate usually dropped from mid 130's down to below 110 during recovery. Did that 15 times, then a cool down walk, and some stretching.

It's a beautiful day to be going through Fish Creek, nice and cool.