Month: July 2015

Wildlife

Back in December, a headhunter got in touch with me about a great job opportunity.  And he was right – it was great.  There was a catch, though.

The job was in Florida.

But – against all odds, we sold our house and moved to Florida at the end of April.  There will be a lot of discussion of the adjustment of moving and the running in Florida vs. the running in New York (preview:  no hills!).  This post, though, is going to focus on a specifically new thing for my runs:  wildlife.

I’m sensitive to this topic because about six weeks after we moved here I took this picture from the pond about 3 minutes from the house:

That is EXACTLY what it looks like
That is EXACTLY what it looks like

When I took that picture, I was standing on a sidewalk that is part of my regular running route.  It has to be, because I have to regularly go through there to get to a lot of places.

So … yeah.  I run in the early morning, before work.  Before dawn.  When it is still dark.  I pay attention when I run now, to indulge in understatement.

Of course, this means I notice a lot, and it turns out that there is a lot to notice in Florida.  The big one for me is the birds – an example is this guy, whose picture I took not 100 yards from where I took the picture of the alligator:

They stand like that all the time
They stand like that all the time

This one is called an anhinga, and they are basically South American birds who also have a small range in the extreme southern United States, including most of Florida.  In other words, I never ever would have seen this bird in New York.  Incidentally, I looked him up, and they stand with their wings like that to dry them – they are water birds, but their feathers don’t get oily like a duck’s, and they struggle to fly with wet feathers.

There seem to be a million of these little lizards:

These guys are EVERYWHERE
These guys are EVERYWHERE

And, just, in general there is a lot of wildlife.  Several runs ago I spent 5 minutes watching two bats going crazy catching bugs. On the run after that I was close enough to an armadillo that I could have kicked him.  And then just after the armadillo, there were three deer that included a little yearling buck about 10 steps away.

The next day I almost stepped on something that scared me to death, and I still don’t know what it was.  It was, however, furry – so not an alligator.  Or a snake.

Oh, dear god, if I ever step on a snake…

Zombies – Run!

I found a new thing.

Lets not get carried away and say I discovered this – turns out in 2012 this was the number 1 health and fitness app in the Apple app store.  Plus it raised over $70k on Kickstarter back in 2011.  This thing has been out there.

The practicalities of it were mystifying to me, but now that I’ve been using it I get a better idea of how it works.  There is a story (zombies take over the world, survivors live in a little enclave, a group of runners go out and get supplies, etc., you become one of those runners) that happens while you’re running.  You are given a mission and you head out running – periodically, the characters pipe up and give you updates or new missions, or tell you there is a zombie near and you better get off your ass.  During the dead time, you can either have silence or you can have it play your music.  Essentially, this is a form of interval training, with somebody else calling the interval shots.

Frankly, this sounded kind of silly to me.  Its not like there are real supplies in the real world – seems like just having something there for the sake of having it there.  And I was wrong.  When one of those zombie sounds happens out of nowhere and somebody screams in your ear “Run!” – yeah, you respond.

I’ve only recently begun the 5K training program – I’m not involved in the full-blown game yet.  But I will be.  And if you happen to look threatening on my run, don’t be surprised if I act funny, ok?

In which I compare myself to Mike McDermott

Not to get too carried away here, but it is time for a Mike McD-style Ali-like return to the ring, so … we’re back

They say when you come back from not blogging that you don’t have to, and maybe even shouldn’t, apologize or explain.  They are wrong.  That makes no sense.

So, in one of my very first posts, one of the things I talked about was how I was inspired by, but ultimately disappointed and frustrated by, Ben over at Ben Does Life.  About how he was so cavalier about “just do it!” when his process didn’t match reality for so many – we don’t all get to cut class and go running at midnight and not worry about our families and our mortgages, etc.  The reality for most people is that fitting in fitness is about juggling schedules and making it work, and we don’t get to just drop Ironman training onto our daily schedule and expect a maintenance-free transition.

Ben fell off the wagon and quit blogging, and that has been frustrating, too.  Because part of this whole story is the journey – there and back again, as it were.  And for whatever reason I was overcome with cognitive dissonance because I never equated my abandoning this blog with Ben abandoning his. I was wrong about that.

I also fell off the wagon.  After I dealt with my first (and I guess still only) running injury last summer, I was frustrated by how HARD everything felt.  It was hard to eat right, it was hard to be motivated, my running performance was falling off (some of that was because I was out of shape because of the injury, some of that was because IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING SUMMER, but, whatever it was, it was hard), and I just got into one of those mental funks.  I didn’t have a concrete next goal to be working towards, and I just … stopped.

There was another race – a 5k in July that went very poorly – and then, on August 3rd, 2014, I went for what would become my last run for several months.  I didn’t make a positive choice to stop running and eating well.  I just fell back into an old routine and old habits.

When I started focusing on my food and my running, I lost 55 pounds, and needed to lose another 30 – 50.  I’ve gained almost all of that back.  I’m at 322 pounds as of Friday, and I’m not happy with myself for it.  This size limits things you can do, and I’m not OK with that.  Not to mention that a doctor would almost certainly put me on blood pressure medication, and I don’t want to do that, either.  Clothes aren’t fitting and I’m just not comfortable with myself at all.

It is time.

I’ve been back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon for two weeks now, and I’ve now spent a week running again (lots of walking, but I’m getting out there).  I’m signed up for a 5k in October and a half marathon in January.  And I still have a goal in life to run a full marathon.  This is not over, not by a long shot.

This blog will be a little different, though I’m still me.  Life has changed, too – we moved our family to Florida from New York, and our family has grown – my younger son is now 18 weeks old and is an absolute little angel.  I’m not focused on my race streak anymore, and though I’ll mostly talk about food and running and fitness here, I want to incorporate more of the elements of my life.

We’ll see how it goes.  For the two of you that might actually read this, let me know what might be interesting.

Onward!