The Trek

So something else happened that I didn't share with you masses. Something vewy intwiguing...

Good and bad things happen when a family member dies. Obviously, the worst thing is that you lose somebody that you cared for very, very much. You've probably lost somebody in your lifetime; I don't need to elaborate further. But there are a few good things that can happen as well. For me, these sad events are a chance for me to catch up with friends and family I have not seen for a while. One of those family members is my Uncle Shawn.

Uncle Shawn and his family live upstate, a two-and-a-half-hour car ride away that limits my opportunities to see them. Uncle Shawn, for the last 15 years or so, has done the Trek Across Maine, usually with a close group of friends that go cycling together a lot during the year. For those not in the know, the Trek Across Maine is a yearly event on Father's Day weekend that literally takes participants across the Pine Tree State on bicycles. It starts at Sunday River (western Maine) and ends two days later in Belfast (eastern Maine). Needless to say, it's not an easy experience, but by all accounts it's an extremely rewarding one. It benefits the American Lung Association.

Well, anyway, my Uncle Shawn was a small business owner for many years, and an extremely successful one to boot. To be a small business owner, you have to not only be a hard worker, but you have to be able to talk a good game. It's been known for years that he was extremely skilled with the former, but the latter didn't become clear until my grandmother's wake. That was where we started talking about various events in our lives, and one of us happened to mention the Trek which had just wrapped up a couple weeks prior. Uncle Shawn started telling me about how much fun he and his friends every year, and how various cousins of mine had participated over the last few years. He talked about what a physical challenge it was, how you needed endurance, but how you always felt great after each day. He told me how every pit stop is essentially a giant outdoor festival, and how when you wrap up the final day, you cruise into eastern Maine feeling like a million bucks.

At some point, my lips formed the words, "I'm in." And since then, one thought's crossed my mind: is my butt ready for this pounding? I haven't sat on a bike in a few years, but from what I remember, if you haven't done it in a while (cycling, I mean), that bike seat invades you like an alien probe. So I've created a Trek List (kind of like a check list) of things I need to do before June 17 of next year:

1) Get skinny(er)
2) Buy a damn bike
3) Raise money
4) Get a CAT scan
5) Not buy a "Livestrong" bracelet

The details are muddy right now. I still have to figure out how to register, and set up a pledge sheet and what-not, but this should be a fun experience. To the right, you'll see a countdown to the 2011 Trek Across Maine. So it's out there. I'm in. So, there it is. While the wedding is the ultimate pay-off, this is something more immediate that I can test my physical stamina on. And should I do well and have a great experience, maybe I'll do it again the following summer, in which it will be called - you know I had to make this joke - Trek Across Maine II: The Wrath of Shawn.

Ricardo Montalban approves this bad joke

Weeks 11/12/13: Fin

PART ONE: 1:56 AM

Um...where to begin?

Week 11 officially began for me on Sunday, June 27th at 1:56 AM. It was technically the last day of my first Week Off, but life - as it has a tendency to do - intervened. And when you look over at your screaming cell phone and see your father's phone number lit up on the screen, and knowing my father probably wasn't in jail or needed a ride home from a bar, it just can't be good.

Needless to say, my grandmother had passed away about an hour or so earlier. You ever have those visions in your life when you imagine somebody telling you some devastating news, and exactly what your reaction would be? Perhaps you would be cool and collected and hurt on the inside, or maybe you throw a teary fit, or maybe you're the rock for everybody else. My reaction was more like a series of tired condolences for my father. When the day's only 116 minutes old, you're never quite ready for news like this. She passed away somewhat peacefully in a hospital in Central Maine, losing her final bout with pneumonia. She was an incredibly strong woman, and I have many, many memories that I'll keep forever. And in fact, one crystal clear memory I have of her somewhat pertains to this whole blog.

Since we lived in the same town, quite frequently we would all get together for meals. When I was about 12, I was at my grandparents' house for lunch. Grammie and Grandpa lived with my Great Uncle Al, my grandmother's brother. Uncle Al was a dear sweet man, though he had a tendency to not always filter what came out of his mouth. I don't mean he swore and cursed a lot; it's just that he would say things that maybe sometimes a 12-year-old didn't need to hear.

At this particular point in my life, I was starting to gain more weight. I was only 12, so I wasn't like one of those 400-lb. toddlers you see on Maury Povich or anything, but I was heavier than a preteen should have been. Uncle Al, as of late, had been on this kick about making snide comments about my weight whenever appropriate. Not all the time, mind you; in fact, I think he thought he was toughening me up for the future or something, when people would make comments about my weight all the time. Luckily for me, America would grow up to become the most obese, fat-ass nation in the world, so all things considered, I was pretty lucky! Anyway, this particular time, we were sitting down to eat at the table, when my Uncle Al said something along the lines of, "You sure you need to eat with that spare tire?"

Being 12, I'm not 100% sure how I should have responded to that. Should I have told him to shut up? Get bent? Should I have started crying? Laugh it off? I believe my reaction was just a silent head drop, and begrudgingly I began to eat my meal. My Grammie saw this, had heard it a few times before, and apparently reached her breaking point before I did. She gently set her fork down, looked my uncle in the eye, and said, "You know, Allen, sometimes people might be hurt by some of the things you say," and then quickly glanced toward me. Uncle Al, needless to say, uttered about three words the rest of the meal (which I believe were "Pass the ketchup"), and my Grammie looked at me and winked. It might be a cliche to try to throw a morality lesson on top of this story, but if there is one, it's that that particular moment taught me that even though I wasn't perfect, it was ok. She stuck up for me when it was probably uncomfortable for all involved, and I wish I had been able to tell her how much that meant to me.

Thanks, Gram. Bear hug.

My grandmother's obituary
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/mainetoday-morningsentinel/obituary.aspx?n=geneva-m-gordon&pid=143836908&fhid=3030&sms_ss=facebook

WEIGHT AFTER ELEVEN WEEKS - MIDNIGHT, MONDAY, JULY 5, 2010: 263 LBS. (-0.7 LBS.)

PART TWO: TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN

In the world of less important things, the rest of the week was somewhat scattered for me. Monday saw the first day of a completely new workout for me, one that I was not quite ready for. Essentially, this workout consisted of about 18 different exercises, with one superset of each, interspersed with 5-minute bursts of cardio. The great thing about a new workout is that when you read it on paper, you feel invincible. I know when I was reading this thing, I figured about halfway through my first workout, a fresh six-pack of abs would pop out of nowhere, and I would walk out of that gym about 20 lbs. lighter, for some reason wearing a cape, and being carried on the shoulders of obese children with remnants of chocolate frosting around their mouths. A parade of revelers and trumpet-blowers would follow, and I would ascend to the heavens, riding on an escalator made of dried sweat.

Not only did any of that not happen, I almost didn't walk out of the gym. Counting on my body to all of a sudden up its game tenfold when all it had known for two and a half months was a perfectly measured exercise routine was unfair to me. My previous workouts had all been three sets of ten reps each; my first exericse on this new workout was 50 weighted sit-ups. Around sit-up #29, my body looked at me and said, "Hey, Chris? Not cool." Several other exercises followed, and during my second five-minute blast of cardio, I began to have sexual desires for my bottle of water. My head swirled twice. I essentially pulled a Southern Belle and swooned right there in the gym. By exercise #8, I couldn't lift my arms anymore. Exercise #9 was 50 dumbbell deadlifts. I set the dumbbells on the ground, reached down to pick them up, and very nearly fell over. I wasn't dehydrated, so I knew it had to be my workout. I had flown too close to the sun on wings made of overconfidence (nice line).

I sat down for a moment, determined to go on, but it wasn't meant to be. For the first time in eleven weeks of working out, I had to give up. And that's where this whole mess began.

See, when that happened, all bets were off. My routine was destroyed. The plan was to hit the gym twice a week, with four days of straight cardio taking up the rest of the week, and one day off as usual. Between my over-ambitious workout and a trip north for the funeral in the middle of the week, the routine was gone. Of course, I had waited until the last day of my Week Off to figure out exactly what my routine would be, and had not given myself enough of an opportunity to psyche myself up for it. Regardless of the reasons, when that happened, the schedule went to shit and the rest of the week was moot. What I should say here is that I did squeeze in two days of cardio and the other gym day, but it just wasn't the same. The week was shot. I supposed it was going to happen at some point, but exercising, like gambling, operates under the same basic principle: sometimes, you don't have control over the outcome.

WEIGHT AFTER TWELVE WEEKS - MIDNIGHT, MONDAY, JULY 12, 2010: 269.2 LBS. (+6.2 LBS.)

PART THREE: THE DISEASE OF SATISFACTION

So what the hell happened there? 6.2 lbs. gained? It's over.

Well, not quite. When the routine was thrown into a tailspin, many things went wrong for me, chief among them my resolve to keep moving forward. With this plan not set in stone and not really thought out by yours truly, there was not much motivation for me to give it my all like I did way back in April. And since my cardio-only days were loose guidelines more than hard-and-fast directions, there were more than enough loopholes for me to mission: abort.

And I did. During Week 11, I took three days off. Same for Week 12. Two during Week 13. Not good. But my workout routine was not the only thing that was destroyed during this time-frame. My diet, which had proved very successful during the first 10 weeks, was suddenly deep-fried and served to me on a platter of butter and Crisco. Holls and my mom have both accused me of being all-or-nothing. In this particular instance, I definitely was. I should have been watching what I ate, but the snacks started to creep back into my daily diet, and I wasn't watching my portions. After 3+ months of shedding weight like a damn fat suit, I've learned that you can still lose weight if you eat healthy or work out - you have to do one of the two. If you don't do either, well, you might as well put a coaster on your beer gut and settle in for a marathon of Man vs. Food, because you're not losing any weight at all.

The food problem culminated during the last half of Week 12. My parents threw their annual Camp Party - essentially, lots of good friends, lots of good eats, lots of good beer. I may have drunkenly devoured five or six chicken thighs throughout the course of the day. Hey, for a recovering fat-aholic, a platter of burgers and potato salad just sitting there is like taking a recovering alcoholic on a tour of a Smirnoff factory. Since my diet was already going downhill that week, why not shoot a hole in the parachute and finish the job?

When I awoke Sunday morning, three things were abundantly clear:

1) My head hurt
2) My stomach was still full
3) I had to go to the gym that night

Crap. Crap. Crap. Well, that's the price I pay for being...what? A fatty? Now wait a second. After 2+ months of working my cherry red Irish ass off, shouldn't I be allowed a less stressful workout routine, one that is tailored to my schedule and that doesn't chop up my whole day EVERY DAY? Methinks so. Then again, I wouldn't be having that feeling if I hadn't pushed myself very hard to begin with. I think it's time to find some common ground and kill that nagging feeling that I've hit the high point already and should just be happy where I am a.k.a. The Disease of Satisfaction.

As Week 13 wound down, I awoke Saturday morning and quickly realized that I couldn't remember what was the last day I had been to the gym. I know I had been Sunday, but after that? I had quantum leaped to a different point in time, not touching the gym for nearly a week. There had been some cardio, but the workout was a different story.

And another phenomenon occurred: I felt completely and totally gross. I mean, I wasn't eating right, I wasn't exercising very well, and I was becoming extremely lethargic again. The last time I had that feeling? April 12: the night I weighed in for the first time. I had to get to that point before I felt compelled enough to lose weight. If I was having that feeling when I was much skinnier, that meant to me that I was never going to go up significantly again. From this point forward, I need to keep making progress. So on Saturday, I made up my mind to get back on this horse. I went Saturday and Sunday to the gym, and I plan on going Monday. I have to amp up my diet again, and my workout schedule will have to be more balanced, but that's easy enough. I just have to want it. Do I want it?

WEIGHT AFTER THIRTEEN WEEKS - MIDNIGHT, MONDAY, JULY 19, 2010: 261.9 LBS. (-7.3 LBS.)

I want it!



How do I feel at this exact moment? On a scale of Olga Sherer to Gilbert Grape's mom, I'm Kevin James: found unexpected success, hit a plateau, seemed to go downhill for a while (Chuck and Larry, anyone?) and now I'm becoming more and more successful when all signs say that I shouldn't. Also, all my success is owed to Ray Romano.