Oh Wow!

Yesterday I made a quick trip to Knoxville and when I returned home I found this from the Diabetes Sports and Exercise Association in my mailbox. After my bellyaching about Skateboard Hill and no more twentysomething fat meltaway, here's a 72 year old lady that runs 10 miles a day.

Talk about an example! Strap on the running shoes and lets go!!!

Day 61 - Woot!

Well, I had a nice post prepared last night and when I tried to 'publish', blogger lost it... grrrr! I've had this happen a couple of times lately, but all other times I've copied the post to the clipboard and had a recovery path. Anyway I wanted to give a quick update since it's been almost two weeks since my last post. Also, a quick shout out to johnboy for checking on my progress and to my neighbor vivian for her support... thanks friends!

In the quest for 100 continuous days of areobic exercise, yesterday was day 61. The good news is I've lost slightly over 2" in my waist. The discouraging news is it comes off pathetically slow. Now that I'm well into my 40's I miss those twenty-something days when a couple of weeks of serious exercise would yield some dramatic results. Oh, well. If your in that enviable age range, enjoy it. My attempts to hang onto it have been in vain, my sincere hope is that it won't slip through your grasp as well.

Now that the weather here in East Tennesse has turned absolutely gorgeous, I'm trying to run outside. My favorite path lies up the hill from my house where a 2.8 mile jogging trail wraps around the city's high school, middle school and civic complex. About half way around the trail is a hill I've affectionately named, Skateboard Hill because of the skate park that lies at its base. Skateboard Hill continues to defeat me in my quest to complete this almost 3 mile loop. Ever since we've lived here I have been unsuccessful. On a few occassions, I've made it to the top, but my heart rate was so dramatic I feared an explosion of nuclear proportions. On these occassions I've stopped running and walked till my heart rate returned to at least the three digit range and then began running again.

Again last Sunday I met with defeat. About half way up the hill I had a meltdown. I think with a little more training and some rockin' music on the mp3 player I can win this battle. My hope is to complete the loop while running, including the conquest of the infamous Skateboard Hill, by the middle of May. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Skateboard Hill is goin' down!!!

What a day!

The second week of every month is particularly challenging. Besides my weekly 7:30 Tuesday meeting, I have a 7:09 (go figure?) Chamber of Commerce breakfast on Wednesday and a 7:00 non-profit Board meeting on Thursday. These early meetings combined with my inability to get into bed before 11:00 or 11:30 at the earliest, mean by the end of the week I'm ready to shoot the alarm clock.

Yesterday, my quest for technology knowledge took me to the Carolina IT Professionals group in Charlotte for their monthly meeting. Charlotte is approximately 200 miles from my little burg. As I did a mental walk-through of the day's agenda, I could see it would be a tight squeeze to get in 30 minutes of exercise and keep the jb100 streak going. My plan was to exercise at noon, grab a quick lunch and leave the house at 1:00. OK, good plan.

My 7:30 meeting was over at 8:45. Just enought time to slide by the auto shop for my 9:00 brake appointment. As it always seems to go with these things, the car needed more work than originally anticipated. Diagnosis: I needed new rotors along with brake pads. By the time the new rotors and brake pads were delivered to the shop and installed, the clock was pushing 11:00, but good to know the car was in shape for the trip. One more stop before the treadmill.

Well, that stop also took longer than expected and I arrived home around 12:15... not enough time to jump on the treadmill for a half-hour and still get out the door on time. OK, I'll have to wing it. I managed to grab a bite, get packed and leave by 1:00.

Maybe it was those new brakes or the new tires I had installed on Monday, but the car flew. I was around Asheville in a little over an hour and headed east, changed highways in Hickory and arrived Gastonia at 4:00. Wow, remarkable time! I had been thinking about what to do for exercise when I spied a mall out of the corner of my eye. I thought, I've got plenty of time and just a short distance to my destination, I'll stop in the mall and walk for 30 minutes. So I did. I'm not crazy about being a mall walker but hey, it worked.

So one more day checked off on the jb100. I thought this would be close and I was right. I'm don't want to seem braggadocios but it does show what dedication to a cause can accomplish. I have to admit I'm a little surprised, but very pleased that I've now completed day 48. The only negative is since I wasn't in my workout shoes I now have a nice blister on the ball of my right foot. Not to worry though, I drained it when I arrived home and it appears to be healing fine.

I arrived at the Forest Hill Church at 5:30, right on time and stayed till 9:00. I must say it's very commendable that the church opens their facilities to an outside group like this and it was definately a very beautiful facility. Heard some super good speakers, it was well worth the trip.

Thank goodness for dark roast coffee as it's the only thing that helped me get home safely. Man, am I ever going to sleep good tonight!

It Must Be Love!!!

Yesterday I received a very pleasant surprise. I was sitting at my desk, wrestling with a programming issue when in walked my sweetie with lunch. I was surprised on a couple of different fronts. A little surprised that I hadn't raised her ire as she had already asked me about my lunch plans a couple of times. Seeing how I was nearing completion of this specific task, I wanted to finish before munching. The second, because she brought my lunch to me. However pleasant, the real surprise was she told me exactly the number of carbohydrates on the plate.

She has always been very suportive of me and my diabetes, but I think this is the first time she's told me the exact carb count on the plate. Surely this is a direct result of the jb100, of which yesterday completed day 42. I think the moral of the story is this: when we are truly serious about taking care of ourselves, our loved ones will join in with us. As an additional bonus, when I returned from a 7:15 meeting this morning she was just completing her exercise video, so maybe I'm setting a good example as well.

On a humerous note, one evening last week my oldest son and I were sitting at the dinner table talking and looking over some printed material. My wife was across the room making some relatively diabetic friendly chocolate chip cookies. My son looked up from our conversation and said, "Mom, I believe I'll lick the beater". When I glanced her direction this is what I saw (Sorry about the pic quality). Wonder how much I'd have to bolus for this kitchen cleanup duty? Hey, maybe she knew the carb cout on this too but was just holding out!