The Streak - An Update

I’ve read about this affliction on several other blogs and now I've caught it, I too have become a blog slacker. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything thus far in July and, by George, I’m running out of time.

The exercise streak stands at 159 days –1. I am very glad I joined johnboy on this endeavor. Exercise has always been one component of my control that’s been hit or miss. This time I feel like I’m in it for the long haul.

All other times I’ve tried to implement something similar, it’s always been a routine based on exercising every other day. Eventually, the ‘off’ day leads into two and then three days, and pretty soon I’m out of the habit. By doing it every day if you get up in the morning you better have a plan to ‘git ‘r done’ sometime during the day. This seems to work better than anything else I’ve tried.

The only negative is there is no time for resting muscle groups, or at least there wasn’t in the beginning. My left hamstring is still very tight and I’m trying to implement a stretching routine somewhere into my day to alleviate this. On the days I actually stretch it seems to do much better.

The second week of July, we visited my 89 year old Aunt in Western Kentucky. While there she gave me her late husband’s (Uncle Sam, from the previous post) rowing machine, a Precor Amerec 610. It’s an older machine, but yet a very nice twin piston design. This has allowed me to implement more variation into my program and rest my legs. And didn’t someone say, ‘Variety is the spice of exercise?’… or a least something like that.

You’ll notice that earlier I said 159 days –1. The –1 happened on July 3rd, the 131st day of the streak. As you recall July 3rd was on a Monday. Our area pretty much celebrated the 4th on the 3rd, beginning with the City who arranged (and paid for) a very elaborate 30 minute firework display that evening.

Now our rather large church sits on top of a hill probably 300 yards from where the fireworks are launched and as a result our parking lot is sought out by those wishing to have a good view of the display yet not be among the huddled masses that gather closer in. We take this opportunity to minister to the community by having a free carnival. The church provides big blow up toys for the kids to play on, face painting, music, lots of bottled water and hot dogs. All at no charge!

Our class was in charge of cooking and serving the 500+ hot dogs. (Unfortunately, we depleted our supply just before dusk. Note to us, increase supply next year!) Anyway, after cooking and serving hot dogs all evening, watching the display, waiting for 50,000 people to clear from a 1 square mile area so I can drive home and then driving home, when I looked at my watch prior to exercising it was 1am on July 4th. So I had good intentions but just waited too late in the day.

C'est la vie! No big deal. I just picked up where I left off the day before and have been going strong ever since.

As a result of this I’m trying to exercise in the mornings. I think this will ultimately result in less skipped days. Right now I’m going to have to work into it. I’m at about 3 out of 7 currently, the rest still in the evening. I am still very pleased with my streak and hope I can continue on.... indefinately!