I’ve been perfectly square for the last 15 years or so. By that, I mean that my inseam exactly matches my waist size, which is 34″.
Being 34″ X 34″ all these years has been a product of some hard work, but also some heavy eating. Like all of you out there, I love to eat. And have a few beers. There is a daily soft drink typically thrown into the mix. Ugh. Liquid poundage. Same with the beers.
Lately, I have been leaning more toward wine at dinner rather than beer. A dietitian recently reached out to me through LinkedIn to trade some marketing services in exchange for some dietary advice. So I keep lurching toward a better approach to eating to go along with a balanced fitness routine that includes running, cycling, swimming, weight work and yoga.
I’d like to lose the few pounds of fat around my waistline. It built up over time and is quite stubborn. Much of it is the product of a lower metabolism with age. But it has not caused my pants size to go beyond 34″ at the waist. I have only panicked once about that, a few years back, when I was under a ton of stress and my comfort food intake shot up due to multiple levels of caregiving.
Foundationally, the process toward healthy weight loss begins with strength work. That is, building up the smaller leg and joint muscles that carry me through all the running and cycling. I have some biomechanical issues that require strength to support them. It’s a combination of a long athletic career and pursuant age.
Recently we joined a new fitness center that has a ten-lane pool, a 200-meter indoor track and quite adequate weight room facilities. It’s only three miles from the house and thus a logical way to carry a routine of fitness through winter.
I want to manage weight but not lose a ton of it. To get too lean as you age makes for a wizened look. If you’re a guy with buzzed silver hair like me, and lose too much weight, people ask if you’re sick or something. That’s not the image I want, or anyone for that matter.
Rather a healthy, happy fitness for the rest of my life. That’s my goal. Compete and enjoy. And stay square. Living by the rulers.
How about you? What’s your goal for fitness and appearance?
As athletes, we all want to achieve the highest level of performance possible. We train with goals such as personal records in mind. When we achieve them, we set new goals. This is the cycle of life and applies to many other endeavors as well.
It takes a degree of personal confidence outside the scope of our self-image as athletes to back off and accept that we’re temporarily not the athlete we so desire to be. When we’re sick, hurt or injured it takes personal integrity to admit that and find paths to self-esteem not so reliant on our public achievements.
There are plenty of arenas in which these lessons apply. So we’ll close with this beautiful and somewhat funny lyric from a song by the Lovin’ Spoonful, a 60s group with some of the best harmonies and melodies ever written. The song speaks to the greedy mind of a young man that can’t choose between the girl he’s dating and her cute sister. “Oh, to be so lucky,” some might think. But greed confuses the mind. It can make you think you’re capable of ruling the free world when you’re little more than a greedy bastard who talks big. If you want all the asses in the world, it just turns you into an ass yourself.
Sue was telling me to chill out while driving behind some of these aggressively slow vehicles on the road. You know the type. The speed limit is 30 so they go 27. And if you get up on their bumper, they go 25. And if that doesn’t work, they slow down to 20 and give you that glance in the mirror that says Fuck. Off.
Of course, it was. But that can’t last forever. And so, there’s a social responsibility of sorts to share whatever experiences we do have. That’s why I have written this blog the last three years. Trying to open people’s eyes to other thoughts and possibilities is both a challenge and a reward.
by long, hard rides goes somewhere else. Into the twilight zone of autumn.
Peter Pumpkinhead came to town
But when you grab hold of the allegory and give it a different shake, we find that person who is a pumpkinhead can also be someone who innocently encounters the evils of the world and reveals that many supposed strengths are actually the true weaknesses in this world.
That’s how the pumpkinhead side of liberalism actually works. People who stand up for “pie in the sky” ideas such as human equality can seem a little simpleminded in what they say to promote the cause. Mahatma Ghandi once said: “Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.”
This same brand of treatment holds true for liberals who claim to be patriots. Yet absent the brand of pseudo-militaristic trappings of aggressive, creed-driven, flag-waving patriotism, some people think it doesn’t deserve the label of “patriotism.”
The truth about running half marathons is that you really should train for them. That was evidenced by the performance of my fiancee Sue, who ran with confidence and decent cadence for all 13.1 miles of the race in Madison, Wisconsin. Her coach 
because the temps were still stubbornly stuck in the high 30s. A steady breeze from the north was keeping it that way.
My hunger to enjoy the race was sufficient however, to start. It’s still exciting to step to the line with all those people and glance at your watch when it reads 00:00:00. All those zeros are possibilities, you see. That’s the fun of running a race. You feel alive.
As a competitive kid, I was always trying to win at everything I did. It helped that my brothers challenged me daily with taunts or physical roughhousing. We also played sports constantly. Often these games went on for hours whether it was table tennis or a game of what we called Glowball, a form of baseball using a 29″ hardball bat and a collection of softball-sized balls formed of a tough but pliable plastic.
In order to discredit and distract from these notions of equality and progress, opponents of the female candidate for President did everything they possibly could to knock her off course. The male candidate Donald Trump behaved just like Jock Semple did all those years ago, jumping into the race to shove aside the woman who was the object of his close-minded hate. Think back to what Switzer said about Semple: “He was pulling at me and screaming,” Switzer recalled. “Get the hell out of my race, and give me that number.”
Professional athletes plan their day around their training. The rest of us have to plan our training around our day. That might involve working a job, being a full-time parent or caregiver. Whatever our responsibilities, they must come first.
Yesterday we did a long run on the Fox River Trail from North Aurora up to Batavia and back. Sue had a scheduled 13.1 mile training run. The workout was prescribed by her coach in advance of the half marathon we’re doing in Madison, Wisconsin next week. It contained a series of 6 X 800 intervals along the way at her 5K pace.
We Run and Ride 