Week One: Complete

I'm one week in.  I do not feel any fitter.  But I guess that's normal, right?  I got off to a bit of a rough start due to a very late night on Sunday.  I went down to the Patriots game with my mom, my sister and my brother-in-law.  The weather was amazing, the seats were great and they even beat the Jets, so it was fun.  I don't think I'd been to a game since they built Gillette Stadium.  I would only go to games with my family, and after a certain point in his life my dad decided that fighting the traffic to go there and sitting outside and braving the elements just wasn't worth the trouble when you had big screen TV's, pre- and post-game shows, comfortable couches you could nap on at half time and beer you didn't have to wait in line for.  So he started turning down tickets or would give them to my brother who would take his friends.  I had no problem with that, anyone he took surely would appreciate those tickets a lot more than I would.  I mean, I don't even watch the games on TV.  On Sunday afternoons I'm usually recovering from a workout and falling asleep on the couch to some movie on TBS I've seen 37 times. 

Anyway, the later game and the ridiculous traffic had us getting home pretty late and it's not always that pleasant to start off the first official workout week on five hours of sleep.  It makes things seem a lot tougher than they really are.  I've been working on getting my internal clock reset to its old ways and it's been slow going.  The clock change in two weeks will help.  We're starting off fairly slow since it's been so long but after the first four weeks it will ramp up quite a bit. 

Oh, but running.  Well.  I did mention that the last time I ran was Mooseman, right?  You know, running those first three miles and then getting a ride back in the golf cart.  I thought I was being a baby but that was probably the smartest thing I'd done in a while.  Let's just forget the fact that it would've been a lot smarter for me to have had it all checked out before I went and did the entire race in Florida on the broken foot.  Hey, at least I got to go to Disney World after. 

So, that meant four months of no running.  I've never not run for four months, ever.  That includes when I was a fat, lazy teenager.  Fat and lazy or not, I still played sports and I'm sure that entire off seasons never lasted that long.  Needless to say, it has not been easy, but most importantly, there has been no pain.  And for at least the first half-mile of each run, it just feels awesome to be out running again.  You know, before the pain of not running sets in and the freedom of doing it again is with you.  My sister had a big yard sale this weekend and while I was over there my nephew came out in full Batman costume asking for people to chase him.  Even running around the yard chasing after a five-year old felt good.  And I can still catch him. 

Nothing much else exciting.  Oh, I've started using a toy that I've had for a long time but didn't have the means to use it.  Maybe two years ago now, someone gave me one of those H2O audio things so you can listen to your iPod while you swim.  He also gave me the iPod to go with it, which was good because I am severely behind in technology and that was my first iPod.  The only problem was he got me the third generation shuffle and the headphones were for the second generation, and the two sizes are completely different so there was no way to use it.  I at least used the iPod.  Well, finally just last week someone gave me their old shuffle and I was able to use it.  It's not great, and the first use was a disaster because I didn't realize the significance of using the correct sized earbuds, but once I went with the smallest size instead of the second-largest that were already on there, it actually worked fairly decently.  I wouldn't use it all the time as it makes me lose count, but for these early season swims that are much easier and shorter it's a nice distraction.  The things do tend to fall out of my ears eventually so I have to stop at least every 400 to fix them.  It might be better with a better cap that stayed pulled over my ears, but right now my old Mooseman cap has it riding up after a few laps.  I wouldn't buy one because they're very expensive but as a gift it's nice.

Nothing much else exciting to say except week one is done and there's still a lot more work to do.  I feel so far removed from being an athlete in training it's ridiculous but I guess I'm no stranger to this feeling.  I also already brought out all of the cold weather running and biking gear.  I haven't needed it yet, but any day now I'm sure it will come.  I'll let you know if anything exciting happens this week!