Beau Jackson

Ok, this post is a day late and a dollar short :)

Week 4 went pretty well – I ran 3 times.  I’ve determined that I’m going to have to just run 3 days per week because if I don’t get the full day of recovery between runs, my shins start crying like little girls.  I also managed to lose one pound – which is progress at least.

In other news, we got our Suburban running again this week (THANK YOU CHUCK!), and we also had three lambs born on the ranch this weekend – all spotted.  Two rams and one ewe.

I was driving to work this morning, and as I neared the parking lot, I was pondering my son’s future.  I was thinking on his college education, and how that would impact his working life.  I then contrasted that with not going to college, and how that would (most likely) let him get out on his own without carrying a truck-load of debt from college loans – a very heavy burden I assure you.  As I neared the parking spot I had picked out, I thought to myself: “so…college, or not?”.  I looked at another car in the lot, and the last part of the license plate said “NOT”.  Coincidence or providence?  Who knows, but I thought it was a strange little coincidence.

The good news is the running went very well this week.  I did miss my Saturday run due to rain, but perhaps I’ll be able to get that done today?  It’s looking like rain today too, but we’ll see.  I walked/ran for 25 minutes three times this week, and got myself up to where I was running for 3 minutes then walking for 1.  This still sounds pathetic to me, but given that a 1 minute run was tough a couple of weeks ago, I’ll take it as a good sign of progress.  I actually felt like I could do more than three minutes (not a *lot* more, but more), but I’ve been cautioned about over-doing it and the likely result of injury if I do.  So baby steps.  Next week I’ll be walking/running for 30 minutes and my goal is to get up to 5 minute intervals of running.

The bad news is I keep gaining weight.  I’m up to 283.5 as of this morning.  Sigh.  I can’t blame all of this on the medication – I’ve been overeating way to often.  I guess any overeating is way to often, it seems to be an all or nothing thing for me, and it’s something I’ve struggled with all my life.  I like to eat, so it’s hard to restrict myself.  I think the medication simply slows my metabolism some so that the weight packs on faster.  I’m hopeful that running will eventually reverse that trend, but I definitely need to focus on not overeating too.

I missed a day again this week, but that’s ok – I’m now getting up at 5:00am to run, instead of trying to do it after work which just wasn’t working out.  So by Saturday I was running two minute intervals, and walking one.  I feel that be continuously nudging this up, I’ll get to the point where by the time I’m just supposed to run I’ll actually be able to.  In other news, Allena has taken up running with me – she has no marathon aspirations but would like to run a 5k.

In other news, we went to the zoo today.  Springfield has a small but nice zoo and we bought a family pass so we’ll undoubtedly be going back before long.  I took several pictures with my cell phone – we’ll see how they look when I upload them.  I was able to get some remarkably close shots – the animals just felt like being near the observation points I guess.  If any turned out good, I’ll put ‘em up.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

- Thomas Merton

That struck me as rather profound this morning – I think I live dangerously close to the doorstep of hell all to often.  I’ll have to work on that.