Status

Today was a great day. Last night I was torn about whether to walk or not and decided to sleep on it. The goal was to get up at 5:30, move my legs and see if they want to walk to work. Well, I woke up at 5:30 and decided I don't really want to go anywhere. At 6:30 my 'better I' finally dragged me out of the bed, I still really wasn't that enthusiastic about walking but convinced myself to listen to my body (yup, I am consciously doing it) and go. Learning from the past, I stepped on the scale, got 197.4 and had my

Breakfast #1: a cup of coffee and slice of cheesecake

As I said, I wasn't too enthusiastic, but it only took about 1/2 mile and I was grinning from ear to ear, I started talking and listening to the birds, poking fun at prairie dogs and in general started having an immense amount of fun. I realized I just got high drinking the morning sunshine. What an experience. Made it to work in 1:37 and proceeded with

Breakfast #2: bowl of morning mush and more coffee
Various snacks: about a handful of trail mix and blood orange
Lunch: 2 toasts (no butter) with a bowl of my creation from last night topped with 1/2 onion and bit of balsamic vinegar. The creation is really bunch of pork feet parts (skin, cartilage, tendons) that most people throw away, but I cook them in a pressure cooker and they pretty much dissolve into this rich protein soup that just gells up when cooled. If you ever had this thing they call 'head cheese', you know what I am talking about. It's loaded with collagen and actually has very little fat.
Afternoon snack: had a banana half way on my way home

My GPS heart rate monitor arrived, so I asked Nancy to bring it to me to work so I could use it on my way home. Since I didn't figure out how to work the speed+distance thingy, I only used it as a stopwatch and heart rate monitor. Made it home in 1:34, average heartbeat 136. Walking uphill I was ticking up to 160 at one time. Pretty good.

Dinner: 4 small toasts (equivalent to 2 normal ones) with my headcheese (this one is the other one I made last night, same technique, only used beef tendon and ox tails to make it), onion and vinegar. BTW, whey I talk about toast, it's normally either rye or sourdough bread from Wild Oats. Yes, I can't stand Wonderbread and other crappy excuses for bread. Topped it with bowl of raw spinach with olive oil and vinegar.

Fluids: again, I didn't quite finish my gallon at work but had few more glasses at home and half teapot of chamomile tea.

Alcohol: glass of red wine late in the evening

Exercise: walked to work and back - as far as I know, it is 2x 6.9 miles (no shortcuts today) for total of 13.8 miles, decent time.
total walking: 15.25 miles
running: 2.45 miles
other: did 25 crunches, 25 oblique crunches on each side

Commentary:
When I got home I started reading the GPS gizmo manual and in order to test it I decided to go for a walk. So I walked for 1.45 miles and then decided to run the rest of our bikepath loop. This was the first time I ran since the surgery and I did 2.45 miles at about 9 minutes per mile. I was really watching my heartbeat and I clocked myself close to 180 a couple of times. I need to set my heart rate alarms (I can set 5 zones) on the gizmo and keep myself ticking where I am supposed to tick. So, to summarize, today was just freaking great, only if it wasn't for the damn mosquitoes in the evening. I am so full of life it's not even funny. For some reason this seems to be pretty important. I realized I need to set my goals. Pretty late at the game, don't you think?