A Small Setback...

First, some good news...

I sat in the blood pressure cuff machine today. You know the one, where you gladly put your arm into the torture device that encases your bicep and then fills up with air almost forcing you to hit to the emergency stop button due to the pain it causes you? Yeah, that one.

After 2 or 3 retry’s due to comfort and position (do they make the seats on these things for teenage anorexic girls, I’m a grown man dammit! Gimme some room!) Amongst other things, it finally completes. Ding.

120 over 80 with a heartbeat of 67 at rest. Whammo. I’m 36 years old, 285 pounds, and my heart seems to be doing really well. Whoo hoo!

Now for the setback...

Around 10:30pm last night I get home from having to take a Defensive Driving class (that 4 ½ hours could end up being multiple blogs on its own). Let’s just say it was an enlightening experience. After I decompress a bit, and get settled for the night it is almost midnight.

Around 2am I get a call from our NOC (Network Operations Center) informing me that there is some heavy data traffic to one of our Sports Clubs. Really? 2 friggen am, and they are telling me that the data usage is a bit high? WTH? This is after, of course, they had called my cell (which I did not hear on AT&T's wonderful network - shocking) and then called the house phone, which resides next to my wife's side of the bed. Which means she had to answer it? For all you married folks out there, this is not a good thing…

I go back to sleep, and the alarm goes off at 4:55am. Between 2am and 4:55am I have somehow lost all feeling in my left leg. Seriously. All at once that feeling comes back, when I attempt to get up for the alarm. Whammo - needles, pins, fire and some more pain strike my leg. WTH? So, my wife dutifully gets up and shuts off the alarm. My wife is pure greatness, I truly owe here a Spa day or something for all the pain and suffering I seem to be putting her through as I try to get my fat arse up each day and go to the gym.

I take a quick wake-me-up shower at 5:15am and in walks our 3 year old. That is not going to sit well with the wife. She promptly takes him back to bed. I get ready for the gym, and I hear coughing and some little cries, the 8 month old is now awake and has gotten both legs stuck in the crib slats. Really? The wife takes care of this as well. When getting back in bed, she says vehemently "You are not leaving!" You see, our 3 year olds bedroom is over one of our garages. The automatic garage door is barely loud enough that if our 3 year old is awake and in bed (any time of day or night) he bolts up, and typically runs around the house asking "Wuts dat?” My wife knows this, and wants to go back to sleep which is predicated by the fact that the 3 year old needs to go back to sleep first.

I mention that I have to go. I do. I’m on a mission. The whole training for a marathon thing. I tip toe downstairs and quietly leave the house. I do use the garage door, but I double lock the garage door into the house when leaving, as I plan to leave the garage door open hoping that just opening it will create less sound then closing it as well after I am done.

Anyhoo, long story short, I get to the gym, I am running for 5 minutes and my gym partner texts me a series of questions regarding medical coverage and where he can be seen to look at his severely swollen and twisted ankle he received a couple of days earlier. Lee Dayley works for me at DMB, and we have really good health insurance, and at 6am I seem to be the only expert awake to answer his questions. I don’t mind, I like to take care of my team and I also consider Lee a good friend. After 20 more minutes of texting, my workout is officially over. I have meetings at the office I need to attend to, and my body no longer wants to run.

5 minutes of running, pathetic. A setback for sure.

This running 5 days a week, every week, is harder than I thought.

The best part about all of this is that tomorrow is a new day. A new start. Again.

Wish me luck, and remember that at least my heart is uh-rockin and uh-slammin if even if my legs are still (and resentfully) at the opposite side of the spectrum...

-Aaron