scott d. feldstein

One bit of good news: I’ve been hitting the gym every other day for the last couple of weeks.  Go me.  Mostly I’m putting in 45 minutes on the treadmill and then just messing around with some squats and dumbbells.  

Maybe if I keep this up I’ll end up on the correct side of the 200-pound mark again.  The last two years have just been terrible for me fitness-wise.  First, I started eating poorly.  Then I quit working out.  The results are just awful.  I can’t believe I took it for granted when I weighed 190 and could run for miles without getting tired.

Anyway, I live three blocks from the YMCA and I’m fortunate enough to have a lifetime membership there.  I’ve been getting up early, walking to the Y, walking back, showering and going to work as usual.

I bought an iPod Shuffle this morning. I’d kind of been meaning to pick one up for quite some time, but just hadn’t done it. So now I have. I just wanted something really well-suited for, and totally dedicated to, exercise. The Shuffle is definitely it.

You don’t have to buy any straps or cases for it, because it clips right on to your clothing. You don’t have to worry about breaking the hard drive or cracking the screen if you drop it–it doesn’t have either of those things. You don’t have to worry about having anything but your most exercisable music come up on random, because those are the only songs you put on it to begin with. And for $48, why the hell not? I spend three times that on a pair of running shoes.

The real problem is headphones, though. Everyone’s ears are different (and some are more different than others), but I think it’s universally understood that the earbuds included with the iPod are not for exercising with. They just fall out too easily. So on the advice of a friend I ordered some Sennheiser twist-to-fit ones. (Got free shipping via Amazon Prime, too–sweet!)

I have a confession to make. I’m insanely jealous of people who live close enough to their workplace to bike to work. I’m just so that kind of person. It’s easiest for me to get exercise as a matter of practicality–biking to the coffee shop, walking to the corner pub–rather than exercise for exercises’ sake. Unfortunately when it comes to my daily commute, I’m not liking my options.

I live right on the East edge of downtown Waukesha, and I work at Marquette University–a journey of almost 17 miles each way. I mean, I could possibly take Greenfield all the way to, say, 35th street and then cut over to Wisconsin. That at least might be a decent route. But it’s still so gosh darned far! A ride like that could take as long as 90 minutes, depending on traffic and other conditions. Besides, I’d have to train for weeks and weeks before I could possibly bike 34 miles in a day.

But then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t necessarily have to bike the whole way. I could drive just part of the distance, leave the car in a park and ride, and complete the journey by bike. On the return trip, I’d bike to the car, and drive the rest of the way home.

That reduces the 36 mile bike ride by half, leaving a much less insane 17 miles. Plus, it still reduces my gas consumption by 50% as well as reducing the number that appears on my bathroom scale each morning.

But some problems remain.

First of all, that’s still a long way. It would be time consuming: biking even 15 miles can take an hour. Do I really want to start looking at increasing my commute time from forty minutes to an hour and twenty minutes? Even if I did, there’s still the problem of route quality. It’s true that almost half the route has a bike trail to follow, but it’s the wrong half. The New Berlin trail starts at Springdale Road and runs east, parallel to Greenfield ave., all the way to 124th street. This leaves the second half–the half I would be biking–to city streets full of traffic and other hazards.

There just seem to be too many challenges to this whole thing. I’m not at all considering finding employment nearer to my home, and I’m certainly not considering moving closer to work–at least not in the near future. So I guess for now I’m stuck driving to work.

Lacking anything more interesting to blog, I’ll tell you about something I did on Saturday. I ran on a treadmill for the first time ever.

You may know that I used to be a regular runner. I never ran more than 5 miles at a crack, and never more than three times a week. But hell, even running 3 miles three times a week (as I did for a couple of years) keeps one pretty fit.

That was, oh, thirty pounds ago. Sigh.

Now I’m afraid to run! I always had to kind of baby my knees. At this weight I’m scared to do more than a mile or two. But Saturday morning I reulctantly got on the treadmill, expecting to hate it a lot.

But I didn’t! I set it for 30 minutes and ran 4k, no problem. A nice easy pace, no knee pain, no problem. I’m ready to do it again as soon as I get the chance.

One tip, though: don’t close your eyes. You’ll end up getting spat off the back end of the treadmill.

a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27.

link

At J. K. Lee, people have to do 100 during their test for first-degree black belt. I myself have fallen way out of shape since then, but I think I could still bust out 30.

What about you?