Making Time During Busy Times

For the majority of July we have had family in town.  Most of my kids are adults now and many have kids of their own.  As time has gone on, they have scattered all over the country.  While we still have some in Utah, the others are from Ohio, Michigan and Arizona.  As you can imagine, it is hard to get us all together at once.

This year was different.  Several were in town for three weeks and some of the others made it for two of the three weeks.  It has been a while since we have all been together.   It has been a lot of late nights, laughs, screaming, running here and there and seeing this and that.  Being together or going on vacation can make working out a challenge.
Let me give you a few ideas of what we did to keep up on the workouts and still have lots of fun.

Plan a family race.
I told about the Goody 5/10K a couple of weeks ago.  It was really fun and we got a lot of the family involved in this one.  Just remember, no one beats grandpa! (Except Rachel and Mike on the 10K)

Get out and explore the local sites and use resources.
We visited our local zoo, went swimming at Oma and Opa's pool a couple of times and one of my son-in-laws planned a great hike up in the Uintah mountains.  It took a lot of planning for the hike due to the high levels of snow still hanging around at the higher elevations.   But we found a great trail that was a bit lower than the ones we usually hike on and ended up doing 15.5 miles.  Hard, but extremely rewarding!

Troy, Mike, Gordon and Bruce

I give this hike a big thumbs up!

Find a new workout buddy.
Chances are that there is someone else in the family that likes to workout.  See if you can plan a time each day to get out and do something together.  This trip I was pleasantly surprised that one of my son-in-laws, (Mike), wanted to running with me in the mornings.  He even did two of my scheduled long runs of 9 and 10 miles respectively.  We learned a lot about each other and the miles flew by.

What do you do to make sure you get the workout in during your busy times?

Hang in there and I will too!

What Motivates You?

About two and a half years ago, I was well over 300 lbs, extremely out of shape, and tired most of the time.  I was ducking out of a lot of things because I was either embarrased about the way I looked or knew I couldn't handle anything very physical.

A turning point came when I was listening to a talk.  The speaker was giving an analogy about a local hike that he made several times a year.  Mount Timpanogos is one of the most prominent mountains in the Utah Valley portion of the Wasatch Range.  There are two main trails to the summit.  Both are very popular and both are over a 14 mile round trip.  I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the talk because my mind went back to the time many years ago when I had made it to the top.  I have always enjoyed hiking.  Utah has many diverse and beautiful trails.  The terrain varies from high altitude alpine adventures to red rock desert slot canyons and arches.

I knew what I needed to do to get back in shape!  I always do well if I have an upcoming hike which I know will be a challenge!  I came up with a Three Peak Challenge.  Peak one was Big Baldy.  It is a smaller peak near my house that sits in front of Mount Timpanogos.  Even though it is over 8,000 feet, it is hardly noticeable with the bigger peaks that tower over it.  Peak two was Timpanogos itself.  I hadn't hiked it for over twenty five years and wanted to do it again.  Peak three was the largest in Utah, Kings Peak.  I have always wanted to hike this but never set aside the time to do it.

I left that talk ready to get started.  It was a long struggle that started with a quarter of a mile up and back the Dry Canyon trail.  I hiked further and further each week during that summer, but failed to reach the summit before the snow flew that fall.  I didn't give up and kept losing weight and working out.  Along the way I took up running the same way I took up hiking.  I alternated running and walking and before long my distance was increasing.  Even better, I was enjoying both the hiking and the running more.

By spring of 2010, I was able to run 6 miles several times a week and I made it to the top of Big Baldy!  As the summer progressed, I hiked Timpanogos twice, once on each trail.  I raced in my first 10K and by late fall, I trained and ran my first half-marathon.  I never would have dreamed that I could have accomplished all this in the course of a year and a half!  I can look back to my source of motivation and realize it helped me lose 130 lbs, make two of my peaks and even start running races of significant distances.

I still have King's Peak ahead of me. The snow kept falling this year in record amounts and there is still
a lot left up above 10,000'.  With King's Peak sitting over 13,000', it may have to wait for a year.  I guess I can look at it as another year of motivation to stay in shape and lose those last pounds I need to.

What motivates you?  What gets you out of bed and out the door for a walk or a run.  What helps you keep on track with eating right.  Grab a hold of that goal and start making the steps you need to reach it!

Hang in there, and I will too!

Goody 5/10K

I have family in town for a while.  It is a bunch of fun.  I have a large family and several of the adult children and spouses are into running, walking and exercising.  One daughter suggested we have a 5/10K while we were there.  I got to thinking about it and put together a 1K, 5K and a 10K course that would stay out of traffic for the most part.

We started of with the kids 1K.  We made a rule that no one could get ahead of grandpa and no one could get behind the last mom.  The kids (the oldest being 8), were complaining that grandpa would slow them down and make it so they couldn't run fast.  I told them sorry, but that was the rule for safety.  After some goofy warm ups, they lined up behind me and I said ready, set and go!  I wasn't much more that a block underway when I could hear some of them saying "wait up grandpa!", but I could still hear someone breathing behind me and keeping up so I kept up the pace!  By the time we had circled the block and were nearing the driveway, I peeled off and saw that my 8 year old grand-daughter had kept up and came in first, followed by my 8 year old grandson and then his little brother not far behind.  There was no complaints about grandpa being too slow after that.

Later that evening, the 5 and 10 K runners / walkers lined up and off we took.  The daughter who had suggested the race took off in the lead step for step with one of the son-in-laws and they lead the 10K from start to finish.  I ran for quite a while with my brother who is just taking up running, but I really started getting exhausted about mile 2 and had to slow down.  Many factors I think, a bit dehydrated, second 10K in the week and time of day. I caught up with my brother and the turn back as we doubled back.  Since it was my brother's first time going further that a 10K, he wanted to walk portions and I just didn't have it in me myself to run the whole way back either so we just talked as we ran/walked and had a good time.  I even had to stretch a few times due to some cramping (which never happens in the morning). That's is one of the clues that I had about dehydration.

On the way back, we saw the walking 5K group and they were having fun and doing well going the 3.1 miles to the waiting cars in the lot.  For our first family race things went well.  We all had a good time, the lead runners R & M ran it in under 1 hour and G and I gimped back about 1:25 or so.

The funny thing was, I went 4.5 miles this morning and had no problems other than needing to loosen up a bit at the first.  I have a few challenges this week with a long day hike in the Uintahs and a summit hike up Cascade with the Varsity Scouts on Saturday for On Target.

Shout outs to all the family who participated in the Goody 5/10K .  It was fun and inspiring to see all of you going the distance.  Another shout out to Bill who paced another half-marathon on Saturday.  It wouldn't surprise me if he logged some additional miles after.  Todd A is doing some great training for a BQ attempt at St. George in October.  Keep up the great work Todd!  Very impressive.  Last shout out is to all the June Boomers who did really will on their goals!  Hang in there and I will too!

June Boom Ends - Scouts, Quick Weight Loss and the Freedom Run

I felt June Boom was a big success.  Thanks for a great challenge Alan!  Because I tracked my food and worked out 6 of 7 days, I lost weight.  I'll give 8 of the 12 pounds I lost to the June Boom.  The other 4 to Scout camp.

How did I lose 4 pounds at weight at Scout camp you ask?  Easy just get a good case of the runs on Friday and Saturday and don't eat much of anything.  Quick weight loss!  But not recommended!  Other than that and a fun spider bite things went well.  I would wake up most mornings and run from the Scout camp gate, up the Nebo loop.  It turned out to be a 900' climb over 1 1/2 miles.  It wasn't fast, but it was a great workout and it was a lot better coming back down.  We were also camped at the top of the camp.  One of the dirt roads back to camp has a nickname of Cardiac Hill.  The other was is just about as bad.  When you make that trip several times a day, you get extra workout points!  The scouts did great, worked hard and we all had a good time.  They qualified for about 25 merit badges between the 5 of them and we were able to get one of the newer scouts caught up to the others on advancement which was great!

This morning, I ran in the Freedom Festival 10K.  Between the 5K and the 10K there were about 4,800 runners.  I paced myself well, but I didn't have the best endurance after the two days of sickness.  But I still ran without stopping and finished at 1:08:36.61.  I was hoping to run under an hour, but it is a challenging course with some good climbs.  It was fun to have my brother along to run the 5K.  One unexpected benefit was running for a short time with Chad Lewis, who had a great run as a BYU tight end and then went on to play for the Eagles.  He has lost some weight and slimmed down himself.

Shout outs to some family that have lost weight.  Hillary and Rachel came into town and look great!  I am proud of what they have done!  We will see the results of Sarah and Mike who have worked hard as well when they come out next week.  We will have the whole family in town when they come in.  Fun times.  Hope the rest of you are doing well.  Need to catch up on some blogs!  Hang in there and I will too!