Just a Blah Day, week, month

Okay,
I haven't been here for a while. I've been kind of busy. I really don't have a lot of time lately. I've been working out a lot after work. I do a dumbbell routine and then I swim. It's just kind of a blah day, month, week, period.

It's been nice lately though. I've had someone finally join me instead of just asking me how my workout went. It fills the time to kind of have someone there with me.

So, the other day, I decided I was gonna swim a mile...indoors. Now you have to understand where I'm coming from on this mile thing. I have been swimming since I was about 5 or 6 years old. When I first got adopted, it was because I had burns all over my back from somwhere in my life with my first family. So when I got adopted, I started to get nutritious food, and my legs started to grow. I had horrible growing pains. So, part of my therapy was swimming. And I swam eventually competitively for a long time, till I was 16.

Then I started to run, but I kept the swimming thing going on with my lifeguarding. Then I got away from it all for a few years. Until one day at Fort Hood Texas I saw a sign for a lifeguard training class starting up. Fort Hood probably had the hardest lifeguard school in the Army. There was a week of just conditioning that you had to pass just to get into the lifeguard school. Swim a lap, do twenty push ups. Swim a lap do twenty leg lifts. Swim a lap do twenty sit ups. Swim a lap do twenty elevated push ups. Grab your brick, swim with the brick, do sit ups with the brick... This went on for 8 hours every day for the first week. As a young 23-year-old Sergeant, I thought to myself, "I can do this."

Well I kept with the swimming thing for about a year. I started to swim mileage at the lake. Then when winter came, I swam indoors again. I do not recommend swimming six miles indoors doing flip turns! One day I decided to see how far I could swim in the pool before closing time. I ended up swimming six miles...I got so sick and dizzy when I finally stopped!

So anyway, the other day I decided to swim a mile right? Well, I thought for sure I was gonna be all sick and dizzy again. But I put my mind to just doing it; forget the consequences. It turned into one mile, with no problem!

To me, that's how the mind over matter thing works. I've run ultra marthons on very little training. I've swam till I puked. I've worked fire lines till I thought I was gonna puke from just being so tired. I've hiked with 100 lb. packs on, carrying just water and batteries for a radio through the desert 10k at a time. I've done a lot; I've rarely been the best, but sometimes I got lucky. I like to think that I did it in amazing fashion because I'm really not the pick of the litter when it comes to athletic talent. When it comes down to it though, I put my mind to it and forget the consequences. I like to think that I really don't know my own limitations because I never think about the limitations; I concentrate on the task at hand. So, I'm very much young at heart still. I approach the "hill" and I still do things that I never thought someone "over the hill" should be doing. Isn't that what getting old is about? I think if it's even exercising your mind, you've got to be challenging yourself to keep that mind young. Maybe getting old isn't necessarily failing to challenge yourself any more, as much as it is settling for just "accepting."

Accept the fallacy that you can't do some things anymore, without ever just checking to see if you might be able to do it with style, and a couple of flip turns thrown in just to wow the kids watching! Accept the fallacy that you'll look ridiculous trying to do things "only younger people do."

That's B.S.! Put in a braided pony tail and sweat a little. Put some flashy running shoes on and get out there!

If you do get sick though, wait till you're out of sight of the kids, they might call an ambulance on you're sorry state of being!

I thought I was old until today when, as my partner and I were sweating it up, a lady with a LOT MORE birthdays than me came up to us and commented that she was looking at us as her inspiration. She was wearing a purple shirt, purple running tights, and it looked like purple shoes. She WAS doing it, and with style!

I say she had a lot more birthdays than me because that's more true than saying she...was.........old.

That's what I want someday when I have as many birthdays as she had today. I want to keep doing all those miles in my life with a stylish flip turn that speaks to my mind-over-matter approach to things.

Maybe it wasn't such a blah day, week, month afterall. You just gotta keep them eyes peeled for the moments that count, 'cause if you don't, they might pass you by.