One Year Later...

Hmmmm, how do you turn this thing on? I study the display panel looking for a button marked, "Start your self abasement" but can't find anyway to turn it on.

I feel like a dork.

I feel like my ignorance has cast me right into the spotlight for the three others working out in the gym at the moment. Assessing eyes are on me and I can tell that now I'm everyone's bitch.

Super.

What to do? Nearing panic I decide the best course of action is to pretend I know what I'm doing so I start moving the arm things and working my legs in the pedals, feigning this bored just another work out on the ol' elliptical expression on my face. I'm trying to blend in with the other athletes and pretty much screwing that up.

The control panel lights up, thank God!

I wrote that on December 28, 2008 in this blog, one year ago. Since then I've managed to accomplish the following:

• Made some great new friends! ::waves at pals!::
• Went to the gym 271 times over the year
• Logged 297 hours (12 days) and 566 miles on the Garmin
• Lost around 35 pounds (it is still fluctuating :-( )
• Lowered my resting heart rate to mid 65 (from 84)
  
• My doctor is happy with my blood pressure and is considering taking me off the BP medication I'm on.

In general I feel better except when I get injured (Look I'm an athlete, I hurt myself!).

Where do I go from here? Well I have two, er three goals for this next year:

• Continue to exercise
• Get weight down to 190 and stabilize or keep driving it down until I'm happy with it
  
• Go on at least one century this summer. I'm kind of nervous about that but so what? The worst that can happen is I'll fail miserably. I don't intend to win the thing, just complete it.
  

Hmmmm.... what to do with this blog? I attempted to blog daily and managed 280ish posts in a year (77%) which isn't bad but even though I love to ramble write I feel like this blog has gotten rather boring and I think by now you get the gist of what this is all about, right?

This ain't no disco
It ain't no country club either

This is hard work!

But you can also have a lot of fun if you wanna. I hope this blog will show 'the newbie' who's considering this path what it's all about when you start from scratch, like I did (overweight and out of shape). It's not so scary, you can do it, after you figure out how to turn on the machine.

I think I'll attempt going from daily to weekly entries. I have no idea if you'll follow along or not, I never put a counter on this blog. I hope in that vain way like someone blabbing into a shortwave microphone does that someone is out there listening but I'm no longer sure of it. This blog may have served its purpose. So look for the next post ::frantically grabs a calendar:: on 15 Jan. I'll go for every Friday after that and we'll see where year two of the exercise in futility takes me, huh?

Be well!