Monday through Wednesday

Monday was just another day in my fairly strange last week. I woke up, got ready for work, went to work for a few hours, and then walked around downtown for a while accumulating various prizes for the raffle I am throwing in conjunction with the concert that is occurring tomorrow night (Thursday April 30). After walking around and picking up one of the prizes from Osteria, whose manager is really cool and I respect him for his courtesy, I came home and relaxed for a bit before heading back to the gym for spinning and yoga.

Spinning was awesome, I hadn’t gone the previous week, so I expected this week to be really challenging, but it was perfect. Last week my coaches told me to take it easy on the cross-training, so I was expecting to go about 80-90% of capacity, but the workout wasn’t all that hard, so I just went about the routine. After the spinning class I stayed for the yoga class which I haven’t done in about a month. It was absolutely amazing. On one of the positions, I literally heard parts of my body pop numerous times. It felt kind of weird, but extremely relaxing immediately after.

The rest of the night is a blur, but I remember writing emails and then waking up around 6AM on Tuesday and being stoked about training. I got my mind right and then started to run around 7AM, heading over to the gym, which is a little over a mile from my house. After getting there I immediately jumped on the treadmill and decided to run a mile and see what my time would be, having already warmed up and being ready to bang it out. I set a goal to run a near 6 minute mile, so I set the treadmill at around 6:30 pace, which is approximately 9.5MPH. I went like this for the first 3 laps and then increased the cadence to a little over 10MPH and about a 6 minute mile. For the entire mile I was as far up as possible, and occasionally feeling my foot slide along portions of the machine (meaning I was going too fast for the treading). I finished the mile in 6:10 and got off, heading into the studio to do some abs, obliques and lower back. It felt great to do some core as it’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve really gotten a good workout in that section.

After the core I headed back home and then got ready to play tennis with my dad. It was pretty nice outside, fairly overcast but it was much better than the crazy wind from 2 weeks prior. It was sunny for about 2 minutes, but in comparison to the time we played when it was sprinkling, this was awesome, no sliding. Neither of us were particularly on, but it was fun and I could tell that m legs were a little tired from the running less than an hour prior.

When I got home from the tennis, I got ready for work at the Golf Course and eventually made it over there. The course was fairly slow, so we just hung out for a while. I had a chance to continue reading Barack Obama’s first book “Dreams From My Father.” So far it is a good story, and it’s amazing what I’ve read thus far, well before his political scene began, so there’s probably some really crazy stuff coming up. I was going to head over to a comedy presentation after work with one of my friends, but we got kind of lazy, we’re tired and both had obligations, so I left there and picked up my mom from her friend’s house (We share the car). We watched a little of American Idol and then headed home. I am not an Idol fan, but it’s an interesting show and I think that Simon does a little too much manipulation of the fans’ voting agenda based on emotion. After all, his money depends on the ratings and advertising money (Apparently Coca Cola has a big push, as their big red cups were right in front with the Coca Cola showing for all to see. I don’t think any of them took a drink while we were watching, I wonder if there was even anything in the cups?) In any case, don’t drink soda, it will rot your teeth, cause bone density loss, and make you fat, it’s a no-brainer.

Tuesday night led to Wednesday morning as I fell asleep on the couch for about 5 hours. When I woke up after falling asleep during a recorded episode of Fringe, I woke up to some nonsense and turned it off and headed to bed. I had meant to work on part of the raffle information that night, so in the morning when I woke up, my work began, quickly engulfing my entire day. After working on the raffle for about 2 hours I went to work and then worked on the raffle for the next 4 hours until I headed over to the baseball field for practice. After practice, which was very productive I went to my dad’s for dinner and had some really good pesto chicken and a good salad with sesame miso dressing, it was really good. We hung out for a while and I ate some chocolate, chocolate chip cookies and some orange flavored water.

At this point in the day, I am absolutely exhausted, and I really just want to fall asleep right here on the keyboard, but as there are still things to complete tonight, I shall head on and get them done before falling into a quick REM sleep.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this journal, tomorrow (Thursday) I am hosting a fund raising concert to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society between 7-11PM. Whiskey Hill will be performing with Joe Hayes from 8-11PM, and there will be a raffle with a bunch of cool prizes. I will attach the flier for all to see. It should be really cool and hopefully you’ll be able to attend and bring lots of friends and smiling faces.

Thanks again for all the support, this Saturday will be a new test, 18 miles of running over about 3.5 hours. I’ll let you know how that feels.

In recent news, I have added Clayton Hagy to my list of honorees, for which I am dedicating and running this marathon. Clayton is an 8th grader and family friend of one of the kids on my baseball team. Clayton has biphenotypic acute leukemia, and is waiting for a bone marrow transplant. More information about Clayton can be read at this website:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/claytonhagy

Please let me know if there is anybody in your life that you would like me to run in honor of. I am running this marathon to improve the life of any person with blood cancer, and anybody or their family in the future that may be affected.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great rest of the week and weekend. Start it off right by attending the Fundraising concert!

Ryan