If TopGun Tells Me "Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body" One More Time . . .

As mentioned last week, I am once again on a quest to lose weight and get in shape. As part of this I have drastically reduced my soft drink intake, cut fast food out of my weekday diet, joined a gym, and -- perhaps most telling of all -- got up at 6:30 AM this morning in order to exercise before heading to work, and plan to do the same thing Monday through Friday from here on out. As anyone who has had to live with me can probably attest, a morning person I am not. But, since there's always a danger when I work out solely at night that my evening exercises will be derailed by the siren call of the recliner, a morning workout seems to be called for. Not to mention the benefits of kick-starting the metabolism first thing.

I actually got on the early morning workout kick several months ago, when TopGun and I were doing P90X. Granted, we didn't make it up every morning; there were multiple times when I would roll over to see my cell phone flashing with a text message from TopGun saying he wasn't going to work out that morning due to insomnia or sinus problems or what have you, but that I was more than welcome to go on without him. I, of course, almost always declined to get up and workout without him. Solidarity, you know. Still, despite the occasional hiccup, we managed to keep to the morning workout schedule for several weeks, before other scheduling conflicts made it too difficult to maintain at the time. But now those conflicts are behind us, so back to the early workouts we go.

It's good to have TopGun around as a workout partner, as his overly healthy eating habits and obsessive need to work out tend to shame me into trying to emulate him. Not to mention that I always push myself harder when there's someone else working out with me than when I'm working out alone. TopGun likes variety in his workouts, so we are now on probably the 4th or 5th different workout schedule since he moved in last May. That includes the time we did P90X and the much more intense Insanity. It was at the end of our first month of Insanity that I got really sick for a few weeks, so TopGun had to finish the second month without me -- considering that Insanity was about to make my knees explode at the time, I wasn't too heartbroken. Of course, the downside was that by the time I felt up to working out again, I had lost a lot of the strength and stamina I had gained before.

At times it's hard for me not to focus on things like that; even now, I have to force myself not to dwell on the fact that I'm not as strong as I was back when I was working out regularly with Cap'n Shack-Fu and Li'l Brother a year or two ago. When that happens, I try to remind myself that, while I may not be back to where I was at the peak of that time, neither have I fallen back to where I was at the beginning. A small comfort, perhaps, but I need all the help I can get, if for no other reason than to keep TopGun from smacking me around for getting all mopey and self-deprecating.

A few weeks ago, I got a message from one of the Parkerites letting me know that several of them are taking part in The Cowtown 5k at the end of February, and asking if I wanted to participate. Now, on the one hand, it would be a good excuse to see the gang, most of whom I haven't seen since the weekend of GMC's wedding, as well as serving for an additional motivator for getting in shape. On the other hand, I've never been a fan of running at the best of times, and my current weight makes it hard on my knees. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to go ahead and sign up for the danged thing, and so on my next trip to the gym for some cardio I will be heading to the treadmill instead of the elliptical. Depending on how that goes, I might have to reevaluate the idea . . .