Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Achieving my Goal




It's now official. In the last 28 months I have lost 60 pounds and now weigh in at a svelte 165 lbs. I went from a 38-inch waist to 31-32" (depending on which brand). I don't think I ever thought I would get to that goal weight but I have and am proud of it. I look very different and feel very different.

When I first made the decision to take control of my health we were expecting our first child. Since that time a lot has happened and yet I was able to "stay on target." (Star Wars reference for the geeks in the crowd.) I remember during the first few weeks talking with Cathy and both of us thinking that 185 lbs. would be a good goal weight for me. "Anything less and I would look unhealthy," I can remember justifying. Plus that would've been 40 lbs. of weight loss. That would be good, right? Wrong!

At this point I kind of forget when I hit various stages. I believe I was at 185 around Christmas of last year. Not bad but Cathy would say to me, "Honey I think you could lose another ten pounds and look better. Then at 175 she said, "Maybe another 7 pounds would be your ideal weight?"

Well I decided that if I was going to go from 175 lbs. to 168 lbs. I might as well just hit the 60 pounds of weight loss mark. And I have.

In the beginning I did research and found that a man of my height would be considered overweight if he were 168 lbs. or more. Cathy and I both laughed this off as extreme and out of date. Now looking at it I guess it wasn't too out of line.

I know in the past I've rattled on about my progress and how good I feel but I honestly do. Being able to go out and think nothing of running 9 miles or biking 37 miles gives me great confidence that I can complete a difficult task no matter what. Also the fact that I've lost 60 lbs. shows me that the mind is an amazing thing when you harness it.

Alright now where are the Dunkin' Donuts? I'm starving!!

Monday, September 14, 2009

It's Becoming an Addiction


It felt better the second time. My hobby of triathlons is becoming an addiction I think and Saturday's race in downtown Orlando solidified it for me. The race itself was slightly longer than my first one back in June and my training for it was even longer.

The OUC Downtown Orlando Triathlon consisted of a .25-mile swim in Lake Underhill, then 11.5-mile bike ride and finished with a 3.7-mile run from the Lake Underhill to Wall Street plaza in the heart of downtown. I smashed my goal time by five minutes to 1:15:22.

The swim segment is still my strongest of the three disciplines (shocking I know) but this swim was much different than the first race. The main reason was that it was an open water start as opposed to a sprint from the beach. I kept getting kicked and hit for the first half of the swim but when I got away from the pack I really kicked it into high gear. I was the 8th person in my grouping to get out of the water which I thought was really good.


The best way to cut your time in a triathlon is to tighten up your transitions which I did very well. I cut my transition times by 2 1/2 minutes this time around. The biggest reason for my time improvement from the first race was knowing iPods are prohibited. I din't have to waste time putting it on and then taking it off.

The bike course was more tactical compared to Clermont's scenic ride around the lake. This was city biking with 90-degree turns along the way. I did have to yell at one participant as she didn't know the meaning of pass on the left. She just kept peddling her little beach comber while I screamed, "LEFT!!!!"

It was during the run that I started to feel the temperature. The wind that was in my face during the bike was absent as I turned on to Robinson Street for the long run to downtown.

Looking back, the only thing I would've changed would have been to increase the pace of my run earlier. During the home stretch I had way too much left in the tank. I had a kick that felt like I was at the NFL Combine timing my 40.

In the end I placed 11th out of 42 for my age division and 121 out of 505 overall. I felt great after the race and now want to find another to enter. I am making a goal to enter and finish a half Ironman next year. I already have done the swim and run distances of 1.25 & 13.1 miles respectively. All I need to do now is see how I would do with those and a 56-mile bike thrown in. Who's with me?

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Back to School


As you may remember I joined up with Panasonic a few years ago to be one of their instructors for a program they called Digital Photo Academy. I taught a class in Tampa and really liked the whole experience.

Since then we've tried to find a similar venue here in Orlando for me to teach. Then this past summer we came up with the idea of holding the classes in the community room of my subdivision's clubhouse.

So now, once a month, I will be teaching Beginner, Intermediate and Understanding Composition classes. Panasonic has other classes through the DPA program but I prefer these three as I can teach all of them in one day.

This past Saturday I had a group of three attend the Intermediate class. The course description says that the class is four hours long but the last few times I've taught it I only needed three. The class is not too technical but it helped explain to students how to use their cameras to capture the picture they wanted by using the aperture, shutter speed as well as other features found on most of today's digital slr cameras.

It was nice to be back in a classroom environment and showing others how photography can be an outlet for them. If you're interested in finding a DPA class near you click on www.digitalphotoacademy.com to sign up.