Troy’s BodyBlog

So, my doctor has ordered me to stay on my butt for another week - not a great thing when I’ve got goals to reach.  Told me that I have chronic epidydimitis (Google it, but don’t look for pictures - you might see me there!) and that I can’t be up for a total of 2 weeks.  This used to happen to me at least twice, sometimes three times a year, but it’s been a full year since my last case.  I hate Lortab, when I used to love it.  Now, it’s just one more thing to slow my metabolism and keep me on my butt.  I’m really down.  I mean really, really down.  This is my Spring Break, so I don’t have to take time off from work, but we should be out playing with my family and I had planned on going balls out (pardon the expression) this week to make more gains and losses.  Did I mention that I’m really, really down? 

and a little hypocritical that I get so pumped after reading the ads and website from Animal Pak?  I like to consider myself a pretty cerebral guy - when people tell me that they hate baseball, I kind of smirk in a "that’s because you can’t understand the psychology and you can’t keep an attention span longer than….hey, I’m still talking to you" kind of way.  And I know that we ALL love Henry Rollins’ "The Iron;" in fact, I’ve given several copies to some of my students.  But, I really, really love reading the online "journals" on Animal Pak’s website.  Now, I get a lot of encouragement and celebrations of manhood here - guys like Lift247 and NinjaBill remind me that it’s perfectly o.k. to be hardcore and that it’s perfectly fine that I lift to Mudvayne, Static X and Fear Factory.  Plus, guys that blog here aren’t trying to sell me something.  I do find, though, that it’s starting to affect my own personal journaling - I find myself writing things like "Monday, March 17.  My girl asks me to stay home this morning but the b- just doesn’t get it.  She is not my number one priority right now.  She can’t fuel the pump that I need just to get through another piece of s- day.  She can’t fuel my brain with the fire that it takes to realize that I am better than any other pathetic piece of meat on this God-forsaken planet, where there are no heroes except the ones you create in your head and, of course, me.  She doesn’t even realize that I don’t think about her all f-in’ day, that it’s just the steel, the pump, the protein, the creatine, the blood, the sweat - but no tears because I ain’t no pansy."

By the way, "my girl," which I would never call her that because she neither belongs to me nor is she a "girl," is not a b- and, this morning, it was her that helped me stay for a 45 minute cardio session after lifting.  And I never have a "piece of s- day," there are plenty of heroes, and I am kind of a pansy.  It does feel good to be a bada$$ once in a while, though.

A great morning.  I ran 4 miles without stopping at my fastest time ever - but it was easier than I expected because I had Tonya to the right of me and AmyLK to the left (sorry, Amy, but I’m not going to apologize for your looking so good!).  Thus, the 4 mile sandwich.  If only I could get those two to run the 5k with me, but I’m guessing that Amy’s time would be half of mine. 

I know that the Circle is getting together this summer - far, far away from here - but could you imagine what I could get done with PixiG, Jjanet, Stormiorsini, Maddi, Missathena, PBolton, and TheNamesDonna in the hizzy?  Not to mention NinjaBill and VTdad (although they’d inspire me in a much more "guy" way and less of a "creepy stalker" way.  Well, I guess that I’ll just have to keep realizing that they are with me every morning, every workout, and in the smile of every child who’s delighted by a soap bubble or the first flittering butterfly of Spring.  Whoa, must need more Creatine - and maybe I should check into Andro.

When all of my friends here warned me about overtraining, they really knew what they were talking about.  I busted my butt for the past two weeks, but saw virtually no gains in strength or fat/weight loss.  On top of that, I got grumpy, depressed, hungry, probably a little dehydrated (don’t we all?) and under-nourished.  Friday night after school I met Tonya at the gym, and I couldn’t even find pleasure on the treadmill - something that I really do love!  I even yelled out "F-" because I just felt so frustrated.  On Saturday, I was very grumpy, to the point where my son and daughter kept hugging me because they knew that something was wrong. So, I re-evaluated my diet, realized that I wasn’t getting ANYWHERE close to the calories that I needed, and talked to Tonya about my going back to the gym in the mornings only (my two-a-day workouts were realling sucking).  We went shopping yesterday and totally loaded up on chicken breast, lean flank steak, and amazing greens and grains, and came home and grilled a week’s worth of meals.  This morning, Tonya joined me at 4:40 a.m., and I think that she’s going to keep coming early - it’s just a different feel people-wise - really dedicated (no cell phones)   Oops, bell just rung for next hour.  Gotta go!

After living through what I have during these last 24 weeks, these are the 12 weeks where I meet my goal - and blast right past it - in front of my students and school.  These are the 12 weeks where all of the images born from my visualization techniques will become reality.  These are the 12 weeks where I can tell the scale "Scale, I don’t need you anymore.  I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I’ll never forget the way that I became a slave to you when I should have been looking in the mirror, using bodyfat percentages, and not relying on you to tell me if I’m a success or not."  These are the 12 weeks that I will remember as being the best Spring that I’ve ever experienced, the best Spring that Tonya and the kids have ever experienced, and the best third trimester that my students have ever experienced.  These are the 12 weeks that are going to usher in Summer - where I will mow the lawn without a shirt, swim with my kids, and not feel like a wannabe hypocrite when I go to the farmer’s market twice weekly to buy local, organic produce.  It is during these twelve weeks when I can say that the hardest goal that I’ve ever wanted to reach, that I’ve ALWAYS wanted to reach, has been met - a goal much more difficult than graduating college with High Honors and getting my dream job 2-1/2 years ago, more difficult than convincing Tonya that I really was the man of her dreams.  This is the final of the triad of goals that I, at one time, thought would never come to fruitian.  These are the 12 weeks where I, at the end of this cycle, will ask myself "Alright, you bada$$ mofo, what’s next?  Because you know damn well that, whatever it is, you’re going to get it done."  What a difference 36 weeks can make!