I am Batman

The gravitational pull on my motivation to stop at the gym after a long day of work or scrape out of bed at thirty past "Oh my gosh it's early!" has very little to do with physical fitness. (Even though it's nice when the ole wife says I'm getting my David Beckham look on). As noted in earlier post, my motivation is the performance of exercise task that Jaron conjures up in his mad genius skull. With this blog providing the only real intrinsic reward needed to continue the journey. Jaron ask for no payment from me and I ask that he not change his mind. We both love to use this medium as a way to share our decade old ramblings of two wilded-eyed muses. It's our narcissistic bull horn volleys in the digital town square. Working out is just a cover to keep the CIA off our tails as the third world audience is trending toward cult following.

See people, Jaron and I are attached at hip by text message... Once we were enjoying our favorite debauchery of Sushi on Trop, when I caught myself crafting a text because I felt it played out better on the 3" Blackberry screen than in person. During Running Rebel season, our output quadruples. So much so, rumor has it AT&T is considering creating a plus 35 age group for the international speed texting competition. 

I love hypertrophy phase; with the :60 seconds of rest between reps and short sets. Jaron can get up to the minute, real time status of my efforts. This past week I was having trouble with overcrowding at the gym (pre-New Year's resolution hacks getting in the way), so Jaron gave me an alternative on the fly. Mucho appreciated! He is my side kick. Jaron is my Robin. That is, if Bruce Wayne was a near middle-aged, poorly funded southern expatriate father of three. Then I am Batman.   

Challenge: Spartan 300 Workout

Merry Christmas to our new readers from Côte d’Ivoire and Afghanistan. Elf civil wars and Mrs. Clause in a burqa this Noel.

As part of our series of challenges, Jaron laid down a monster on this poor southern man's shoulders; the 300 Spartan Workout.

25 pull-ups
50 dead lifts (135 lbs)
50 push-ups
50 24" box jumps
50 floor wipers (135 lbs pressed)
50 Kettle bell clean and press (25 reps per arm with 36 pounds)
25 pull-ups
300 reps

One last fold... It was timed.

I am formally submitting papers to have it rebranded as the 300 Feet From Hell Workout. Imagine a Rude Goldberg machine set up in the spare bedroom of the fifth horseman of the apocalypse condo.

In all reality the only way to prepare for this challenge is to lose a ton of weight, exercise for months, and put on your big boy pants. All of which I did. However, I would've been fed to the lions if King Leonidas had been there on Christmas Eve. Jaron's personal best hovered around the sub-nineteen minute mark. As a solid mentor, Jaron laid forth a mark of twenty-five minutes. For the math whiz kids following along in our new World of Warcraft chat room, that is one rep every five seconds.

Well boys and girls, I finished the challenge. But if I had been running a race, I would've been the guy the audience gives a mercy clap; completing the marathon two hours behind the rest of the field. Crawling across the finish line, full body trimmers, and total loss of all bodily humility. The stop watch read with cold cruel honesty... 33:20. If I had been a sitcom, the network would've required two commercial breaks and a "To Be Continued." That was just the workout. There were two days of muscle and soul soreness. At one point on Christmas morning my bed sheets felt like iron shrouds. 

As challenges go, I failed. As egos go, I mourned. As good friend goes, Jaron does not have to return my Man Card. As  the rules go, I will continue to enjoy listening to Running Rebel basketball games on AM 1100 on Novalee's radio. Second attempt at the sub-twenty-five minute 300 Spartan Workout will happen on my 37th birthday, February 15th.  

    

Fragile Constitution of a Former Fat Guy

During Destination 195 Jaron structured my diet program to have one "reward" meal each week. A meal that could have 500 additional calories to the 500-600 allotted. Over the seventeen weeks of the challenge, I only took one higher calorie dinner, but it was not a reward. The family attended a house party where the only food offerings made dive bar food look nutritious. The reward concept actually concerned me during the challenge because untethering myself from high calorie albatross would proved to be far greater of an advisory than any workout Jaron lined out for me. Not to mention the mental defragging required to end the ole pantry grazing ritual, passing the evening hours one bite size at a time. Daddy daycare can require a great deal of comfort food! So it was not until the goal weight had been reached that I dared to celebrate with a reward meal... Not a wise move after four months of eating healthy.

The wife and I decided to take the kids to a wonderful outdoor Christmas pageant in our old neighborhood. Even though Las Vegas is one massive suburban orb with a vein of Sodom and Gomorrah running through the middle, we Lost Vegans are slaves to convenience. Heck, the valley is only 40 miles tip to stern, but traveling to the south side is likened to taking a trip to California. We were not about to squander our mini-Griswold staycation; off to our favorite pizza haunt, Nikki Lee's. Two pieces of greasy cheese pie and two colon killing loaded potato skins later, this former fat guy entered a confused state of nirvana and irritable bowel remorse.

After downloading the weeks results with Jaron, I mentioned in passing the "bastard on Father's Day" paradox from the recent reward meal. His all to experienced wisdom (via text message) gave me wonderful perspective:

Me: I had my first real reward meal. Nearly puked... Certain things need to stay in the past.
Jaron: Amen. Still love me some greasy pizza thought!
Me: 2 pieces of pizza and 2 potato skins... Nearly lost it on the ride home.
Jaron: Your constitution can't handle the fat.

My brother from another mother could not be any closer to the truth! My dietary constitution is as fragile as a having an AA convention in Las Vegas on "open bar night." No one likes a quitter.

The Chicken-Legged Legionary

Now that the body weight is down to a manageable mark, the fun begins... Hypertrophy. I'm not a Latin scholar, but I believe hypertrophy translate to "high probability of hernia." Low reps, heavy weight. Ta-dow!

This past week I spent the day job hours in Salt Lake City. Jaron invited me to his gym so we could go through all three days of scheduled workouts; chest & triceps, legs & core, and back & biceps. Thank goodness Krause was there to spot my five reps of  five with 160 pounds on bench press bar. His official training gear helped run interference on the gender neutral she-males giving the stink eye. Vera de Milo two benches down shot me the look with a carton bubble that read; "Man up... or join the jazzercizing water buffaloes in the pool."

In retrospect, chest day did not result in major bodily convulsions. Then came day two of my Wasatch Range business trip, ending with a leg smack down. The formal introduction to a big boy leg workout. Hack squats followed by a brutal death mark of walking lunges, and some extra lactic acid gravy with a final set of leg curls. The technical verbiage for walking lunges is, functional isometric. Basically it is keeping the muscles engaged through the entire set, with no rest or relief for twenty lunges across the gym. This lovely little nugget is a 48-hour grenade; pull the pin with the workout, two days later... BOOM! If it was socially unacceptable to wear adult diapers in one's thirties, I might need a Costco ten pack in sky blue. So, until the standing loo is installed in our house, my poor wife and kids will have to manage REM sleep while I scream louder than a 1980's horror flick chick attempting to lower upon the porcelain throne of manhood, which of late has become a midnight iron maiden.

And the road toward the goal of dunking a basketball begins with this guy struggling to hop over my broken ego strewn about the gym floor.

Final week: Destination 195

Sometimes the best motivation to avoid failure is getting the reward before a competition is over. That, and the fact Jaron would actually make me pay him back with interest and a tax for making a fool of myself in front of the Russians and bringing dishonor to the Marlow name. Even though court side tickets for a Running Rebel smack down were great; finishing this damn challenge was even better.

Even thought my math was a tad shaky in the early days, Destination 195 is over and the scales don't lie... In seventeen weeks the Jarvis blubber vessel shed 38.5 pounds of fat guy insulation. It all came down to two weeks of carb cycle, stair climbing the Sears Tower (twice in one week), and raisin shrivelling sauna trips.

After four months that required me to give up comfort food and consuming less daily calories than an anorexic having a fat day, the initial phase of "stretching the rubber band" has got me to the starting point. Next week I start some sadistic phase called "hypertrophy." A phase that Jaron has mentioned numerous times through this journey, but has only given me a little preview of the fun to follow. 

Back on July 10th Jaron dropped some major revelations into my world. He outlined the key problems with western civilizations pursuit of weight loss. Me included. As we sat outside of his Sandy, Utah house sharing current life events, I was amazed at his stories of American's piss poor personal fitness. I am the lemming, where is the cliff. 193 is only the starting line to getting to the destination. The work begins once the weight is taken off. So existential, yet so teeth bashingly new.

See, old Jaron and I have known each other on the lesser side of two decades. We swam for the Rebels in the mid-90s, then lived together from 1999 until 2002 in what was commonly know as The House of Pain III. And in no way were we mistaken for two motivated former collegiate athletes during our days as roomies. Our preferred workouts consisted of 12 oz weight classes offered by Miller, and heart pumping Tony Hawk Pro-Skater II cardio, which we actually played for a straight twelve hours one Saturday. Because of a well executed gag order and potential long term psychiatric visit, I will not go into much detail of the dueling hacky-sack work outs. A career we nearly launch once our Y2K predictions did not materialize. We had a Starsky and Hutch kinda thing going there for a while.

After he moved out of state we would reconnect every spring around March Madness. In 2004 he set if off! In full Fat Krause greatness he rolled to a party in a pimp hat and 1970s Elvis shades. Man I loved the Fat Krause. Then two years later Jaron drops into Vegas looking tight as a drum. The freaking guy lost something like four score in a matter of a few months. But the motivation was simply priceless 

During our July 10th life changing talk, he told me about his decision to get in shape was 100% vanity driven. In 2006, Jaron was heading to the Cook Islands for a wedding and he had this image of a great white whale on the beach of fine ladies and chiseled Aussies a. Some dudes don't want to be the oldest guy at the club; Jaron didn't want to be the fattest white guy on the beach. Sometimes vanity is the greatest motivator. I'd be a liar if vanity did not play a major role in Destination 195.

A near excessive pride in busting my butt every week was not matched by the love of returning to this blog to report my progress. It has became a simple souvenir of my friendship with Jaron. We are like two comedians standing on a stage trying to crack each other up; not caring if anyone is actually in attendance to hear the insanity coming forth (if only our text message accounts could talk... actually that would be a phone call... either way, I digress). So I have decided to keep No Fat Jokes Please going. Jaron is committed to continue to feed me workouts and challenges, while I swear to hit the gym, pool, road, Stair Master, etc. If he says jump, I am the lemming! 

We hope you will continue to come along for the ride, there are going to be some major hilarity on the way. Just wait until I begin my quest to slam dunk before I am 38 (I'll be 37 in February). And if you don't read anymore, no sweat, Krause and I bought our tickets, going to take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what we had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: tune in, freak out, get beaten. 

Final weigh in: 193.3
Lbs dropped since last weigh-in: 5
Total pounds dropped: 38.5
To hit 195: None... Do the math!
Weeks to go: 0