A holiday in the life of our trainer.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Black Friday programming to give those in the know a calorie by calorie run down of our fearless trainer's Thanksgiving Day celebration. It is our policy at No Fat Jokes Please to avoid celebrating the fruit of vice, but we made and exception since Jaron's dietary execution is one of the avenues he is using to beat yours truly in the challenge to end all challenges. Yesterday's redacted text messaged can only be best described as four cheat days, two mulligans, and a Jim Morrison rolled into one 13 hour holiday.

9:28am  194cals ~ 1 Bloody Mary breakfast
10:31am 230cals ~ IPA (poor Utah transplant drinking 8.5% booze)
12:55pm -1100cals ~ Leg work out
2:23pm   1100cals ~ First food of the day and that damn box wine
4:06pm   275cals ~ More food and a few sips from the box wine
6:41pm   230cals ~ Beeeer!
9:03pm   650cals ~ 1 beer, 3 glass of that wine, and one cigar
10:01pm 300cals ~ Night cap of more boxed adult drink!

All in all Krause saved himself by doing a mid-day leg workout. He is still very serious about our competition -- however, I know from anonymous sources that he is out on the town tonight and getting VIP treatment at the UNLV football game on Saturday. Oh and who could forget the Aussies! Any ordinary man would put ten pounds and fold like a taco during this week of craziness, but Krause is the master of clutch performances so I would not expect him to take a major weight gain before our next official weigh in. (But I can hope.)

Bite the dog that bit me

Nearly every early morning body ache is preceded by a wonderful work out the day prior. This phases leg day has become a muscle hangover mini-series. After Saturday's brutal round I struggled through Sunday with the usual grunts and groans, which convinced me to just suck it up and bite the dog that bit me. First thing Monday morning I jumped on the StairMaster and climbed the Sears Tower (70 steps per minute for 20 plus minutes) and then 10 minutes of the slow grind (10 minutes, 15% incline at 3mph). Oh the hair of that dog!  

During our weekly workout, Jaron came clean that his Thanksgiving plans may result in a complete backslide of all progress gained -- three football games, an industrial grade 7-Eleven Slurpee straw plunged into an adult juice box for a Vegas turkey day of underwhelming proportion. And he is going to need to arm himself... to the teeth!

It should be noted for future lawsuits and or movie rights, we at No Fat Jokes Please do not promote or condone vice or debauchery -- our choice is always to recommend a clean lifestyle promoting prolonged life... that is until it comes to Jaron. He is the trainer not the example. So as the numbers below indicate his slide toward his original weigh in could possibly come true in a few short days. Ooooh and one must'n forget the Aussies... the sweet Aussies are expected to arrive in Vegas sometime next week. (Get caught up on the reference in last weeks post "Taking odds on one-legged tortoise") All the gastric and malted love Krause will partake in makes my expected Thanksgiving menu look like a long-haired freaky people's rabbit food buffet.  

Bitter transparency:

JBK: 194.9 & 17.9%

Me: 218.3 & 20.2%  

Taking odds on the one-legged tortoise.

The below stats will show Krause is off to a good start with a solid two pound per week average. One could compare it to a steady 8 minute mile pace for this marathon of weight loss. I would say my effort is more like the Black Knight on a bad day... It's just a flesh wound.

Krause: 193.6 lbs, 17.9%
Me: 218.3 lbs, 20.3%

Disneyland was two days of ten hour slow grinds, burning calories one step at a time in the line for Its a Small World. Keeping a thin thread of sanity was the only thing I accomplished. As expect, my Old Testament rituals went unanswered -- instead of notching up a few pounds, the dietary deities blessed Krause with the stomach flu, trimming more off his mark. I have a chance to make significant gains over the next two weeks; Krause is a sucker for Thanksgiving and his good buddy from Australia is arriving in Vegas for a 36 hour bender post Black Friday. Please let the outbackers bring some good old excessive calorie consumption.

Post script:
It has been brought to our attention by some loyal No Fat Jokes Please readers that our naming convention for Kraus and I can be confusing at times. The following are the most common nicknames we will answer to:

Jarvis, aka: Marlow, Yours Truly, "J", and my inbred name "JT".

Jaron, aka: Krause, JBK, Kraustian, Professor of Pain, Doctor of Fitness Funk, Maestro of Muscle Ache, Minister of Misery, Prognosticator of Possibility, Mayor of Hurt Town, Dr. Frankenstein, Prodigal Son Returns, and THE ODJ!

I am the mine.

In the mid-1990s a pharaoh size Colorado mine operation stopped production. The Environmental Protection Agency informed the owners that the closure of the mine would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in clean up fines. For nearly two decades the mine stayed open with a few guys sitting at desks to keep the mine "open" so the company did not have to cough up the funds. I am the mine!

Krause had another week of weight lose while I did my best impression of World War I attrition. Thank goodness we built in a little clause that the winner can not collect on the challenge until the loser drops his total twenty pounds. At this rate I will be executing diabolical plan code named "second place is first loser if and only if I'm the loser, at which time I will not cross the finish line." Full transparency requires proper weekly reporting.

Krause: 196.3 (4.7 total loss) & 18.1%
Me: 219.0 (2.0 total loss) & 19.3%

My hopes that Krause see a significant gain in weight after a weekend of "wine tasting" did not materialize. In another parallel universe the mass consumption of industrial grade grape juice and free cheese would've worked in my favor, but it is my unqualified opinion that his body has yet to acclimate to the Mojave's lower elevation resulting in weight loss. Frantically keeping pass with one of our favorite Vegas characters, the original Ole Girl, I expected Krause to fall off the wagon by week three. No luck. But it is Las Vegas and Krause has been know to implode at the hands of Lady Luck. If I'm ever to catch up with him on this challenge a fast acting stomach flu needs to take hold of my guttural region.

Unfortunately for yours truly the wife has requested my company at the Magic Kingdom during week four... two days of the happiest place on Earth. (So much fun on the horizon that bleeding from the face could only pull me away from Walt's pleasure palace.) Not to mention we'll be traveling through the same lonely desert that was the last known home of the Manson family and dietary options on par with a Long John Silver's grease trap. I have been considering an abbreviated fast over this coming week to at least make this competition look respectable, but then a mental video played in my head of me jumping out of the boat in "It's a Small World" and gnawing on happy hippo... the snozberries berries taste like snozberries!  

Self-inflected leg wounds

ODJ is yet known for the bond of loosely likeminded souls seeking out endeavor across a sea of storytellers who love the sound of cheeks slapping together in a worship of voice... especially their own. ODJ perspective is alloyed Horatio Alger boot strapping and American bird-dogging -- sniffing out practices of cutting corners. Executed with enough tact not to shed light on it's own practitioners' hypocrisy, which is why ODJ is more of a mindset than a cult.

                                                    - forward to Achieving ODJ    

Over the past 15 months I have been able to survive most phase changes designed and set in motion by Krause because I have stuck to a consistent schedule. So when I read the leg work out for this current phase there was no doubt it would be brutal but survivable. Never in my wildest dreams would I think the beast of work outs might nearly end it's creator. Paging Doctor Frankenstein to the ER!

5x5 leg press (500 lbs)

5x10 donkey calf raises with 2 sec holds at top (115 lbs)

5x5 good mornings (60 lbs bar)

5x20 jumping lungs

We started off pretty solid on the leg press with little indication of leg muscles reaching spontaneous combustion. After the donkey calf set got the lactic acid boiling it was the good mornings that I pictured being my undoing. A simple set -- rest a60 pound bar on your traps and go from upright to a 90 degree hinging at the waist. To my surprise the good mornings were actually refreshing and calming to the brewing muscle burn. Three down and one to go... in my mind I was thinking, "Home free!" How wrong I can truly be sometimes.

The last set of this leg phase is all plyo (cue the professional explanation below). Like a good trainer, Krause went first to demo. However, the first set looked like it had been preceded by a full marathon. By the second one, I could've sworn neither one of us cleared the profile of a #2 lead pencil laying flat. Krause confused me when he said, "We got three more sets(*)"... I wasn't able to read his body language because the punctuation ending that sentence sure looked like a (?) and not a motivational (!) while I was convulsing for air. Fast forward through the embarrassing details of the final three sets, we agreed to no snap photos if either one of us flat backed on the warm down set of tread mill. And with no fan fair or knuckle bumps we departed for what we both knew would be two to four days of excruciating pain.

Week #1 weigh in:
JBK: 198.6 - 18.2%
Me: 219.0 - 19.3%



    

Track starts are best left to the professional

          Oh where to begin?

          With our pain or lust for thin?

          Cuz this man ain't got it together.

          Its mind to mouth with no filter.

                                                     - ODJ: The Musical

Krause looks similar to dehydrated microwaved death at 6:30am. Not as bad as those poor zombie herds in the ordering line of Starbucks. Damn sad sight to see deer-eyed addicts listing to and fro just one barista mix up away from dropping all rational convention and jumping over the bullet proof glass to mainline the black gold. No, Krause has less passive aggression and a better sense of humor.

The two things I have come to accept during the first week of a new phase are pain and awkwardness -- the former delayed by a day and the latter instantaneous. So after our first set of opposing cable press at 100 lbs we moved into the fun stuff. Second set on chest and tricep day is corn on the cob incline push ups (not corn cop as I mistakenly called them last week.) Lower the bar on the smith machine and rock out five sets of ten. However the corn on the cob part brings the pain! You lower yourself to arms 90 degrees with head up, then move left then right then back to center and then push up. By the third set which was the point Krause was willing to negotiated on that it became clear I might take a strain induced nap on the bar with a little neck smack to finish things off. The arm trimmers on the last ten were a bonus.
The third of four sets was a blast from the past -- blank push ups. This fine little exercise makes you look like a camel standing up, but in our case that camel comes with an involuntary snot cannon primed to blow at any moment. Then Mr. Mayhem gives me a bonus introduction of a plank push up on a bosu ball. After attempting three reps of these unholy bastards I did a track start dismount off the ball nearly turning the ab station into a hardcore parkour course. Thank goodness Krause is a professional and realized the gym's liability insurance would not cover a header into the women's gym glass partition so he landed the plane with a set of single arm machine flys.
May your week be well, because Krause and I have a week of pain to begin!

Post Script... Congratulations to Krause for taking over his gym after only a month in town.

Challenge: Two Score No More

"For the last time, anything you put on that prompter Burgundy will read!"

During our recent Thursday workout, Krause rolled out the new chest and triceps for the next phase which included an evil exercise called corncob push ups. After demonstrating the movement he graciously offered our ego's a get out of jail free card with a revised set of three. My hamster wheel did not process that revision. I'm a robot people, if it's on the paper I'm going to do the work out. If Krause wanted to be a real bastard he could throw in a set of tread mill runs with my shorts at my ankles -- and because it is written it is gospel.

Outside of my lemming tendencies and a sadistic love for seeing my brother from another mother stumbling into the gym at half past WTFreak-time-is-it?... yesterday was the official start for our combined challenge, "Two Score No More." As noted in the last entry of this fine digital broadside the Prognosticator of Pain and I are going mano a mano in a race to lose twenty pounds per capita. Last one to cross the finish line buys the other a fish dinner. (Sorry, Dorthy Mantooth is extra)

As true gamesmen, former UNLV teammates, and once upon a time roommates Krause and I take our challenges as serious as a Mexican standoff between two matchstick men... Smiles on our faces but anti-freeze running through our veins. So it would be expected that he predicted my casual efforts to wear four layers of cloths and a led laden back-pack to our weigh in. Likewise, I enforced the "no touching the wall" rule to ensure no extra grapefruit got added by downward force. On our honor and document via the gym's surveillance cameras for future depositions the below weights have been validated by the Nevada Board of Weights & Measures:

As of this Halloween in the year of our Lord 2013 Krause checks in at 201 lbs with 20.0% body fat and I, your scribe for this savage journey tips the scales at 221 lbs with 20.6% body fat. Please don't think that racing to drop double deuce is easy (see below comment section for scientific explanation  by Krause.) Over the past year I have been on a brutal lifting regiment plus I don't drink soda, booze, or liquid lard any longer -- so with the only avenue to succeed being nutrition, I'm on a water and Trinidad Scorpion pepper cleanse for the foreseeable future. My appointed sparing partner has three avenues; nutrition, working out, and booze. On the other hand, the third avenue is like taking the rivets out of a destroyer; fermented gluten is the only thing keeping his ship a float. In addition, he will have to be south of 10% body fat to enjoy the sweet satisfaction of having me pick up the check in a couple months. I must also mention that I quickly amended the terms of the challenge to exclude purchases of alcohol for the winner... Krause has a massive hollow leg even by Dean Martin standards!

To be continued...