Awesome Morning

Today has been, for lack of a better word, awesome. I was up early and shot some nice star photos before sunrise. As I waited on the sun to come up I walked the pug, had a cup of coffee, checked email, and got ready to run. The temperature this morning was an amazing 55 degrees, so I had planned accordingly and was itching to run.

Once the sun began to light the sky I retrieved my camera, got Jumping Jack Flash out of his crated, and headed out to run. Jack made it to the end of the driveway and stopped. His loss. I guess I should have known something big was nearby, since he didn't want to run with me. Just around the barn from the house I ran across a good sized deer. It took of in the direction I was running, so I just followed it. She (I guess) ran to the top of a ridge, turned, looked at me and waited for a few seconds. Then she was off again, down towards the lake and off into the distance. And the lake? It was perfect. Still, clear (the water), and very foggy. Just beautiful. When I reached the big damn (basically a mile from the house) I saw 30-40 geese and ducks swimming quietly in the center of the lake. They had been invisible just seconds earlier, but once I got to the damn I could just barely see them through the fog. They were silent. The only thing I could really hear was my footsteps and breathing. I made the turn and ran back home (the short route today) I spotted a large hawk at the little damn. Usually hawks will fly away when I get even moderately close, but this morning he (guessing again) just landed in a nearby tree and watched me jog by. Back at home JJF was waiting for me on the front porch. Lazy dog.

The running part of the run was ok too. I never have any idea as to my pace when I run outdoors. I finished 2 miles (more or less) in 18 something minutes. Not great at all. But not bad for varied terrain and the first outside run since summer started.

Once I made it to they gym I was running late (morning of mowing yards, running errands for the Don) and trained chest rather quickly. 3 sets of flat hammer presses, 3 sets of incline hammer presses, 3 sets of wide decline hammer presses, and 3 sets of pec dec. Next I moved to the treadmill where I planned to run 3 miles. I ran out of time and only was able to run 2. Finished them in 16:09.

After a dentist visit and working for a bit I came home where my only other exercise of the day was an evening walk with Kim and JJF.

Food for the day was great. I'm implementing a new modified diet for a while. Back to six regimented meals per day. No fast food. No Indian (OK maybe once every 6 weeks). No Pizza. Basically I'll have a muffin or cereal for breakfast, shake for snack, LC or NS for lunch, shake for snack, NS or LC for dinner, shake for dessert. I'll sub chicken or tuna with a salad for any dinner. Saturdays I'll have some turkey dogs as a treat, and make sure I eat real food (not LC or NS) both non breakfast meals on the weekends. As my weekend rewards, I'm gonna allow myself to have 1 Hornsby's Cider on both Saturday and Sunday nights. Only 200 extra calories, and it gives me something to look forward to. For a while it'll be a much better treat than say going to eat out at a nasty Pizza/Mexican/Indian (not nasty, just high calorie) place.

Today's food was great. Muffin for breakfast, Lean Body shake for AM snack, NS beans & ham soup for lunch, shake for PM snack, LC French Bread Pizza for dinner, shake for dessert, and a muffin before bed. Less than 1800 calories on the day. BodyBugg has me burning 4400+ calories on the day. Good day.