Couch to 5k: Week 1, Day One

The Face of exhaustion
Originally uploaded by davmopedia

I am overweight. I’m not happy about it, but I acknowledge it. I’ll spare you the various levels of discomfort I’ve felt with the corpulence that I’ve lived with for pretty much my entire life, though, since that’s not the point of this post. What is the point is that I’ve decided to change this particular bit of reality. I’ve been working over the past few months to improve my diet (with varying levels of success: my big victory has been in the increase of real food I’ve been eating, as opposed to highly processed crap), and now I’m taking the plunge and starting to exercise.

This has been a long time coming, I’ll be the first to say, and to give myself a regimen, I’ve decided to go with the Couch to 5k plan. Basically, get me running, and all the other chips will fall into place like the perfect ouse of cards. Checkmate.

Today was the first day of this glorious 9-week push, and as one can see from the photo on the right, it wore me out. I’m likely going to do the first week twice, just to ease myself into things, considering that I could barely complete what is admittedly a really, really easy workout.

Seriously. Run for a minute then walk for a minute and a half. Repeat 8 times. Not hard, Dave.

Of course, it wouldn’t be me doing this if I didn’t find a way to geek it up. So here’s how I’ll be using technology to help. Firstly, I’ve started a really basic spreadsheet on Google Docs, where I’ll be tracking the data from weigh-ins via Wii Fit. Second, I’ve found a helpful podcast that was designed to work with the c25k program, with handy vocal prompts for when to change pace. Third, once I manage to find one (outside of the “sport kit” which would be 15-25 dollars more for a receiver I don’t need), I’ll be adding a Nike+iPod sensor to my new running shoes.

So that’s where I stand right now. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to shower.

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Some Addenda

With regards to my previous post, a couple of other things:

1. I neglected to mention that Saturday, everything else permitting, we’ll be role-playing this weekend. Yay!
2. I’ve been assembling an outline for the new draft of this book, to start fresh and all, and I think that this one will work out better, so yay!

On Geek-Thought

I consider myself to be rather geeky, which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s known me for longer than five or so minutes. While I’ve never written code, run a server, or other such things that would instantly get me a class specialization of Alpha Geek; I know enough to be able to play around with a computer with little fear of totally ruining things. I think my laptop, Sycorax, really embodies that and provides an outlet for my geek tendencies.

Named after the unseen witch from Shakespeare’s the Tempest (to keep with a naming scheme established by my iMac Oberon and my iPod Puck) and the identically-named aliens from Doctor Who, even the name is geeky. Plus it has an x in it. X is an awesome letter.

In the just-under-a-year that I’ve owned this computer, It’s currently on it’s fifth different OS. It’s run Ubuntu, Vista, Windows 7, Leopard, and, as of yesterday, openSuSE. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve formatted the hard drive in it. A few months ago, with the help of a service manual found online, a really good reseller, and a rather handy screwdriver, I replaced the screen after the original had come down with a rather nasty case of having a giant crack in it.

As frustrating as it can get at times when things aren’t working out quite right (and the sharks are circling), there’s nothing like the elation I feel when I finally get some problem or another solved, and have a working laptop again until I decide to try something else.