Busy weekend with many more to come
7 September 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
It appears my life as an isolated writer, which my wife calls the Catoctin Hermit, is coming to an end. On Sunday Fred W came up to scout locations for our about-to-happen reality TV show. The idea was to visit a half dozen potential locations where our yet-to-be determined selectees will tramp through the woods in order to reap cardio benefit. We drove to one scenic locale after another and Fred would dutifully shoot test footage to be shared with director Mark Hammond in NYC and camera ace Hilary currently in Taiwan. Just for grins I hooked Fred up with a heart rate monitor and we left it running for the 4-hour, six-stop nature tour. By the end of this enduro wed walked our legs off and Fred had oxidized 1500 calories! Afterwards we ate salmon and homemade bread. Fred and Stacy drank a few glasses of wine while I had a few beers. Our timeline gets serious mid-month when Hilary returns, the participants are selected and the 60-day Blitzkrieg commences.
The idea is to shoot as much footage as possible of the 3-4 participants doing outdoor cardio, (every single day) lifting weights three times a week and preparing and eating high-protein/low saturated fat, fibrous carb meals. Ill be working with them every single day with able assistance from Dr. John Emmett and Kirk Karwoski. This is going to be a big hairy deal and as I told Fred and Mark, We got to make it happen and do so in a humane fashion. These folks have real lives and real jobs - but if we dont obtain results there is no show. Ill need to strike a realistic balance between intensity and time compression. This isnt The Biggest Loser or one of those other idiot festivals where they put people up in a mansion and they literally have nothing else to do: no work, no family, no responsibilities and personal trainers that dont have a clue. Our dilemma is to leverage results in 60-days without killing the participants or babying them. The other problem is these are not motivated athletes facing the urgent immediacy of an upcoming competition these are untrained individuals who have nothing going for them other than a burning desire for change. Well get results assuming these folks can do whats asked our tactics are based on science and biology and weve gotten results for decades when motivated people regardless their degree of fitness or lack of fitness take our approach to heart and implement the entirety of the Fitness Triad. Well keep you posted on this ever-evolving soap opera.
On Monday Lorrie G and her husband Kevin shot up for a fitness day camp and we did the whole enchilada starting with a cardio session during which we walked, jogged and sprinted up and down the steep hills of the farm. After all that exhilarating torture I got out my ultra-long distance Frisbee and we did the intense throw-sprint-throw-sprint procedure that had our tongues hanging out then we had to hoof it a mile back to the jeep. That was tough going, exhausting in and of itself but it got tougher when we got back home to the garage gym and I put both of them through a 2-hour killer workout that covered every imaginable progressive resistance angle regarding the selected exercises. Lorrie was quite impressive with a 105-pound triple in the bench press and a 135 single repetition not bad for a 145-pound mother. Husband Kevin was game for whatever we threw his direction. The sum total of the cardio and lifting knocked all of us down a notch or two or three and mercifully they had bought along some superb steaks which I got from raw to grilled to the table within 20-minutes. Id picked up a pile of just picked green beans, tiny red potatoes, wonderful miniature onions and the leftover homemade bread from Freds visit. Lots of great conversation put a terrific exclamation point on a great day.
Today I decided to check out yet another promising looking trail that ran off the main road in the state forest five miles from my house. Id seen it in my travels with Fred on Sunday and made a mental note to check it out. Yesterday I wanted to get out and about after working from 5-8 am on a brain-twisting feature article. I traced my way back to the turnoff and parked the jeep in front of the yellow gate that authorities use to keep motorized vehicles off the fire trails. I jumped out and hit the new trail pretty fired up my current menu of trails is so extensive that I havent sought out any new ones in a couple of years. This one did not disappoint; I hit the tree canopy and rolled upward for a good thirty minutes. The grade was gentle but relentless. Eventually I dumped out onto a cross trail and looking left and right got real excited. It was a massive trail that ran for miles downward, literally you could walk for ten miles on this single trail and from my elevation could the trail go down and down and downbreathtakingto my left was a super steep trail that went up and up and up to the crest of the mountain. I hit it upwards and it was real tough going; Im a regular mountain goat and can eat up most grades with laughable ease. This one was different; it took 20-minutes of hellecious effort to hit the crest, the last 200-yards were a near vertical climb. Turning around I had a spectacular view. Not a mechanical sound could be heard. I got a further treat when I walked the flat crest to see what lay on the other side the drop off was not nearly as spectacular as the section Id walked but I spooked a huge while bird of prey (Eagle? Hawk?) I slowly pulled my field binoculars out of my pack and studied this fearsome looking bird for fifteen minutes at about 30-yards. Just him and me and the sound of the wind through the trees and some of the most visually spectacular scenery you could imagine. I sat on the crest and ate a power bar before heading back down the mountainside. The downhill leg always goes quicker than the uphill climb and back at the jeep punched the button on my heart rate monitor: 1015 calories if there was a better way to get a cardio session in Im unaware of it.
Tags:Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
