Heading To Seattle Washington

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

It is just before 6 a.m. on a somewhat rainy Saturday morning.  I am sitting in the Bob Hope Burbank Airport Gate B-5 heading to Seattle, WA.  Why? Because my wife who works as a consultant was supposed to come back yesterday, but ended up having to stay another week.

Because she had to be back at 8 a.m. on Monday and due to last minute flight arrangements, the only flight back to Seattle was on Sunday morning at 7 a.m. which meant she would have only been home one day.

So, instead of having her come all the back, I decided I would fly out to see her and visit Seattle.  A little impromptu get away for the weekend.

Our weekends are not normally very exciting.  I usually just end up going to the office to catch up on work most of Saturday. Sunday is the normal household duties and getting ready for the week.

So it should be a fun weekend.  I told my wife it was her job to make reservations or at least figure out what we are going to do while I there.

I booked my tickets on Thursday so the prices of flight tickets were pretty expensive.  I think the airlines have this all figures out to get you on price.  The cost to leave at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning was twice the cost of leaving at 11 a.m.  They know you want to get there for the weekend. Then there was the Friday option.  The morning was cheap and the evening was twice the cost. Again, they knew people were leaving and trying to get out of town.

Well, getting ready to board and will see you in Seattle.

 

1 Week Seems Like A Long Time – Day 8

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I don’t know if it is because I am so much more productive due to having more energy or what, but this last 8 days have seems liked they took a long time.  Like it was a long week, but no in a negative way.

I got so much done this week.  Because I am sleeping better, I am sleeping less.  The quality it better.  So I am only sleeping about 6 hours a night.  And I feel better after 6 hours than I would after sleeping 8 or 9 hours before.

My day now typically starts at 6 a.m. and ends around 11 pm or midnight.  I try to go to sleep earlier and my body just isn’t interested.

Now I have been alcohol free for 8 days now. I was not a problem for me to stop, but just to break the bad habit.  Was not so much that I needed to drink as I just turned it into a habit and would drink everyday because I had nothing else to do.

The first real test of not drinking will be this Saturday night. We are going out to dinner with friends so will have to see if I have what it takes to not drink.  I just think I will see everyone else drinking and having a good time and not want to miss out.

It is my goal not to drink because I am feeling to good.  I don’t want to jeopardize what gains I have made in my health, even though it has been just one week.

Not much to report from Yesterday, I just did a leg and shoulder workout with my wife.  This morning I am going to the 8:30 training and it will be a weight day again.  That works for me.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Feeling Better & Sleeping Better : Day 5

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I have to say that just 5 days in I am feeling much better and sleeping much better.  Today I was a little run down, a little tired.  There was no personal training today, but my wife and I did go to the gym and did your heavy lifting day with the weights.

Tomorrow is the cardio day.  James O’Rourke does his training with weights on Monday and Friday and Wednesday and Saturday are reserved for cardio days.  The cardio days are more like a Cross Fit class with weights and a lot of motion.

I already notice myself getting stronger and even losing a little weight.  Today I mistook a pair of pants that I have not worn in a while for a pair I do wear all the time.  I don’t wear the other pair because they just didn’t fit well.  Yep, too tight.  Today I put them on by error and they fit.  I only noticed they were wrong because they were still a bit snug, but they fit actually pretty good.

I think just a quick post tonight, getting late but still wanted to post an article as this was my plan to keep me on track and motivated.  I was just about to go to bed, then remembered I was going to write a post everyday to track my fitness, how I feel and to remind me to eat well and everything else.  So far, so good. It seems to be working.

Valencia Workouts Getting Serious With Survival Of The Fittest – Day 4

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

So it is only day 4 of working out.  Is that right?  Started Friday, worked out then, and Saturday, took Sunday off and again today.  Yep, just day 4.

I have to tell you that the whole diet thing is hard.  I do very well during the week when I am busy with work, etc., but the weekend proves challenging.

This past weekend I tried to stay busy, but no matter what I did, I would feel hungry.  I swear was saying, “When will the weekend be over?” lol.

Anyways, today is Monday and a holiday. My youngest did not have school, so i decided to sleep in a bit and hit the 8:30 personal training class at Ignition Fitness.  That went well, we did another 4 rounds of high rep weights after warning up.

But I have always liked to get strong.  So tonight, I went back to the gym and did a heavy, low-rep chest and triceps workout.  The personal training is good for the high intensity stuff so I can lose weight, but I still want to get strong.  I think the two will work out well.

Well, that is all for today, not a whole lot to report.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Valentines Day 2016, No Flowers For My Wife & Doing The Little Things

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

So today is Valentines day.  My wife and I don’t buy into the hype of the holidays, not after being married now over 20 years. Now most people would say this is the most important time to do things, after all these years, but I don’t agree.

I think Valentines is like very other holiday such as Christmas to get people moving in a certain direction. And that is to spend money.

For Valentines day it is buying expensive gifts and overly marked up flowers.  It is going to a fancy restaurant and making this huge day of it.  I think it is sad.  Just my opinion.

My wife is very pragmatic – very down to earth.  She also does not buy into the hype.  In fact, this year, as she has said the last few years is don’t spend money on flowers. So I didn’t, sort of.

What my wife hates is buying flowers that will only die in a couple of days.  But she does not bat an eye when I buy her plants.  Especially her favorite plants, Hydrangea’s and Tulips.

flowers

So I got her two of each which she loved and will be around until she forgets to water them.  Don’t tell her I said that.

I try to do the little things that matter when I can.  I am in no way perfect, but I try to do the little things that my wife wants or appreciates.

For instance, we had to do our weekly shopping on Sunday.  I know she was not feeling good on Saturday night and didn’t go to bed until after midnight.  I knew she would be sleeping in.  I, on the other hand am a morning person and up at the break of dawn.

So I headed out early and did our weekly shopping at Traders Joe’s.  Then I mowed the lawn. All before 8 a.m. (This is Sunday, mind you).  So when she woke up, those two things were done and gives us more time to just be together.

Tonight, I cleaned up the kitchen.  Not a big deal, but I could tell that we both just wanted to go upstairs and rest so I just got it done.  And I got a big “thank you for doing that”

It is the little things you do all the time, not a big spend on flowers, dinner and gifts all rolled up into one day per year.

So we spent the day at Home Depot getting little projects that we completed around the house. Cleaned out the garage, again.  I swear, we clean it out every other month.  It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Well, this is day 3 of working out and is was just a day of rest. No gym today. Felt this body needed a little rest. Tomorrow is a big cardio day with the personal trainer.  Got to get a good nights sleep.

Talk to you tomorrow.

 

Jim Johnson : Ignition Fitness Valencia : Day – 2

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Okay, so here we are at day 2 of working out and day 2 of making it a priority to blog about it.

In addition to talking about me, I wanted to talk about the place I am now working out.  Ignition Fitness. Ignition Fitness is where the personal trainer I started working with, James O’Roarke, now holds his training classes.

From what I understand, Ignition Fitness was opened by Jim Johnson who previously was a trainer at Big John McCarthy’s in Valencia.  And when Big John’s closed down, Jim opened up Ignition Fitness at just the right time.

As I am writing this article, I am realizing that I don’t have all the information.  I think what I will do is ask to interview Jim Johnson to get some of the back story. For now, I will discuss why I decided to sign up at Ignition Fitness and what I think about it.

I had never been to Ignition Fitness in Valencia when my trainer said to meet him there.  I showed up and realized that Ignition Fitness is in an industrial building near Valencia High School (sort of) on the corner of Ave. Tibbits and Newhall Ranch Road. This seems to be the popular way to go and I don’t mind it at all.

Ignition Fitness is where you want to go to work out.  Period.  Ignition Fitness is also the place you want to go if you want to support local business owners and not your typical franchise gym.  Ignition Fitness is also the place you want to go if you like feeling like you belong somewhere.  Hope that makes sense.

Ignition Fitness is not what you are probably used to.  The best way to say it, is that it is the polar opposite of LA Fitness or say Gold’s Gym.  I know people like these gym’s for certain reasons, and I’m sure your reasons are valid, but for the same reasons, I don’t like the big chains.

But I don’t want to talk about what I don’t like about the big chains.  Let’s focus on what I like about Ignition Fitness.

First, when you walk in you are greeted by either Jim a family member.  Or sometimes nobody at all if Jim is training somebody.  It is totally relaxed.  Didn’t see Jim when you walked in? Oh, there he is in the corner or helping spot someone. Pretty cool.  And when he is there it’s, “Hey Tim” and I’m like, “I just signed up yesterday and you already know my name!”  Juuuuussst a little bit different than handing your key tag to some girl at a desk to scan it.

Second, what I like is that Ignition Fitness is no frills.  Today I took my wife (secretly trying to convert her) to show her what it was like.  We walked in at about 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday and there were 2 people there.  This was aside from Jim running a personal training group.

It is literally like walking into your own private gym and it makes you want to treat it that way.  Not to mention that you can park right in front of the gym. Not that this was a deal breaker, because I would always make fun of the people at LA Fitness in Valencia circling the parking lot trying to find a closer space.  I would always yell at them (windows up and laughing ) “You’re here to work out for christ sakes, what’s a little walking going to hurt?”

And then we would park far off and walk past them as they were still looking for parking.

Third.  Tires.  Not just regular tires.  Tractor Tires.  I don’t have trouble gaining muscle (or fat) but my cardio is terrible.  I get tired going up a flight of stairs and this is what I want to work on.  Flipping tires must be the best (worst) way of totally exhausting someone.  But in a weird way I like it.  I don’t know if there is another exercise to completely exhaust you.

On the first day I was there, Jim saw me flipping tires and figured I liked them. Today when I walked in he said, “I’ll unlock the gate to the tires”.  Now, I was there to do legs and shoulders and then do the tires, but now I felt I had to.  Then he says something about flipping the 400 pound tire.  So, of course, when I was done working out, I had to do that, right?

So I did.  I did 4 rounds (4 times for those not in the know) of 10 flips with the 400 pound tire.  Admittedly, I had to stop after each 10 flips for a few minutes to catch my breath.  By the time i did the last round, I was completely done.  Take it to exhaustion and for some reason, once you can breath normally, you just feel so good.  And this after a heavy leg and shoulder workout.

IMG_1016
Flipping 400 pound tire while my wife says I’m crazy

Okay, signing off for today.  Will try to connect with Jim Johnson in the coming days or weeks and see If I can dig in more about his personal story. For now, you can just go to their website at Ignition Fitness.

Now I need to get back to my divorce business.

 

Day 1 – Personal Training With James O’Rourke In Valencia

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Today is my first personal training day with James O’Rourke in Valencia.  That is actually a lie, because about a year ago my daughter wanted to change gyms because the training staff at LA Fitness was hitting on her and we were introduced to James O’Rourke who at the time was doing personal training at Big Johns in Valencia which has now closed.

At the time I was not looking for personal training for me (even though I needed it) but signed up with him because my daughter wanted me to work out with her.  How could I say no? I hung in there for about a month or so, but when your head is just not into doing something, it sure effects your motivation.  So I stopped going.

When I decided this time to start working out and to get a personal trainer in Valencia my first call was to James.  When I met up with him to talk about my new goals, I could not believe it that it was almost a year ago that I started the first time.

Man, I always think, “what if i stayed then? I would be in amazing shape!”  Okay, I am over that now.

Well, the reason for this article was to introduce you to James O’Rourke with Survival of the Fittest  (that is his business Facebook page)

The other thing I want to introduce you to is the new gym we are at called Ignition Fitness in Valencia. I will talk more about that in tomorrows article.

How Today’s Training Went:

Today was weights day.  Thank god.  Not that it was easy by any means, but the cardio days can be very tough, especially for me.  I am in very poor cardio shape.  You know this if you read my article about my kids and I running the Spartan Race a few weeks ago.  I get tired after just a few minutes.

So today I got there a little early and warmed up.  For me the warm up seems the hardest.  So I did 10 minutes on the stair climber just to get sweat going and it seemed to help.

Today’s workout was weights and hitting every body part.  We started with 150 sit-up/crunched and then pushed this box with weight on top around the gym.

We then did 4 rounds of weights hitting every muscle group.  Because you are moving from one exercise to the next, there is a definite cardio component to it.  This is why I signed up.  I am the guy that does a set and then takes 2 to 3 minutes of rest and never breaks a sweat.

I needed this type of workout infused into my regular gym days, where I still like to go heavy and take a few minutes break in between.

The great part about working with James is that he corrects you.  Even If you have worked out since high school like I have (so for about 20 sum odd years) there are still some things to be corrected on.  Today I was doing seated dumbbell shoulder presses and he said it was better to stand.  I said, “for some reason, i have always sat for dumbbells and stood for barbell presses”  His reply, “Yeah, that is how it was done in the 80’s!”  Lol

So one day down and feeling good.  I think the personal training, new gym and writing daily about working out will keep me in the game.

Tomorrow I am going to talk about the new gym Ignition Fitness in Valencia.

Here was today’s check-in on Facebook.  Talk to you tomorrow.

Really, Really Starting To Work Out This Time

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Okay, so I may have had one or two false starts at working out.  Okay, maybe 4 or 5, but I swear this is it.

How do I know?  Because I am taking drastic measures this time.  Last time, I just said, “okay, time to start working out again” and then it would only last for a few days.  I think I was failing because I didn’t make a real plan.

This time, i took measures for success.

First, I hired a personal trainer.  I did this so I would have some accountability.  The accountability is from both a financial one ( I paid up front for 3 months of training) and second, from a personal, well thought out commitment I am making this time.

I had to ask myself, “why did I want to start working out again”?  The reasons this time around were about health.  Health to the point of the fact I am now 45 and I need to have good health If I plan on making it to old age.  That and the fact that I just have not been feeling “healthy” for a long time.  And what frustrates me is that just 4 years ago, I weighed 75 pounds less and felt great.

In addition, I decided to change gyms.  I thought I needed a change of scenery (and plus this new place is where the trainer does his thing).

The last thing I decided to do is to write about my progress.  Not necessarily every day (although that is the goal) but often enough that it becomes a habit, just like working out.

So here we go.

Tomorrow will be my first personal training day.  The last 3 days, I did go to the gym on my own, mostly just to test myself if I was really committed.   These last few days I have eaten right, and even decided not to have my evening cocktail, um cocktails, which proved more challenging than I thought.

Do you know how much more you get accomplished at night if you don’t spend the time with a cocktail in your hand in front of the TV?  Even now, here I am after 9 p.m. writing this article (because I can’t sleep). Usually, I would be watching TV and ignoring the family. (sorta).

But not today.  Got home from work, cleaned the house, made dinner, paid the bills, watched tv for a bit with the wife and now just trying to find something to do to pass the time. Weird!

More tomorrow. Promise.

Super Bowl & Making A Wood Gate With My Son

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I am not a big fan of sports. In fact, the only sporting events I watch are the final games such as the Super Bowl.  So the family and I watched the Super Bowl yesterday, but it was just me, my wife and our son.  Our daughter ended up going to a Super Bowl party with her friends.  I have to admit I did enjoy it. I really liked the half time show.

I made our Sunday a son and father do-it-yourself project day.  About a year ago we moved into our Valencia home and it was built around 1997 or so.  I think it was the only house in the area that absolutely no upgrades were added and certainly no updates since it was built.  So we have been doing lots of projects here and there.

This weekends project was the small side gate that leads to our backyard.  It was in really bad shape and had never been taken care of.  It appeared that all they did was put more and more paint on it.  On Saturday I thought it might be easier to just sand it all down, but there was so much paint that it was very difficult to remove.

Come Sunday morning I decided it would just be easier to build a new wood gate.  Something I had never done before.

So I made a supply list and headed down to Home Depot.  It did not take much to make the wood gate.  Just a few 2 x 4’s, fence posts, screws, hardware and some stain.  It took my son and I approximately 6 hours to get the gate made.  For a first time gate builder we did pretty good.

Here is the before and after with our brand new gate.

old gatenew gate

Overall it was a good family weekend. Glad to have spent the time with my son in building something.  At least I got him off the computer for a few hours.

Talk to you later. Tim

My First Spartan Race – Mud, Rain, Wind and Cold

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Yesterday, on January 31, 2016, I took my family down to Vail Lake in Temecula for our first family Spartan Race.  I had signed up myself and my 2 kids for this race about a month ago or so. ( my wife is a Yogi and not into these types of things)

A few days before the Spartan race, I could see on the weather app on my phone that it was showing 100% chance of rain and for the temperature to drop about 20 degrees.  Turns out the weather man was right.  And it was strange that the day before and the day after (today) are totally clear.

Anyway, it turned out to be the coldest, muddiest, windiest, rainy day you could have.  It was about 50 degrees out and pouring rain.  The wind was blowing so hard through the canyons that rain was horizontal.  The combination made for very uncomfortable conditions.

They say a picture says a thousand words.  Here is the before and after photos.

Before
Before
After
After

Per the Spartan website, the race was to be between 3 and 5 miles and with 25 or so obstacles. While on the course, we spoke to a few people who have done spartan races in the past and I guess the joke is that the mileage is always over 5 miles for the Sprint and that they just try to get new people by saying it is 3 miles.  Got me!

What made the course so hard is the rain which then turned the dirt to mud.  I think I spent as much time sliding down the hills as I did trying to claw myself up on all fours.

Here is a picture of my son on the rings and you can see the mud is just crazy.

spartan_mud

The short story is that I did not train enough for this race.  I am so sore this morning while i write this, it is crazy.  I know I will be more sore tomorrow most likely and should have worn a long sleeve shirt to work because I have so many scratches and bruises on my arms it looks terrible.

I am just glad that my kids did not have a bad attitude about the experience. Even though they were freezing and shivering for almost 3 hours, they said they would do it again.  I just kept telling them while we were on the course that this build character and most likely we will never have to experience these extreme conditions again.

Well, one could hope.

Tim