Day 4 – Thurs Jan 31 – Choice of Hotels/First Swim in Winter

Today I was traveling for business so I made a choice of the Radisson Hotel in downtown SLC because it had an indoor pool and I wanted to start exercising when I was on out-of-town business trips in the winter.After work appointments I went to the pool before dinner and tried some sidestrokes and breast strokes which I normally prefer. But today I tried the crawl. I haven’t done much of a crawl since 1969 when I graduated from high school. It took me 12 strokes to get across the small pool without raising my head to breathe.  I figured if it took me 12 with a front crawl it would be about the same with a backstroke. I confidently went for it, and bonked my head on the end of the pool on stroke 10. Novice mistake.  After that I started paying attention to what was above and around me so I wouldn’t bonk anymore.

Day 3 – Wed Jan 30th – Weight & Body Fat Analyzer

I decided that I should see what my starting weight and body fat was at the beginning of my training so I took the Omron HBF Model 306 out of the box that hadn’t been opened for years and set the controls and took a reading.  Here are the results:

Weight	Fat Percentage	Body Mass Index
180	27.4%	27.8%

The blinking indicator showing how I was doing was just on the border of very high and obese.  I like to consider myself 177.5 pounds but when I got back from skiing the other day, I was actually 181.5. In the morning I am not usually that much, so I settled on a beginning weight of 180. It is easier to remember the weight loss I expect to achieve if I start with that number.  I am hoping to be under 160 when I run the triathlon. When I graduated from college I was 145 pounds with 3% body fat.  About age 30 up dessert and other treats at work gradually started making a difference.

Day 2 – Tues Jan 29 – Sore Muscles & Ate too Much

I needed to figure out how to help my sore left leg calf muscle and left bicep so I stopped in to see Lori-Ann Tierney and Hailey Olsen at Canfield Physical Therapy.  My son Jonathan was going there to treat his broken leg from soccer. (See the CDA Press article on October 11, 2012 entitled “Tough Breaks” at http://www.cdapress.com/news/local_news/article_73da7013-fc93-594e-81a7-88579739d57b.html for more information.) They had been treating him very well and he has recuperated enough to start snowboarding and skiing again. 

Lori-Ann told me to try having Jonathan roll a rolling pin over my sore calf. Oh man, that hurt, but my muscle did seem a little less tight after that. It was almost like the knots were being smoothed out.  Here is a brief blurb about Canfield.  They provide “one-on-one, individualized outpatient physical therapy services to all ages for all conditions. Specialties include but are not limited to Sports & Orthopedics, Hand & Upper Extremity, Women’s Health, Pediatrics, pre-and post-surgical, spine rehabilitation, s/p MVA, and work related injuries.” 

At the end of the day, I felt like I hadn’t curbed my appetite and ate too much during the day. Do you sometimes just feel that way?

Day 1 – Mon Jan 28 – Chamber Sponsorship Award

Today Katherine Coppock asked me to meet her at the CDA Chamber of Commerce building at 10:00am on 105 N 1st St #100  Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814. That is a nice building. If you’ve never been there I would recommend going.  Joan Ford was an especially nice receptionist. I felt very welcomed to the Chamber offices by her. 

I thought Katherine might be interviewing final candidates to sponsor. She started off by saying there were a lot of essay writers to consider.  At first it seemed to be a soft let down, then she stated we have chosen to sponsor you. I was excited as one of my 2013 goals was to run a triathlon and this just made it that much more likely to occur.  She then went over the requirements to use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Blogger in which I needed to make continual  updates on both the ups and downs of progress. She asked me to be available for stories, interviews, and connecting with ordinary people.  That was agreeable to me. 

I left her offices and hobbled out assuring Katherine that I could indeed run, even though my left calve was very tight and sore after a ski fall at Schweitzer last Friday while staying at  Don and Heather Duffy’s cabin.  I even have blood at the bottom of my foot that has drained there from the injury. 

On the way home I saw the CDA Press building and decided to stop and talk to a few friends such as Alecia Warren about it.  Boy was I intimidated as I parked the truck next to the press building.  I parked right behind a blue Toyota Matrix that had Ironman stickers everywhere.  There is a big gap, a very large gap between an Olympic distance triathlon and an Ironman. 

  I wanted to know whose car that was so I went inside to ask Amber the receptionist and she said it was Katie Burke’s car. Katie came out and gave me lots of tips and pre-races to consider. What a first person to meet and announce the sponsorship to.  I had Amber take a picture of us. 

I continued on home and stopped at Fred Meyer to buy some groceries. My wife Julienne Dance who has run some triathlon’s in past years with friends and family (never me) was gone for a week  to visit our second son David Dance’s twin girls that were just born a few weeks ago in Vancouver, WA.   I wanted to cook and eat responsibly with our last son Johnny Dance who is 18 and in his final year of high school at CDA High. 

I can’t believe all the choices I had to make in one shopping trip.  Here is a brief chart of what I considered on the left and what I did on the right.

Grocery Choices
Cereal	Sugary good tasting	Multi grain and bran flakes
Bread	White with fructose corn syrup	Orowheat bread
Fruit	Pre-cut	Whole Grapefruit
Cheese	Cream Cheese	1/3 less Cream Cheese fat
Juice	Juice Drink	Real juice
Snacks	Oreos	Fig Newtons
Milk	Whole Milk	2% Milk
Vegetables	Avocados	Tomatoes and radishes

It came to $47.69. Maybe the place I went and the choices I made were not the best, but between the comparison on the left and the right, I chose the better part.

After shopping for groceries I went to the KROC Center to visit and see more what it was like. While there I stopped in Shelley Johnson’s free Healthy Eating & Cooking class so I could have some new dinner ideas for Johnny. An excellent class. She talks to you the whole time, while cooking and then gives out the recipes and lets you eat them to see what you like.