Father of Six

Someone asked me if a reason for my exercise habits was to lose weight.

Good question.

I answered that losing weight doesn’t matter to me. I weigh about 190. If I weighed 175 that’d be cool, but at some point you would figure that you’ve lost all the weight that is reasonable, and so what do you do now, stop exercising?

I want to be healthy, have a strong cardio-vascular system, and be able to do the physical things - like run a half marathon, swim a mile, bike a MS-150, etc – to demonstrate that I’m “in-shape.”

I want my heart and lungs to be in super-human shape. I want to be strong enough to carry my 2-1/2 year old son all day if he needed or wanted me to. I want to be able to hang out with my 23 year old son and do the physical things that 23 year olds do. I want to be able to help my four daughters move their furniture, or whatever young women might want their dad to help them with.

I’ve found it inspiring to set goals for doing exercise. I want to exercise with a purpose. Just lifting weights without some challenge, goal or performance in mind would be a snooze-fest. Running to race reminds you daily of the reason you’re doing it. That’s how I’m going to tackle the 6 weeks swimming plan. If I were swimming just to get exercise, then I’d be half-assing it.

So my Saturday, June 16th, swim one mile without stopping is the target. I need to execute my training plans in order to demonstrate my ability to perform.

I suppose it’s a peak, it’s the pinnacle, and it’s the “why.”