Bleacher Laps: Feeling the Burn

I've been working out pretty hard trying to get back into shape.  I've been playing with the same 4 or 5 lbs for the last week or two, so I decided to mix things up a bit and hit the bleachers for some bleacher laps intermixed with walking around the track while my oldest son worked with his track throwing coach.

I put in 6 bleacher laps and a mile around the track before the 90 degree F weather finally caught up with me and I had to stop. I think I worked out for a good 45 minutes in the sun.

The interesting thing I noticed as I was working out was that my lungs never got to that point where I was gasping for breath.  The majority of my effort was in the legs.  They were burning and cramping something fierce.

Yes, I was doing stairs.  And yes, I stayed hydrated.  An interesting tidbit about being so severely overweight is that underneath all of that fat (at least there is for me) there's a bunch of muscle already.  You NEED that muscle to heft around all this extra weight.

For example, halfway through my bleacher laps, an athletic guy showed up and started running the bleachers.  Good for him!  He's in shape and he's putting forth an effort.  And one day I hope to be running the bleachers just like him.  The difference right now, though, is that I'm traversing the bleachers with 20 lb weights on each leg.  20 lbs of FAT covering the muscle I possess.  With each step, I must lift that extra 20 lbs.

Consider this for a moment.  How far do you think that same man (or a women) would get with a 160 lb person on their back?  Would they be able to run very far before they get winded, or body parts begin to ache?  Could they even do the bleacher laps with someone on their back? That's what it's like for me.  I'm an athletic person with 160 lbs of dead weight hanging off my body. And until I lose that weight, my muscles will constantly be burning and aching, slowly lessening as ounce by ounce, that dead weight is burned into nothingness.

So, this morning, when I began to walk down the stairs and felt my quads screaming in agony, I smiled.  Because for the first time since I began, I was feeling a GOOD pain.  Lactic acid had built up and my body was building more muscle.

I have surpassed the hardest part of the 'torture' phase of my weight loss faster than anticipated.  Now I can begin the burn & build stage:  Burn the fat and build the muscle.  Yes!!!!!