The Daily Grind

Training Log for Jlesko

Jlesko — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:36:03 +0000

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Getting back on track

Jlesko — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:32:12 +0000

This week has been really good for me so far. I’ve been watching the fast-foods and take outs and have been getting back into YRG, and walking. Last night I got the iPod Nano all loaded up with workout music and am excited to use it for tonights run.

This weekend I’ve got planned a 5 mile walk/run and some more YRG. My goal is to drop at least 3 pounds this week, so we shall see how it goes! I’ll keep you updated as usual

Now accepting Sponsors

Jlesko — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:19:41 +0000

Want to become more involved along with me in my journey? Then become a sponsor!

What does a being a sponsor mean?
Being a sponsor means you support my journey in losing weight and becoming physically fit, and want to become more involved!

What does being a sponsor do for me?
Being a Sponsor actually does quite a lot. First and foremost it gets your name, business and or product listed on my blog. In addition depending on the amount/type of sponsorship, I’ll even wear t-shirts etc with your name/product/company to races, and while I’m working out to increase exposure for your company. It can be something as simple as donating a t-shirts, a hat, or anything really.

Sponsor benefits include

Website listing
Free advertising
Links to your products via the site
Updates and access to race and other photos.
Your support in my journey to a healthier life.
and more to come

Lose2Learn

Jlesko — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:52:30 +0000

So, I was thinking about this last night and am getting excited. I’m not sure how this can be done, but I think it’ll be something that can turn into a huge thing.

I’m thinking about calling it Lose2Learn, and the purpose is to help get people motivated into getting healthy, and at the same time, get money to go to school. I think for starters it would be something like to be eligible, you need to loose 10-15% of your total body weight.

For me that would mean losing 38-56 pounds. To lose that kind of weight would be tremendous for my health, and at the same time if it got me money for college, I think it’d be great. With so many people overweight and either not able to go to school, or pay off their loans, I think it’d be something very doable.

I think the more someone lost, the more money they would receive, and heck I’m sure I could get donations from just about anywhere. I’m going to be searching the web, and trying to figure out how to get this started, be it having to make a scholarship fund, or charity, or whatever it needs to be done to get it going.

A much better day

Jlesko — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:59:51 +0000

So today was a good day. Work went by fairly smooth, a few hiccups here and there, but really it’s work people, not much you can do about that. The actual best part of my day was getting to see my best friend Mike again. It seems like it’s been forever since we were able to just kick back and hang, but today was great.

After everything that’s been going on, it was refreshing to just be able to hop in the car, meet up at his place and just not worry about the stresses at home, or any of the other craziness. We actually ended up going over to his new house, and he showed me the place and where I’d be staying at ( yup roomies!) and we talked about ideas for the house and such, SUPER excited to get things rolling. After that we just grabbed some good food, had some laughs, which to be honest was really what I needed after the past 2 weeks or so and just sorta recharged the batteries so to speak.

Another great thing that happened today was I decided to get back and start walking/running. I’ve got my second 5k walk/run next saturday, it’s called Beat the Heat, and it’s ironically a night time race, so that’s actually pretty cool!

To put the icing on the cake if you will, a really good co-worker of mine who’s really been a lot of both inspiration and guidance to me throughout this whole journey suggested I join Team in Training(TNT for short) and hopefully I can find someone to walk/run with and just get to know more people who enjoy doing what I do.

I think one of the hardest things to do by yourself would have to be losing weight if your a big guy or person. It’s so easy to self-defeat yourself, and I think having someone who wants to run, or wants to go do things would really be great for me. I was joking earlier today with the guy I work with and told him I wished I lived near him so he could be all over me like white on rice. The guy is just all about fitness and it’s so refreshing to have that, and to be able to just talk to him about whats going on, or what i was thinking about doing, and when I’m struggling or being lazy, he tells me flat out, and it really helps. I honestly think if I hadn’t been talking to him about this, I most likely would have just talked myself out of this a long time ago.

But it’s late, I’m tired and tomorrow a new day. I hope to get in some walking time and get some exercise and see what the day brings me.

A mother’s bond

Jlesko — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:46:29 +0000

Things have been beyond stressful and very emotional for me for the past three weeks or so. I’ve come to a major crossroad in my life right now, and honestly I’m beyond worried and even embarrassed to say, scared. In a few weeks I’ll be moving back out, and in with a close friend of mine, which I know will be a very welcomed change for me. However what concerns me and scares me is the safety of my mother, and that of my little brother, who i many ways feels like my son, than my little brother.

My mom has always been sick, since as long as I can remember. While most kids are able to think back about playing with their parents, or even now being able to do things with them, I’ve grown up knowing my mother in her bed. Outside of when I was very young, I’ve always seen my mother in bed, for whatever reason or another. Here and there I would get to see her out watching me play at a tennis match, or at practice, but for the majority of my childhood and so far almost all of my adult life, my mother has been always in the same place, her room.

Watching TV, sleeping, or chatting on the internet, my mother has never really been one to go places with my brother and I, and it dawn on me this weekend after spending the last two weeks falling down the 4 stairs in her room, or in the vegetative state she gets in when her blood sugar goes sky hi, or bottoms out, that I don’t want my mother, I really and truly need my mother. Is it sad to say the only time I can think of within the last year or so that my mother actually spent time with me outside of my Graduation was after we left the urgent care and she was hungry, so we stopped at ihop. The thing that gets me so much is I don’t even really know if she wants to go out with me anymore, it may sound hard, but she actually gets out of the house more to see some guy she met online than she does with me.

I’ve always thought my mother and I were close until recently. Last week I had to watch day after day of sheer pain and agony as my mother was essentially a vegetable because she had an infection and it was making her blood sugar go all over the place. At one point I couldn’t even see her face anymore. I just kept crying to myself as I washed the dried up blood off the side of her face. I probably should of called the ambulance each one of these days for the past week or two, but the same thing always happens. They take her to the hospital, get her blood sugar levels ok, and then keep her there for hours on hours and then let her go.

I will always remember July 1st, 2009. That is the day I walked into my mother’s bedroom and thought she wad dead. It’s been playing in my head since it happened. I was going to check on my mom to see how she was doing. Each day for the past week she’s been fighting her blood sugar levels and has need major assistance to get through the day. As I turned the corner and got into my mom’s doorway, my heart sank so deep into my chest, you could feel the pulse in my feet. My eyes instantly began pouring down tears and my voice seemed to just disappear. My mother was standing up next to her bend, bent at the waste and her upper body was just collapsed on the bed. No rising of the chest, no movement at all. All I remember is running down the steps and screaming my for my mom but there was no answer.

Instantly my eyes were looking for a phone, dialing 911 and my other hand was shaking my mom. I don’t really recall ever talking to the 911 operator, it’s at this point all I remember was lifting my mom off of the bed and laying her down on her back and just trying to get her to wake up. It seemed like a million years but she finally opened her eyes and began mumbling something. I felt as if everything that ever meant anything to me, my very life was just taken away from me and then given back. Each time it replays in my head I still never remember talking to the person on the phone, but somehow the paramedics made it, and they found me crying, trying to keep my mom awake. It turns out her sugar was very low, and thankfully they were able to get it back to normal.

Even almost a week later, I can see her clothes, when I sleep I just see her hunched over that bed, and it reminds me of my uncle larry. He was diabetic as well, and died while he was in his apartment, watching my brother. In an very weird way, he almost died exactly how my mother looked on that day, hunched over the couch. So many thoughts and emotions have gone through my head the past two weeks and even now, I feel as if things won’t change. I don’t know how to reach to my mother, and at this moment, she wants nothing to do with me. So much so she’s forcing me to move out of the house, she feels like I’ve put her in a position that she can’t deal with it anymore, and it truly hurts so much to go through so much for the past two weeks only to be told to leave.

I don’t know what lies ahead for my mother and little brother, or even myself. But I pray to God almighty that, despite how bad I am as a Christian, he see’s past that and watches over them. I’m always going to wonder what led to this, or why things happened the way they did, but I pray that my mother understands her medical condition and gets help. I’ve done everything I know how to do, and hopefully one day she’ll realize that I love her to no end, as I would do anything for her, I truly would.

May God bless her dearly, and watch over her and my little brother

Welcome to my personal journey

Jlesko — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:29:28 +0000

I would like to first thank you for taking time to come to this blog and hopefully come back often. This blog covers my journey from weighing almost 400 pounds, to my daily trials and tribulations and well, just about everything else along the way. Ironically, why I am not totally shy person in life, I usually do not let most people into my life this much.

Somehow I find this blog to always be my “shoulder to cry on”, that “Friend who will just sit and listen” and my own historian to document all the sane, crazy, and emotional events that make human.

Should you ever wish to contact me, be it for a comment, to ask a question, or for any other reason, please feel free. While I may not reply right away, I do reply to every message that is left for me.

God Bless

Nervous

Jlesko — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:02:12 +0000

So I’m fairly nervous right now. Things are getting a little uncertain at work, and I’m hoping everything sorts itself out. Today was the first time I had to interview for a job I already had, and to top things off, I’m still not even sure if I’ll get the job. I would say that the one major thing I was happy about today was I got to talk a co-worker today that always just seems to put me at ease. She’s great, funny, and I just feel so comfortable around her. Saying she’s a busy woman would be a total understatement so any chance that I can spend time just talking on the phone has been just great for me.

Who knows what going to happen soon, but the only thing I can do really is hope for the best and do the best I can in the meantime. Here’s for good news and good times ahead

I came, I trained, I kicked some 5k butt

Jlesko — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:16:34 +0000

So I was a little nervous and somewhat intimidated when I first pulled up to the running area, as there was a lot of in shape people and honestly some very beautiful women there as well. Sadly I went by myself, which kind of sucked because it would have been nice to have some friends, or family there but hey, I’m doing it for me so thats all I need right? Overall I have to say that they did an awesome job setting up this race. For my first race ever, it was just fantastic. They had people throughout the run cheering you on and it was just great. Everyone, running to volunteers was just so friendly and personable it just made the run that much more enjoyable. I can really see myself wanting to do this more, and who knows maybe each month I’ll try to do a running event, I’ll just have to see how things go.

So my official race results were as follows:
51:12 16:31/M Avg heart rate 178

For not having run in a while I was happy to see that this was actually my fastest time per mile! That was a big confidence boost for me to see that because when I started running my times were 22 minutes a mile and the over 17 minutes a mile, so I was proud to see my time actually went down. It gives me the momentum to keep running and bringing down my time. I know once I loose more weight it will be easier and easier for me to actually run longer, but for now I do what I can and I stayed in my fat burning zone the entire time so I was very happy and actually other than my legs being a little sore, I feel great!

Today is just what I needed to get re-motivated and I was very happy and look forward to see what’s in store.

Enjoy the pictures!

First 5k Tomorrow

Jlesko — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:32:26 +0000

Yup, it’s here. My very first 5k….ever. I would like to see a time around 40-45 minutes, but who the heck knows if I can blow that out of the water I will be so excited it won’t be funny. Ironically, I just picked up my running kit, and I was either delusional or something, because I ordered a LARGE size shirt lol. I called them and they said I’d have to make it back down there today and hopefully they could give me a XXL shirt. If not, I’m going to be running in a super tight shirt that is definitly not going to be flattering!

I’ll post back tomorrow with pictures, and so forth.