"I'm going for an 8.93 mile walk honey"

That is what I told my wife on the evening of May 21st last year 2007.

Three weeks back from a great 17-day vacation to Italy where we stayed in Rome the entire time, I realized that I was back to business-as-usual and not walking as much as I like and should. And definitely not as much as we did in Rome. While I did not keep track, it felt like we averaged over 10 miles of daily walking while in Rome. We “roamed Rome” and it felt good to be in motion constantly as we incessantly covered one part of the eternal city to the other.

So I decided to walk to work on Tuesday, May 22, 2007. I used an internet website to calculate the distance of my planned journey – it was an 8.93 mile route.

I woke up early Tuesday, packed a light backpack of change clothes and a lunch and left home at 5:50 a.m. excited about my walk to work. The early morning weather was nice, the air clean and my middle-age man knees actually had some spring in them. My goal was to walk as fast as I could to see how fast I could get to work. I arrived at my office at 8:23 a.m. so my time for this 8.93 mile journey was 2:33.08, a 17:08 mile pace.

But my walking was not done that morning as I had to walk another quarter mile to my gym to take a shower, and then walk back to my office to begin my work day. Not surprisingly, I decided to take the bus home that day.

I repeated this walk-to-work experience for the following three Tuesdays, each time completing the distance a little faster than the previous week as follows:

Tuesday, May 29th – completed in 2:21.33 or a 15:52 mile pace

Tuesday, June 5th - completed in 2:18.39 or a 15:32 mile pace

Tuesday, June 12th – completed in 2:17.46 or a 15:26 mile pace

Then the weather started to get warmer and I had client work assignments requiring me to use my car. One thing let to another and I never walked to work again. But this experiment did cultivate a hometown walking mindset and I try to engage in functional walking as much as I can. I generally walk to downtown client work locations as I live close to downtown. And I generally walk to Sunday Mass at the Cathedral, a 2-mile round trip.

I am going to walk more during this new September month. How far I don’t know but I’ll try to walk daily and record my walking effort. It would be nice to walk at least 100 miles for the month. Stay tuned and we will see.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Sunday is my fitness day of rest

Just as God “rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done” (Genesis 2:2), human life has a rhythm of work and rest. The institution of Sunday as the “Lord’s Day” helps me enjoy adequate rest and leisure to cultivate my family, cultural, social, and religious life.

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, I try to refrain from engaging in work or activities that hinder my worship owed to God, the joy proper of the Lord’s Day, and to relax my mind and body. For me, this means no fitness training and hopefully a good mid-afternoon power nap. Every blue moon now and then I’ll make an exception but generally that is how I strive to live my Sunday.

Have a great Sunday!

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

No thank you but I am an athlete

I do not drink alcoholic beverages and have not for many years. 

But I use to – beer and wine as a teenager, then mixed drinks later. In my world that was what everyone did and I was no different.

I remember as a teenager in the early 1970s, Coors was the beer of choice among friends at $1.69 for a six-pack of 12-ounce cans. After much practice, drinking seemed so natural in the world in which I lived.

I got better at it while in the U.S. Army, and even better later as a young man during the disco-era nightclub scenes. But that was then and this is now.

I no longer have any desire to drink so I do not with one exception. 

Every New Years’ Day, my karate dojo trains early in the morning, then afterwards we all join in for a ritual of downing a shot glass of bourbon or something similar, a salute to our good health and fortune in the coming year. Afterwards we all go out to eat breakfast.

It use to be difficult not being a drinker when among my middle-age brothers and sisters. I would get offered a beer or a glass of wine at a social event, and I would say no thank you but I don’t drink. 

This was oftentimes not an acceptable answer so in response to my decline would come an insistence that I have at least one. They were persistant but so was I and always got my way.

Then I discovered a new reply – “No thank you but I am an athlete.” Guess what? It worked really well and I have been using it ever since.

I pass no judgment on anyone who enjoys a bottle of beer or a glass of wine but, at this point in my life, if it doesn’t make me run faster, jump higher, react sooner or perform better during a gym workout or athletic event, I am not interested.

If you offer me a beer or a glass of wine, I'll politely reply with: “No thank you but I am an athlete”.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Something is better than nothing

Many years ago, I use to have the "all or nothing" training mentality. If I could not do all the workout I was "supposed" to do, then I would do nothing at all. 

This training mindset did not serve me well and during my busy work “tax season” from January through April (I’m a self-employed CPA) I would experience "fitness erosion".

Then I discovered a new mentality - the "something is better than nothing" mentality - and my fitness life has been different ever since. I no longer experience fitness erosion, or as much of it, as I use to during this busy time of year. Some of the most demanding workouts I have done with this new training mentality were completed within 10 minutes or less early in the morning so I could get to work early for a 12 hour plus work day.

I personally like early morning workouts as they energize me and set the pace for a highly-productive day at the office where I sit for a living. They seemed better when I was doing volume-oriented bodyweight-only training. Now that I am doing more strength training, I actually prefer early afternoon, but I still do train early in the morning at least half the time.

It is all good - we just gotta show up because something is better than nothing.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Welcome to Pierini Fitness

Welcome to Pierini Fitness, a middle-age man's cyberspace chronicle of his journey down the superfitness highway in the fast lane.

For the past four years, I have maintained a training journal on two different fitness forum websites. I've created this new blog to continue my cyberspace training journal, and to record anything else I have on my mind for my archival benefit and for the benefit or disadvantage of anyone else who happens to stumble across Pierini Fitness.

Read at your own risk. I make no guarantees and I do not profess myself to be an expert at anything other than my own pursuit of my own destiny.