Wise, Dumb, and Lite

Wise
I was at the Walnut Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, sitting alone, drinking a Devil's Thumb Stout, when I spotted a review by Anna Maria Basquez of a book called "Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled and Knuckle-headed Quest for the Rocky Mountain High" by Mark Obmascik. It recounts how he went from middle-aged couch potato to climber of all 54 of Colorado's mountains over 14,000 feet high. He said something very wise:

"I overcame the fear that my body was just in decline. I overcame the fear that I can't do certain things, physically, mentally, emotionally. Once you hit that time in your life when your body's best days are behind, you start to doubt yourself. It's hard because you remember what you used to be able to do. My mindset and first instinct was, 'I can't do that, that's new. I'm not up for it.' Now I start to look at things as possibilities. One of the biggest things I learned was that one of the keys to getting older is to keep doing new things because then you can't remember how good you were at the old things. If you're trying everything for the first time, you've got no benchmark. It changes the way you look at yourself and at your life."

Look at things as possibilities...a great insight for all TOJs!

Dumb
Then there was this inane filler disguised as a tip in November's Runner's World: "When you're establishing a performance goal not tied to times, make sure it's measurable, so you can tell if you've met it..."

What if your goal is to be done with measures and just enjoy running?

And here's another real gem from the same issue: "Running is a free-form activity; we alone determine how fast, how far, and how long we run. The empowerment of running is open to anyone, at any speed. Your definition of "slow" may change as you grow more fit, and will change again as you grow older."

Yeah, well, you may be empowered to change the definition of slow, but you better not look at your stopwatch.

Lite
Enough heavy thinking. Time to lighten up. In the past couple of blogs this TOJ has talked about squeezing out the empty carbs in your diet to become a lean, mean, eating machine. So what am I doing having a carb-rich stout right in the first paragraph?  Actually, just as often these days I have a lite beer found on this useful list of "The 25 Least Fattening Beers," which originally appeared in the Daily Beast.

Here's lookin' at you, kid!