I slept fitfully last night.I tried to go to bed early. About 10:00. I know boot camp comes early and the more rested I am, the better I can perform. Unfortunately, I had a couple of things kind of collide that had me thinking too much in the night and did not make for a restful sleep.
The first was the news that my great nephew has ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy) . This has been a disease that has been in my family for years. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the death of 2 of my brothers and my nephew. My first brother passed from this disease in the mid '70's. My second in 1997. Both were misdiagnosed as having died from MS. Only when my nephew passed in 2001 was the diagnosis of ALD given. It also became the diagnosis for my 2 brothers. This is a disease that is only passed from mother to sons. I had to have a type of blood test given that showed I did not have the disease. Every time one of my nieces has a son, the baby has to be tested. So far 4 of my great nephews has been diagnosed. The oldest of the 4 was progressing to fully developing the disease when he received a bone marrow transplant. While the transplant was unable to undo any damage the disease caused, it won't progress any further. The other two are a 10 week old baby, a 3 year old, and an older one. All will need a lot of medical attention, keep on special diets, but at least there is more hope for them, especially with Jordi, the bone marrow transplant recipient, around to always show a positive outcome is possible.
The second was reading the book Not Without Hope. This was the true story of Nick Schuyler and 3 other guys in Florida who went fishing one day in February. While out to sea they managed to capsize their boat, with eventually only 1 person surviving. It was such a tragic story. All the guys were in terrific shape, 2 being NFL players and Mr. Schuyler was a personal trainer. Reading not only their story but what he has to go through emotionally now really moved me. Especially the part about "survivor's guilt". I think I often wondered why didn't I get that horrible disease? Why was I spared? There must be a purpose. Fortunately I'm pretty sure I have discovered my reason.
Both of these things kept me thinking into the night. They made me sad for my nephews and really sad for my brothers. I guess you never really stop grieving. Both of my brothers were older. One was only about a year older. He was 16 when he died and I was 14. My other brother died when I was 35. He was about 44. Although both were hard, the one in 1997 was particularly hard. He was such a bright, witty guy and a great deal of fun. Both brothers had a love for wrestling and Larry (the older of the 2) was always teaching Joe wrestling moves. If he had made it to high school he would have been a great wrestler. Larry also left behind 5 children. Sometimes I still think to myself that I need to call Larry to talk to him about the Wolverines, or a book I read, or something that struck me funny. I think about my brothers everyday.
But theses two events also kept me up because they served as inspiration. I thought about those guys on the boat, how they gave everything their body had to give to try and survive. I also thought about how my brothers and nephew wanted to give their all but after awhile they couldn't. I told myself I'm going to continue to push to give what I can.
So, back to boot camp. Today was so, so hard! We started out warming up by jogging on the field Then we had to run a sprint across the field and back so that we could put ourselves into 2 groups based on speed. I wound up in the fast group again, not having learned my lesson from the last time. We had two different workouts today. One was an obstacle course, the other was strength training. Our group got to do strength work first and I was glad. After that sprint I didn't think I could go to cardio right away. Little did I realize how cardio intense the strength work was. Push ups on the weights with tricep kickbacks, abs with weights, side planks with a side dip while a weight rested on our side, and then we did it again. I got tired and wanted to stop but I kept thinking about those guys from the book and my brothers and thought push yourself, keep going, even if I rested a second, I made myself go again as quickly as possible.
When we did the obstacle course it was the same thing. I got tired but I kept trying to push myself. Even if my sprint became a really slow jog I kept moving. We did push ups on the medicine ball, bunny hops, crab walks, side shuffles, sprints, a side to side agility move and again it left me a sweaty mess. But I kept going. If I had to go to a modified push-up I did and then tried to get on my toes again. My goal is to get my mind to overcome that "I can't" mentality but it will take some work!
The whole class again went very quickly and we had to group up with people we didn't know at the end to do a slow jog while discussing what we hoped to achieve exercise-wise in the future as well as what might happen if we stop exercising. I hope I don't find that out!
Oh, yeah, tonight I found another inspirational story:
http://detnews.com/article/20100720/SPORTS0201/7200317/1131/SPORTS/U-M-coaches-helping-player-s-brother-to-walk-again
Check it out if you get the chance!
Roger
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