Day 9

Here is kind of a silly story about Matthew.  One summer, or who knows maybe it was more than one summer, when Matthew was in college, he believed off-season training was very important. On a daily basis, after a long day of work, he trained by running at the track and/or working out in our weight room.  

One day, one of us asked him to get something from his bedroom.  It was a rather simple 30 second task.  Yet, five minutes later he came downstairs with a red face and a little out of breath.  We didn’t think too much of it and went about our business.  A little while later the same thing happened.  He seemed a bit hesitant when we asked him to get something else from his room again. He did so anyway, without complaining, and once again he came downstairs breathless.

The next day, it was the same story. Yet, this time when he was retrieving something from his room, it sounded like he was dancing up there before he came down.  After a few days of this odd behavior, someone had asked him what seemed to be the problem because every time he goes to his room, it seems to take him forever before he comes back down.  It was also mentioned that sometimes when he was upstairs, he made quite a racket.

 He sheepishly explained that part of his training protocol (that he made up himself) included every time he walked in his room, before he did anything else, he would do 25 pushups, or 25 sit-ups, or 25 jumping jacks—25 of something to get a little stronger.

So, over the past year and a half, every so often, I would try to be like Matthew.  And when I open the door to my bedroom, I would  do 10 jumping jacks  or 10 sit-ups or 10 lunges.  I smile because I know Matthew would be happy that his little training secret rubbed off on me.  Now, instead of 10, I’ll do 12. Or if I am feeling really ambitious, I’ll do 23, or 24, or 37….those were some other numbers Matthew had proudly worn. I should make this a habit---if I do, maybe someday I will have the physique that Matt had.

For my physical challenge today—every time I went in my room, I did 12 of some type of activity. I noticed myself not going to my room as often (I wonder if he avoided going to his room when he was training?).

For a donation, I donated to our neighbor’s 4 x 4 x 48 Challenge for Courage of Carly Fund.  He is training to run 4 miles, every 4 hours, for 48 hours on March 5th.  This is something Matthew would have loved to have done.  Perhaps I should tell our neighbor to add Matthew’s unique “open the door to his bedroom training” into his workout plan.

For an act of kindness— I need to step up my game on kindness. I try to do kind things daily, but it’s hard to do random ones when I don’t go out too much. I know I can do online ones, but I feel they are better in person. I will have some of these to make up after the challenge is over.