In this vlog entry, the hosts chronicle a typical Sunday that marks the midpoint of their 28‑day fitness and lifestyle challenge. The day begins early with plans for adventure, followed by a spontaneous registration for the Atlanta Marathon, highlighting their enthusiasm for long‑distance running despite not yet completing a New Orleans race. They discuss the allure of the Atlanta skyline and muse about the freedom that higher income could bring. The group then heads to the local landmark OK Cafe for a Valentine’s Day lunch, sharing humorous observations about fashion trends (the "man necklace") and small‑car preferences. After a lengthy wait, they continue the day with family visits and a walk on the Silver Comet Trail in Smyrna, reminiscing about past runs and dreaming about eventually traversing the trail’s 60‑mile length. Throughout, they reflect on staying disciplined with their walking routine, acknowledge recent diet slip‑ups (multiple pasta meals), and look ahead to upcoming meals at Mexico Linda, expressing both excitement and concern about staying on track for the second half of the challenge.
Chapters
Sunday morning, up early as normal. Just woke up, it's a little after 6. Ready to get some things done for the day before we go out and find some adventure today of some sort. We like to try to get out every once in a while and just go somewhere we haven't been before and have some fun.
I guess I've officially lost my mind. I registered Grant and myself for the Atlanta Marathon this morning. We haven't even run the New Orleans one yet and I've already registered for a second one. I think he's a little happy about it. This is still one of my favorite drives into Atlanta, just to see the skyline there off in the distance. We've all commented recently on how small Atlanta looks compared to New York since we were in New York a couple of weeks ago, and it does look smaller, but the truth is it's still a pretty nice skyline. It's kind of impressive as you're pulling in from this direction. Okay, so let's just suspend disbelief for a second. Let's just say that we were making, you know, $35,000 a month or $50,000 a month or whatever the case may be. A lot of the things that are important to us that we want to share with others would be easier to do so. But not only that, we wouldn't be spending time wondering, you know, how we live the life we want to live. We would be busy living it. And so that's just kind of the, you know, the thought. OK Cafe, it's an Atlanta landmark, and we've decided to eat lunch here. Burned, had a fire a little bit while back, and it was closed for almost a year. Usually there's a good wait here, and of course on Valentine's Day on a Sunday right after lunch, right after church, we're waiting about 25 minutes. Grant has established a new fashion trend. This is no longer the man purse, it's the man necklace. The man nurse. No, that doesn't work. Something. They are awfully small. I love small cars. I love driving small cars. Spear mint lemongrass. Yummy. Gotta have it. Hello. And now the waiting begins. Tick tock, tick tock, waiting. I guess I didn't get enough last weekend, so I'm back getting another pair of shoes this weekend. Can you look up the shoes that I bought last weekend? Got some new socks for Grant, or for Carson and Tammy, and some for myself. You get nothing. We spent a little extra time today with Tammy's mother for Valentine's Day and visited with Tammy's sister and, and her husband. And so we weren't going to be able to get back home in time to do our walk, so we decided to stop here in Smyrna at the Silver Comet Trail. Grant and I used to run here about 5 years ago, um, maybe even more than that, maybe 7 years ago. Haven't been down here for at least 5 years though, so it's gonna be a fun little trip for us to see this. We'll walk for about a mile and a half and get our walk in and make sure that we stick with our priorities. This is an old rail line that they converted into an extremely long park and trail. It's, um, I think it goes over 60 miles, goes all the way to the Alabama state line, or almost to the Alabama state line. And Grant always had that dream that maybe one day we would run the whole thing, but I don't think we ever will. But it's just kind of fun to reminisce.
And you couldn't bike it though.
Oh, we could bike it if you like to bike. I don't like to bike.
I was just saying, I'm just so stoked, man. I mean, these two right here walking in this cold, I know that they're going the distance. I know that they're going to succeed because I remember when I had to do this, you know, to get to where I was going, and I had no idea how important this day was. And now these two, they're going to look back at this day and remember, I accomplished something because of this day.
So it looks like we're gonna blow our whole thing this weekend. Not only we got OK Cafe, now we're going to Mexico Linda. We had pasta twice on Thursday and Friday. This is getting out of hand!
Hahaha!
I mean, I know I said I didn't care about gaining weight, but this is ridiculous. Our Valentine's dinner was every bit as romantic as this sign indicated it would be. So here we are, day 14 of 28 days, halfway point. It's been an interesting couple of weeks for me, and hopefully I've been able to share some things with you that you've been able to use. Some diet ideas, some recipe ideas, and some routine ideas. I think that really is the theme of the whole process, is getting into a routine that works for you and sticking with it. And speaking of that, over the past couple of days, actually the last 3 or 4 days, I've kind of slipped off my routine a little bit more than I wanted to. I've been out to eat quite a bit. We spent time with family and friends more than normal, and I could have stuck on my diet, but I've chosen to go ahead and eat what I wanted to eat when I wanted to eat it at certain restaurants. And I've enjoyed that, but by the same token, I'm a little bit concerned that that might show up in my scales. Over the past 13 days, I weighed myself this morning like I do every morning. I'm— some people say don't weigh yourself very often. I weigh myself 3 or 4 times a day. I'm just addicted to it. I'm constantly watching it, and I think that I never weighed myself when I was gaining weight, and I think that's probably why I do it so much now to really keep an eye on it. I've gained 1 pound over the past 13 days. Not concerned about that at all. That could be just something as simple as weighing yourself at a different time, or I did eat breakfast before I weighed myself this morning, so it could be that. Going on to the next 14 days, we're going to really get back on track with our routine, try to get very, very serious about hydrating every day. We're going to start taking some extra vitamins just to make sure that we ward off any colds that might be coming our way. Don't want to have something silly like a cold throw us off track. And I'm going to be a little bit more careful with our exercise, trimming back what we're doing as far as long runs go. We did trim back to 16 miles this week, probably go back to a half marathon next Saturday, and of course then the following Sunday is the marathon. So that wraps it up for the halfway point of 28 days. Looking forward to the next 14, looking forward to get to that 15th day where I will have already run the marathon and I can share with you the recap of the full experience.
