This Week Definitely another good week. The big triumph was finding a way to start waking up early again. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long, long time. Since golf is my primary objective, I need to maximize my ability to play and practice while fitting it all in with my full time job. Typically, I get home fairly late because I have a 45 minute commute. Before, I’d get up, stumble out of bed into the shower and get ready and go right to work. I’d get home in the 7 o’clock hour and be really hungry and thinking about dinner and how I was going to fit in a blog post and a workout and a little time for relaxation. I’d end up staying up late because I felt like I was so rushed. But the last hour or two was just time wasted surfing the web or some other useless activity. Now, I get up at 6:30 am and can easily go to the gym before work. Then, I feel

This Week What a good week. Finally! I got back in the gym again after so long. Three good workouts. I started slowly for the first workout because I didn’t know what kind of post surgical issues I was going to get. I found that some things were a little painful in the area where my guts were hacked up, but nothing extreme. I was fine for cardio and most of the stretches that I tried. The first day back, I did a more traditional cardio workout, just to ease back into it. Twenty minutes of moderate intensity. For the subsequent workouts, I picked back up with my HIIT routine. I started some basic weight training exercises. Nothing heavy, but I feel like I’ve lost some strength in my arms and upper body, so I want to tighten that up. I got back to the driving range yesterday for the first time in a few weeks. I was able to get through it without much abdominal pain. However, by yesterday afternoon, I was having a

My club puts out a newsletter every month. I think that’s a nice touch. I just got this month’s letter and saw the results of the club championship that was held the day before I had surgery. As it approached, I tried to decide whether to play in it or not based on a few things. First, I hadn’t been successful in getting enough full rounds to get an official handicap, since I’m usually a 9 hole player and had some injuries late in the season. Second, I wasn’t happy with where my game was at the time and figured “why bother”. Fast forward to the newsletter and I see that the winning score was a 79 and the runner up shot 80. That floored me a bit. I know that high handicappers are much more prevalent in general, but surely there have to be few low handicap players around. I don’t know how many members the club has, but I can’t imagine there are no big-time players. I don’t think weather was an issue.

This Week I’m at the tail end of my surgery recovery period, so I haven’t accomplished anything for two full weeks. The good news is that I’m released for activity as of tomorrow. I’ll continue with my weekly weigh-in later today, but I expect a slight rebound from last week. The reason for that is that I dropped about 10 pounds in a week right after surgery and my first official weigh in was right at the low point of that. After a week, I started eating regularly again, though I’m on a very good track. However, with no activity, I expect a little rebound and really should be judging myself against my pre-surgery weight two weeks ago, rather than where I was last week. Overall I feel like I’m on a good track with my diet, and I’m certainly well rested now. I had some nagging soreness in a few areas that’s gone now after two weeks of rest. I’m ready to resume the charge and get where I need to be, before the

I got some recent feedback from a few people that I should do more progress updates. The underlying purpose of Life in the Rough, after all, is to follow my progress toward being a golf pro. But somehow, I had gotten away from reporting that progress. Times have been rough and it’s no fun to report all bad stuff. Recuperating from surgery has given me a lot of time to think about it, and a progress update is the perfect way to ease back in after a week of down time. I’m going to dedicate each Sunday to cover my progress for the previous week as well as to talk about any overall progress items of interest. Finally, I think I’ll have a “tweaks” section that will mention any changes in routine or approach I’m trying out to continually improve each week. This Week I have nothing to report for the previous week because I’ve been sitting here not able to do much, counting the hours until these surgical staples come out. About the only