Three Dog Night weekend...

Alice and I have not been to many concerts in our lifetime. Yet in the past 3 months we have been to two, Fleetwood Mac and Friday night it was Three Dog Night.

Music wise I am caught in the 70's. I don't listen to any other music only 70's. I have the complete decade of the 70's top 100 billboard hits for each year of the decade. I got it from a guy who got it from a disgruntled and fired DJ from a radio station in the U.S. In fact, it was just part of 50,000 songs I got.

On every run it's the 70's. When we are sitting downstairs at the Pig & Whistle or outside on the deck it's Sirius 70's playing in the background. In my mind there is not greater era of music.

To my delight many of these old time bands are still touring. Fleetwood Mac, most of the band members are in their late 60's and one even in her 70's. They still managed to fill the Buffalo Arena.

Three Dog Night formed in 1967. That's 47 years ago. I was born in 1965. I found out their were playing in Williamsport, PA which is about 4.5 hours away from our house. It was at a smaller venue and tickets were about $50. I think Fleetwood Mac tickets were just over $200 each.

When we went to Fleetwood Mac most of the crowd was older. Most in late 50's or early 60's. At Three Dog Night I was surprised to see most of the people in their 70's. It was a white hair and balding celebration. It was actually crazy, I almost felt out of place just standing in line. There was some younger people, like us, but not many. It's weird to think of myself as a younger person at 49 years old and turning 50 this year.

I was expecting an awesome concert. Three Dog Night has some of the best songs. I actually thought it would be better than Fleetwood Mac. I was wrong.

Why?

Basically because they played their hits, but they also played new songs that no one knew and there was lots of talking from them to the audience like a Vegas lounge singer would do, explaining songs, etc.

Alice was telling me that she hear Stevie Nicks talk about their concert and only playing hits. So much as they would like to do other music they don't because that would be self-indulgent and people came to hear the hits not the self-indulgent stuff. Three Dog Night didn't get that memo. Had they just stuck to the hits it would have been a great concert.

I did also learn one other thing. Although we had great seats in the balcony the sound is not as good as on the floor level.

Getting down to Williamsport was a breeze. I was really blown away how hilly it is from Buffalo to Williamsport. It reminded me of the terrain in West Virginia.

Williamsport was a little more "seedy" than I thought it would be. It's only 30,000 people and I thought it would be a "American apple pie" type of place. Instead it seemed to look like a decent amount of poverty, one of the stores we went into had some pretty sketching looking characters.

Prior to leaving home, I did a weightlifting workout. Really pushing the weights and the pump lasted all day. I love that feeling of knowing your muscles are still recovering and you are getting benefit all day long.

I was really on the fence about wanting to have beers. I haven't had beers in nearly a month and have been completely focused on living a healthy lifestyle and losing weight is not easy, it's a commitment. Having beers is counter productive and could easily reverse some of the hard fought gains I've made.

It's not just the beer that is the killer. It's the lack of willpower when you have beers and start to eat bad food because you are not in the right frame of mind. I also tend to have lots of beers when I have beers. I have an all or nothing personality and once I get started the only way I stop is when it's bedtime which is usually well after the bars close. Which did happen in Williamsport. We closed the city down.

To put it in perspective. We didn't wake up until just after 1 pm. I was shocked that no one knocked on our door to wake up us. When you end up sleeping until pass 1 pm in a hotel you really feel like you got your monies worth. That you gamed the system. At least I do.

The good news was I didn't eat poorly. I had a salad for dinner and no late night snacking. Perhaps the hypnosis is working and it was able to combat my old habits of eating real crap if I'm out partying.

The next day we started our drive home. It was an awesome drive. Hardly any traffic and near no trucking traffic. We were in no rush and ended up stopping at some little towns along the way. If or when we ever retire or slow down our idea of the perfect retirement is driving around and stopping randomly at small towns and taking in the sights. Typically stopping at bars, having a drink and moving on and not knowing where are next stop is going to be.

That's what happened on this trip. It was good and bad. Good as in it was a slow ride home. To put it in perspective it took us under 5 hours to get there and almost 12 hours to get home.

Lunch we stopped at a restaurant that has been around since 1886 and are known for their Turkey. They used to be a farm and the restaurant has been in the family for 5 generations. It was just a place in the middle of no where, literally. Of course we had Turkey. I had turkey with waffle. It was a lot on the plate and I probably only ate a 1/4 of it. It's such a great feeling to taste and not over eat.

Next stop was Painsville, PA and a pit stop at Applebees. Alice ordered some awesome wings. I had a little nibble and more beers. So much for only having beers one night.

Rochester, NY was our final stop before getting home. Found a nice restaurant and pub with live music and great stone oven cooked pizzas. Nice atmosphere. We weren't sure if we were going to stay in Rochester or head home. We ended up heading home. One less hotel stay and it's always great to sleep in your own bed and relax on a Sunday.

Waking up today was tough. Even though it had only been two days of being off my great routine it's enough time that could bump you off your healthy regime. I woke up well rested and both days felt really good all things considered.

First thing I did was jump on the scale. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty and it wasn't, I was 199.6 lbs. Still under 200 lbs so a major win. I also knew that I'm major retaining water.

I could feel myself not wanting to train. Dang, I knew this could happen. My motivation levels were not what they were. Even though I worked out Friday and only took Saturday off it felt like a lifetime ago.

There was a point I was thinking I should listen to my hypnosis and it would get me back into it. I didn't. I did a relaxing Sunday morning with coffee and catching up on my social media, downloading my pictures from Friday's concert and then I decided to enter the food I ate into my weight watchers online diary.

Too put it in perspective I did not eat that much food this weekend. Or at least not relative to what I wouldn't have eaten on a road trip. Most road trips we would have snacks in the car and most of our time would be spent grazing on food. This time there was no snacks.

I was actually looking forward to see what the points would add up to. I was shocked when I saw how much points I ate. I'm only allowed to eat 39 per day. I had 70 points one day and 80 the next. It blew me away as I didn't eat that much relative to the past.

It was also an eye opener. I tried to tell myself it was okay. I didn't eat my weekly bonus food points or exercise points. I was still on track somewhat.

There was a point I was going to grab some leftovers to eat and quickly thought about it and stopped. I wasn't hungry. It was only out of boredom I was going to eat. Instead I made myself some freshly juiced orange juice. It hit the spot.

Then a couple hours later I got motivated to go out for a run. It took a while for me to get into that mode and I was a little bummed because my resting heart rate was high and I figured I had sabotaged my progress.

I was wrong. First thing I noticed when I got out the door was my pace was the fastest it had been in over 6 months. I've been running between 6:18 - 7:00 per km. Today I did the run at a 5:32 pace. Mind you I turned it into a tempo run and only kept my heart rate at 140 bpm on less for the first half of the run and then it got up to 167 bpm for the last half.

The amazing thing is my legs feel so strong lately. After a run it doesn't even feel like I ran. I think the carbo loading really helped as well. I definitely had lots of gycologin stores in my body. At one point I started sweating and the amount of salt coming out of my body was amazing. The sweat was dripping into my eyes and there was so much salt my eyes were burning and I could hardly see. I guess those meals I had over the past two days were salt rich.

Sweating salt is a good feeling. It tells me the weight I weighed in at this morning was water weight from water retention caused by the salt.

When I got back I made my recovery drink. I added different frozen fruits this time with my whey protein. More strawberries and melons. It was AWESOME. The texture was exactly like a milk shake. It's so great having a drink that is so healthy yet just as tasty as any milk shake.

Plan for the rest of the day is to relax. Listen to my hypnosis tape and just chill and prepare myself for a great work week next week. I'm not sure if it's the beer, must be, but I've been having great dreams about work and the app and have a clear vision. They say that light sleep when you think of this stuff is a self hypnotised state. I love that state. Some of my best work has been when I come out of that state.

Feel I did good and didn't sabotage myself this weekend.

Run - 57:27 / 10.4 km
199.6 lbs