Archive for September, 2008
@ 151 average, this was the ‘hottest’ run that I’ve had since I’ve started. The Mizuno’s feel terrific. I found another way to tether my two girls to my waistpack with the retractable leash. They were very good. RJ came along (he’s as big as the two of them put together). Met a neighbor down the road walking his beautiful Springer Spaniel. Her name was Lucy.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 09/30/2008
- Time: 17:35:40
- Total Time: 00:33:57.30
- Average Heart rate: 151
- Max Heart rate: 177
- Distance: 2.02 miles
- Average Pace: 16:48.4/mile
September 30th, 2008
Here’s some stuff that I found that might be useful to folks who are looking for a systematized way to train for various races. I ran across it in leaving a comment on another’s blog. I’ve NEVER run a race, though I’m feeling some nascent inclinations. But, this seemed like a reasonable (perhaps excellent!) resource for folks looking for accessible information.
Click HERE for his website and look under training programs. Programs for novice, intermediate and advanced, different race lengths AND walking v. running.
Now I’m going to take my Mizuno’s out for a test drive.
September 30th, 2008
My longer Mizuno’s came today. They feel wonderful on my feet (though I’ve not run in them yet). The toe box is not as large as NB’s–it may be a problem. I’m going to be daring and risk it.
I’m waiting for my trail treads. Already have my cycle treads. I’m set. Ready. Go!
September 29th, 2008
Here’s my cardio plan for this week. As I completed this yesterday, I realized that there is an inherent understatement bias in my Z-Factor. For example, yesterday’s workout had a Z-factor of 2.62, but my average heart rate of 139 had it at the lower end of my aerobic zone. I’m not sure if I’m going to calibrate the Z points in some decile system to better reflect effort. Seems like too much effort to do! But, it was worth noting the bias.
I had originally planned 500 points, but there is “that woman thing” that begs for some consideration. I took today’s workout off; but I’ll modify each day as needed. The good news is that I’ve had six weeks of fitness under my belt, and I did not suffer (well, to put it more truthfully, my loved ones did not suffer) from PMS ultra-bitchiness (Ultra-B) this time.
True Confessions: I never had much sympathy for women who could not control their snapping turtle-like tendencies during this time. I felt like it was merely a mind of emotion sort of thing. Gird your loins and stiffen your spine and stop being so uncontrolled emotional. Though I had ‘normal’ moodiness, I never suffered from the more debilitating Ultra-B moodiness—-that is until I reached 35.
The Fates will not be denied. At thirty five, some unkind hand (the hand of empathy!) pushed the red button (I think that it had Ultra-B written on it) on the PMS machine that put it into turbo-charge mode. Suddenly I was very cranky, and shaky-mean on the inside that overflowed like a volcano onto people in my life. At least I had the good sense to recognize it for what it was. (My kids became pretty good at spotting it and I as very good at admitting it. Unfortunately, it was their normal being-a-child transgressions that seemed to be the biggest needle. ) I did at least manage to squeeze roiling emotions into a casing of general testiness. Still it was a bitter sausage to serve up during this time. At least I was self aware enough to both warn in advance and apologize when needed!
In truth, I was not an ogre, but it was a paler shade of ogre that made me (1) realize that the Fates were chastising me for my previous lack of understanding with other women suffering from debilitating PMS symptoms; and (2) want to ask my GYN about some relief. He confirmed that it gets worse with age. He offered to write a script for Prozac. I did not wish to get on any sort of medication such as that to treat something intermittent.
Happily, within the period of the onset of Ultra-B PMS and my first foray into fitness at 39, I found some reprieve from both the psychological and physical discomforts. A regular cardio program really did make a huge difference, and in fact, I would say that I was asymptomatic during that time. Then the back sprain and the layoff and then the tired excuse.
Emotional tone AND muscle tone. So here I am on my second foray into fitness in middle life (okay, with any of my life) with results so good that Ultra-B tendencies were rendered asymptomatic. Emotional tone is every bit as important as muscle tone!
September 29th, 2008
A nice trail run with both of my girls. This is the first run where my legs felt tired before my lungs. I put Daisey on a leash to get her going in the right direction, so I would not lose her prior to hitting the trail. Macy did not have a leash and spotted Toby, a German Short Haired Pointer down the road. Toby lives 5 houses down (the homes sit on 5-6 acres). Macy is always on constant lookout for Toby’s encroachment at our next door neighbor’s. (Her own yard guarded by barriers to keep her and Daisey out of the road).
Toby is a horrible nuisance. He’s killed some of my neighbor’s chickens, but worse, he killed Fred, Tim’s pet turkey. Now thinking about a turkey as a pet is not something that brings out warm-hearted feelings. But let me be quick to tell you that Fred was a cool bird. He would follow Tim all around–something we marveled at. Tims was not happy to find Fred shredded but still alive. It was not a pretty sight, and Tim quickly dispatched him the the Great Beyond. But as Tim reminded, angrily, Toby is just doing what comes natural. But a gun is always handy to do what comes natural when your pets and livestock are threatened.
We’ve lived next door to Tim and his family for 22 years. Our children grew up together. Our dogs have been best friends. Once Lucy, the avatar Lucy, decided that she would chase down and kill one of Tim’s chickens. Tim knows how to nip it in the bud—he disciplined her with the chicken that she killed. She never killed another chicken.
I was able to divert Macy with a simple call, “This way”. I quickly lost site of Daisey, but she managed to find us at the trail head within a few minutes. Daisey, just like my first generation setters, also stopped and wallowed in every mud hole–she was very hot and needed to cool down. At one point she ground the right side of her body (and head) into the slime–she looked Janus-like. Beauty queen pristine on the left side and mud bog queen on the right. Sometimes I think E. Setters are part crocodile the way they sit in the mud hole and snap at the water.
Macy wasn’t even keen about getting her feet muddy. She is very sedate on the trail. She walks rather than trots or runs, though now and again she’ll bound ahead of me.
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 09/28/2008
- Time: 09:32:30
- Total Time: 00:39:00.00
- Average Heart rate: 139
- Max Heart rate: 159
- Distance: 2.2 miles
- Average Pace: 17:45.09/mile
September 28th, 2008
My son is home. His surgery was successful. His surgical site requires 2 hr on/1 hr off ice (around the clock) and pain meds. I was counseled on the importance of not letting his pain become uncontrolled–cautioning that once uncontrolled, he’d have a hard time getting under control. I remember when I broke my foot I was foolishly capricious with my pain meds. I got behind, and it was not a pretty sight. I’m a little tired from my Florence Nightingale duties over the last couple of nights.
I found an easy way to keep track of his pain meds. Sure writing it down would be helpful, but I was looking for something more visual. I used post-it flags on the face of the round clock in the great room. I put one flag on his last pill hour and another flag on the next pill hour. It’s very helpful to tell at a glance next dosage. I love these flags, and seldom read (non fiction) without them.
My weekly plan was a little light this week. I wrapped up the week with a recon run on my bike. It is newly tuned up, and today my husband and I put the new tires on my bike. I elected to try them out on the home trail with a brief jaunt on the road. They did quite nicely on the trail with a small exception of a little bit of slip going up the steepest part. But a little weight adjustment on my part rectified that. The brief jaunt on the road (my dogs elected to follow me—we have fence that barriers the front–they do not go around it to bother people, but they will go around it to follow me–so I went back “on the inside”) was also met with satisfaction that this tire was a suitable road tire. The tire is a Continental Flow ProTection Kevlar Tire.
Though I fell short on my planned exercise (I had planned to accumulate 433 points this week with a Z factor of 2.58, I wast at 334pts/Z 2.47), I’m not kicking myself. I essentially lost a day with my son’s injury. When I rode my home trail loop today, I found with great satisfaction that my heart rate was NO HIGHER than 150 v. 158 for the same effort just 2 weeks ago. So my training is providing visible cardio improvement, and missing one day is not derailing anything in that I’m building an 8 week base.
I am being negligent on my stretch/strength post cardio and that will be a mea culpa that I’ll atone for next week.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 09/27/2008
- Time: 15:00:00
- Total Time: 00:20:51.00
- Average Heart rate: 128
- Max Heart rate: 150
- Distance: 1.86 miles
- Average Speed: 5.35 mph
- Max Speed: 16.6 mph
September 27th, 2008
A loaded question to be sure out of the mouth of my 17 year old son. It was a rhetorical question, but one which I answered wryly, “It has to do with Darwinistic concepts of survival of the fittest.” I think that the hardest thing about being a parent to teenagers that become mobile in vehicles is that they see freedom, we see statistics—and grim ones.
He screwed up. He knows he screwed up. He’s paying the price for screwing up. I’m trying to find the right balance between leveraging the lesson of breach of safety (riding a dirt bike without the right gear) and breach of trust (being someplace different than communicated).
I do remember some years ago coming home to find my husband sitting on the front steps with a friend. There was the odd pair of objects—crutches fetched from the ancient bin from a past foot break–nearby. Apparently my husband was putting around on his dirt bike–and he is a very accomplished, advanced rider–and planted his foot wrong when he popped a wheelie. He tore his ACL. It bled so badly that he had a band from just under his buttocks all the way down the back of his leg to his ankle. It was a very long recovery with extensive physical therapy. I’m not sure that qualifies as dumb ass….but perhaps a paler shade!
My dumb ass moment came early in life. I was six and was riding down the hill in front of my home. My parents were watching. Somehow I thought I would show them that I could ride with no hands–I could barely ride the darn bike. I did a face plant which required just a few stitches–they type of injury that parents feel compelled to explain lest the be considered brutes.
I suppose, then, my son comes my his DA genes pretty honestly. We are fortunate that our collective injuries were no worse than they were. Many young people do not fare so well–and those are the statistics that keep parents awake at night.
September 26th, 2008
Yesterday was a planned day of rest. Today was an unplanned day of rest. Tomorrow….I’m not sure!
Yesterday, my son was injured in a dirt bike accident yesterday late afternoon. I was at a swanky hotel attending a KPMG alumni event when I got the call from my husband. I elected to let my husband handle the initial hospital excursion (I handled the 2 a.m. appendix excursion last May) while I visited with old friends and colleagues. That my son was supposed to be at work rather than with friends and that his injuries were not life threatening allowed me to dampen my maternal instincts a bit. (Though my husband and I are weighing the consequence of this trust transgression).
It was terrific visiting with old friends and colleagues. I was 22 when I started at the firm, and it has been 22 years since I left. I also have my 30th HS renunion and my 26th wedding anniversary within the next week.
My son has all of the dirt bike list injuries: concussion, broken collar bone, broken finger, slightly cracked humerus. Unfortunately there is a 1.5 gap between one end of his collarbone and the other—and it is a vertical gap that is causing one end to poke upward. It givens a very bruised and swollen shoulder a bit more cachet!
Late night–bedtime well after midnight–early up at 4:30 a.m. to check on him. I had given him two Oxycontin pills that evening—I wanted to make sure he was okay. That’s not enough sleep for me. We were able to get into the ortho, and we have surgery scheduled for tomorrow. He will have a “battle scar”. When I arrived at the hospital and learned that my husband and the doc and another had already exchanged their road war stories on broken collarbones. I guess my son is merely a new initiate into that club.
I could put my running shoes on and run in the rain, but I’m not feeling very motivated to do so. I seem to be morphing into shoe diva. My New Balance shoe came, but they do not feel like much of a trail running shoe–but more of a shoe to wear on the trail. I’m not sure how I missed that fact when ordering. This will now be my 3rd returned shoe. But the length felt good. I settled on this shoe the NB WT1110. It has Gore-Tex, and my feet will appreciate that on the trail when I fjord a couple of streams:
September 25th, 2008
My bike is back from the bike shop. It cost a whopping $57.10 to fix. I’m confident that bike repairs are inexpensive because bikes are well….expensive. Inexpensive repairs are really an invitation into the bike shop to surround you with visions of new-bike sugar plums. Don’t think for a minute that disc brakes did not sing their siren call to me! I was able to turn away.
I have a GT 2000 XCR mountain bike. It cost more than my first car (a 1972 VW Super Beetle). For Father’s Day in 1999, I bought Mark a GT as a gift. It was a nice bike in the middle range (but still plenty expensive). As an avid dirt bike rider, he enjoyed this bike as a way to use his exceptional balancing and maneuvering skills but under his own power. This bike, with its front shocks, seat shock and I-drive technology was very compelling in the way that it floated over trail obstacles.
My birthday is in August. In general getting me a gift leaves my family in a state of sheer panic. I have everything that I need (and for which I’m enormously grateful). And because I do not discuss things that I want, my family is wallowing about in agony in one of Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell. So they have to engage go about an elaborate process of divining something that I might like. (I’ve since came to my senses and ask them for some book that I would like to have).
Around the first part of the month, Mark began suggesting that I get a bike. I was not warming up to the idea, as I never was very athletic (though I had begun a modest running program that year). Nevertheless, I began riding his bike. There were two distinctive problems that had the same consequence. Distinctive Problem #1: it was a man’s bike; I am a woman. Distinctive Problem #2: It is a medium frame; I needed a small frame. Same consequence: Injury. That dang bar caused a few bruised tender places that polite people do not talk. I also had some pretty spectacular, publicly viewable places sporting some bruises that incited people to exclaim, “What the hell did you do to yourself?”
So as I began to really enjoy the freedom of a mountain bike, Mark, who knows well my magpie tendencies, suggested that we visit a couple of bike shops. It was a foregone conclusion that we would get a GT. The shop that his bike came from did not have a GT small frame. We went to the other dealer. That dealer had a small frame GT–in black and red. It was a super-luscious looking bad ride in my favorite colors, and it was unbelievably expensive.
The rest is history, and getting this bike enabled us to plan cycle activities together–though I don’t write any of this to suggest that these activities were anything but those of the casual recreationist rather than die-hard mountain bikers looking of the next big thrill.
I did have a colleague who was a die hard mountain biker. Once he recanted a story (and I had read about it in the paper) where a mountain biker was tossed off the trail to his death. I was NOT looking for those types (or any type really) of near-death adrenaline rushes, but Joe was! Once he came to work with his leg bandaged. I forget how many stitches he needed to sew his calf after his front sprocket was buried in it. I might has well imagined a hatchet in my head as a sprocket in my calf.
So now I’m reunited with my bike with all 27 gears working. (My husband did inquire as to what it would cost to put disc brakes on it: $500+ not including the tab weld on the frame needed. ) I’ll pass on that. I already have a bike that is really more advanced than my skill level will every be! My new tires should be coming on Thursday.
I also have a new pair of New Balance trail running shoes coming. I need a little Gore tex protection for my feet for some of the swampy areas on the trail that encaked my feet on the last two runs. (My trail shoes were shot anyway!) And my Mizuno’s in my new longer size should be arriving, too.
Feet and seat, road and trail….I’ll be ready to get some better traction on my quest.
September 24th, 2008
Sweat365 Readers may find some interesting ’stuff’ at LIVESTRONG.COM . A ran across LiveStrong.com incidentally….I was looking for some nutrition information for a food, and I found TheDailyPlate, which is now part of Livestrong. (Coincidentally, I also found THIS site on the same day.)
Recently they had a Dare To Challenge. The link below is to the winner of that challenge. It might be worth a look. http://www.livestrong.com/contest/youtube-share-your-story/
September 23rd, 2008
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