Opposite Life

There's something about 2012...

2012-01-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

"A thrill of hope,

The weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks

A new and glorious morn."

That verse from the Christmas carol "O Holy Night" followed me around all season. Although I might have sort of encouraged it by replaying Straight No Chaser's version of it over & over in my car....but no, even out of my car, I bumped into that song everywhere, maybe even more often than that stalker, "Oh Baby, It's Cold Outside." Hearing it made me grin, because seriously? There was just something about the approaching new year that had me kind of giddy.

And we don't even have a Hawaii trip on the horizon!

Sure, I usually like the idea of a new year. I've learned that I'm just not a big, honkin', audacious goal or resolution for the new year type of person, and I'm okay with that. (My most successful resolution ever? To do a page-a-day origami calendar, and even that one, there were a lot of days I missed. But it was fun!) Some years it feels like New Year's happens too soon, though, that everything is bundled up and put away before I'm ready to move on. Like last year: Looking back at last year's post, I was pretty "meh" about the whole thing, probably feeling kind of fatigued from post-Las Vegas rock & roll half marathon.

But this year? Bring it! Maybe it is a residual sugar high from the Christmas cookies or finally getting enough sleep or something, but this year has me feeling even more optimistic than usual, although I don't quite know why. I'm feeling the complete opposite of last year.

"Well, heck, yeah!" you all are probably thinking.

"Who wouldn't be giddy with weather like that in January?"

Some things on tap for me and the Opposite Family this year, so far:

Hula class! I took almost an entire year of hula in 2011, and seriously, I think it was key to my sanity during some really stressful times. This year, our instructor is having an intermediate class, which should be good and challenging. (And it will be later in the evening, so I can make it home before class. Dinner is a GOOD thing before hula. Unless there are beans involved.)
Pre-Season Burn Series! I found myself longing for triathlon during the last part of 2011. So I decided to jump-start the year fitness-wise and sign up for all three of the "Pre-Season Burn Series" mini-sprint triathlons at College of San Mateo. I did this in January of last year, and it was pretty fun. I'll be doing a 200 yard swim, 10K bike on the poolside stationary bikes, and a 1.5 mile run around campus three times this winter. I will not be as fast as last January during the first one, but that's why I wanted February and March in there. It will be interesting to see how well I can ramp up.
Camping! We're finally going to try camping with the kids. We have a test run close to home in May, and then a longer weekend trip by a lake in June.
Family visits! Things 1 & 2 are sure looking forward to their Michigan cousins' visit in July, and we'll be spending time with grandparents this year. (Rumor has it Legoland may be on the agenda in there somewhere....)
Quarterly Events! I'm not going to commit to any particular event or distance yet, but I think that having a quarterly event to reward my exercise habit (or to provide a noodge) works well for me. So I'll be on the lookout for things in Qs 2, 3, and 4. (Although Pumpkin Run will probably be there in Q4.)
2nd-days! While I was on my walk today, I thought it would be cool to do something special on the 2nd day of each month. It doesn't have to be big, as long as it's something enjoyable. Today's was my walk on the coast trail. I saw so many smiling people out there, it was as if they, too, could feel the awesomeness of the new year. Next month's will be my birthday (and that of 2 of my co-workers, I discovered this past year - it will be fun to celebrate with some of my fellow groundhogs).

Here's to a happy new year in 2012 to you all! May you enjoy fitness & health, love & laughter...and maybe even a chocolate kale crunchie or two.

P.S. - And hey, if you're not quite ready for the New Year yet, the Year of the Dragon begins on January 23!

(Almost) Wordless Weekend - Rancho Siempre Verde Tree Farm

2011-12-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at one of our favorite holiday places: Rancho Siempre Verde tree farm! It's the perfect place to spend a little time playing in the hay bales and on the swings, roasting and eating marshmallows by the enormous fire pit, and making wreaths! We lucked out with the weather, because we had high fog from our house all the way to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, but it was sunny at the tree farm.

View from the top of the hill, toward the ocean

One of the gazillion swings hung from the trees

Someone liked building hay forts with a bunch of new pals

View of the wreath-making tables and the fire pit

Mmmmm! S'more time!

Time for Pubsgal to make a wreath...

Why do we torture these children with such boring outings?

A ride on the swings can be so Zen...

Things on swings!

(Yes, Mom and Dad were on this outing, too)

2011 Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Run 5K Race Report and Other Stuff

2011-12-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

She's ALIVE!!!

It's a small, pre-Christmas miracle: I have a few minutes to put together a blog post! Woot!

Naturally, I have about 5 gazillion things I've been wanting to blog about. But since there are probably about 50 gazillion other things I should be doing right now (like sleeping), I think I'll stick to just a few things I've been wanting to catch up on for awhile now...

December Already?!?

Aaaaiiiieee! Aaaaiiieeee!

It's time for The Tree!!!

We've got the tree and the lights up, and most of the kids' gifts purchased, but we're facing the annual quandary: what photo for our cards this year? Hopefully we'll have some nice weather next weekend, so that we can figure out a family photo. Maybe at our favorite tree farm, Rancho Siempre Verde...where we never buy a tree, because we have an artificial one, but where we go to make wreaths, roast marshmallows, and ride on the tire and rope swings.

2011 Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Run - Race Report

My 4th Pumpkin Run! I love this race - it was the first one I did when I was regaining my fitness, and so it has a special place in my heart. I'd been revisiting the Couch-to-5K program, because I had felt like I'd lost a lot of my running capacity this year, and I was in week 5. So my main goals this year were to have fun, to finish, and to feel grateful that I didn't have any injuries to keep me from running it this time.

We'd had the most gorgeous week we'd had all year, and yet...Sunday, October 16, 2011 dawned grey and overcast. Not too cold, and it didn't threaten to rain like last year. But it seems like every year the race is overcast. Sing it with me: tra-di-TION! TRADITION!

This year's was enjoyable, as always, and I think this one was the biggest one yet! I counted, in the results, 556 people in the 5K and 272 in the 10K! The female 40-49 group is the biggest by far, in both races.

There were a ton of people milling around before the race, enjoying the usual pre-race goodies. I was enjoying the pre-race lines at the ladies' room! The kids' race was the usual cuteness overload...so many beaming faces running across the finish line. I also enjoyed all of the pumpkin attire-hats and shirts-and one group of ladies had gone with a "wicked witch" theme: bright green t-shirts with witches and the stencilled words, "Wicked Witch of the South Bay," North Bay, East Bay, etc. Another thing I noticed this year were some tutus! Tutu'd running seems to have finally reached the coastside.

(Oh! I just found a very cool YouTube video of the race. Click here to see what it's like! I especially liked seeing the PUMPKINS group's approach to the finish line, which I didn't get to see in person at the race.)

I discovered this year the problem with an unchipped race. I was in the bathroom when it started, and trotted across the starting line right behind the walkers. Unfortunately, I didn't take a peek at the starting line clock, so I will never know what my true time was for the race. But I am proud that even though I didn't even come close to a PR, and though I hadn't finished the C25K, I ran just about all-only a short walk at the water station-and I didn't have anything left in my tank by the end. I think my favorite part was chatting with the runner I'd been leap-frogging during the race, a relatively new mom who had just done C25K and who was running her first race! I had kept a look out for some of my hula class friends, but it turns out they had run the 10K instead; I did see several of my kids' preschool friends' families. I love that in this race, there always seem to be a few familiar faces.

By my watch, I finished in around 36 minutes, but my official time was 38:15.
Finished? Check!
Had fun? Check!
Felt grateful to be out there and running? Check!
Wish I'd trained a little better? Check! But that'll just make me hungrier to do better next year, right...? ;-)

Here's to #4, and hopefully many more!

Random Item, Filed Under "Coincidences That Seem Contrived"

Do you ever have incidents in your life that are coincidental, but seem otherwise? I was out of one of my lunchtime walks one day, about a month ago. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and I had been grumpy with each other that morning, and I was thinking about how sad I felt about it. Then, there in my path, was this lone leaf. I saw it as a sign that I was so loved, even when I didn't feel like it. I also see it as a good sign that I jumped to the "heart-shaped" conclusion. Because upside-down? It kind of looks like the opposite sort of thing that The Mr. and I were both sort of being earlier that day.

Weird Stuff Pubsgal Eats #534: Chocolate Kale?!?
(This probably belongs over on the sadly abandoned "Pubsgal Eats." But oh well.)

The other day, I was in a funk, and close to a Whole Foods.

When I'm in a funk, I know in my head that food is not the answer. But sometimes, nothing soothes the soul like either something chocolate or some crispy, intensely-flavored kale snacks. Usually the two are mutually exclusive. But in my moment of weakness, I succumbed to a quirky combination I had been eyeing but hadn't quite gotten the gumption to try yet: chocolate-covered kale snacks.

"Ingredients: Organic Kale, Organic Pumpkin Seeds, Organic Coconut Palm Sugar, Organic Cacao Butter, Organic Cacao Powder, Himalayan Crystal Salt, Organic Vanilla Extract and Blessings." Curious...I didn't know that "blessings" tasted like vanilla...they must have confused it with the cacao, or else were simply being redundant, since "cacao and blessings" is sort of like the anti-"corn syrup and sugar."

Hmmm...such an unfortunate appearance....

Most of the crunchy kale snacks I eat are quite crisp, like a dehydrated salad. The chocolate kale pieces were heavy and hard, but when you started chewing them, they turned out to be more chewy-textured than crisp. The taste was kind of interesting...sweet, nutty at first, then quite chocolatey. I didn't taste the kale very much at all. Given the appearance, I had expected something much more chalky in taste and texture. Admittedly, this stuff stayed in my desk drawer far longer either chocolate or other kale snacks typically do...but you know, for a "what was she thinking" purchase, they were pretty good! It sure would make a fun holiday gift for any friends who are following a vegan & raw way of eating.

That's all for now! I look forward to reading about everyone's holiday adventures. I might not comment as much as I used to, but know that I'm reading and cheering you on!

"If you can't beat 'em, offer 'em shots"

2011-10-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

Or, "A Volunteer's View of the Half Moon Bay International Marathon"

So much to write about, so little time! But I've gotta take a little time and write my latest race recap...

On Sunday, September 25, 2011, I woke bright and early and prepared to head over to the inaugural Half Moon Bay International Marathon. It was actually several running events: a free 5K, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a full marathon.

Sadly, I wasn't going as a runner. Or even a walker, for that matter. It sold out! But it was as something I'd been wanting to try for a long time: as a volunteer. So if I wasn't racing, why did I have trouble sleeping? Maybe I was channeling all the pre-race vibes floating around our town...

I arrived at the parking lot at the base of the Pillar Point bluffs before dawn. It was dark, but not too cold. There were staff people coordinating the high schoolers who were stationed along the bluffs to direct people along the trails. The aid station organizers arrived, and we set to work: mixing the electrolyte drink, cutting the Cliff block packages in half, and setting out cups of water and electrolyte. The wasps were bad - trying to swim in the electrolyte cups and all - but no one got stung, thank goodness!

About an hour later, we heard the sirens: the marathon had begun! The event was limited to 500 entries across all races, and there were a little over 100 people in the marathon. However, they would pass our station four times, so we had to be ready for them. I liked the way the race bibs had the participants' names printed on them, and how there were red bibs for the first time marathon racers - a nice touch! We cheered, we handed out goodies and beverages (it made it easier when runners would call out what they needed before they quite got to us, so we could direct or get the right thing in place). We chatted in between waves.

One marathon racer, I noticed, was carrying a pink rose. On his 4th pass, we found out why: he was racing in memory of his wife, who had died this past spring of breast cancer. She was only 42. Hoo boy, that really got to me. We all gave him hugs and wished him well, and not just in the race that day.

On a lighter note, on the 3rd pass, one of the runners called out, "You must cheer on my beautiful friend Dee Dee, who's right behind me and is going to pass me soon!" So we all started chanting, "Go, Beautiful Dee Dee, go!"

Our aid station was near Mile 2 of the first loop,
the trail out to Foo Rock at the foot of the Pillar Point bluffs

The aid station, all stocked and ready!
Our station leaders were well-prepared!

How 'bout a shot?

(Yes, that's my "I though they said 'rum' " shirt.

Too bad it was too cold to show it off, except for in this picture!)

After my time at the aid station, I went over to the start/finish line to help. They had the essentials pretty well covered, so one of the staff members had me help as one of the recycling assistants. While I felt a little superfluous at the time, helping people properly sort their disposables, I think the event has a good shot at their goal of attaining a Gold Certification through the Council for Responsible Sport organization (CRS), if this picture of the landfill waste I saw is any indication: one of those big ol' garbage truck boxes with a bitty pile of bags at one end of it.

What was cool was talking to the finishers, and seeing some familiar faces. One was of one of my former neighbors who ran the 1/2 marathon; she placed 13th in her age group! Another was one of the women in my hula class. I also saw the Pink Rose Runner and his family, but he was without the rose. I saw this photo later: he had laid his rose at the finish line.

Popping in for a Quick "Hello"

2011-08-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

Wow, that "summer" went fast! (The quotes are because I think we had less than 10 sunny days the entire summer.) There's a lot I could write about right now, but we're back to school today. The first day went great; Things 1 & 2 were very happy when I got home. I knew Thing 1 was excited and happy; he has had the same teacher for 3 years now (it's a combined 3/4/5 classroom) and he knows what to expect. Thing 2 was anxious about having a new teacher, but she reported that she LOVES her new teacher. Whew! Things 1 & 2 go to a small school, only about 80 kids, so they know everyone in their classes except for a few new kids to the school this year.

Anyhow, I have 10 minutes before bedtime. Here's tonight's train of thought:

How are Pubsgal and fast food restaurants alike? Saw a great article on the Mills Peninsula blog, about portion sizes, by one of their nutritionists. The link includes a video segment. Here's the link: http://www.mphsblog.org/2011/05/portioncontro/. Here's an interesting fact regarding restaurant portion creep: The child-size portion at fast food restaurants today? "That was a standard adult-size portion 20 years ago." This is timely, because the panicked ranting & raving post I drafted back in January and never published, about not having an "Overweight" BMI anymore? Well...same situation, plus a few more pounds. It's not so much about the number on the scale or BMI number anymore as it is about as feeling physically uncomfortable in my own skin, never mind my pants! And I swear I thought of that before I started listing to Lynn's interview on Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone, in which she talks about becoming physically comfortable in her own skin, and that discomfort being a sign to rein things in. Anyhow, my food plan is to weigh and measure portions and to use the My Fitness Pal tracker daily. I've been enjoying this tool, because I swear, its search finds EVERYTHING! I hardly have to enter any new data. My other goals are to stay under my quite reasonable calorie allotment, eat healthy things I enjoy, and limit my starches and sugars to only the MOST worthy items and quantities. Oh, you know, all the stuff that worked before when I did it consistently. ;-) Updated fitness goals to follow: right now, I'm rebooting my running with C25K in preparation for the Pumpkin Run in October, hoping hula class will survive the new school year, but I need to figure out a new strategy for getting more strength in there.

Speaking of running: ALL events at the Half Moon Bay Marathon were sold out before I had a chance to register! How RUDE! But before I could get too "pouty puffer" about it, I submitted a volunteer application. Turns out that I'll be working at the Maverick's aid station, and then helping at the start/finish line. I always wanted to volunteer for an event, so this is a great opportunity! (With riding my bike to and from the event locations and helping out, I'll probably burn as many calories as running my 10K. And my volunteers' t-shirt will be free. :-) If you're interested in volunteering, here's the link: http://halfmoonbayim.org/event/volunteer/. They need help for the race expo on the days preceding the event, not just event day itself.

Speaking of sports and events: Diabetes Hands Foundation will be having a fundraising party at Sports Basement in Walnut Creek on September 10, from noon until 2 p.m. (It's Thing 1's 10th birthday, so I can't go, but maybe YOU can!) According to organizer Emily Walton, "We will be screening our fundraising videos, offering food and drinks, and you will receive a coupon for 10% off everything you spend. Sports Basement will also donate 10% of everything you spend to DHF! They have great TRI gear, trust me, I shop there all the time!" Event details on the TuDiabetes web site: http://www.tudiabetes.org/events/583967:Event:2160403.

And speaking of triathlon and fundraising: Can the woman who kicks Type 2 diabetes' ass on a regular basis help kick blood cancer's ass too? If anyone can, Foodie McBody can! She joined Team in Training and is going through an amazing, "stress-citing," and inspiring journey in triathlon training. Read all about it here: http://foodfoodbodybody.wordpress.com/ And here's her donation page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/Marine11/sitoo6.

Sheesh...how did 10 minutes turn into 1 hour? I had better post this and get to sleep now....

Fit Stanley is here! (And other summer stuff)

2011-07-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

"Fit Stanley" is here!

A new friend of ours arrived from Austin, TX last week!

"Hi! I'm Fit Stanley!"

He's enjoying hanging out with the Things...

"Is this another one of your blog things, Mom?"

And I took him for a walk on the coastal trail...

The trail was sunny, but there was fog on the water.

So much for Stanley's first view of the Pacific Ocean!

He climbs trees with grace and style!

What?! Trash on the trail?

Ever mindful of his fit'vironment, you know Fit Stanley had to transport this to a proper receptacle.

Fit Stanley is a great fit'venture companion!

He never grumbles about the pace being too slow or too fast, and no activity is too humble.

Stay tuned for his continued adventures! And be sure to check out Fit Stanley and Fit Stella's blog at http://fitstanley.com/. (Fit Stella just had a great time visiting Christie O, and she even got to go surfing! Sorry, Stanley, but you'll need to look to another family for that sort of fit'venture.)

How does your garden grow?

Remember this? My "restrained" shopping trip at the nursery?

I thought you might like to see how they're doing now!

This pot was in perfect bloom for Independence Day!

The catnip, though, is a little worse for the cat love...

Post-planting. (Actually, this is a few weeks later, because the carrots are starting to show.)

Here it is now!

We've had a couple of snow peas, but no beans yet. The plant in front is a "ronde de nice" zucchini, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it does here.

Annie's Annuals alpine strawberry. They stay white, so it's kind of hard to tell when they are ripe...

Lettuce and a blueberry shrub - the blueberries are tasty!

We just don't get many all at once, though.

Annie's Annuals snapdragons

The snapdragons have been the biggest surprise. I bought single apricot, double apricot, and double pink one, and they are now all blooming. So beautiful! The photo really doesn't do them justice. The shape is different from your regular snap - you can't pop their mouths open and shut, which I was looking forward to showing the kids. And these got really tall for snaps, the tallest spire is 2.5 feet tall. (They look taller, though, due to the camera angle, don't they?)

Happy Summer, everyone!

"Be Present" - Not Just Another Pretty Crunch-Granola Phrase

2011-07-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

I've been quite absent lately from the blog world. I have Google Reader, which is great for reading, but not quite as good for commenting. And there's this idea in my head that I need to "catch up" with a mega-brilliant post, and that's feeling pretty daunting. (Then again, Crabby McSlacker of Cranky Fitness made a comeback--yeayyy!--so maybe it's not too late...)

"Hmmm," I thought to myself. "Maybe I could just post little 'postlettes,' but more frequently? Or maybe I have something in my drafts that would do?"

And then I came across the following in my rough drafts. I wrote it over a year ago. Funny how I sound just as harried then, eh? This past year has also taught me a lot about how powerful that can be, being present for others, so this finally seemed like the time to post it. Without any further ado....

Ever feel like "just being there" for people can sometimes seem so...passive? Not useful, because we've come to associate usefulness with concrete action? I know I feel that way more often than I'd like to admit. It's not a comfortable feeling for me. I prefer to jump in, do things, take action to bring about the desired result.

Some of you may remember that time in early 2009, when my mom was admitted to the hospital with congestive heart failure and needed heart valve replacement surgery. I made two trips downstate, while Mr. Handsome-and-Handy kept things running smoothly on the home front. There wasn't much I could do, other than "be present" with my parents and be their phone liaison to our extended family, so that my step-dad and mom could have the time and space they needed.

Talk about feeling passive and helpless! To my mind, the important doing was in others' hands. I was just an extra thumb. (Although maybe an extra thumb is more useful than one would think. One of my ancestors had with an extra thumb; too bad I can't go back and ask him.)

Anyhow, one of the mornings we were sitting around, sipping coffee and reading the local paper. I'm not a big news reader, so I was browsing for the comics, and I came across a Q&A column syndicated from The Kansas City Star called Searching for Answers. The topic was, "How do you comfort a grieving person who doesn't have a faith?" (This article was published on 2009-01-17, Page F12, Kansas City Star, The (MO). Their archives are available by subscription only, so I'm unable to link to the original.) Two ministers' thoughtful responses were used for the column.

I know, not a very happy topic when one's mom is in the hospital, is it? But boy, the first minister's answer and its timing was quite what I call a "woo-woo moment": that is, if my life were a movie, that would be the moment where the soundtrack plays that "woooooooo-EEEEEEE-ooooooooo" music. You know those coincidences that make you sit up in your chair a little straighter and pay attention? That makes you ponder along with the X-Files' Agent Mulder: "If coincidences are coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?" Yep, one of those moments.

Rev. Pat Rush advised something called the ministry of presence:

"The ministry of presence requires a willingness to spend time with another in a nonjudgmental and nondirective manner...simply crying with others in their sorrows and rejoicing with them in their good times. It is the ministry of love and concern for another, fully respecting what the other both believes and doesn't believe. It is the ministry of 'staying close together' with another."

In other words, "being present" for someone. This article and its timing helped me understand that I was doing--by not doing--exactly what my parents needed me to do for them. (And happily, it all turned out fine: my mom healed and is doing great, and both parents quit smoking.)

I clipped and saved that article, and I've wanted to blog about it for awhile now. For some reason, this just felt like the right time to share it. Maybe because I've been really busy lately and have been unable to "be present" here as much as I'd like to be. Maybe because I (and others) seem to be struggling with the health and fitness stuff a little more than usual.

When I wonder whether things like Twitter or Facebook are just big time-sucks, or when I feel a little overwhelmed by the whole blog thing, I think about the times when I've shared joys and triumphs, grieved with others, waited and hoped with others for various news or results, or simply listened or felt heard. This "bring present" thing? Powerful stuff.

A Trip to the "Candy" Store

2011-06-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

Let me take you on a little trip to the candy store...well, a trip to a gardener's "candy" store, that is!

I love flowers and veggies, but I'm a gardener only in the loosest terms. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy has been bitten by the gardening bug lately, though, and he prepped some planters and wanted me to do a little shopping.

Hmm. Flowers? Shopping? I'm so there. And I knew just the place for it. I think I'll just let the photos do the rest of the talking....

Here's the place! It's like a botanical garden, but everything is for sale!

This is a small section out front - perennials and roses

I thought of Lori when I saw these!

I was really tempted to buy this peony, but I've never grown them, $32.50 is kind of an expensive experiment to try on the gopher-and-snail farm that is our garden.

Here's the inside! I loved all the hanging baskets.

Did it take a lot of patience to set out all of these impatiens?

I loved this garden-in-a-pot! (Why do mine never look like that?!)

A whole section of just lavenders!

Big, fluffy hydrangeas

Mmmm, freesias! So fragrant! I almost bought that one in the foreground.

They fit all this in one container! ($140?!? I'll pass.)

A quiet corner of the nursery grounds. At least the view is free!

This is what "restraint" looks like.

An Anniversary, A Healthiversary, and a Race Report!

2011-06-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, Blogosphere!
(Hello!...Hello!...Helloooo!...)

Well, here we are, nearly at the summer solstice! I've sure missed posting and commenting in blogland, but I have been reading and silently cheering everyone on!

Much fun and frolic and end-of-the-school-year craziness happened during the past month, but it's done and we're...well, if not fully chillaxin' here in the fog bank, it's a leetle less crazy. A couple of photos of our goings-on:

Hangin' with my BFF in the PDX. Some totally worthy chocolatey stuff at Alma!

Dance Recital time!

We laughed, we cried, it was better than "Cats."

Oh wait.

It was "Cats."

(Thing 2 was an elegant black kitty, and Thing 1 had a principle role of "Bustopher Jones")

Now waiting for the Andrew Lloyd Weber ~~ear worms~~ show tunes to exit my brain...

An Anniversary
Today was Mr. Handsome & Handy's and my 14th wedding anniversary! Don't worry, I'm not going to get all mushy-gushy and stuff. He doesn't read my blog. If he did, though, I'd tell him I love him and thank him for the best 17 years ever! (We met 17 years ago yesterday! ;-)

A "Healthiversary"
Today is also my 3rd "healthiversary." Or maybe I should say my "re-birthday." Coincidentally, today's email from Prevention magazine had the subject line, "You've been diagnosed with diabetes. Now what?" 3 years ago today, that's exactly what happened and what I was wondering. (Type 2 + horrible cholesterol panel + borderline osteoporosis, oh my!) While at the time it felt horrible, in a way it was a gift. Diagnosis helped me get the support I needed to regain my health and well-being. Thanks to my family (especially Mr. Handsome & Handy), my health care team, and you--my wonderful friends in the blogosphere--I'm hanging in there (granted, by a thread or two at times) and keeping healthy. And oh, I guess I had a little to do with it, too. Thank you, me of 3 years ago, for digging in and doing the hard work, for working that "IFNO" mindset. But and most importantly, for making the decision to live instead of merely exist.

And a Race Report: The Pillar Point Run 10K Encore!

Sunday was the 2011 Pillar Point Run! My running has been sporadic lately, but I really wanted to do this in honor of the "healthiversary."

As I wrote in 2009, the Pillar Point Run was my first foray into 10K races. The event features a 10K, 1/2 marathon, and a family fun run to benefit the Coastside Infant Toddler Center. It's small and low-key, but well-organized, with many water stops along the route and friendly volunteers. And it seems to get better every year! I realized during the Rock & Roll Las Vegas 1/2 Marathon, I decided then that the 10K distance was just right, and this race confirmed it. It felt long enough to be a substantial run, but not so long that I was totally incapacitated for the rest of the day.

So I got up bright and early on Sunday...well, early anyway. It was too foggy for the "bright" part. I fetched the family donuts, ate a couple of holes with some peanuts and coffee, and biked up to the harbor. That was a nice warmup!

My trusty bike at Pillar Point Harbor!

(Where you wouldn't know it was late Spring....)

I registered for the race and milled around with the rest of the 10K crew, the 1/2 marathoners having left a half hour before us. The starting point was a little different than the previous time I ran the course, but otherwise it was the same route on my home turf, the Coastside trail!

At 8:30 we were off! I felt a giddy little rush as our pack started off, but the gazelles quickly surged forward and the rest of us strung out a bit. I tried keeping pace with a girl in a purple t-shirt, but she was a bit too quick, so I ended up falling in behind a couple of women, one of whom was running with a jogging stroller. Their pace seemed a little slow at first, but it ended up being a good thing that I held to it, because it ensured that I had enough in me to run almost the entire way.

I usually don't run with music, but I decided to do so in this race. I kept it low enough so that it didn't tune all the sounds around me out, like songbirds in the meadows and the ocean. I don't know that I'll run every race that way, but it sure helps with the longer distances. (They are not allowed in triathlon events...then again, I can't watch movies when I bike, either, and that doesn't stop me from using that to help me stationary bike more enjoyably.)

Before I knew it, we were at the turnaround point! Which is right across the highway from my neighborhood. But there was no heading home for another donut hole: a big loop around the parking lot, and we were heading back to the harbor. I walked a little while my "pace stroller" stopped briefly for a break at the water station, then fell in behind them again heading back.

Then the coffee caught up with me. I held out until the Dunes Beach restrooms (flush toilets, as opposed to pit toilets - that's one of the great parts of the Coastside trail, all the state beaches mean plenty of facilities) and made my stop. But oh no! The pace stroller was way ahead! I started running in earnest then. It felt kind of good, there was one point where I felt almost giddy, probably the endorphins. Those gals were rather hard to catch, but I got almost caught up at around mile 5. Then the stroller's passenger - quite the little mobile cheering crew, cooing at all the runners coming the other direction - started melting down. "Pace stroller" turned into Formula 1 vehicle, but my body was saying, "Run your own race, now, girlfriend!" So I didn't try to keep up as they booked it for the finish line. I finished with a respectable 1:15 and some change, and I was very pleased with that! When I looked back, I saw that it was only 6 minutes more than my 2009 time, and I was running much more frequently that year (not to mention carrying about 10 pounds less, *cough*).

At the finish line!

(And why IS there never any rum?!?)

I felt like a little post-race fueling, since I also had to bike home, so I probably added about another 1/3 mile or so walking to & from the gelato place. (Lori, they had your macarons there, too! Another time, though, the gelato was calling...) The ride home was so pleasant! I passed a few of the 1/2 marathoners, and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the trail. All-in-all, it was a nice way to celebrate my "healthiversary."

But at least there was gelato! Yummy-yum-yum!

(I was not the only racer who stopped at Mezza Luna Cafe for a little "schmackerel of something sweet," as Pooh-bear would say...)

So...anyone up for one of the running events at the inaugural Half Moon Bay International Marathon on September 25? There's a free 5K, a 10K, a 1/2 marathon, and of course the full marathon. I'm feeling kind of torn about which one to sign up for. I know I can do the 10K and feel good, the 1/2 marathon would require more training and be a bit more painful...and then there's the full deal, a distance I have never done and never thought I wanted to do. Not to mention, it's only a few months away. But sheesh, there's just something about the idea of saying that I participated in the first one... (Having chatted about it with my doctor yesterday, she said that if I trained for it and just aimed for completion, I could do it if I wanted to.) Something to think about, anyway.

Easter Update

2011-04-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter for those celebrating the holiday; happy Spring weekend to all!

Here's the 10-minute update blitz:

We enjoyed a great visit with Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's eldest sister & her husband & their 3 kids. Things 1 & 2 enjoyed their cousin time! We all bonded through hockey, feasting, and my crew went on a Chinatown adventure with them at the end of the week. I got to show my sister-in-law some of my favorite trail walks, too!
The kids had a great time over spring break, and it's back to school on Tuesday. Sadly, part of spring break was the California kids' 4th grade hurdle: the California mission reports. (So Mr. H&H and I had homework, too.) Thing 1's assigned mission was Santa Clara de Asis. Did you know that Padre Serra traveled more during his time managing the 21 missions than Marco Polo and Lewis and Clark combined?
Easter was pleasant for us. Things 1&2 got some new Wii games, so there was lots of play. They hardly touched the candy. They did enjoy the egg hunt, and we're still finding a few plastic eggs here & there...why we're glad the Easter Bunny doesn't leave only hard boiled ones for us to hide.
Like Lori, I had my Reese's egg. :-9
I also had to get out for a walk, because the sun came out and I'd been feeling really cooped up over the weekend. I walked on the coast trail at dusk, and saw...tons of bunnies! Very Easter-y! I even felt like jogging a bit, even though I'd only planned on walking. So I jogged, oh, maybe a third of the way. The evening air was so crisp and clean by the water. I took a few pictures, and I'll have to share them later.

Time's up! Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful week!

Pubsgal Adrift

2011-04-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody! (Hopefully "everybody" includes a few human beings in the orchestra of crickets!)

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've written a blog post.

First, the fun stuff. We've been enjoying...

Our first Little League Baseball season with Thing 1!

(Of which all weekends in March were rained out except Opening Day.)

Birthday fun with Thing 2!

Spring flowers - the narcissus bloomed prolifically, but snails ate my daffodils. Grrr.

Checking out the studly neighbors

Random acts of silliness

We're also enjoying the fresh sight of a newly-painted kitchen. We have a couple of family visits over the next few weeks, so Mr. Handsome-and-Handy gave it a fresh coat. The walls are a buttery shade of gold--sort of like that in the folds of the narcissus flowers above--and the ceiling is white, which really brightens the kitchen up quite a lot.

So the home front is good.

The work front is actually going okay. I'm busier than ever, which certainly beats the alternative. But the intensity of the last couple of months has definitely thrown me off balance a bit. Which, in some ways, is a good thing. Life changes can be kind of like changing one's exercise routine: it exercises parts of ourselves that maybe aren't getting what they need to grow stronger.

But what has that meant for the health & fitness life? The word that comes to mind is "adrift," probably in both the positive and negative senses. In some ways, it's been freeing to not be so obsessively focused on it. To move along naturally, without exerting a lot of energy. On the other hand, "adrift" also means lacking direction, which isn't such a great thing for very long. I don't have my quarterly athletic events picked, for example. And although I didn't see this definition in Webster's, "adrift" also apparently means, "feeling wedged a bit too tightly in one's clothes." Not such a hot feeling.

How does a typical "Pubsgal adrift" week go? Well, "typical" implies consistency, which has been lacking lately, but here's a brief summary:

Sunday: Nom, nom, nom. Lounge, lounge, lounge. Nom, nom, nom. Thing 1 had a paper due tomorrow? Oh, bother!
Monday: Bolt breakfast. Work, work, work. Ugh, I don't feel like class at the gym during lunch. 2 p.m. already? Guess I'd better eat something. Thank goodness I have hula class tonight! Work, work, work. Bolt dinner. Hula, hula, hula. (Aloha, aloha, aloha!)
Tuesday: Bolt breakfast. Work, work, work. Another meeting? Work, work. Oh, hey, it was sunny out there today. Oh well. Bolt dinner. Supervise homework. (Secret #5,643 they don't tell you about parenthood: When the kids have homework, *you* have homework.) Read bedtime stories (that's one of the good secrets...they haven't outgrown bedtime stories!). Hop on stationary bike and watch another installment of "Eat, Pray, Love," the literal and internal travelogue of a woman named...uh, what was it? Oh, yeah. ~~Julia Roberts~~ Liz. It was beautifully filmed, and though it wasn't on my movie top 10 list, it had the occasional zinger of insight and of humor for me. Lately, I find that I'm relating best of all to her need for bigger jeans.
Wednesday: Linger over breakfast. What, today's not Thursday? ACK!!! Bolt breakfast. Drive kids to school. 1 p.m. meeting? Oh crud, looks like gym class is out again. And it's raining again, so a walk is out. (Of course, another week, this was, "Oooo, new farmer's market within walking distance of work? I'm there!!!" This past week, it was an inner dialog like this:
"I will lose all self-respect if I miss yet *another* week of gym class."
"But I'm scaaaaaaared! What if I can't keep up? Or get so sore that even typing and breathing makes me whimper for days?"
"(1) You *always* have DOMS after that class, what's the big deal? And (2), if you don't go, how will you know if you've still got it?"
"*sigh*. You win."
"Of course I do. Now go and pack that gym bag!")
Work, work, work. Hmmm...feels weird leaving when it's still light outside. Bolt dinner. Homework. Stationary bike. Bed.
Thursday: Linger over breakfast, because it's the kids' carpool day. Marvel that Mr. Handsome-and-Handy cooks beautiful omelettes every day, knowing I will bolt them down in about 5 minutes, and he's still okay with that. Work, work, work. Debate at lunch: gym, or walk? After so much rain in March, it's a pretty easy decision. Yeah, nice dose of vitamin D! Work, work, work. Go home, bolt dinner, homework, etc.
Friday: Hmmm. I think I'm coming down with the office cold...it doesn't feel like allergies. Weird, it's been so long since I've been sick. Work, work, work. Oh, whew, time to go home...Oh crud, I have to do birthday party shopping on the way home. But do I feel too sick for sugar-free mojitos tonight? Hmmm....nah!
Saturday: Collapse.
Well, except for one evening a couple of weeks ago: Zumba party school fundraiser! So awesome & fun! We whooped and hollered and shook our bangled bundas. (Boy, I was grateful for hula class and all the hip rolling.) One of the instructors had an inspiring story: she had started taking Zumba, and a group of her Weight Watchers friends asked her to teach them. She eventually lost 80 pounds and became a Zumba instructor.

So with the tightness of the pants came the realization that it was time to set a course and start paddling. I cracked open our local tourism guide one day last week, and on the calendar? A 10K race on June 12, so now I have a Q2 event in my sights. It's been awhile since I ran regularly, but I did a nice lunchtime run last Tuesday, and it felt fine. If I stay consistent, I can get back to the distance.

On the food front is where I've really been "la-la-la*I-can't-hear-you-scale*la-la-la." I've been fine with the carbs--blood glucose control has actually been good, and I've been seeing great fasting numbers--but I've been ignoring the caloric impact of fat and haven't been vigorous on the veggies. No tracking, no measuring, no weighing. This doesn't work so great for me, because I just can't ignore those things and experience my best possible health. So I brought back the calorie tracker. I didn't do so hot this week, but at least it gives me a general direction.

And there's a final definition of "adrift" that doesn't fit: lack of support. I miss the interaction of commenting on blogs regularly, but I have been reading and enjoying, and getting inspired by all of your adventures.

See you around the blogosphere, and I hope everyone enjoys a wonderful spring!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: The "Dude, Where's My Spring?" Edition

2011-03-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaand, that about sums it up...

P.S. - I've missed you guys!!! Will be back soon, I promise!

Weekly Update, 3/16/11: The "Ides of March" Edition

2011-03-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings, all y'all! Well, it's been an unquiet week-and-a-half in this sector of the Pubsgalaxy, but I'm still here and holding steady with the health & fitness stuff. And given the alternatives, well, I'm pretty content with that. Here's the news:

Stomach Flu & Tsunami Warnings: Wednesday night was stomach flu night for Thing 2 (wee girlie isn't going to be wanting Shamrock Shakes for awhile), and then at 4:17 a.m. on Friday morning we got a text message with the tsunami evacuation notice. I was half-expecting it, since we'd heard the news the night before about the earthquake in Japan. We're far enough up from the beach that we didn't need to go, but given that there's only one route to the outside world for our neighborhood, we went ahead and drove to the kids' school anyway, because we knew traffic would probably be really, really bad when it was time to go to school, and Thing 1 had a field trip scheduled for that day. After we got there, we got the news that all the schools in our district were closed (even ours, which wasn't being used as an evacuation site), but the road up to it was choked with traffic, so we ended up spending the morning with some school friends, who kindly took us in and made us coffee and pancakes and let us play with their new corgi puppy (squeeeee!!!). It ended up being, thankfully for us, a non-event. I sure wish it had also been that for the people of Japan. I don't usually follow the news much, but I have been following this one, and it's just mind-boggling and heart-breaking.
Big Changes at Work: I'm still not sure of the full impact, but our smallish company was bought by a really huge company, and our technological distinctiveness is being gradually added to its own. (Say what you will about assimilation, but I'm sure that this nifty ocular implant is going to come in especially handy. ;-)
Little League Opener: A very bright note during the past week was our celebrating Thing 1's opening day! The ceremony was very cool: all the teams were on the field, the mayor threw out the opening pitch, then each team had each player run the bases as the coach introduced the player. Thing 1's coach did a really nice job announcing them. Later in the afternoon, their team played their first game. Mr. H&H and Thing 2 got to watch; our team got first snack bar duty, so with Thing 1's OK, I went ahead and volunteered, but I missed seeing the game. Thing 1 struck out on his first time at bat, but he hung in there and at his second time, he got a hit and made it to 1st. Another player got a home run, so Thing 1 got to complete running the bases and scored for his team. And their team won the game, which was neat, because I think they have a lot of the newer players; all the kids seemed have a nice time, which is the important thing. So far, we're enjoying the team sports experience.

Health Stuff: Weight is up, but less than 1 pound. I'm still 5 pounds over where I was maintaining before the holidays. Blood glucose levels are looking good - for the last 7 days, fasting average is 96, overall average is 97. (I've been good about taking the fasting numbers, not so good at taking post-meal numbers.) Fitness-wise, I got at least 30 minutes, 7/10 days. (Not counting the hours-on-my-feet day working the snack bar!) Thank goodness for our stationary bike. I didn't make it to the gym much last week, and with the rain, it's a great option. This week is looking a bit better for making it to my gym classes, which is good, because I don't get much strength focus otherwise. (I was looking back over my Daily Mile log, and it's been a whole MONTH since I made it to my Wednesday class! Which has changed names to "Beach Body." Oy. This week there was a substitute instructor, and he was very energetic; I liked the way he incorporated a lot of flexibility stuff in there with the strength moves. (And I couldn't help but wonder what kind of coffee he drinks? Gotta get me some of that. Also gotta get me some hearing protection to keep in my purse, because he played his music way too loud. Eh! Darn those kids and their crazy loud music! ;-)

Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful rest-of-the-week and weekend! And happy St. Patrick's Day tomorrow - I need to remember to pick up some corned beef and cabbage at Whole Foods tomorrow! Or at least some corned beef, I can always make Brussels sprouts to go with it! :-)

Weekly Update, 3/7/11: The "Hanging in There" Edition

2011-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Well, it was quite the hectic week last week. Lots of life-swirl, but I'm feeling pretty good about getting through it with mostly-composed spirits.

So how did things go on the health & fitness front? Just...okay. I wish I'd gotten more running and strength training in there - I feel like I'm hanging on by my fingertips, and given that I can't even do one pull-up, that's kind of a scary thing. As you can see, actuals are not exactly what I had on my main plan, but at least I did stuff.

The plus side of the current swirl is that it was kind of nice to not be obsessed with food for a change. This is where I'd boast about Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and his mad chef skills, but I don't want anyone to hurl while reading this. Being able to go on healthy eating auto-pilot is helping my blood glucose levels to do well.

So it was nice to finally reach the weekend. Thing 2 and I got to delight her little shop-a-holic heart and go shopping. (Mostly errand shopping, but she needed shoes...and what's not to love about getting new shoes?) The boys got to go to baseball practice - Mr. H&H got to help with practice, and Thing 1 and he got a good workout! I wish I were more skilled at baseball, but even so, I'd really like to help with one of the practices one of these weekends - not many of the moms help out with the practices, but I think it would be a good thing.

Sunday was drizzly, so it was a flop-at-home day. We read books and baked cookies (Trader Joe's mix of sugar cookies - not overly tempting, yet satisfied our urge to bake something). Kind of nice to kick back a little, because with the Little League season starting next weekend, our weekends are going to be off-the-hook crazy until mid-June.

I think I'll close by sharing some photos from our garden. February was so strange - heat wave followed by cold wave - but no snow at sea-level. Southern California got our snow, sad to say. But our plants are doing nicely. Our camellia bushes usually flower in January, so they were a little late, but we have one that gets light pink and dark pink blossoms - isn't that weird? My bulbs came up, which was a relief. I thought the gophers had eaten them all. We have the ideal climate for calla lilies, and they can get pretty invasive here if you're not careful.

Our mixed-up camellia bush

Isn't this a pretty one?

How could a lovely plant like this be plotting world domination?

Can't wait to see how this one blooms!

Where's Pubsgal?

2011-02-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

Popping back in briefly to let you all know I'm still around, but swamped beyond belief. It'll probably be a couple more weeks before things are back to what passes for normal around here. :-)

All's well - not much different on the health & fitness front. I'm running a little bit more, but I missed my strength stuff last week. The Things were on school break, which eased up the home schedule a bit, but the work schedule has been pretty relentless. This coming week is going to be quite the juggle, but life will do that now & then. My plan? Is to plan, and backup plan, when it comes to the food & fitness stuff: pack lots of veggies in my lunches (and Greek-style yogurt - Safeway had a lot of it on sale this week!) and stick to my workout plans. I've been finding it's the workout plans that tend to suffer during times like these, so here's the schedule:

Monday: If no meeting conflicts, lunchtime transformer class + run 1 mile + evening hula class; if meeting conflicts, just hula class.
Tuesday: Treadmill run at the gym (3 miles) at lunch. (Backup: stationary bike @ home, evening)
Wednesday: Gym in the morning; 1 mile on elliptical + strength exercises. (Backup: 30 Day shred @ home, evening)
Thursday: Treadmill run at the gym (3 miles) at lunch. (Backup: stationary bike @ home, evening)
Friday: Morning lap swim, 30 minutes. Backup plan: Walk at lunch.
Saturday: Flop.
Sunday: If no rainy weather, run or bike ride outside; if rainy weather, stationary bike at home.

Hope everyone has a great week ahead!

Event report: 14-Miler for the 1st Annual Blogger's Healthy Heart Weekend!

2011-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

As many of you probably know, Lori of the blog Finding Radiance sponsored the 1st Annual Blogger's Healthy Heart Weekend this past weekend! It was a virtual event, in which people could create their own event, to be done over the Valentine's Day weekend. (And of course, she offered fabulous prizes!)

Well, how could I not make that one of my Q1 2011 events?

Because weekends are a tricky time for me to schedule in exercise stuff, I wasn't entirely sure which day or what I would be doing. My swim on Friday would have been a nice candidate, had I remembered to take pictures. I thought of the sunset hike I'd planned with Mr. Handsome-and-Handy for our date night, but again, we both forgot our phones, so no photos. Plus it ended up being a short and not a very heart rate-raising hike, since we were going out to dinner after. (What? Our fellow diners would object to a little sweat?) We did catch an amazing sunset up on Pillar Point Bluffs - we even saw the green flash! Which is just a little bit of green light, not a huge flash, but still very cool to see.

So I knew Sunday would be my last chance. I fueled up with some peanut flour protein waffles (Lori's recipe - which works great for pancakes OR waffles! Mr. H&H prefers them as waffles.) and bacon and egg and coffee, and got in my grubby clothes. D'oh! Forgot there was a Detroit Red Wings game on TV, and I thought it would be nice to watch one with Mr. H&H for a change. And it was nice, plus I got some knitting done, too.

And then someone wanted me to make mudpies with her. How could I resist this?

You know, the great part about making mudpies is that you have the fun and creativity of cooking, but without having to eat it, or find someone else to eat it for you!

We ended up making mud soup, mud cookies out of the first failed mud cake, and that lovely item. We also ended up blowing bubbles with Thing 1 and his friend, and I was pretty happily occupied until it was time to help Thing 1 with some homework. Ugh.

But then, I got my chance to get out on my bike and do my event! I decided to ride 14 miles, in honor of Valentine's Day. I ended up riding north toward the harbor (cutting over to the coastal trail as soon as possible, there were a lot of cars on the road - which meant some slow & go in the more popular walking sections, but it was worth not having to worry as much about cars), and then back down past the state beach, then back out to the highway, down the bike trail, up the bike trail, and through town (had to walk in spots there). I did a lap up to the high school and around the parking lots, and then headed to my neighborhood, where I had to do an extra lap to get my 14. Whew! It took an hour and a half to do the whole thing, but that takes into account the walking spots (had to walk a few blocks through town, plus had a massive gear shift failure going up the rather steep hill to the high school), photos, crossing the street at cross walks, and the like.

The weather was cool and the clouds were rolling in, but it was very pleasant once I got going. I tried out my new running gloves, and they worked nicely for keeping my hands warm on the bike. I also sported my very bright and reflective safety vest, and it was comfortable. When I paused on the trail for one of my photos, a very happy dog came trotting up to me, bearing a large stick. I said, "Wow, for me?" But no, he was just showing off. I laughed, because it reminded me of Noah, Debby's dog, who enjoys collecting sticks longer than himself, too.

And now, the photos:

Starting mileage (because I don't know how to reset the mile counter!)

Ol' Trusty-but-not-Rusty!

Greetings from the trail!

Wish you were here - and I bet you do, too!

Sunset from the high school hilltop - hoo boy, I'd better get home before the streetlights come on!

Ending mileage!

Happy and hopefully a little more heart-healthy! Thanks, Lori!

Wordless (?!?) Weekly Update

2011-02-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

Race Report: Pre-season Burn Series, Series 1 (A Mini-tri!)

2011-01-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for your comments & cheering on my 1/2 marathon report! Thanks so much - I sure loved and appreciated them! Once I got time and space to dedicate to writing it, the writing was enjoyable and the finishing even sweeter. I do love to write and share a race report!

So there I was, having this little new year slump, when what should I stumble upon online but a NEW mini-triathlon series located close to me! (Talk about your "woo-woo" moment!) It's the "Pre-season Burn Series," a series of 3 triathlons on the College of San Mateo campus on January 16, February 13, and March 13. Each event comprises a 200 yard swim in the new aquatic center pool (plush!), a 6-mile bike ride (10k actually, which is a little more) on a type of new stationary bike called the "Wattbike," and a 1.5 mile "rolling loop" course through the campus. This distance is sometimes called a "super sprint," which is shorter than a sprint distance; there's no standard distance for sprint distance, but the Pre-season Burn Series is about half of a regular sprint.

Well. Y'all know I do love me a triathlon. The question was, should I wait until February or March, or do it now? Ha ha ha ha ha! Yep, you got me: you know that wasn't a question at all. :-) I was all fired up to do it ASAP! Since the series was new, I figured it would be okay to do a race-day registration.

So...even though the race was somewhat casual and I told myself, "It's just like a workout," I still slept really poorly the night before and was waking up every hour or so. Typical pre-race stuff. Then - YAWN - up bright and early and before my family on a Sunday morning, tip-toeing around (not so quietly - the orthotics in my shoes squeaked like mad) and getting ready. Because Sunday is Kids' Donut Day in our house, I dashed off to the donut shop and picked up their donuts. The glazed twists were HOT out of the fryer, but the donut shop people were happy to glaze a few of them with chocolate frosting. We usually only get two, but hot donut? Yes, please! Part of one of them ended up as part of the 'Breakfast of'...well, this triathlete anyway. That, and a heaping cup of coffee. And some nuts.

Thus fueled, I was out the door and on campus by 6:30 a.m. Start time was scheduled for 8 a.m., with packet pickup/registration 6:00-7:30 a.m. When I arrived, the event staff were just arriving, so I ended up waiting around until about 7:15. I walked around, did a little hula practice as I watched the sunrise. Being a Sunday, on-campus parking was free (yeay!), so I didn't have to pay extra for waiting.

The setting up - ooo, all misty and mysterious!

I registered, and wandered around until it was time for the race to start. Pre-race, the Wattbike folks helped everyone determine their settings and try them out. They ride more like a regular bike than a spin bike - "coasting" will not snap your foot off, for example - and the computer monitor has all kinds of cool features, such as stroke analysis graphing, so that you can see which side of your body is delivering more power and you can see how you need to adjust your pedaling to get more power on the upstroke. The front wheel has a huge fan inside, so with 10 of them set up along the pool deck, it sounded like a wind tunnel! :-) I'm glad I took a little time to check them out before the race. That was another great part of this event - everyone had the same equipment for the bike portion, although most folks had bike shoes and thus a power advantage from being able to clip into the pedals.

It turned out that I was in wave 4, which didn't end up starting until 9:30! That's a lot of time to mill around and drink coffee and go to the bathroom about 50 times. I took a little time to walk around the run course, which sure beat standing around and trying not to stare at the guys in their Speedos. I'm glad I did the walkabout, because I was able to see where the hills were before the thick fog set in! The morning had started rather clear, but you could hardly see buildings that were right across from each other as the morning progressed.

I felt a little lonely and bored - no one there seemed to want to chat - so I fired up Twitter and Facebook and got some good cheering up before the race.

On Facebook: "I forgot how much of this sport is hurry-up-and-wait...
but at least there's lots of lovely coffee!"

Great thing #2 about the race: Everyone in the wave got their own pool lane! After the Lompoc tri, this was a relief, because even though everyone was really nice about sharing, I felt compelled to go a little faster than I felt comfortable going. After the men's wave before ours, I grabbed a bike that would correspond to a lane fairly close to the pool ladder, set up transition and bike, and then waited for the go-ahead.

And then, we were off! Only 8 times across the pool, but I still felt really rushed and like I wasn't getting enough air, so I broke from the front crawl into a breaststroke. (I'm a slow swimmer anyway, and my pace is the same for either one, so I knew it wasn't going to cost me to do this.) I was the last one out of the pool - had to pause a moment at the ladder to catch my breath before heaving out of the pool and onto the bikes.

Transition went fairly quickly, although it seemed reeeeeally slow when everyone was already on their bikes pedaling away. Putting on my tights and tech shirt was a bit tricky, and of course having to tie my shoes was a bit of a pain, but on the other hand, no shoes to change after the bike! I jumped on and stated pedaling like mad. I made it my goal to maintain the revolutions-per-minute that the Wattbike guy recommended, and I liked the way it counted down the meters. I could also see my neighbor's monitor, so I made it my goal to catch up with her. Whew! Burn, baby, burn! Oh, and it turns out I drop things off of my bike during a race, even when the bike is stationary! *blush* My electrolyte water bottle didn't quite make it back into the rack. One of the nice tri staffers put it back for me. :-) Another one of the nice tri staff came around and was writing down our names so they could record the bike times in the computer system (we wore chips during the race). "Wow," he remarked to me, "You're kicking ass!" Being the queen of delayed repartee, of course I didn't think of my response - "And you're taking names!" - until after he moved on. Oh well. I was delighted to jump off the bike before a few other people, and I was off to the run...well, after the initial leg wobbles wore off, before then it was more of a quick stagger.

I was glad to know what to expect on the run! I felt like that helped me keep a good pace for me, and I kicked it up on the last bit. The woman I "passed" on the bike blew past at about the halfway point - "I knew you'd catch me on the run!" I grinned - I tried to keep pace, but no dice. Luckily there wasn't anyone around when I made my muttering-to-myself sprint to the finish!

"43:47" called the gentleman at the finish line. Huh? Wow!

Greetings from...the Finish line!
(Isn't it weird how foggy it got after sunrise?)

It turns out I placed 39/41 overall - yes, with all else being equal, that's still way at the back of the pack. I think it was a pretty fast field, though. The top 10 were sub-30 minutes (fastest time was 25:06), the next 19 were sub-40 minutes, and 8 were sub-50 minutes, and 2 were sub-60 minutes.

I was quite happy with my time, though. I'm not sure if an equivalent time would be possible in a full-distance sprint tri with my regular bike (that would be 1:27:34 for 400 yard swim, 12.5 mile bike, and 3 mile run). I think the bike monitor helped me push harder, and I'm sure not having to worry about steering and road conditions made it much easier to just pump out the distance. Plus I think it gave me a taste for what a better bike could do - I don't think I could get equivalent speed out of my current bike or my limited "real bike" skills. The most equivalent 2x-this-distance race I can think of was the See Jane Tri - my time was 1:46:40 for 400 m swim, 11 mile bike, 3.1 mile run - but the bike was much more hilly. Lompoc, with 500 m swim, 11 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run, was 1:39:06. It's so hard to compare sprint triathlons. But I think it's safe to say that even though I feel like I haven't improved a whole lot, I can claim some improvement. And that is a really, really good feeling.

So...nice setup, good swag (t-shirt and hand towel, all the Starbucks I could drink, sugar-free flavored electrolyte drinks), great staff and volunteers: this series is a winner! I'd highly recommend it, especially for folks who want to get a taste of triathlon without having to do a full sprint distance or lug a wetsuit, bike, etc. I hope to do at least one more of these. I think next time I'd see about buying a guest pass for the posh athletic center and trying out the facilities (or even better, warming up in the other lanes of the swimming pool).

It's also a good feeling to meet my Q1 event-per-quarter goal already! And yes, OF COURSE I'm doing something for Lori of Finding Radiance's "1st Annual Bloggers Healthy Heart Weekend"! Check it out!

The Not-So-Weekly Update

Well. In the grand scheme of what a lot of you all and your families are going through, my main health-and-fitness gripe is pretty much a non-issue. My 6 pounds of holiday overage is still hanging in there. So, apparently, are some not-so-good food choices (see "donuts as 'Breakfast of Triathlete'" and sundry highly caloric-yet-healthy weekend madness). No, it's not muscle, because my pants are a little tighter around the tummy and I haven't upped my strength workouts. The weekday feedings go pretty well, the weekends haven't quite as much, so I've got something to work on there.

On the other hand, the good news is that my blood glucose numbers are great! I haven't reported in awhile - 30 day average is 98 overall and 101 fasting, with the last 7 days being 101 overall and 105 fasting (darn today's PMS number for messing with the curve!). I've also been getting new and fun activity - my hula class is a blast, I found a cute, swishy-yet-fitnessy skirt at Goodwill to banish my very non-Aloha-spirited skirt envy I felt during class #2, and I think I like the deceptively difficult 30-minutes-of-not-tangling-self-in-exercise-bands (aka "Transformer" class) at the gym. Work craziness keeps messing with my overall gym schedule, but I'm at least hanging in there with my basic minimum (30 minutes, 5 days, at least 1 strength).

How About a New New Year?

(Or a NEW New Year if you're a Two Fit Chicks fan? Loved podcast #23!)

Maybe we should do a New Year's do-over on the first day of the lunar new year. (Because seriously, I think we've had quite enough of the funky stuff in January, don't you?) February 3, 2011 begins the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac and year of the Cat in the Vietnamese zodiac. Bunnies, kitties...what's not to love?

Kittehs make everything better

Update - 2 minute plank for the PLANKTASTIC PLANKATHON!

I'm not big on planks. In fact, when I saw that Foodie McBody and Josie of YumYucky were having a "The Planktastic Plankathon Challenge," well, I tried to studiously ignore it. I mean, I thought I could only do a 30 second plank, and there were folks like Sagan, the Queen of All Things Planky, doing 6+ minutes!

But then, I saw that Foodie McBody posted a video of her 88-year-old mom doing a plank, and I was won over. I had to get off my bum and on my toes and forearms!

So I grabbed Thing 1, our camera with video powers, and my stop watch, and assumed the position. When I got to 1:30, I knew I had to go for 2 minutes, and what do you know? I probably didn't do it very well, but I did it! (Well, if moving my feet a little is okay, I did.)

Raw "Planktastic Plankathon!" footage

(which I think makes it even funnier)

"Why did you do that?" asked Thing 1. "Wait - don't tell me - it's for your blog, isn't it?"

Race Report: Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon Weekend!

2011-01-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

Or, The 27,667 Long-freakin' Steps (and Then Some)

If you were on Twitter or Facebook this morning, I bet you weren't expecting the write-up of my experience at the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon! This took a long time to write, for many reasons, but oddly enough my mojo-restoring mini-sprint triathlon this morning got the "I'm going to finish this thing!" writing juices flowing!

The Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon wasn't just a race--it was an entire weekend experience. It wasn't just an entire weekend experience, though. It was the culmination of months of...well, I'd like to say hard and consistent training, but it wasn't that, either...more like scraping together enough training to feel okay about completing the course within the cutoff time.

This is a long one. Sit back, grab a cup of your stimulating beverage of choice...here we go!

The Tribal Invasion

It all started when MizFit and Bookieboo decided to run the Las Vegas Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon. Lots of bloggers got excited about the idea, and Foodie McBody offered a place to stay on the Strip. I gave my husband "pretty eyes" (wide eyes with batting eyelashes; my daughter does that quite effectively when she wants something) and mentioned something about it being the ideal Christmas gift. So when I got the go-ahead, I jumped on it: told Foodie I was in, registered for the race, and booked a flight.

Thus committed, I started training. But then, as regular readers know, my training went awry. Each time I ran, I had these shooting pains in my leg, starting around my ankle. I ended up resting the leg, getting a referral from my doctor for a podiatrist, and needing to get new shoes, orthotics, and an ankle brace. *sniff*...gone were the days of cheap running shoes! On the other hand, my new shoes (New Balance 1123s) are super comfy!

Oddly enough, a weekend that had seemed like it was going to be "Fit Bloggin' West" started dwindling: life circumstances and injuries saw lots of people cancel their plans to be there. I was a little worried about ending up as the lone blogger, but luckily Foodie McBody and her daughter, Jr. McBody, were still game, as were several other members of the healthy living tribe. I would still be in good, if fewer, company.

I Lost My Modesty in SFO

So I packed my bags, did my pre-trip freaking out (eeeek! I'm going to big, bad Las Vegas! Without my family! How am I going to get to the hotel? What am I going to eat? EEEEEEK!), and the next morning I drove over to the airport.

The trip was quite smooth. I guess my only weird moment was ending up in the security line that went through those new scanners. I wasn't crazy about the idea - you have to stand with your arms up inside the thing, which seems kind of demeaning. However, they don't project your image on a screen for everyone to see, thank goodness...although, heck, the TSA might be able to spin off a little side business, offering people a "souvenir photo" of their scanning. Commemorative t-shirts, maybe? I think a photo shirt with the slogans "The TSA Didn't Touch My Junk..." or "My Mom Went Through the SFO Security Checkpoint and All I Got Was this Stupid T-shirt" might work.

[image courtesy of Wikimedia commons...didn't feel like showing the stock photo everyone's seen in the news already]

The plane flight went well (with the most funny pre-flight talk I've ever heard). I enjoyed the marvelous company of Charlotte Hilton Andersen...well, not in person (bummer!), but through her incredible new book, The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything! I finished this book later in December. In Mythbusters fashion, Charlotte and the Gym Buddies put various fitness programs to the test. I loved reading about each of the experiments, and the pros & cons of the various fitness programs they did. I adore Charlotte's writing and sense of humor, and it was such a treat to have it in book form! As MizFit mentioned in her review, it's also a fitness memoir. It goes deeply into Charlotte's personal experiences and how they affected her fitness experience. I think my only word of caution would be about some of the personal essays (in particular, the December chapter's). I don't know everyone's experience with sexual assault, so just be forewarned if reading about it would trigger mental or emotional pain that you would prefer not being triggered. Who of us wouldn't feel pain to read of anyone going through that experience? I found it painful and uncomfortable to read about; not something I've had to go through myself, but it makes me so angry that "people" treat other people like that. No one deserves it. Anyhow. The personal essays give context and depth to Charlotte's fitness experiments. I especially found her treatment of body image issues to be powerful, and I think that it could be healing for many (women in particular) to read her insights.

I arrived in Las Vegas and met up with Jr. McBody to share a cab. There were tons of people, and it took awhile to get a cab to the Expo. Not only were the foot racers in town, but the National Finals Rodeo folks were there, too - that explained all the people sporting cowboy hats!

Plastic Is Burning

We arrived at the Expo and met up with Foodie. I was relieved to get my packet and t-shirt, and then we hit the expo.

Can you spot the REAL showgirl?

I was pretty much unmoved by the merchandise...that is, until we hit the One More Mile booth! Oh my! So many funny shirts and bondi bands, so little room in my suitcase! I figured a polar fleece bondi band was a good pick, since it might be cold the next morning. I got the one that read "Race Day Strategy: Start off slow, then back off." Then I found the shirt I'd seen and admired at a race: "Does this shirt make my butt look fast?" I had to get the "I thought they said 'rum'" one, and then I saw one with a penguin and the phrase "No Need for Speed." So many others, but really, how many technical shirts does a girl need? Now I have to figure out which shirts to weed out of the shirt drawer.

Pre-race jitters at the Expo. And with good reason!

Candy? Or sushi? So confusing....

The OTHER thing I was looking forward to on this trip was the opportunity to see the Cirque du Soleil show "O," which I'd heard was amazing and had hoped to see if I ever made it to Vegas again. (The last time I went was 13 years ago; our company sent us all out there to see the Cirque du Soleil show "Mystere." It was the day after we'd just hosted a party, and I was beat, so the frenetic atmosphere of Vegas was a bit much. Had someone told me that 13 years later I'd be going back to do a 1/2 marathon, I would never have believed the person. I think I would have fallen off my chair laughing, with maybe a floor roll or two. I know that's kind of a cliche image, but it would have truly been my response.)

By this time, I was pretty ravenous. We ended up eating at the Bellagio, in a restaurant called Yellowtail, which is a Japanese sushi bar-style place. The young waiter cracked us up ("Hi, I'm server_name, and I'm going to be hanging out with you tonight!" Uh huh.), he initially offered me black tea or Earl Grey when I asked for tea (but it worked out okay and I ended up with the desired green tea, in a handsome cast-iron teapot), and the menu had some interesting specials. One, which Jr. ordered, was a crab sushi roll with watermelon Pop Rocks candy. I suspect this is the one that the chefs laugh about people ordering, because candy in sushi? Yep, works about as well as you'd think. Everything else (tempura, spicy tuna roll, and roasted eggplant) was superb.

At one point, I noticed water shooting past the windows. We saw people going out the French doors, and sure enough, there was a small patio, from which we had a splendid view of the Bellagio dancing fountains!

Oooo!

Aaaaah!

Wow!

So, the show "O" was as fantastic as I'd imagined. It's hard to describe...amazing music, lighting and sets are gorgeously dramatic, and acrobatic feats that make you go "wow!" Definitely worth it!

So then, we took a cab (I've never ridden in so many cabs in my life!) back to the hotel...

Nice view, eh?

...and everyone tried to get to sleep....

[On Facebook...]
"ready as I'll ever be" - Foodie McBody, December 4, 2010, 11:15 pm
"Likewise. Go to sleep!!! ;-D " - my responses, 11:18 p.m.
"Why aren't YOU sleeping?!? LOL
OK, I'm shutting down now." - Foodie's response, 11:21 p.m.

I always get lousy sleep the night before a race, and this was no exception. But eventually I drifted off for awhile...

"Go, Johnny, Go"

Then all of a sudden, it was 5 a.m.

Those who knew me before "opposite life"

know how completely opposite it is for me to

(1) be willingly awake at this hour...

(2) ...for the act of running, no less...

(3) ...looking quite this chipper.

Our grand plan was to get ready, then to wander over to the Sahara and get a cab from their back entrance and arrive near the Mandalay Bay on a side street across the strip. And, other than a few very tense moments of wondering whether a cab would show up, we got one. And sure enough, we got dropped off pretty much across the strip from the starting line.

The atmosphere of intense, palpable excitement caught me by surprise. There were helicopters hovering over the starting area, tens of thousands of people excitedly milling about, and scenes from the event were broadcast onto the Mandalay Bay jumbotron sign...wow-o-wow!!!

"Hi, Mom!"

What they don't tell you? Is how unbelievably far the starting line and corrals for the wave starts are from the bag check. We got our obligatory photo with tinsel boas, and then I packed 'em up and did the hike (at least a good 1/2 mile round-trip) to rid myself of the bag and hit the port-o-potties.

A little pre-race hijinx

So back to the corral. Foodie told me that Mrs. Fatass was there, at the front of the corral, except she meant her corral. So I wandered around, checking out the chest of every brown-haired woman in Corral #31, looking for a "Mrs. Fatass" t-shirt, and shyly calling out "Sue?" Er, sorry if I creeped anyone out....

So after milling a bit, and watching Elvises and even an Elvis SpongeBob SquarePants pass under the starting arch, our group began to slowly move forward. I realized that yes, I felt like I had to pee again. Our group took at least 40 minutes to inch our way to the start, but I'm so glad they had a nice, gradual wave start and no one got trampled. And oh, look! There by the start! Port-o-potties, all in a row, with lines that didn't seem long. Amazing how long it seems for 5 people to go pee when your wave has already started.

Go, Pubsgal, Go!

(And shouldn't that guy be going the other way?)
(And what am I doing, stopping to take a picture?!? GO ALREADY!!!)

When I emerged, the Blues Brothers impersonators were belting out "Go! Go Johnny Go!" and I abandoned my idea of a slow start. I pelted through the starting arch and down the strip to catch the back of the pack.

As I trotted along, I kept an eye out for Mrs. Fatass, and I was in luck! I was so happy to finally meet her in person! We walked for awhile and chatted about our weekends so far, and other stuff. I wasn't sure how long she'd want company, so I was very happy and honored to read in her report that I was a welcome distraction! ;-) I decided to jog on ahead at the 5K marker, and so we snapped a photo and continued with our races.

Pinch me!!! It's the fantabulous Mrs. Fatass and me at the 5K marker!

(So excited to finally meet my "bikini mentor"! ;-)

(And is it bad form to wear a tri hat at a running race? Ooops.)

The part of the race on the main strip was tons of fun. There's plenty to see, lots of music (and not just the race bands) playing, and just a great vibe. I was delighted at how well-stocked the aid stations were throughout the entire race, although I found myself having to watch my step a bit from all the dropped & crushed cups in the middle of the road. The volunteers were great, and my mind boggles at the logistics of planning and implementing something like this.

"What the **** Was I Thinking?!?"

So I "wogged" along merrily until about mile 6. That's when I had to start dealing with not only the mental part of the race, but also the distinct lack of inspiration along the course. It was the section between The Strip and Downtown. We passed pawn shops, liquor stores, apartment buildings, bleak wedding chapels, a Federal building. We did get a brief enjoyable glance at Fremont Street and some of the famous old neon signs of Las Vegas.

Foodie McBody likened this part of the race to the "Harry Potter maze of death." Here is the map of my thoughts during the taunting that was miles 6-9:

The scenery didn't have as much to offer, it was hard, but that's when the camaraderie seemed to kick up a notch. People on the course chatted with each other, I met a lovely fellow racer from Zappos, I stopped to get photos and take photos of other racers at the part where you could see the old "Las Vegas" neon signs.

Sometimes, you just gotta be a tourist. Even in the middle of a race.

I wasn't the only one who waved my hands in the air like I didn't care (au contraire - like several others, I did care about getting puffy hands). I liked offering to take photos of some of the couples, because I know it's tough to get both parties in the picture.

"Party in the Pint?" Yes, please.

After passing mile 8, I entered the undiscovered country: this is as far as my training, such as it was, had taken me. It's funny, though. I never thought that I wouldn't make it. Not really. Oh, sure, I knew that if injury happened, I'd quit, or if I felt seriously ill, I would quit. These things happen to people during races sometimes. But barring those, I was going to keep going.

Any Port-o-Let in a Storm

So I was very glad about the amount of facilities on course. Because all that hydration is going to catch up with a body, and sometimes your digestive system has its own "What were you THINKing?!?" moments. While I thankfully didn't experience any moments needing this product, the 2 "bio breaks" probably sucked up at least 15 minutes of my race time. The one I was a little peeved about was the break where I saw one with a line of about 5 or 6 people near the medical table. I wasn't sure where I'd find another one, and I didn't want to run with that sort of pain. So I waited...and waited...and waited....FINALLY! As I dashed out and around the corner, there they were: the 20 or so general use ones with no lines. (Someone could have told us, perhaps? Oh well.)

"Ain't That a Kick in the Head"

So I emerged from the Maze: hip sockets and knees aching, muscles feeling fine, and my ankles had never been better. I'd been sticking to my food and hydration plan, but also did a bit of my usual trying new things on race day. I tried my first Gu...hmmm, goopy. I drank the electrolyte drink stuff. I kept moving.

Yeay, there was music again! I typically don't work out with any music other than the ambient stuff at the gym, so I was used to not having it, but it sure does put a spring in one's step. I saw the back of the pack and the follow-up vehicles once I got to the strip. I finally passed the Stratosphere...9 miles..."Christie O. does a whole one of these and swims over a mile and rides a bike 50 something miles - OMG, how???"....noticed the "Nascar Cafe" that would have impressed Thing 1...Hi, hotel! *sigh* "Miles to go before I sleep"...mile 10. Oh my gosh. Only a 5k race to go! I'm really going to DO this thing!!! I noticed some racers dashing back out from from one of the casinos...with beer. Boy, that looked good! And then I caught sight of the Mandalay Bay: the end was in sight! Still kind of far, but in sight. I got a little teary as I jogged along. I was hurting, man was I hurting, but not in an injured way, so I just kept shuffling along. At almost mile 13, our lane was next to the marathon (OMG, I cannot even imagine!) finish lane. Then right in front of the Mandalay Bay, there were the Rat Pack impersonators, singing, "Ain't That a Kick in the Head."

Deano, you don't know the half of it.

So there was mile 13. The sign I never thought I'd see. The last .1 was pretty cruel, up the only "hill" on the course, and across the neverending parking lot. And there was...the finish? For reals?!?!

For reals!!! I wanted to get photos of this, because heaven only knows when--if ever--I'd feel like doing something like this again. So there I was, walking and futzing with my phone, and getting a crummy picture.

"Um, Pubsgal? Isn't this when we should be racing toward our triumphant finish!?!"

Yeah, I know. Something for your amusement: Official race photos and finish line video. With me walking, then doing a last-few-yards' dash. I had no idea that I would be able to view video of not only my approach to this monumental finish line, but my having crossed it, too! Otherwise, I would not have bothered futzing with my phone. That video cracked me up, though. It captures the tension in one of these races for a blogger: how much should I be "in the moment" and how much should I stop to capture the moment in photos.

Oh, there's the triumphant finish!

(Look like I wasn't the only one trying to catch it on film.)

Mr. Handsome-and-Handy bought the crossing-the-finish-line photo for me. And there I am, arms raised in thanksgiving and relief, lips pursed in the hearty "Woo hoo!" of victory, bracelet glistening on one wrist (bracelet which has talismans from my girlfriends, both those I've known a long time and those whom I have met and have yet to meet through the wonderful world of blogging), cell phone in the other.

Because you just can't have too many finish line photos.

(This was taken by the guy in the other photo,

and I returned the favor for him and his running companion.)

So there I was. Done with a half-marathon, and lapsing into what triathlete Jayne Williams dubbed "Post-Race Stupidity Syndrome." It doesn't just happens to triathletes...or maybe it only happens to us, whether we are doing a triathlon or a foot race or whatever. The post race was already kicking my posterior. I wandered in a daze, and someone handed me a medal. Huh? Oh, yeah, medal! Sweet bling! I went through the photo-with-my-medal chute. I walked in circles a few times in front of the medical tent, because I was feeling kind of iffy and I wanted to make sure I was near someone who could help if I collapsed into a heap. I ate a banana and felt a little better, and I walked some more. I decided I was going to be okay, and I wandered out of the finish area to gather my checked-in items. I tried to call and text my husband, to let him know I'd survived the race, but cell phones were reduced to shiny river rocks in the post-race area.

Thank goodness I found Foodie McBody, because I needed to see a familiar face of someone who had also survived this race. I burst into tears. And then wiped my eyes, and mugged for a photo.

Heck yeah, we did this thing!

So here's the part not everyone mentions much in their race reports: the getting-back-to-somewhere-in-which-one-can-collapse part. As Foodie mentioned, it took us an hour and a half to return. Thankfully, there were two monorails that conveyed us most of the way. But there was also the painful journey through the bowels of the MGM Grand to the monorail station...it felt like MILES. I just trailed, dazed, in the wake of the McBody women, stopping with them to eat the most welcome ever tuna sandwich of my life, finally getting to the monorail - hey, a monorail! Thing 1 would love this! - hiking through the Sahara (which was familiar from that morning), then up the driveway of the Hilton, up to the room, and aaaahhhh....Oh wait, I need ice.

Ice, Ice, Bay-beh!

So I figured out how to do an ice bath. It was heavenly. I followed instructions I'd read, and I ran a lukewarm tub. I got in, put a little ice in, and then put some of the ice in a plastic bag and iced the owie parts. Which was just about all of my joints. My muscles felt fine (thank you, Zensah tights!!!), and I can't believe it: NO blisters. Unbelievable.

I soaked, I was finally able to talk to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and my merry crew. I emerged, still munching on nuts and things, and then I felt really cold, so I bundled up and hung out in the bed for awhile. And then we went were off for dinner at Serendipity III. But not before the ride in the "Caustic Cab."

"It's all these people from California"

Unlike "Cash Cab," in which you have the opportunity to win fabulous wealth (or at least get reimbursed for your cab fare in a major city), "Caustic Cab" was the delightful domain of the Angry Taxi Driver. We had taken a veritable legion of taxis over the weekend, and I was amazed that we hadn't encountered an Angry Taxi Driver until then. He started grousing the minute we got in about how awful a weekend he was having, how people were stiffing him on his tips (astonish me!), and the like. "It's all these people from California," he muttered as he rounded a curve. Gulp. We all nervously eyed each other in the back seat. We are about as crunchy-granola California as a group could get. On he drove, and just about every word from his lips could not have been more accurately targeted to offend us had they been calculated to do so.

I guess our silence finally soaked in. We a little over halfway there, and he asked where we were from.

"From California!" I chirped.

"What part?" he inquired.

Oh, this was rich. "San Francisco Bay Area!"

At that, bless him, he had the grace to laugh. That "oh I just shot myself in the foot but good" laugh. And we then talked about non-flammable subjects like places with beautiful scenery.

"I Just Finished a Half-Marathon, Heck Yeah I'm Going to Eat That!"

So we then enjoyed a tasty dinner at Serendipity III, where we all shared some of their frozen hot chocolate, some Kobe beef sliders (yum!!!), and I had a great crab cake salad. We were a little worried when they only brought 2 baskets of sweet potato fries, but there ended up being more than we could finish. We walked over to the Caesar's Palace taxi stand, and the sitting had made me stiff and sore. I was hobbling so noticably that Jr. asked if I was okay. I wasn't so sure...I felt kind of queasy. But the feeling passed. We bid a fond farewell to Jr., took a cab back to the hotel, and then, as Foodie so eloquently put it, we respectively "CRASHED HARD."

"Well, I'm Back"

The trip home went smoothly. Hopefully I wasn't too much of a pain in the patootie about getting to the airport sufficiently early, which made us both way early for our flights. I made it home in time to hang out with my dad (who was visiting that weekend) and Mr. H&H until it was time to pick up the Things from school. Oh, it was so good to see everyone!

Of course, the kids were curious if I'd "won." It's hard to explain how I feel great about a race, even with having 17,895 people kick my hiney. ;-) My pace would not impress any of the runners out there, in fact, any snooty ones out there would scoff. But in having a great experience with friends, and by overcoming my fear of the distance, the frustration of injury mid-training, and the minor worries about travel and logistics, I feel like I won big time.

I also feel pretty darn lucky to have only about 24 hours of feeling gross after the race. My ankles felt a little fatigued and sore after the race, but it was a different sore than my injury, and rest + gentle activity did the trick. In fact, I had a follow-up appointment with the podiatrist the Wednesday after I got back, and it was such a kick to tell him that I'd finished a half-marathon on foot only a few days before.

What Happens In Vegas, Stays in Vegas...

...unless you're among bloggers, in which case, it gets texted, Tweeted, Facebooked, photographed, videoed, and blogged about. Here are some other reports I've run across from those of "the Tribe," as MizFit calls those in our little corner of the blogosphere. (If I've missed yours and you want me to link to it, please comment with the URL of your write-up!)

@FoodieMcBody - "I Finished a Half Marathon!"

@MrsFatass - "gadzooks" (Part 1) "@mrsfatass: 13.1" (Part 2 - the race!)

@EatingJourney (Mish) - "Marathon Recap, Part 1" (Part 1)

@FitMacDaddy - "Las Vegas Marathon Race Report - No Luck on Race Day"

@AHealthyDad - "Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon Recap"

@OperationJack - "Race Report: Las Vegas Rock N Roll Marathon"

And Now?

I have to admit, while I'd toyed with the idea of doing 13.1 before (in fact, it was a "maybe" on my 2010 goals list), it was the fact that I'd get the chance to do this with blogger buddies that made me commit. I really think this article by Emily B Malone of the blog The Front Burner, "You Don't Have to Run a Marathon", speaks nicely to not letting the "I'm not a real runner/athlete/healthy person if I don't go long" bug bite you. As my mother-in-law wrote when I emailed everyone about the race, "You gotta wanna." And this distance or longer? You reeeeeeally gotta wanna.

I'm not sure if I ever want to go 13.1 on foot again. I have a profound respect for the distance now. I know I would not do so without better training. I would definitely choose a local event, because that "not quite feeling ready but I dropped a chunk of change on this" feeling? Sucks big time, even with modest goal of finishing before the cutoff in a walker-friendly race. And I didn't get that same surge of excitement about the idea of trying 13.1 again as I did when I finished my first triathlon, which I know is kind of screwy, because the foot race is a part of triathlon. This race, this distance, taught me that I can dream big, but it can only be real if I can commit to training big. "Now" is not the right time, but you know what they say: never say never!

10 Delightful Things

2011-01-10T15:08:00.000-08:00

I read an article by John Carroll (a columnist for sfgate.com) once, in which he declared:

"Absence of delight is the problem."

Well, that certainly sounds like it was MY problem last week. I had turn-of-the-year malaise. Even as recently as Saturday, when we were taking down the tree, I started feeling a muddle of maudlin+worried. What if next Christmas wasn't as happy as this past one? What if something awful happens, personally, in 2011? What if....?

Yeah. I obviously had to snap out of THAT line of thinking. Whether I feel anticipation or stress about the future, stuff (both good and bad) is going to happen. And does the other shoe EVER drop quite as hard as one thinks it will? Sheesh. I know I'd rather spend that time feeling optimistic.

So today, I'm going to focus on 10 delightful things, no particular order (except maybe the first one):

I enjoyed a nice weekend with my family: everyone healthy (never EVER taken for granted, especially in the winter!), kids and their neighbor friends all getting along pretty well, doing nothing in particular. Ahhhh. Sure, we took down the Christmas decorations, but "ordinary time" is kind of nice, too.

Coffee party with Thing 2

It's my friend W's birthday today! I'm so glad she was born. We've known each other since jr. high school, and she helped get me through my teens and twenties. We don't see each other very often anymore, but when we do, it's just like no time has passed. (And to see her, you'd think that no time had passed, she's lovelier than ever.)

I got to run yesterday! It's been awhile (almost a whole month!), but we had a nice, clear day, albeit somewhat cool (upper 40s), and I felt inspired by the folks I knew who were running the Disney Marathon. I settled for about 1/5 the distance; I went 6 miles total, with about 1-1/2 mile of that as walking to warm-up and cool down, and a few bio and photo breaks sprinkled in there. I think 10K is about my max right now; the half-marathon taught me that. That may or may not change over time, of course. ;-)

"Start off slow then back off" - Not just another pretty race day strategy!

Good news in the blog world: Debby is back from Africa! And several gals in "Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans" finished the Disney Marathon! Crikey, 26.2?!? Christie O, Brooke, Kirsten, and Terri, I salute you!

They finsihed 26.2...while I was still in my pajamas!
(Sorry, Terri, I didn't have your Twitter handle! :-/)

(Biz, I know you're going to disagree with me on this one, but then again, I'm one of those crazy people who loves onions.) Kale crunchies are yet another proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy...and apparently raw, vegan, organic, and gluten-free. (And yep, just about any brand will do it for me, not just these ones. Especially when the brand is on sale AND has a $2 off sticker on it.) At least some of the time. Oh wait. If He wanted us to be gluten-free, then there would be no beer. Then again, as the old Polka song goes, "In Heaven, there is no beer/That's why we drink it here." Hmmm, quite the conundrum. Well, as long as there's chocolate, we're good.

Kale crunchies...don't know why I love them like I do/Don't know why, I just dooooo

Hula class is so much fun! It started last Monday, and I had a nice time. Our instructor is great, and it's such a nice group of people. I really felt it in my arms, quads, and core, even if it wasn't a drench-me-in-sweat, DOMS-for-days workout...which was nice for a change!

The Gym Fairy granted my wish: they added a strength class to the schedule, on Mondays at lunchtime, AND it's only 30 minutes! I tried it for the first time today; it's a resistance band-based strength class, and the instructor was friendly, had great enthusiasm but not over-the-top, and she showed variations where appropriate (mainly on the core exercises, thank goodness!). I know I'm going to "respect the bands," especially tomorrow when the DOMS sets in....

I got to help Thing 2 learn a new math concept last night. "Homework" does usually make my list of delights, especially now that it's not my own and I'm in more of a supervisory role. But I got to explain something to Thing 2, she was in a receptive mood, and it was so fun to see her "get it" and feel excited and happy that she learned it. It's a cool feeling when something "clicks" like that.

They have yet to be sent, but the thank-you notes are all written! That's always a delightful feeling.

What to put for #10? Hmmm - there are so many things I could put for #10 - what to choose? Then I saw a Martha Beck quote that reminded me of something important, it was over on Cammy of The Tippy Toe Diet's blog and FWIW, the quote was in another entry that she linked to, not today's entry. Anyhow, that quote summarizes the rest pretty well: I live in an abundant environment. Which simultaneously delights and makes me feel grateful-humble.

Hope you all have a DELIGHTFUL Monday and week ahead!

Am I the Only One?

2011-01-02T20:59:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one not totally fired up about it being the new year? Who is not surging ahead with plans for 2011? Who is not cajoling others to do the same? It's funny, last year I was so excited to share my goals for 2010. This year, I'm feeling kind of "meh" about it. I guess that's one truth for me about the health & fitness journey - enthusiasm waxes and wanes, and one just has to be patient about it returning.

I'm definitely not feeling "meh" about 2010; although the last quarter wasn't exactly a blaze of glory, in general, it was a good year for me. I successfully accomplished most of my goals. I did 6 events total, with at least one event per quarter: completed two sprint triathlons, did the bike leg of a tri relay, racewalked a 5K, finished (albeit slowly) a half marathon that was a "maybe" goal, and I even got to run a race in Kauai! Even with my ankle injury, I was able to meet my goal of 1000 miles of activity this year (activity=walk, run, swim, bike, spin, elliptical, etc.), which I logged in Daily Mile. I did some things that my former weight held me back from doing: horseback riding, riding a roller coaster, and wearing a bikini! I completed half of my "pay it forward" items (3 caps) and started on the second half (a dog sweater). And most importantly, I was able to maintain my good health numbers, including keeping my a1c in the 5% range all year.

So for 2011? Well, my only plans so far are "more of the same." I definitely want to continue my "event-per-quarter" plan, to reward being consistent with exercise, and do at least one triathlon (hmmm...maybe this is the year for an Oly?). I've enrolled in a hula dance class, something I've always wanted to try, for January. Other than that, I'm going to stay open to inspiration. I'm also going to swipe my 2011 mission from blogger Debra Sapp-Yarwood, who described a healthful life so beautifully: "Live joyfully most of the time, eat healthfully most of the time, exercise most days and treasure whatever body happens."

Happy New Year's Eve-Eve!

2010-12-30T17:29:00.000-08:00

Have any of you done the "Elf Yourself" thing, or was that so 2009? Well, we missed it last year, but cracked ourselves up doing it this year. Maybe it will crack you up, too. Enjoy!

Click here to see how the Opposite Family "Elved" Ourselves!

Hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve weekend, and find lots to laugh about and enjoy! As for us, I'm taking the Things to a local kids' party place full of inflatable play structures for a very active New Year's Eve party (which ends at 6 p.m., just our speed!). Hopefully Thing 2 won't mind if I bounce a little, too. And Mr. Handsome-and-Handy will get a few hours' peace and quiet after the excitement of having the kids home on vacation all week!

P.S. Oh, and I have a shameless plug for my alma mater: the Cal Poly universities create a float each year for the Tournament of Roses parade. They'd really love to receive the KTLA Viewers' Choice Award [click here to go to the voting page - voting is open 8 a.m. - 2:10 p.m. PST]. I vote for their float each year, not just because I went to college at one of these schools, but because unlike most of the other floats, this one is completely created by students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona. Theirs have been the only student-built floral floats in the parade since 1949. (Note to self: Add "help with the Cal Poly rose float during a future Deco Week" to my bucket list; I think it's the only thing I regret not doing during my college years.)

Yes, I'm Still Here!

2010-12-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

This one's a bit of a non-post and a ramble, just to try and capture my end-of-year mood and show that I'm still here.

I hoped today would be the day that I finally got to post my half-marathon story. It was such an amazing experience, and I feel like I should have eagerly jumped all over it and had it done by now. It tends to keep getting sidetracked by...well, just about everything: holiday hanging out; feasting, playing, and resting with my family; going back to work after a nice week off; hitting the gym again. I started writing about it again last night, but I realized that it wasn't going to get finished, and I felt so frustrated. I had time over vacation, but I didn't do it then, either. Why am I putting this off?

Health and fitness-wise, I pretty much took the holidays off. No tracking, no weighing/measuring/portion control, lazily eyed the carb intake, was less scrupulous about fiber and veggies. I think it was kind of a reaction to the panicked clamping down earlier in the month. So I think I'm just going to try gradually picking up the reins again and easing them in. Keep doing at least my minimum fitness goals; use portion control on the protein and carb and saturated fat items; aim for at least 3 veggie servings per day. I guess just go back to my "ordinary time" eating and fitness, and see what happens from there.

Thing is, I'm not fired up. I'm not eager to jump back in and set goals...yet. I'm usually not ready for all the New Year's hype, and I am not one for making the infamous "New Year's Resolutions." I'll come up with some 2011 plans, and fairly soon, but not just right now.

I do hope everyone enjoys a wonderful end-of-2010 and close of the holiday season!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

2010-12-23T23:44:00.000-08:00

Week 4 of the Holiday Hoedown!

2010-12-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

UGH!!!! I can't believe how the holidays went from nothing much going on to EVERYTHING going on!!! Eeeeek! But I know, that's what it usually does and we'll get through it.

So, how did last week go for this Tinsel Vixen? Pretty well!

I exercised 285 minutes last week! And I was so excited to meet my goal of 1000 miles of activity for this year! (I counted everything: walking, running, biking, spinning, elliptical, and swimming.)

I did the Tinsel Vixens Mini-circuit! In case you're curious, here's what Team Tinsel Vixen came up with for a strength circuit. We did not specify weight or number of reps, but most routines I've seen recommend 10-15 reps (each side for the one-sided ones) in a set for the arms and legs.
- Burpees (at least 8. The variation I did involved jumping out to a straight-arm plank, then doing a pushup, then jumping back to a squat, and no mighty leap up at the end.)
- Tricep kickbacks
- Bent-over rows
- Bicycle crunches
- Military shoulder presses
- Straight leg crunches
- Hammer bicep curls
- Squat + inner thigh lifts
- Butt bridges
Fruits & veggies? You know it!
Water - I didn't track that this week, but with all the tea and coffee, I'm sure I was close.
Scale-wise, I'm down .6 lb from last Wednesday, to +.2 of the weight I was at the beginning of the challenge. So I'd say that's moving in the right direction. (Unfortunately, it's up a couple of pounds from Friday. My week/weekend eating is kind of like Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde.)
Blood glucose levels: 7-day average is 101, fasting 7-day average is 103.
Fun stuff: Got to see the Harry Potter 7 Part 1 movie. Very well done, even if there were some parts that were filmed as an obvious bow to the 3-D movie experience - at least no gratuitous plot changes like in HP6, but I'm sure there were several side-story things that would make those who hadn't read the books wonder, "Huh?" Mr. Handsome-and-Handy also got a date night to see rock guitarist Gary Hoey! If you like rock & roll instrumentals, his "Ho Ho Hoey" series of Christmas albums are a treat. The show was FANTASTIC! The venue was rather small, and there were way less people than we were expecting, but they put on a show worthy of a stadium. Best of all, the band genuinely seemed to enjoy performing, and that makes for a good show. I also took the kids to a great birthday party, which included a nature walk/scavenger hunt and playing in a ship-inspired fort and in the mud.
And aaaaaack! I'm so far behind on my race report and book review! I'll see what I can do, but I'm not sure I will be getting it done before next week.

Week 3 of the Holiday Hoedown!

2010-12-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update from Week 3 of the "Holiday Hoedown!"

Exercise minutes: 333 minutes last week
Weight change: Down 1.2 pounds this week, but I'm still up .8 for the challenge and am 3 pounds away from where I usually maintain. With a few planned exceptions, I'm still on portion control and a calorie budget until I get back to my usual maintenance weight and stick it for a couple of weeks. I think this will take about 3-6 weeks.
"Try something new" challenge: Does a distance PR of 13.1 miles count? I certainly think so. It's 5.1 miles farther than I've ever propelled myself on foot.
Doing the "Tinsel Vixen" circuit: Didn't happen this week.
Food goal of 1 no-junk food day: I crushed this one. I went junk-food free 4 of 7 days this past week. For me, this meant no "sugar added" sweets (sugar-free stuff with some nutritive value, such as the sugar-free caramel latte I enjoyed on Friday, was okay). I also kept within my calorie budget 3 of the 4 days on which I fully tracked food intake.
Food goal of 3 fruit/veggie servings: I met this one 6/7 days last week.
Saying one nice thing about myself each day: The Tinsel Vixens added this goal as the more concrete (and often achievable) version of "no negative thoughts." I don't really struggle much with being overly critical about myself, this week especially. I was lucky to be in the company of friendly companions, which eased my anxiety about the social aspects. The race was well-suited to walkers as well as runners, so thoughts of athletic inadequacy didn't creep in, either. I'm still in thankful awe of my body and its ability to endure the crazy stunts I throw its way.

As you can see, the Tinsel Vixens were well represented! Perfect shirt or what?!?

Not sure what makes more attractive headwear, though: bondi band or swim cap...

Left to right: Jr. McBody, blogger Foodie McBody, and me!

Quickie Update

2010-12-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody!

I'm back from my trip to Las Vegas for the Rock & Roll 1/2 Marathon! I met my goals of finishing before the cutoff time of 4 hours (made it in 3:28:29), having fun, and staying alive and uninjured. I don't have time right now to do justice to the thrilling tale, but you can check out the wonderful recap (with slideshow!) written by Foodie McBody (click here).

I'm also over 3/4 of the way through blogger Charlotte Hilton-Andersen's book, The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything. Her experience is nearly the polar opposite of mine, with regard to food and fitness and body image, but I've learned so much from her blog, and now the book. She's a great writer and this is a fantastic read; it made plane travel and waiting around airports a pleasure. (And no, I'm not just saying that because I'm a parent and when you have children, any time you get to sit by yourself and read something without cutting into sleep time is a bonus!) I can hardly wait to review it! (But sorry, the race report is going to come first.)

More to come...

Week 2 of the Holiday Hoedown!

2010-12-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Well, we're wrapping up week 2 of the Holiday Hoedown!

I did great with the exercise: 298 minutes! I didn't meet some of my personal goals, such as getting in a 10-miler before the 1/2 marathon this Sunday (!?!) or getting that 2nd day of strength training in there. But oh well.

On the days I paid attention, I did fine with the fruit & veggie & fluid intake. Thanksgiving was wonderful, and although I ate too much, I got a lot of healthy stuff in there. (I need to be more like my kids - their favorite part of Thanksgiving was the game time after dessert with the grown-ups! I did enjoy playing catch with my son in the backyard, until dog poo got on the football...and on us. Ew. How quickly we forget - I guess I'm still not used to them having a dog, and as we played catch, I caught whiff of a funky smell. "This ball smells funky! What IS that?" There obviously wasn't enough on there to immediately catch my attention.)

It was the days after that were tricky, snack-wise. We also had a birthday celebration in there for Mr. Handsome & Handy's birthday, so that meant bowling and eating out and cake. It was lovely! But I'm back on track as of Monday with the "Tinsel Vixen" food & fluid goals.

Bummed to say I'm up a pound, having hit my *gasp* weight and battled it back down a little. I really thought I'd see it go down more. (You mean I'm going to have to have more than 2 on-track days to correct this little problem? Damn.) I'm looking over my chart of weight from the past year, and I noticed an interesting trend: the last time it bobbed up like this - other than a freak surge at the end of April - was back in March, around the time change, and it took about a month to get things regulated again. Maybe I just get a bit more peckish when the seasons change. Or it might just be a coincidence, because I didn't see this pattern play out in 2009, and it didn't stop me in 2008 when I was still in fat-loss mode. Whatever.

So my oh-so-lofty food goal is to refresh my "food training" to the right portion sizes (by weighing, measuring, and calorie tracking for the rest of the "Holiday Hoedown" - in addition to fluid and fruit/veggie goals) and to keep on with the fitness goals (5 days x30 minutes, 2 strength segments of 15 minutes or greater) . Hopefully, the result will be ending the year within 1 pound of where I started it. (3 fewer pounds would meet that goal; 4 fewer pounds would see me weighing exactly the same.) P.S. - Oh, and try something new fitness-wise, ala the Week 3 challenge. I have a Zumba DVD set from the library that's just waiting to be reviewed!

P.S. Forgot to include a blood glucose update! 14-day average was 107, fasting average 102. All readings for the past 2 weeks were below 120, only 2 were above 110 fasting. Much improved! In spite of all the fun weekend stuff. I guess riding my stationary bike at night has been especially helpful with the morning numbers, much as I don't like to save exercise for the last thing I do in the day.

Happy Thanksgiving + Holiday Hoedown Update for Week 1!

2010-11-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful holiday! I'm so looking forward to it! We'll be doing the arduous journey of about 1 mile to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's brother's family's place and sharing the day with them. We'll be bringing fresh fruit (salad or tray, I'm still deciding) and steamed broccoli, as well as rolls and pumpkin pie, and they and our sister-in-law's family will be doing all the other stuff. (They always BBQ their turkey, which makes it nice and smoky and crispy...yum!)

I'm so humbly thankful for all of the good stuff during the year. I'm especially thankful that we had good news from Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's eye appointment yesterday. His eye pressure is back to normal and all of the restrictions (riding in a car, driving, exertion, reading) are done! He has a bit of fuzziness, but the doctor said that ought to clear up when the dilating eye drops wear off. Follow up appointment in a couple of months. WHEW! Thanks, everyone, for the good thoughts, prayers, etc.!

Holiday Hoedown - Week 1 Update

I'm also grateful for my upbeat and very interactive team, the Tinsel Vixens! Woot!

This past week I was up .4 lb, which I'd be fine with if I wasn't a couple of pounds up from my "happy" weight.

However, I will claim success on meeting the team goals of at least 3 fruit or veggie servings per day (and even though I eat a lot of veggies normally, the weekend was a bit harder that way) and exceeded the 30 minutes x 3 days goal by doing my personal goal of 30+ minutes x 5 days.

I didn't quite hit it all the time with reining in the eating as much as I ought to have done, but I did bring my lunch each day and packed good, healthy stuff. I was especially proud of meeting my basic exercise goals, because the past week was pretty crazy, and I had to do the stationary biking after everyone else was snoozing away for the night, instead of wandering off for a long walk/run or going to the gym at lunch during the week. I was also proud of me for getting in 2 strength days instead of just one. Even though the 2nd one was kind of short, it was more doing something outside of class that was the point.

Blood glucose numbers were also looking a lot better; will report later, as my meter is not handy at the moment.

Holiday Hoedown! + Weekly Update, 11/17/10

2010-11-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody!

It's been awhile since I've done the "Weekly Update" posts. Here are the past month's goings-on:

4*(5*(work, eat, supervise homework, ooo candy! squeeze in workout) + 2*(birthday party, supervise kids' school projects, eat, workout)) + Halloween events + company over + cookie baking + helping @ school + date night + date breakfast + appointments for ankle problems + work lunches out + Diwali work event + sporadic half-marathon training + >1 week of new windows getting installed = crazy month for Opposite Family. (And I probably even missed some stuff)

And that's JUST THE START of the holidays!

Feeling Fall-Challenged

Most of you know that I log my food over on "Pubsgal Eats" (usually), taking pictures and showing what I've been eating, with sometimes the odd recipe or commentary, although I've been a bit sporadic about that lately. I feel like I've really been...I don't know if "struggling" to take good care of myself is the right word. Maybe a feeble kick or two in my mind, but not in my actions, if that makes any sense.

I think this is a pretty common occurrence in the fall. I was dealing with the *same stuff* with respect to daily feeding last year:

"I'm not doing so hot with my eating at home...I've pin-pointed it to stress-feeding, and I need to figure out a better outlet than grabbing salty, high-calorie snackage." - Pubsgal, November 2009

So the scale is only up a couple of pounds and in my "maintenance" range (I claim a 5 pound range, and am usually at the lower end of it); big deal, huh? But what worries me is my fasting blood glucose trend is off. My post-meal numbers are generally pretty good, but my fasting ones are a good indicator to me of when everything is truly on track. Last week, I had 2 readings over 110 and 3 of 120 or greater - a trend that worries me, but I think I can rein it in with better food habits, especially in the evening.

What did I do then...and need to do now? Probably just kept returning to what I'd trained myself to do:

Space small meals through the day, balancing carbs and proteins.
Aim for my 30 grams of fiber per day.
Grab "free foods" instead of the nuts or "meat doggies." (That still makes me chuckle, Debby!)
Weigh and measure portions.
Bring healthy lunches to work 4 days per week.
Move the problem foods out of sight/reach/mind: Put the nuts up on the higher shelf in the food closet and perhaps get my husband to hide the rest of the kids' Halloween candy (rather than put it in a place that's not the kitchen but that I still know about).

On the other hand, I still feel this:

"I'm not too freaked out about the holidays, oddly enough. Sometimes it feels like a precarious balance, getting all the healthy stuff I need in my diet and allowing for enough of the stuff I love to eat (that doesn't fit into the first category), so that I don't feel deprived and like this living healthy stuff is not worth it all. Not to mention getting in enough exercise to keep me content! But I'd say that's the biggest difference between last year and this one. Last year, I was so afraid that taking a rest day unscheduled or making an "active rest" day out of a workout day would totally switch my track for a return trip to Couchville. This year, I feel (paradoxically) more free to change up my schedule as needed, because the need to workout is now a part of me. I trust it like I didn't before." - Pubsgal, November 2009

Other than some fine tuning - which I've done before and will need to do over & over again - things are still good overall.

Enter...The Challenge!

So even though I usually don't do challenges, I could not resist the latest team-based on over on Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans: The Holiday Hoedown!

The team I'm on, the "Tinsel Vixens," are a group of gals who want to focus more on healthy habits than number on the scale. That's my kind of challenge!

Our goals will build over the weeks, and there are challenges for all the teams. For week 1, our group's goals are:

30 minutes of exercise 3 days per week; track time in Daily Mile (Will definitely meet or exceed with half-marathon training and my "prescribed" type 2 diabetes regimen of at least 30 minutes x 5 days, and I already track on Daily Mile - I'm there as "Pubsgal," if you want to connect there.)
3 servings of fruits or vegetables per day (Since veggies are my main carb source, no problemo there.)
No negative self-talk ("Damn straight there ain't gonna be negative self-talk, Pubsgal! Now drop and give me 20, ya crunchy granola California freak!" <- Er, that last part is actually an endearment from my Inner Boot Camp Instructor. I'm rather proud to be a crunchy granola California freak. ;-)

My personal goals for next week are:

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: Post meal average less than 120, all fasting numbers 110 or less.
Weight goal: Maintain or lower.
Food goals: Lighter eating if dinner is after 7 p.m.; it's perfectly okay to not clean a measured-portion plate. Reach for "free food" snacks instead of the high fat/salt/calorie snacks. Pass by some of the "just a taste of this" and "I'll have a dab of that". Oh, and aim for bringing healthy lunches rather than eating out.
Make 2 of my workouts strength workouts. (I'm good about going to CardioSculpt class, can improve on doing something on my own, which might help me from getting too sore at class.)
Get in a long walk/run this weekend.
Misc. goals: 7 or more hours sleep/night (which means being in bed before 10 p.m.)

Can a Soup Can Workout Impact My Blood Glucose Levels? (Big Blue Test)

2010-11-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I had fully intended to do my Big Blue Test at the proper date and time. But then, I had to get in a long run/walk, and I thought (ha!) that I'd have time later in the day to do a test. Little did I think that I'd be so enthralled by the day that I'd go a little over 8 miles! Well, wouldn't you with this kind of a view?

And I came across this during my stroll and though it was pretty darn funny.

Maybe the same could be said about the gelato I ate at the halfway point. I had originally planned on going 6 miles, but it turns out my meanderings took me 7.5, so I did some neighborhood loops to get it to 8.

Afterward, I thought to myself, "Whew! What a workout. And if I were doing my half-marathon, I'd still have 5 more miles to go. Yikes!"

So Big Blue Test got tabled until today.

Belated Big Blue Test

My experiment for Big Blue Test (http://bigbluetest.org/) was to see what impact seated, upper body weight exercises with soup cans would have on my blood glucose levels. I was curious about this, because upper body strength exercises might be one of the few options for people with limited mobility.

I assembled my equipment: 2 soup cans (approx. 2 lbs each), 1 blood glucose meter, 1 list of exercises. Since it was a gorgeous day, I took it all to the park during my lunch break.

My last snack was at 10:30 a.m. (dry roasted wasabi edamame and 2 Tbsp chia seeds in green tea), and it was 1 p.m. when I started my test. I tested my blood glucose levels. Starting blood glucose level: 101

For 14 minutes, I did the following upper-body exercises while seated:

Bicep curls (1st set done alternating arms, 2nd set done both arms at the same time)
Triceps extensions (1st set done alternating arms, 2nd set done both arms at the same time)
Front raise
Shoulder press
Side raise
Triceps kickback (I didn't kneel on the bench, I just laid down over my thigh. Bad form, that.)
Upright row
Shrugs (do these even really do anything?)
Bent-over row (These I did do with proper form)
Bent-over raises

I did one set (15 repetitions) of all of these, and then I got through the triceps kickbacks on my second set. I thought I'd get 2 or 3 sets in and worried about having enough to do - I obviously overestimated how quickly I could do these!

When the timer went off, I retested my blood glucose levels. Ending blood glucose level: 98. Hmmm...

What happened?

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed by the result. My test last year - 15 minutes of moderate walking - had amazed me. (Click here to see that one)

Some possible reasons why today's test didn't work quite as effectively:

For me, heavier weights would have probably been more effective. My upper body is not super strong, but for all of these exercises, I currently use dumbbells that are more than 2 pounds each. I felt the shoulder raises a little, but otherwise I did not feel any muscle fatigue during these exercises. Also, do arm muscles use as much energy? Probably not.

Strength exercises have a different effect on blood glucose levels than aerobic exercise. From what I've read, strength exercise isn't the best option for lowering a blood glucose reading in the short-term, but it can have a good effect on the longer term. In the short term, "[s]trength-oriented exercise...generally requires short, repetitive and intensive bursts of movement. This type of exercise can provoke a hormone response known as the 'fight or flight' or 'adrenalin' response that can temporarily raise blood glucose levels." (source: http://www.ausport.gov.au/ais/nutrition/factsheets/special_diets2/diabetes_and_sports_nutrition) Somehow, I don't think my soup cans activated this response in me. Yet in the longer term, strength/resistance training helps build muscle mass, which is more insulin sensitive than other body tissue, and can help regulate overall blood glucose levels rather than post-activity levels. Plus it helps in other ways, such as with preventing osteoporosis. (source: http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/content/18/2/71.full)

Could I be experiencing some issues with insulin sensitivity? After my test, I took a 30 minute walk. At the end of that, my blood glucose level was 92, which is only 9 less than my pre-test level. I would have expected the brisk walk to have a greater impact. Some possibilities include my menstrual phase (I'm much less insulin sensitive right before menstruation - even without succumbing to the urge to face-plant into the nearest sugar/salt/fat food source) or delayed-onset muscle soreness (which, I've read in The Diabetic Athlete, can impact one's insulin sensitivity until the muscles are healed). I feel some soreness after yesterday's adventure, but nothing compared to last Wednesday's "Medicine Ball Melange" in CardioSculpt class. So the double-whammy might be messing with the results a little bit.

Will I try again? Definitely! The next version will be sooner after eating something and use the proper amount of weight for me. I'm also going to test before and after CardioSculpt class and see how that affects my blood glucose levels.

More Reading for the Curious

An excellent article summarizing some of the above points is by Dr. Sheri Colberg-Ochs, author of The Diabetic Athlete, titled "Aerobic Versus Anaerobic Exercise: What Is the Difference, and Why Does It Matter?" She also has another good article for those dealing with mobility issues, titled "Exercising with Excess Body Weight, Orthopedic Problems, and Arthritis," which includes some specific exercise DVD recommendations.

Try Your Own Experiment!

If you're newly diagnosed and have been advised by your doctor or diabetes educator to use exercise as part of your plan to manage your diabetes, why not try your own "big blue test" and see if your results confirm or deny the effect of exercise on your blood glucose levels? (Unless, of course, your doctor says "No way!" or your blood glucose meter says ~~"WTH?!?!"~~ "250" or higher.)

T-minus 2 Days Until the Big Blue Post!

2010-11-12T19:07:00.000-08:00

See a building lit in blue?
Wondering why?
Wondering what the Big Blue Post is all about?

It's all part of World Diabetes Day on Sunday, November 14. Some things going on that may be of interest to you or someone you care about...

Big Blue Test - a program of the Diabetes Hands Foundation (DHF). People with diabetes are invited to test their blood sugar at 2 pm (local time), do 14 minutes of activity, test again and share the results. I did this last year (here's the post), and it was AMAZING! I'm definitely going to do it again this year - stay tuned! (Participants on Twitter will be using the #bigbluetest and #wdd on Twitter this weekend!)
View the Big Blue Test promotional video before November 14, and help Diabetes Hands Foundation raise money to help the Life for a Child program, run by the International Diabetes Federation, and Insulin For Life.
Walgreens is once again offering free blood glucose screening and a1c testing at participating locations this weekend! From the press release: "Walgreens...will offer free blood glucose and A1C testing at more than 1,700 stores and Take Care Clinics nationwide Nov. 12 and 13, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The free diabetes health testing events, held in conjunction with American Diabetes Month®, are offered at most 24-hour Walgreens stores and Take Care Clinic locations throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico." Click here for more info. (Good on ya, Walgreens, but perhaps not burying it in your press releases would be a tad more helpful? I didn't see any banner ad on the main page.)
See the World Diabetes Day events page to find an event near you!
Need more information about type 2 diabetes? I compiled a dandy list of diabetes resources. I forgot to mention Dr. Sheri Colberg's web site. She's the author of the excellent book, The Diabetic Athlete, and her site has some great diabetes & exercise articles.
Some bloggers participated in the "Annual D-blog Day" on November 9th. The theme was "6 things you want people to know about diabetes." I was swamped and didn't write a post, but I especially enjoyed Kerri Morrone Sparling's (of the blog Six Until Me) compassionate type 1 perspective (click here to read). Her first point was an especially poignant yet kindly worded observation - not all type 1's (or loved ones of type 1s) aren't quite as kind about the difference. Would I be? Would I be if one of my kids had type 1 or type 2 and people were blamethowing out of ignorance? I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure. As a non-insulin dependent type 2 person, I only have to help my pancreas, not be the pancreas - that's a whole 'nother world altogether. Yet helping my pancreas has its own challenges, with regard to willpower in balancing my food choices and exercise; as type 1 folks experience, sometimes you can do everything "right" and still not get the numbers you're looking for all the time. And sometimes I don't do everything right, and I stumble, and I pick myself up and keep trying. It's remarkably like trying to lose unwanted body fat, or to maintain the loss of said unwanted body fat...easy-peasy, right? ;-)
And I have to give major kudos to diabetes advocate and author Jenny Ruhl and her book and web site, Blood Sugar 101. I really resonated with her approach, and I'm hopeful that I'll get to thank her in my old age for her role in my still having eyesight and limbs. I especially recommend for those with type 2 or at risk of developing it her well-researched article, "You Did NOT Eat Your Way to Diabetes"; it was a very healing thing for me to read as a newly diagnosed person with type 2.

Hope everyone enjoys a great weekend!

2010 Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Run

2010-11-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, everybody! I think I owe you all a race report! This is for the 2010 Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Run, a 5K and 10K event held the same weekend as our town's Pumpkin Festival. The race was held on Sunday, October 17. The weather was gloomy and threatened to rain, and it did start raining just after the awards ceremony, so glad it held off (except for a few sprinkles) for the race itself!

For me, this was almost the race that wasn't. My original goal was to run the 10K, as it would have been about the time in my half marathon training that I would have been ready for it. But a nagging pain after running in my ankle led to me table running until I could talk to the doctor about it. But I could still walk, and I needed to get some exercise that day, so why not just walk it? I know not all races are a good candidate for walking, but I was familiar with this one: the runners in it are fast, but it's also a good-sized race that a lot of people walk just for fun, and the race organizers do a good job of accommodating all racers. Besides, how could I resist a free t-shirt and pumpkin?

I also wanted to try out my spiffy Zensah tights in a race, and this was looking like my only opportunity to do so before the half marathon. They worked great! No chafing and they kept my legs warm but not too hot. I think they will be terrific for Vegas!

Now, you know I couldn't just stroll this thing. I made it into an experiment: could I sustain the pace needed to walk the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Half Marathon in less than the cutoff time? I targeted the pace at which I almost break into a jog, the point at which my rear end starts doing what I call the "race walking waddle." On a treadmill, this is 4 mph, so I figured 45 minutes for the 5K was a good target.

Like most races, I slept poorly the night before and got up early. Unlike most race mornings, I ate not the greatest breakfast: 3 donut holes and a cheese stick. I knew they'd have lots of coffee at the event site, and I would have plenty of time to drink it, so I headed on down there. I registered and got my pumpkin, t-shirt, and bib. I also got my lovely, lovely coffee...so I was ready! But it wasn't time yet, so there was lots of time to mill around and look for familiar faces. I saw Thing 2's kindergarten teacher from last year (who was doing her first race with a "baby on board"! Fun news to start the day!) and her husband. I saw some moms I knew, and I took pictures for people so they'd have the whole family in there. I took my bio break.

The race organizers called for volunteers to help hand out goodie bags and medals for the kids' 1K race. So I got to hang medals on those beaming little faces as they darted past the finish line. Too stinkin' cute!!! That made my morning.

The 10K racers went, then the 5K racers. I started about 3/4 of the way back and to the far right, and the runners dashed past. I passed a number of walkers and just kept going at a good clip. At about mile 1, I fell in step with a gal who had planned to run the 10K but whose ankle started bothering her and so she decided to walk it instead. We walked together and chatted for a little over a mile, up to the 10K turn off. I then kicked back into speed mode and hauled posterior for the last mile.

Here I am at the finish line! My time was 44:09 (a 14:13 pace), and I felt delighted! Although the entry form has separate categories for runners and walkers, the race results lump everyone together. I was 213/358, and had I remembered to write my age on the entry form (this was pre-coffee!), I would have showed up as 29/47 in my age group.

The demographics of the race are really interesting: the runners make it a fast field and it's mostly middle-aged women. Some interesting numbers:

The largest age/gender groups were the females 40-49 for the 10K and females 50-59 for the 5K.
In the 5K race, 28% of the entire field finished in less than 30 minutes and 9.5% averaged a pace of less than 8 minutes per mile.
For the 10K, 71% finished in less than 1 hour, and 26% averaged a pace of less than 8 minutes per mile.
In the 5K, the top male finisher was 41 years old and finished with a time of 18:31, and the top female finisher was 38 years old and finished with a time of 22:26. (I think she was one of the group of crazy folks who *swam* down from a beach a couple of miles up the coast from the race site. The water here is cold, rough, and the weather threatened rain and it was probably dark when they started. Ugh.)
The top runner in my age group finished with an enviable time of 25:43.

I'd have to go sub 30 minutes just to squeek into the top 10 of my age group, and I wouldn't have even made it into the top 10 of the women's 50-59 group.

Basking in the afterglow! Aaaaaaah!

P.S. No picture of the days after, where my tune changed from "Aaaaah!" to "Oooooow!" I totally underestimated the power of race walking: it used some muscles that have been dormant even through biking and swimming and running and even just regular walking. My glutes and hips felt the aftermath for days!

P.P.S. The ankle seems to be doing better. My doctor referred me to a podiatrist, who prescribed new shoes and custom orthotics for my athletic shoes. It turns out I suppinate. (Oooo! I made a punny!) I'll post more details on another day....

Thanks + Quick Update

2010-10-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

Life is speeding along! I wanted to post a race report this week, but looks like I won't have time at the moment. But I just wanted to mention a few things today:

THANK YOU to everyone who commented on "A Tale of Two Pieces!" Wow!!! I'm feeling humble and grateful at all of the wonderful feedback. It's been a powerful and amazing experience to go through and read so many "Exposed" posts. I felt like it helped me feel stronger, seeing so many people sharing what they've struggled with, what they're still struggling with, and what they love and appreciate about themselves and their bodies.

Had my every-6-months checkup with the doctor. Normal a1c from the lab test (not sure of the number; my husband took the message), good blood pressure reading (110/74), stable weight. I got a referral to see a podiatrist to check out my shoes and feet, and see if adjustments are needed to make sure half marathon training doesn't exacerbate the ankle. (Which is doing much better, actually. I did a treadmill jog on it, after a long walking warmup and followed with a long walking cooldown, and while it doesn't seem fully back to normal, it's better.) And she told me those beautiful words, that I knew anyway, but which are still nice to hear from a pro: "You take good care of yourself."

And I walked the Pumpkin 5K! This race has a ton of walkers in the 5K (almost all runners in the 10K, though), so it is very walking friendly. My goal was to finish in 45 minutes or sooner (4 mph being the point at which I assume the "race walk waddle" on the treadmill), and I finished in 44:09. Woot! I have a humble respect for race walking now: I was sore for a couple of days afterward! It's definitely a different gait than a regular, brisk walk and a jog, and it hit some muscles that I wasn't using.

Flying blind: Other than the doctor's scale, our old scale died and I'm rolling without one until our new one arrives. I can feel that my weight is up a little, because I've been eating way too many nuts lately.

A Tale of Two Pieces

2010-10-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

Today, the anniversary of the "Exposed" movement, seemed like a good day to run this post. I've had it sitting in the queue for awhile now.

Two reasons in particular made it seem especially appropriate: Mrs. Fatass' "Exposed" post on MizFitOnline last year really moved me, and she plays a big role in this tale. And today I was especially "light-bulbed" by the retrospective by Mary of "A Merry Life": "Exposed, Take 2: Still Awesome". She wrote about why she felt people view the Exposed movement as "brave": "We were/are all brave for not being ashamed. We are brave for doing this because technically in our society we are supposed to be ashamed....The message seems pretty clear after hearing it my whole life: 'if your body isn’t perfect you should be ashamed of it.'" I highly recommend reading her whole post.

What struck me also is that, even people who seem to me to have perfect, lovely bodies often don't see it in themselves. Of all the people I pass in the gym, for example, which are content? How many feel awkward in their bra and shorts, or get anxious if they can't keep up the work it takes to not feel awkward? Think of what we could focus on and do if we weren't, as a culture, so obsessed with appearance and consumption.

Okay, that's enough "ado." On with the post!

Last month, Thing 2 started asking me interesting questions:

"What if you wanted your hair to be straight, and not curly?"

"What if you didn't want to wear glasses?"

"What if you wanted to wear a bikini?"

I was mystified...she has straight hair, does not wear glasses, and enjoys wearing the little bikini bathing suit she got for her 6th birthday. She was not using this as a roundabout way to discuss changing things about herself...she's only 6. I realized she talking about me. Did I want these things about me to be different.

"Well, no, I love my hair just like it is. I don't mind wearing glasses, but sure, it would be easier if I didn't need to do so. And I like my one-piece bathing suit."

(Well, my favorite is a tankini, but you get the idea!) I finally asked her why she asked me those questions.

Thing 2: "Because sometimes, on TV, they try to make you want those things."

Pubsgal [catching balance after reeling from the internal "whoa!"]: "They sure do, don't they? But we're too smart to fall for that, right?"

Thing 2: "Yes!"

But even so, I couldn't help but think there was something else under the question.

Then one day, I stumbled across a post by Sue Ann (aka the fabulous Mrs. Fatass) on her blog "Did I Just Eat That Out Loud?", titled "The Bikini Promise." Her resolve to not wait, to rock that bikini THIS year as promised, reminded me a lot of some of the crazy stunts I decided to do before I felt like I "looked" the part.

One part of her post seemed written just for me. It's not the line people quoted most often in the comments, but it's one that sure clicked with me, given the recent questions from Thing 2: "Parenting 101 tells us that our daughters don’t hear the compliments we bestow on them nearly as loudly as they hear our critical comments to ourselves."

And then it clicked: my actions were speaking louder than even my lack of self-critical words to myself! My beautiful daughter had unknowingly zeroed in on my last vestige of body shame. I know, not everyone chooses a one piece over a bikini from body shame: a one-piece suit just feels right for them. I had thought that was the case for me, that a one piece was more "appropriate" for me, but this really removed the blinders. What a powerful gift I could give to her, I thought, if I were to wear a bikini - boldly, joyfully - just like her! Presuming, of course, I could find a bikini that I could feel comfortable wearing, especially to avoid the, er, "my cup runeth over" effect, which makes it a little harder to rock the bikini look as boldly as a 6-year-old.

So I emailed Sue Ann, on the chance that her bikini supplier might also have something that would fit me, and she directed me to the Athleta web site (and gave the invaluable pointer to check the sale page). So many gorgeous bikinis on sale! Alas, it was nearly impossible to find a set that had both tops and bottoms in my size. So I took a chance and ordered a top there, then I went to Lands End and ordered bottoms.

The packages arrived. Gulp. The moment of truth. I put on the bikini. I fussed with the top a bit. (One of the "girls" is a little larger than the other, and I wondered if it looked too lopsided.) I dared to ask Mr. Handsome-and-Handy some questions; he dared to answer, brave man!

Him: "Hey, a bikini! Congratulations!"

Me: Um, yep. Does it look okay?"

Him: "Yes."

Me: "Are you sure?"

Him: "Yes."

Me [gulp, it's kind of...revealing...I'd better get this over with and ask the most important question]: "Would you be embarrassed about me wearing it?"

Him: "No."

Me: "Okay then."

Enter Thing 2.

Me: "Look! Mommy's got a bikini! What do you think?"

Thing 2 [scrutinizing]: "It's not right."

Me: "Huh?"

Thing 2: "You need to show your belly button."

[Thing 2 scootched the front of the waistband down a little, showing off my navel.]

Me: [light bulb moment of the fashion clueless] "Ooooohhhh....So, does it work now?"

Thing 2: "You look beautiful!"

Well, success, even if I did get the bottoms wrong. I first wore it during our Lompoc trip. The bottoms came in handy for my tri, because I went 2-piece for the swim, with my fortress-like sports bra on top. (Which meant I didn't have 4 pounds of wet tankini top dragging me down, too; yeay!) Sure, I have not felt comfortable wearing a bikini in nearly 30 years, for various reasons. Losing a bunch of body fat left some loose skin here & there; I have a tummy with stretch marks and a couple of tiny lapriscope scars, and "Summer of Core" didn't completely transform the surface. (And one piece or two, the loose thigh skin is gonna show, that's just how it is.) But darned if knowing THIS body just carried me to the finish line of a triathlon that very morning didn't give me that extra bit of confidence during the bikini debut later in the afternoon at the pool.

And there I was! Just another mom at the pool, cavorting with the kids. It felt great!

So that's how I stopped worrying and learned to love my bikini...and more importantly, the body that's in it.
(Thanks, Sue Ann!!!)

Do the Bloggers You Love, Love You Back?

2010-10-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

Some blogs I've been following have been talking about cliquishness in the healthy living blogosphere.

Here are some thoughts I shared in comments on MizFitOnline.com's "Blogger Cliques" discussion:

Wow, this has been the hot topic lately!

Sure, any large group of people are going to have some sub-groups. Are they necessarily cliques? Maybe I don't get around the healthy living blogosphere as widely as I should, but I have a feeling that most perceived cliquishness is accidental; for example, maybe the blogger you love (and whom you want to love you back) has trouble keeping up with everyone? Sometimes it's hard to read all the blogs I want to read, and comment on my regular commenters' blogs meaningfully...I have no idea how folks with a following like Miz's manage the outreach that they do. Especially Miz - she's one of the first bloggers that gave me that "Wow! Thanks for noticing me!" moment.

Also, this Tribe is quite varied. Like in real life, different people are going to resonate with different blogs. For example, I tend to be drawn to blogs where the people have dealt with similar health and wellness issues, or are in a place in their journey where I want to be, or where I really like the blogger's writing style, or that not mind my posting big ol' rambling comments. (*sheepish grin*) Sure, sometimes I venture outside my chosen sub-group or off-Tribe, and I usually learn a lot when I do so. It's probably something that I should do more often.

Then there are the various forms of social media. I tend to hang back more on Twitter and Facebook than I do in the blogosphere. Blogging and commenting gives me time to think about a response....whereas with Twitter, I end up feeling like I'm hours too late to the party, or that I shouldn't tweet unless I have something really compelling to say...and then never get around to it. I also might be using it wrong - I don't automatically follow everyone who follows me, I kind of follow the Facebook "friending" convention there, and maybe that's not the purpose of following on Twitter?

But this made me think. Are my blogging practices cliquish? If so, it's not intentional, and I apologize to anyone who may have perceived that from me. I know I tend to talk about bloggers whom I feel are my friends, whom I see regularly in my comments or may have even met in person; if you're a regular here, chances are I'm reading your blog regularly and commenting when I can. But I have no idea who's just dropping by for a visit. I have kept myself purposefully in the "un-know" about page hits and site traffic. This blog is my hobby, my journal of how I'm working to continually improve my health and wellness, my open letter to the healthy living blogosphere tribe, and hopefully a way of forming a meaningful connection with others.

Here's my question to you: What makes you feel included in the blog world? How can I improve this here on my blog? If you don't know how to leave a comment, or would prefer to contact me privately, here's how to email me: click the "View My Complete Profile" link on the side bar of this page. From the About Me page, click the Email link on the lower left side of the page.

If you feel the need for a laugh after such deep thoughts, check this out. There's a whole site of etiquette short films hosted by "Proper Ollie," and this one on social networking cracked me up. http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/proper-ollie/social-network-etiquette?autoplay=true

Weekly Update, 9/29/10

2010-09-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

I am...

Happy that it's Fall! It's been beautiful so far. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and The Things did their now annual "First Day of Fall" trip to the pumpkin patch. They were Farmer John's first customers this year; they brought home 3 large pumpkins (orange, green and white), several tiny ones for teachers and for me to take to work, and a cooking pumpkin that Mr. H&H grilled with dinner the other night. Yum!

Happy for My Blog Buddies Doing Awesome Stuff!

Brooke of "Smart + Strong = Sexy" had a great first triathlon experience in the Anchor Splash Triathlon! Read about it here!
Josie of "At the Starting Line" (formerly "35 and Shrinking") did her longest race yet: the Miracle Miles 15K! (The proceeds of this race benefited the Winnie Palmer NICU unit in Orlando.) Her inspiring race report is here, at her newly renamed blog! (P.S. - Happy Birthday, Josie!)
And Biz made it to round 2 of the "Project Food Blog" contest! Here's a link to her entry for the next round.

Feeling Injured. Okay, now's the part where I whine a bit. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I seem to have some sort of lower leg pain in my right leg, in the ankle/heel area. I suspect Achilles tendon, although it's sort of in my ankle, too. I first noticed it after the long, hilly run I did on the 12th. It flares up when I run, then I rest it and do other stuff. It then feels fine, I think, "Oh, goodie! All better!" and then I run again, and ouch again. I think part of the problem may be that instead of completely *easing* back in, I've been jumping back to where I left off in my training.

So naturally, I'm feeling really discouraged and frustrated. I was going to run the Pumpkin Run 10K this year, and it's only 2.5 weeks away. I think that's out, although I might walk the 5K if I can. I'm still planning to go to Vegas, but I'm wondering if I'll be able to do the half-marathon now...it's only 9 weeks away, and I was only up to about 4.5 miles in my gradual build-up of mileage.

But even though I'm kind of in that "what if this never goes away?" funk, I'm also determined to do what I can to heal it and work around it the best I can. Based on what I've read, here's what I can do and plan for the next few weeks. (Any suggestions or advice would be very welcome!)

Ice, Compression, Elevation. (The last one is kind of tricky, but I do put my foot up at work.)
Calf stretching and Achilles tendon stretching.
New insoles and arch support in my athletic shoes. (Done!)
See the doctor if I'm still limping in another day or so.
For fitness, I'll be focusing on moderate stationary cycling and swimming for cardio, and upper body strength exercises. This is actually a great opportunity to get some more strength exercises into my week. I'm still planning to do my CardioSculpt class; I went today and told the instructor what was going on, and so I felt comfortable modifying or doing other things when the class was doing lunges. (Squats without additional weight, for example, felt fine.)

Knitting. "Project Chloe Grace" is going pretty well. I'm knitting a test square with the main yarn, and it's working well. Once I finish it and verify that the rows and number of stitches are matching the measurements for the pattern, I can start the actual sweater.

Grateful for Mr. H&H and his mad cooking skills! I may have mentioned this before, but Mr. H&H is our family's chef. When his mom went back to school (around the time he started middle school), all 6 of the kids had to take on extra chores. He selected cooking dinner as one, and he learned that skill well. Before Mr. H&H came into my life, sure, I could whip up a batch of cookies, but I rarely cooked. I ate more dinners of bag of salad with chopped lunch meat, bag of microwave popcorn, and Diet Coke than I care to admit. And I only ate bacon when dining out, because it was so intimidating to cook.

Well, all that sure changed! Sure, he lured me in with grilled salmon dinners and fresh fruit and veggie beach picnics, but pretty soon we were whipping up homemade pizza and such Michigan favorites as pasties.

So anyhow, last time I mentioned him cooking up a special dish, it was the boneless stuffed chicken. But last week, he made one of our comfort food dishes. Debby tried it and liked it, so I figured I'd share it with you all.

What is it? (Other than something that could really use better lighting and a cilantro garnish?) This dish is our attempt to recreate a favorite dish at La Fiesta restaurant in Mountain View. The dish is called "Grandma's Especial," and it's chicken in a creamy sauce flavored with chiles. The flavor is unique and so delicious! From research I've done, I believe they use a different chile than is commonly used in canned enchilada sauce, and they probably use more authentic dairy products. But the dish seems to me sort of like a Mexican version of the Indian Chicken Makhani dish, or the Eastern European Chicken Paprikash. We have what we consider to be a reasonable approximation at home, with easily available ingredients. I don't have an exact recipe, but if you want to try it, here's how we make it:

We cut chicken breast into large cubes. (The restaurant makes this with the whole breast, bone in.) You could use any cut of chicken, really, but be sure to remove the skin. The more chicken you use, the more like a stew it will be; use less chicken, it's more like a soup.
Sauté the chicken with chopped onions (about 1 onion) and a can of chopped green chiles. Season with garlic, cumin, and oregano to taste. (Fajita seasoning also works well.)
Add a can of enchilada sauce and simmer; 30 minutes seems to work well.
Before serving, add sour cream, cream cheese, and a splash of lime juice (go easy on the lime juice!). To incorporate the cream cheese, sometimes it works best to pull a little sauce from the pan, mix it up with the cream cheese so it's more sauce than big lump of cheese, then add it back in. I think we use about 1/4 cup cream cheese and 1/2 cup of sour cream. I'm sure it would be just as good with plain Greek-style yogurt instead of the sour cream. We've used non-fat and low-fat for the dairy stuff, and either works really well.

I had leftovers in my lunch, and I added leftover green beans and potatoes to it, and that worked really well, too. There are so many variations you could do - I could see this working really well as an all-veggie stew, or adapted to a crock pot recipe, or maybe even made with leftover turkey. (I have done the crockpot variation - I left the chicken breasts whole, putting them on top of the onions, peppers, and spices, which I browned in a pan before adding to the pot. I then added the can of enchilada sauce. The dairy items are incorporated just before serving.)

Doing good with the numbers. Up .8 pound. Blood glucose was 107 for 7-day average and 97 for 7-day fasting average.

I want to...

Be injury free. I want to be able to run again. I also want to come up with a 20-minute strength routine I can learn and get comfortable with at the gym.

Keep the numbers good.

More knitting!

Try a new recipe.

Go, SuperBoo, Go!

2010-09-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

*clang*! *clang*! *clang*! *clang*!

Why, what's that sound I hear...?

Could it be...?

The clarion call of cow bells....?

(Because heaven knows, you can never have enough cow bell.)

It's the sound of me ringing my virtual cow bell. (because I really did price cow bells at the local feed store - yes, we have one in semi-rural coastal San Francisco Bay Area - and those puppies were expensive!).

For whom does the cow bell clang?

Why, for SuperBoo (aka Brooke of Smart + Strong = Sexy), who is racing in her first triathlon this weekend!!! She isn't just any tri newbie - she is racing after having to cancel her originally scheduled tri debut, overcoming extreme adversity, healing, training, and coming back to DO this thing!

Please pop over to her blog and wish her the best of luck!

(Ooo, I'm getting teary and excited for her, just thinking about it! Good luck, SuperBoo!!!)

Weekly Update, 9/22/10

2010-09-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

I am...

Surprised and delighted to try a pair of compression tights from Zensah! I have MizFit and Suzanne, the rep from Zensah, to thank for this. In case you missed it, Zensah sponsored a sports bra giveaway on MizFit's blog, and the price of entry was feedback on your greatest sports bra lament.

Well, I felt moved to verse, mainly to make Miz laugh. But also because heaven knows I've given plenty of thought to what makes the ideal sports bra *for me*, and I'm not shy about sharing. (Although they are not mentioned in the poem, it is also sort of a lament, because Glamorise no longer makes my favorite sports bra, nor do they seem to have one just like it anymore.) In case you missed it, here's the poem:

Zensah sports bras? Alas!
They don’t have my size.
Their Seamless Tights, though,
Look just right for my thighs.

But what qualities in a sports bra
Does this zaftig tri-girl seek?
Must support like a fortress
And of the nipples, no peek.

I like one front-hooking,
With a racer back sturdy.
Uniboob is okay;
I’m not trying to be flirty.

The straps must not slip
Off the shoulders or chafe.
Wickability’s a must!
And size? Opposite-of-waif.

(I’ll pass on an entry;
But thanks, MizFit and Zensah!
Hope those wonderful giveaways
Make some others sigh, “Ahhh!”)

Wouldn't ya know, Miz forwarded this to Suzanne, who kindly offered to let me try some of their tights! I got them this week, ripped open the package, and wore them all evening on Monday. Com-fy! I also wore them during one of my training runs on Tuesday, and they felt fantastic. I think there is some more rhyming in my future, after I've given them a wash and tried them out again. I think the real test will be wearing them to CardioSculpt class, because my legs are usually sore for days after that one. (Compression is supposed to help with that sort of thing.)

Oh yeah. I guess this needs an FTC disclaimer...um...what needs to be in those?

Zensah sent me tights.

Freely, I wear and review.

(Did I do this right?)

Getting geared up to start knitting a doggie sweater! Stay tuned for some photos from Project Chloe Grace! I bought some yarn, and analyzed the pattern, and the next step is to knit up a gauge swatch. I just started testing out the novelty yarn that I was thinking of using for the collar. It's interesting, that's for sure, if a little awkward, but I think it will work. I hope it turns out looking as cute in real life as it does in my head!

Excited for Sagan! Her blog, "Living Healthy in the Real World," was nominated for a "has been nominated in the "Health Resource – Social Media category" for the 2010 Canadian Natural Health Awards! I'm just bummed that I can't vote for her blog - but if you live in Canada, YOU can! Check out the orange banner on the left side of her blog's page.

But I can vote for Biz! She's entered Foodbuzz’s "Project Food Blog" contest. If you want to vote, too, go to Biz's contestant page, and then click the little "Vote" tag in the "My Challenges" widget. Good luck, Biz! (And wheee-whooo, check out that apron!)

Having a great workout week!

Staying healthy! Aside from a donut-y detour (154!) saved by a quick pedal on my stationary bike (back to 122 after 10 minutes at moderate intensity), the numbers are good: 7-day fasting of 99 and 7-day average of 104. Weight is down .2 pound. Try not to be overwhelmed by this.

Using too many exclamation points! But I can't seem to help myself!!!!!

I want to...

Keep trusting the training

Keep knitting

Keep the health numbers good

An Embarrassment of Riches

2010-09-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

Forward: Sometimes my life seems best summarized by the idiom, "an embarrassment of riches," both tangible and intangible, great and small. Today's post is about some of the greater ones lately....

I am....

Relieved that I can finally write about the "Pay It Forward" gift I received from Debby!!!

Oh, whew! (*mopping brow*)

Debby delivered my gift in person at breakfast, and I thought I was going to burst into tears. It is some kind of gorgeousness!!! I cherish it, and am wondering how to best display it. But I was even more moved to read Debby's account ("Pay It Forward Challenge") of how she created it and personalized each segment that she made for Juice, Jill, and me. I love that our quilts have a connection; it's really reflective of the blog community! (*sniff*...I'm getting a little teary again...)

Debby's account has the better pictures, but I wanted to talk about some of the details I've noticed so far, and love. It's an intricate quilt, and I have a feeling that the more I look at it, the more I'm going to see and appreciate.

I love the butterflies!

I love the buttons, and the position of the heart-shaped button by the dedication.

I also love how the stitching goes around the flower blocks to create petals,

and then extends down to create the stems and leaves.

I also love the richness of the metallic gold in some of the fabrics;

you can't see it too well in the photo, but the brown fabric in the upper flower has it,

and it adds to the richness without overwhelming.

Isn't the spiral and star stitching on this flower cool?

More of the lovely stitching and embroidered details...I love how she combined these.

More embroidered detail to compliment the center of this flower.

Here's a view of the full treasure!

Thank you, dear friend!!!

Training: Well, I was all happy after the big run on Sunday, and then I noticed my ankle got achy after my stationary bike ride on Monday morning. Bother! So I swam on Tuesday instead of running. It felt good, though it took an effort to get over the ugh-have-to-drive-there-and-get-wet-and-reshower inertia.

I think my mantra has to be "Trust the Training." I ran today (Thursday, day after CardioSculpt class) and my legs weren't 100%, and I felt really sluggish. My ankle feels fine though. I have to remember that if I do this *consistently*, the results will follow. I'm working to build distance, but a little more pep in my step would be welcome. Rest day tomorrow, then a 4-mile run on Saturday.

Knitting: Yeay, I finished another baby hat! No, not for me, but for Christie O's baby shower for the parents of premature babies at her local hospitals. She and a mom's group in her area do this every year, so I'll be sending her along some hats as part of my "Pay it Forward" project.

I was a little worried about this hat. I was short on blue, so I switched to cream; I was knitting a pattern that you knit on straight needles in the round instead and saw some flaws in the details. I agonized whether to start over, but I kept going. And you know what? When I finished it, it looked fine, and it's so soft. I think there's an analogy here.

Yes, I finished this one in the car.

Don't worry, I'm parked.

It seems to be one of the few places I can bind off, undisturbed.
(Oh, and no, it's not a toilet paper cozy. :-)

Healthy: So grateful that the numbers are good. My 7-day fasting blood glucose average was 106 and my overall 7-day average was 107. My weigh-in day weight has remained unchanged since the beginning of the month. I'm happy that this is so, even though I'm not weighing daily. (Trust the training!)

I want to...

Keep doing the good stuff.

Publish some of the draft posts I've started.

Start that sweater for the adorable Chloe!

Weekly Update, 9/9/10 (whoops, a day late!)

2010-09-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's Rosh Hashanah! (And there I cluelessly was, wondering about the lack of MizFit post in my reader - d'oh!) L’Shanah Tovah to everyone celebrating the Jewish new year! I have to add a pointer to Amy Tenderich's post over on Diabetes Mine today; I liked her theme of "renew, refresh, and reset." Also, her post last year talked about the Rosh Hashanah tradition of tossing bread crumbs away, which symbolizes casting off your worldly mistakes. I was wondering if perhaps I could reframe it to help me get a little closer to my "best self" and cast away my nut cache to some hungry squirrels....

I am...

So delighted to have met Debby in person! Blogger buddy Debby of Debby Weighs In and I have been trying to get together for a meet-up for quite some time now, and thanks to her hard work and travel, we did so this past weekend! (***squeeeeeee!!!!!***) She joined us for an Opposite Family breakfast, we chatted over coffee, and then she and I headed up to the Kings Mountain Art Fair.

Pubsgal and Debby!

(Pubsgal seriously considers changing her Internet moniker to "AmazonOfTheForestGal"
and hopes she's not so overwhelming-looking in person....)

It was a fantastic meet-up! I've felt lucky that every blogger I've met "in person" is exactly the way they are online, and Debby was no exception. Debby wrote a great summary of our visit over on her blog ("A Most Excellent Adventure"). Lori commented, “I find it interesting how you can just fall into easy conversation with someone you have never met in real life, but feel like you have known them forever.” And as I responded over there, it was so true! It was like getting together with a friend that you haven’t seen in awhile. Probably because you know more about the blogger’s interests than someone you’re just meeting, so you have a better idea of what would be fun to talk about, or what you’d like to know more about the person from having read their blog.

Speaking of authenticity, we also had a laugh about her brother's (a non-blogger) "and we like your little dog, too!" remark (imagine that in Wicked Witch of the West voice, of course); the context was, how real are these blog people? With all the stuff you read about, I can see why our non-blogging loved ones may sometimes feel concerned. I had to admit, I felt a little unsure about the blogger meeting etiquette, and it's not like Internet safety isn't important. Normally I'd probably suggest a public meeting spot for a first meeting "in person." But I felt like I had followed Debby long enough to get a sense of the kind of person she is, and vice-verse. I was more worried about stuff like "Will I serve the wrong thing for breakfast?" and "What can I pull together without having to take a trip to Whole Foods?" It is a little good-but-odd, though, once your blogging life starts to intersect with your "in person" life...sometimes I get the sense that Mr. Handsome-and-Handy is bemused about the whole thing: who ARE all these people she keeps yammering about? Well, now he's met one: they are real! Real nice!

So done with cookies. Sunday saw all of the Opposite Family at the fair this time, but we were there for business first: to help sell cookies!

"Come buy a cookie for your little dog, too! Eeee hee hee hee heeeee!"

I'm happy to report that our school's fundraiser was a success: volunteers sold all of the nearly 3,700 cookies we all baked! (The cookies are kept in the community center freezers until showtime.) The cookies are large enough to feed a family of 4-6, or perhaps one if your face is this size. After our shift, we enjoyed lunch and took the kids to the "Kiddie Hollow" section of the fair.

They enjoyed making their own crafts and playing games...

Serious Spin Artist at work

...hanging out in the giant tepee and clambering over the redwood stumps...

Things 1 & 2, fiercely on the prowl

and getting their faces painted!

Cheetah Princess of the Forest!

(P.S. - I saw a kid wearing a "Thing 1" shirt at the fair! I didn't know they made t-shirts that looked like the outfits worn by Things 1 & 2 in Cat in the Hat!)

No, it's not a picture of a dumpster.

It's the mirror above the outdoor sinks.

The one on the left had a little label, "Try the other one."

The one on the right had the label as shown.

Who's not going to look wonderful after reading that! :-)

(Mr. H&H looks quizzical:"Why is she taking a picture of the mirror? Must be a blog thing....")

SO fighting the lack of motivation. But as I've learned, the motivation, she comes and she goes...you a lot of times have to just suck it up and get 'er done. Especially when the running mileage needs to start ramping up. (Although, have to admit, the endorphins were kicking after yesterday's CardioSculpt class, so maybe it's back on the uptick?)

So cheering on this lady AND this lady, too! Good luck on your charity ride this Sunday, Lori, and your Memory Walk for Alzheimer's, Biz! Anyone know a "nice biking & walking weather" dance we can do for them? Apparently "Classical Stretching" is not it, because we're having some truly dismal fog and drizzle this week. Which explains why they filmed that class on a beach in Jamaica - anywhere else, and it would have started pouring rain, I suppose.

So grateful that the health numbers are good. 7-day average for fasting blood glucose is 105 and 7-day average overall is 109. Weight is exactly the same as last week, within my particular "normal" range. I can check "make Dr. appointment" off the list (it's set for next month) and "get flu shot" off the list, too.

I want to...

Feel excited about the training. I'd like to think that I've learned a thing or two over the past couple of years of fun and fitness. One of those things is that I can't force the motivation and excitement to happen, that those feelings come and go, and if I'm patient and stay relaxed and open about it, they'll come back. I just hope they hurry the heck up, though, because I'm starting to feel a *teensy* bit anxious about the mileage I have to build up over the next few months. But I guess that's part of it, though: it's only a few months, and it will pass, and I'll have an adventure and get the t-shirt if I'm lucky and stay healthy. And then I can take a little rest and plan the 2011 season.

Keep good numbers. This seems to be going pretty smoothly. Have to admit, that first year of charting every.darn.thing and intense scrutiny did help retrain me to have better habits. I think there's always room for improvement, though. One thing I kind of dropped was aiming for more meatless meals. Yesterday, I had cheese and eggs but no meat, and a lighter dinner, and my fasting number this morning was especially good. I don't like to make work for our family chef - it's hard enough cooking to please our herd of cats - actually, cooking for a herd of cats would probably be easier, just crack open a bunch of cans of tuna - and it's easy to have leftovers for lunch. But maybe on those "fend for myself" nights, remembering that quesadillas are really quite good would be a wise thing. Or beans, I keep forgetting about beans!

Write a book review for The End of Overeating. It's an excellent book, and I enjoyed listening to it. It gave me a lot to ponder, and I can't do justice to it in one paragraph, so I'll be gathering my thoughts and posting about it soon.

Celebrate Thing 1's birthday! My beautiful boy turns 9 this year! How the heck did that happen?

Happy September!

2010-09-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's September! We've already been back to school for a week, helped bake and wrap 3,642 big-as-your-head cookies for the school fundraiser, and will be helping to sell them this weekend at the Kings Mountain Art Fair. (If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's totally worth going!)

Thing 2 "cookiefaced" me...the resemblance is uncanny, no?
(Wish I could really arch one eyebrow like that!)

I am...

Adjusting to The Things being back to school. Yep, we're back already! Thing 1 has the same teacher, and some new kids in his multigrade class; at least we know what to expect. Thing 2 has a new teacher, and she's enjoying it quite a lot. (Some stuff is still being taught by her Kindergarten teacher, because all the classrooms are multigrade this year.) She brought home this red bull stuffed animal that she named "Bruce the Bull Cow," a prize from the prize box "for winning a very hard game," she said.

Gearing up for the ambitious Shrinking Jeans Monthly Project: Free Yourself Once and For All. I think that will probably be taking a bit of each month for the rest of my life, that one. And funny, the things that have sort of coalesced in this area. I started listening to the book The End of Overeating. (I know, discussed ad nauseum in the blogosphere last year...I'm a little late to the party.) I saw a post today on the blog Stop Renting Weight Loss titled "Convenient Fat," which discusses the question, "What could we accomplish if we didn’t struggle with fat, diets, calories and food?" Which in turn reminded me of the Phineas & Ferb episode in which Dr. Doofenshmirtz builds the "Junk Food-inator" in order to make all healthy food unhealthy, thus rendering the overweight citizens of Danville easy to control. Hmmm. Kind of makes a girl wonder....(if she watched too many X-Files episodes, if nothing else! ;-)

Getting aware of my personal cash flow. Frugality is a virtue in my husband's family, and Mr. Handsome-and-Handy has been a great influence on me financially. When we got married, I told him I didn't want to combine our finances until I was debt free. So I paid off my car and my credit cards, while contributing equally to the house and other expenses. Luckily we tend to have similar financial goals and values, which helps keep things going smoothly, but I feel like I haven't been fully doing my part to manage my own cash flow. While I've done pretty well with less restaurant and Whole Foods eating, when I do go, I feel like I'm spending too much on something that's just for me. Treating myself once in awhile is fine and fun, but I tend to go a little overboard when I walk into Whole Foods. So I'm sort of making a game out of "how long can I keep this cash in my wallet?" and "how long can I go without going to Whole Foods?" (It's been 2 weeks so far!)

Doing fine with my health numbers and feeling a lot better after the weekend. I was sick on Monday, but I'm feeling quite a lot better. I'm not sure if it was a bug or some mild food poisoning, but a day of fairly bland eating and resting got me back in order. 7-day averages for fasting blood glucose was 111 and 7-day overall average was 108. Over the past couple of weeks, my weight went up a couple of pounds, then back down a couple of pounds...still in the same range, which is comforting.

Not on plan with my training, and NOT okay with it. I know that my schedule has changed, and I am not beating myself up about it. But I just need to get those runs in, plain and simple, while they are doable. Because in a couple of weeks? The miles and times really start to ramp up.

Part of the problem is being utterly DOM-inated by my CardioSculpt class, and it's been taking a couple of days for it to go away. I've adjusted slightly to work the arms more than the legs, but today's class? Whew. Even without extra weight, I think all those lunges and one-legged squats are going to really hurt tomorrow. (But I LOVE the instructor...she's really mixing things up now that we no longer have to follow the old class format, and we're going to get so much stronger! Yeah!) I think I just need to switch my rest and run day, and then follow through on the run day.

I want to...

Let myself off the hook for finishing Savor. Great book, but it's going to be due back at the library soon, and I just don't think I'll have it finished. I'll just get as far as I can. And hope the library eventually gets an audio book.

Knit while on homework supervision duty. Because I get stressed out while cracking the whip, and I need something to do with my hands that has nothing to do with eating nuts. (Crunching down the nuts distracts Thing 1, too.)

Make my doctor appointment and get my blood work done. It's checkpoint time for the health numbers!

Get on track with my training. I need to get in at least two runs before next Wednesday. (3 would meet my training schedule, but I'm not sure how the holiday/volunteering weekend stuff will impact that.) So here's a tentative schedule:

Thursday: Rest or run after drop-off but before work, depending on whether my leg muscles are still speaking to me after today....
Friday: See Thursday; rest if I ran, or run if I rested.
Saturday & Sunday: We'll be attending and working at the fair, respectively, so that will be my functional fitness. Get in 30 minutes of at-home upper body + abs strength stuff over the course of the weekend, too.
Monday: Enjoy a long run outdoors.
Tuesday: Ride 30 minutes on stationary bike and run 1 mile on treadmill with sprint intervals.

Race Report: 4th Annual Lompoc Sprint Triathlon 2010

2010-08-25T18:07:00.000-07:00

We interrupt the regularly scheduled "Weekly Update" to present you with this race report! All is well, and not much new, other than my schedule is cinching up with the kids being back in school and all. And now: on to the race!

On Saturday, August 14, 2010, I finished my 3rd sprint triathlon: the 4th Annual Lompoc Sprint Triathlon! The race comprises a 500-yard pool swim at their amazing aquatic center, followed by an 11-mile bike ride out-and-back through the flower fields and a 5K run through the city of Lompoc. This year's race was a memorial for local business owner Hank Hudson, whose company sponsors many area recreational events.

The Prelude

Why the Lompoc Sprint Triathlon? I thought it would be a great way to combine my hobby and a parental visit! I also though it would be much fun for my mom and step-dad to see me race, but it didn't quite work out that way...as regular readers know, my husband had to make an unexpected trip back to Michigan for his aunt's funeral, so I was flying semi-solo on my tri weekend! I wasn't sure if they would feel up to watching the kids for me, so I had steeled myself to cancel the race if necessary, but silly me: of course they wanted some grandparent time! And Mr. Handsome-and-Handy lived up to his moniker, as usual: he packed the kids' suitcase and he made sure my bike and the van were ready for race and trip respectively. (That's the stuff he normally does before trips and races, but I was extra appreciative of him doing so this time!)

So the day before the race Things 1 & 2 and I did our SF Bay Area to Lompoc road trip! With kids, this usually takes about 6-6.5 hours...but we hit a lot of traffic during our trip, so it was more like 8 hours. Ugh! We did get there in time for the packet pickup, though. We had dinner at the restaurant Mi Amore, which The Things love for their arcade and their yummy pizza and onion rings! I enjoyed a nice trip to the salad bar, too. We did the arcade for awhile, then I was gently reminded that I had a race in the morning and we had no beds set up! So we went home, got everything ready, I got the kids off to sleep, and then I got to try and sleep before the race. I'm sure I was a little short on sleep, but oh well!

Racing Day!

...was all-too early, as usual. But I got up in time to get in a couple of cups of coffee and a piece of frozen coffee cake with peanut butter. (This was the askGeorgie.com "Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake" I made, but with a little orange peel + extract - I froze some of the pieces I'd made without the streusel, and they were still great!)

Thing 2 awoke before I went and was a little anxious, so I held her and cheered her up a bit before I headed to my race. My parents enjoyed their nice grandkid time with Things 1 & 2 while I did my tri thing. (I have an AWESOME support crew, no?)

I drove over to the Lompoc Aquatic Center, and there it was! The triathlon transition area, all set up and ready for the big race! Racing day conditions weren't going to make for pretty pictures, but they were perfect: overcast, cool, light breeze.

It's a beautiful day! (For racing, that is!)

I got my gear set up-we had assigned spots, but they were tight and the bike next to mine was intimidatingly nice, so I used my kickstand instead of hanging the bike-and then headed inside for body marking. We had bibs, but there were no timing chips in this race; race results had only the total time. The swims were timed, but you had to show up in person to see the posting of the lap swim split. This race was also different than others by their categories, because the age group categories were based on gender + age range + road bike vs. mountain bike (tires had to be 2" or greater). Having a mountain-bike style hybrid, this was a great chance to race against similarly-equipped athletes!

I should have ditched my clothes outside and just gone indoors in my suit, but oh well. I made the all-important pre-race pit stop (thanks, body, for excellent pre-race timing!), then went on into the pool area.

The Swim: 500 yards, indoor pool

The swim was in three heats, and your heat was determined by your self-reported lap swim time on the entry form. So all the fast, intimidating people went earlier.

Here's Heat 1...

Here's me, wondering what I've gotten myself into...

I was in the third heat. Silly me: I though a pool swim would be easy. Comfort with lap swimming does not equal comfort with racing. One of these days I'm going to have to do a proper warm-up and not just fuss with my stuff and wander around before the race, and see if that makes a difference on the swim.

I shared a lane with two gals who were tri buddies who'd come down from Oceano for the race, one of whom had just learned to swim that summer! I'm in awe, because I think it would be really intimidating to do a triathlon as a new swimmer. We swam in a circle, with the one gal going first, me second, and the new swimmer third. She stayed right on my tail, though, so I had to push a bit more than I was used to, and then I started to feel a little breathless. I switched from front crawl to breast stroke to feel like I could get a little more air. I even did a couple of lengths with my side stroke. ( I'm actually a little faster on the breast stroke, but it's awkward when you're sharing a lane.) The nice part was that other people were counting the laps, so when they signaled that this was my last lap, I of course was finally feeling like the swim was going easier. My swim time ended up being what I expected: 20 minutes for 20 lengths of the pool, which was about my lap swim speed.

So for the record, I think my favorite tri swim was the See Jane Tri swim: it was open water in a lake with entry on the shore and warm enough to go without a wet suit. There was plenty of room to spread out, and no salt water and ocean creatures and scary waves & currents. Not to mention a little shorter...

The Bike: 11 mile, out & back, flat

I dried off, put on my clothes, and when I got to my bike, I slipped on socks + shoes (thanks to Thing 1 for showing me that tennis shoes CAN be slipped on without needing tying/untying) + water backpack. I packed the plain water with electrolytes. I also had my carton of coconut water while in transition and this time carried half of an Odwalla Super Protein bar, which I ate after the bike turn-around. (They were Thing 1's staple protein when he was a toddler - he refused to eat meat after he turned about a year and a half old, and that phase lasted for several years.)

I loved the bike! Even with my heavy old hybrid with mountain bike tires, I passed people, which is a novelty for me. (Granted, most people I passed were also on hybrids with mountain bike tires, or real mountain bikes...I got passed by a road bike or two.) The route was a little bit of residential, then mostly through flower and vegetable fields, so not much traffic. We had a slight headwind as we got closer to the ocean, but it gave a sweet tailwind on the trip back!

And like other bikes, on the way out, I saw again on several faces that triathlon sight I love the most: that awestruck, delighted, "I can't believe I'm doing this! Yeah baby! I so rock!" look. "Why yes, you DO rock! Isn't this a blast?" I grin back.

The Run: 3.1 mile, out & back, flat

Oddly enough, nothing fell off my bike this time. That "stickiness," however, extended to my bike helmet. I breezed in & out of transition, parking my bike and dropping my water back pack, and ran out again. I called my mom to let her know I was almost done. And I was nearly a quarter mile into the run before I realized that I had forgotten to remove my helmet! So I did the run wearing my bike helmet. It's always something ridiculous with me and triathlons, isn't it?

The run went smoothly. Some of the people I passed on the bike passed me back on the run. (Including one of the gals in my category; drat!) I ran at a comfortable pace, pushing but not overdoing. I felt like I gauged it pretty well. I ate a couple of ginger chews for energy during the run, but I didn't carry water. They had water at the turnaround, which worked fine, except I unwrapped a chew and kept the wrapper but ditched the chew during the cup-toss. Luckily I had a spare chew.

And it was back to the finish. I passed a happy group of spectators, who brandished the sign, "Your butt hurts, because YOU are kicking A**!" Loved it! I passed a gal on the final stretch across the parking lot, and as I approached the finish, the announcer did something I never had happen: she announced me! Coolness!!!

"Here comes #103," my_real_name ",all the way from" my_town"!"

And I did a little leap-with-heel-kick on hearing that, which got a "Wow!" and then I ran into the final stretch, with a hearty "Woo HOO!" on crossing the finish line. A couple of minutes later, I stopped the time on my watch at 1:25, which I'd started mid-T1. So I'd finished it in less than 2 hours, which was my goal for this race.

"She's once....Twice....Three tiiiimes a sprint triathleeeete..."

The Post-race

So I got a bystander to take my picture, and I headed over to transition to pack it up. There weren't a lot of bikes left. The first timer guy with the nice bike in the rack next to mine was long gone. I ran into the two gals from the swim, and they both had a great race and are rarin' to do more! (Me too!)

Mentally, this was a much easier race for me than the Treeathlon. I didn't have all those negative, inferiority thoughts trying to worm their way into my brain. The joy was back, in force! Maybe because the last race taught me that if I'm not going to approach this from a "just for fun" stance, it's not worth it. Maybe it was finally talking and writing about my frustrations about wanting to get faster and better and move up to the next level, the Olympic distance (2x a sprint distance), and maybe even beyond someday; letting it out sort of "freed" me to just enjoy where I'm at again...I'll keep gradually working toward getting there, and if I get there, I get there. If I don't, I'll have good health and fitness and some great stories, which are the real prizes.

Physically, I must be in better shape, because I was not totally laid out after this race. I'm not sure if it was post-race euphoria or more effective fueling during the race, but I had enough gas left in the tank to actively do the recreational swim with the kids for a couple of hours at the pool! And amazingly enough, I had NO post-race headache!!! (My last two triathlons, I had some real skull-splitters afterward.)

With Things 1 & 2 at the pool.

Thing 2 is happy I'm wearing a 2-piece like her (a post for another day...).

The Race Results
The race results were posted promptly, a few days after the race (http://www.cityoflompoc.com/parks_rec/events/Triathlon/Results2010.pdf).

I was in the “MJ” category (female, 40-49, mountain bikes), and I placed 3rd of 6 in my category. I was within 5 minutes of the first place finisher in my category! Yes! (furious arm-pump) My total time was 1:39:06, which is my best time ever. It’s almost impossible to compare races, but my time was better than my “See Jane Tri” time, which had a shorter swim but a hillier bike and run. I noticed that of all finishers (only two people didn’t finish), everyone finished in under 2 hours, which is a pretty fast race overall. The top finisher finished in 56:27, to give you an idea of the time spread.

I have to give mad, mad props to the organizers and volunteers of the event and to the officers of the Lompoc Police and the California Highway Patrol who helped! Everyone was so nice. There were officers and staff at every intersection, stopping traffic and helping us to have a safe, enjoyable race. MMMMMMMMWAH!

Weekly Update, 8/18/10

2010-08-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am...

Back from my travels, and happy that Mr. Handsome-and-Handy is, too! My semi-solo parenting weekend-I had help from my folks-went well. The kids were great during the trip (and the long, long drive there and back again). The Lompoc Sprint Triathlon was SO FUN! I had a fantastic time, and I'm working on the race report. Mr. H&H's trip was a solemn one, but he did enjoy spending time with his family during the trip.

Not making much progress on my reading. I didn't get much reading done. I did enjoy Foodie McBody's excellent post, "Double Book Review: Battle of the Spiritual-Eating Stars." Darned if her insightful review had me flip-flop a bit on which book was better! Although, I'd still recommend them both, with the caveat that one or the other may resonate better with a person. One thing I forgot to mention in my comment over there was that although Ms. Roth talks a lot about her retreats and the positive feedback she received from those who attended, I didn't feel like I missed out, or needed to go sign up for one. Maybe because I get so much from interacting in the healthy living blogosphere.

Not 100% on my training plan, but I'm okay with it. Here's the DM chart. Road trip and "re-entry" played a bit of havoc with my training plan. I'm going to Cardio Sculpt class today, and I'm going to hit the last Pilates class tomorrow...I just wasn't in the up-before-the-crack mode yesterday.

Sustaining weight and good blood glucose levels. No change in weight. 7 day overall average was 103 and 7 day fasting average was 107.

I want to...

Work on my running.

Enjoy the last week of kids' summer vacation.

Finish hat #3 and get cracking on hat #4. I'm much happier with the pattern I'm using. Maybe it's partly the yarn, which will work better post-hospital for the preemie babies, but I'm going to try and adapt the pattern for the hospital-friendly yarn.

Finish reading Savor.

Sustain weight and good blood glucose levels.

Weekly Update, 8/11/10

2010-08-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

I am...

Sad for my husband and his family. One of his aunts passed away this past weekend. I didn't know her very well, but I know that his family was close to theirs, so he and his brother are traveling to Michigan for the funeral.

Happy I went back to my regular metformin dose. Whew! All systems back to normal...or as normal as it gets around here. For this past week, 7-day fasting was 105 and 7-day overall was 110.

Done listening to Women, Food, and God and stalled out on Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life . I'm not sure I have much new to say about them right now that I didn't say last week. WF&G was pretty good. I liked the point about food being a teacher - especially if one struggles with food issues. I definitely identified with the compulsive overeater subtype of "permitter" (whereas "restricters" tend to crave structure and rules around eating, and then binge when those rules prove to be impossible to follow 100%). She also discussed "The Voice," a composite voice of authority in our heads, which is funny, because those authoritarian parts of Savor are the ones that irked me.

So I'll be curious to see how this plays out in my eating habits. One thing from WF&G that I have already done all along was to not have the notion of "forbidden foods," which can (for some people-like me) make you only want them more. When I started out this time around, I had a guideline for what I needed to eat, and there were many foods I chose to not eat on a regular basis, but I never said, "I am never going to eat Food X ever again." I think that, for me, this worked really well. I learned to limit things that weren't in my best health interest without it being a cause for revolt. (Scary diabetic consequences are pretty powerful motivators.) Some things were easy for me: I didn't miss white bread, pasta, rice, breakfast cereal, and the like. I missed artisan bread, like sourdough; we don't buy it anymore, but if we're out and there's some and I feel like it's worthy, I'll have a little. Other things were a regular habit. For example, when I was in my initial frenzy of getting healthy habits, I stopped regularly drinking diet cola. I used to have at least 1 can a day, but I figured while I was highly motivated to flip my habit energies, why not try throwing this one in there, too? It stuck, because I had my tea and such, and nearly every place has either water or unsweetened iced tea, so there was always a good substitute. I had some more serious binge eating issues (e.g., driving through Burger King and stuffing down a hamburger or two on the way home from work, when I knew dinner was waiting), and I think the shock of hitting my personal rock bottom was needed to switch that. (Well, and Mr. H&H getting a truly nasty-tasting burger at Carl's Jr. during a road trip, which turned me off of all fast food burgers except In & Out.) And yet, I still feel like I'm dealing with that mindset at times, even if it's not the amounts or the type of food I used to eat regularly.

Speaking of rock bottom, Christie O. has an excellent interview series with Tara Costa of The Biggest Loser over on her blog; Part 1 discusses how transformative hitting "rock bottom" can be. (Though we still don't have to *like* it.) You know what else is kind of funny? It's almost like my diabetes diagnosis gave me an excuse to be particular about things I ate, and in general, an excuse to take better care of myself in general. Oh, and over at Refuse to Regain, Barbara Berkeley also touches on rock bottom, although now I'm wondering if the above paragraph sounds like sad-sack "Queen for the Day" talk. (Do I get a crown, a cape, and a blender now? ;-)

Training! As I said last week, I don't think I've ever followed a training plan exactly, but I do like having a guideline. Here's this weeks's training:

Were I "on plan," I would have had more running in there, but Cardio Sculpt absolutely fried my legs for a few days. I need to talk to the instructor before I go to next week's class and get advice on how to modify what she's doing, because I can't meet my race training goals if I'm limping around for days after a strength workout.

I want to...

Transition my focus to running training. School starts in a couple of weeks, so next week will be my last week of Pilates for the summer. Yesterday's class didn't seem quite so excruciating, but there was still plenty of stuff I hated doing. Teasers and roll-ups, for example. I think the instructor was pretty good at correcting form, but she didn't really take a lot of time to demonstrate or explain modifications to some of the more advanced moves, and I often felt kind of left to wriggle on my own and find something that worked for me. I also think the class would have been more enjoyable if done to music; we only had the instructor counting. That said, this class made me want to get my own exercise ball and do some of the exercises on my own. (I liked the one where we tossed the ball up and caught it with our legs, and there were others that were kind to my lower back, yet still felt like a good abdominal workout.)

I do feel like it has made my core stronger, but it sure hasn't flattened my abs at all. In fact, I compared my measurements at the end of July with those at the end of January of this year. Although I was only 1 pound up, my waist was up 2 inches (!) and my bust was up 1.5 inch (like I needed that); my ribcage and hips were unchanged; left thigh was down .5 inch and the right thigh was up .5 inch. Now, some of that was undoubtedly PMS fun, but sheeeeesh.

Maintain good health. Doing the usual stuff.

Finish the Lompoc Triathlon! T-minus 3 days! Crikey! I though this event might need to be cancelled with Mr. H&H gone, but my mom said she'd with watching the kids while I do this, so it's still on.

Weekly Update, 8/4/10

2010-08-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am...

Going back to my regular metformin dose. On advice from my doctor, given my stable a1c number, I tried cutting my metformin dose back to one pill per day, taken in the evening. After 3 fasting numbers that were much higher than I wanted to see (117, 120, 121) and a post-meal number I hadn't seen in a long time (158!), I decided to go back to my regular dose. Guess that extra 500 mg just gets me where I want to be. From what I read, when one cuts back on metformin, there's an immediate rise, followed by a gradual rise over a couple of weeks. I figured that if things went up in just a week, I sure don't want to see where they end up after two. (FYI, for this past week, 7-day fasting was 113 and 7-day overall was 119.)

Still reading Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life and now listening to Women, Food, and God. Interesting books, these two. From what I've read so far of Savor, I can now see what intuitive eating people mean when they say it's not the same as mindful eating. Savor, it seems to me, is definitely written to people whose weight is affecting their physical health, although its principles can be extrapolated to anyone looking to be more mindful about their eating. However, it is also geared toward people seeking a program and tips, because it does offer a sort of program. Their program seems more geared toward those starting out on the journey, although even those just starting this program may have long ago--even before achieving morbid obesity--cut out "sugary sodas" from their diets.

One assumption that I'm finding kind of annoying with Savor is that everyone who is overweight is in ill health and is suffering. I am currently considered, by BMI chart standards and waist measurement standards, "overweight." (Yes, I know, BMI is not necessarily the optimal measurement, but I think doctors and the like use it to answer the question, what "weight" is "overweight" over?) I don't feel like I'm suffering (although who knows? I might be masking my deep existential angst with too many nuts), and I'm enjoying good health. I feel strong and vibrant. Contrast this with Women, Food, and God, where the assumption is, weight is not a health problem...unless it is a health problem.

Women, Food, and God is not what I would have expected at all, given the title. I had some reservations about reading it. I'd say it's more of a spiritual than a religious book, which for me was a pleasant surprise. Listening is a good way to receive this work, although sometimes I just zone out listening to Geneene Roth talk (she tends to speak in abstracts), and I find myself having to backtrack. Her work reminds me quite a lot of Martha Beck's Steering by Starlight; even their voices sound alike! I just finished listening to Part 1. A lot of what she said about the "urge to bolt" and dreading the pain of anticipated (potential) bad things (that aren't happening...or aren't likely to happen in a long time, if ever) made me think to myself, "Oh, wow. I'm not the only one who does that." (Oh, and she mentions Pema Chodron, always a plus in my book. I found her audio book Getting Unstuck to be particularly valuable at a time of my life in which I was feeling very stuck indeed.)

The question is, then, if I'm truly okay with where I am, then why am I bothering with these books at all? Good question. Part of it is curiosity, seeing if there are any new learnings or practices that I can apply to "sustaining" to make it come more naturally to me, other than the mechanical stuff I've already applied to how I eat. (Which I think is why I felt a little disappointed by parts of Savor.) Right now, I feel like I tread a wobbly, narrow, "just good enough" line of healthy vs. not-so-healthy reasons for eating, if that makes any sense. In WF&G terms, I still "use" food for non-hunger/nutrition reasons more than I'd like to admit: bonding with others, making myself feel better when I'm in a funk or bored, or even simply out of habit. (I'm finding my food blog to be really useful in helping me identify these uses.) I've gotten more "in control" of how I use food, but I want even better for myself. We are all physically dependent on food, but does being mentally/emotionally dependent on it serves me? I don't think it will for the long haul. I know there are no guarantees, but I really want to learn all that I can to help me sustain good health.

Glowing (and *blushing*) in the Spotlight! The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans' "Sister Spotlight," that is. Thanks, Christie O., that was such a lovely surprise! (Did you know that she has a shiny new blog? It's called Average Moms Wear Capes, where Christie O. lets her cape flap loud and proud, and encourages others to do the same!)

Enjoying the fruits of Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's culinary creativity! See Monday's entry on Pubsgal Eats for Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's "Chicken ala Jacques." It's lovely!

Training! Thanks to the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans' "Ask Coach Joe" article, I found a very doable-looking training plan, and he provided good advice for those training for half marathon distance. (At least for starters...I'm not looking too hard at those 10 milers near the end!) It's one he wrote for Self magazine (click here to view). I like that his plan has a day for strength and a day for cross-training built into it, because it meshes well with my fitness fickleness. I don't think I've ever followed a training plan exactly, but I do like having a guideline.

So I skipped Pilates yesterday morning in favor of a run and a swim, because I hadn't gotten in a swim during the past week. It was great! My run was a new route, through the park near the pool I swim at, and out to the trail near the bay. Where I saw this sign, which cracked me up and made me stop and take a picture.

This sign isn't as much of a non-sequiter as you'd think... (There's a driving range behind the trail.)

...But then, I've got an active imagination!

I want to...

Keep gradually improving. I want to stick as closely as possible to Coach Joe's plan and be ready for the 1/2 marathon. There are a whole boatload of people doing this event, from what I've read, and my motivation to go was mostly social, so I'm not exactly looking to this event as a serious race. Still, I want to be prepared and be able to finish it.

Maintain good health. I realize there's a belief I've been sort of clinging to, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I think part of why I may eat too much or when I'm not feeling hungry is because I worry about going hypo. It makes sense to monitor blood glucose levels when I'm working out hard, but the thing is, there is no evidence to support that I'm at risk for this. My blood glucose levels have been within a reasonable range for the last year and a half, and I'm only taking metformin, which-when taken without other diabetes meds-does not cause this. (Insulin and insulin-producing oral medications do this, so if you're on those, this does not apply to you! Read more about hypoglycemia here.) I think it would be good for me to figure out the balance of waiting until I'm feeling hungry vs. the practice of eating smaller meals more frequently, so I won't eat too much and have my blood glucose levels get out of range. I am probably eating too much food.

Be ready for the Lompoc Triathlon! The excitement is mounting! I received my registration confirmation on Monday! Woo hoo!!!

Sponsor Lori! Did you know that Lori at Finding Radiance is using her cycling super powers for good and is doing the metric century "Camp Challenge" ride on September 12? (I think most of you read Lori's blog, so this probably isn't news, but I was excited about her doing this!) It supports Double H ranch in Lake Luzerne, which provides services to children who have life threatening illnesses and their families. Read all about it here. Way to go, Lori!

Weekly Update, 7/28/10

2010-07-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

I am...

Learning Stuff from my Family! If you missed yesterday's post, I interviewed my family in a guest post for Foodie McBody over on her blog, FoodFoodBodyBody. My family is tremendously supportive, and it was fun to pick their brains about what they think people should do to be healthy and happy. (Of course, the Things were thinking in terms of what OTHER people should do....)

Playing! It was a hard week, in some ways. Swimming, usually the balm of my soul, was an emotional suckage this week; Pilates and Cardio Sculpt felt really hard, and I chaffed a big gouge into my shoulder during my 13 minute treadmill run in the wrong bra. Ouch. But I'm satisfied that I at least touched on all areas, and I even did a little yoga!

Sustaining! I'm still food blogging, and that's been valuable. forgot to weigh this morning. As of yesterday, though, I was down 1.4. As long as it stays within a couple of pounds of where I am right now, I feel very neutral about what the scale says. Interestingly enough, Debby summed this up beautifully in her "TVP, Part Deux" post, in support of her not weighing:

I am making good choices, and I don’t want to eat less. I only want to stop eating when I am already full and of course, I want to stop eating when I am anxious/bored/irritated/whatever.

I think as long as I'm honest about my choices being good and my motives--in other words, satisfy my physical hunger in a way that pleases my senses and best fuels my body--then the scale will continue to be a useful tool for me. As a tool, it helps keep me honest about whether I'm truly making the best choices with my food and fitness; it won't change good behavior, but it can help me course-correct.

Getting Excited about the Lompoc Sprint Triathlon! I printed out the registration form and the course maps, and I got this little rush of excitement. I'm looking forward to this event. I haven't been training for it particularly well, but you know? I realized that I'm okay with that, even if it's not in alignment with my crazy-ass dream. I know I can finish it, although it will still be challenging. The swim is a pool swim in their aquatic center, and the pool is the same width as the pool I train at now, so I'm comfortable about that...no weird swim start like the Treeathlon, no wetsuit, although I may have to share lanes, which I feel comfortable about doing. The bike is an out-and-back course, completely flat. The only thing that could throw me there is the infamous Lompoc wind, although it would be at my back on the way back, if it's even blowing in the morning. And the run is also flat. Registration was duly mailed yesterday afternoon.

Reading! I finished Chapter 3 of Savor this morning. Good stuff, and it makes sense with my own experience in some ways. I'd read the advice in a book about simplifying your life to stop subscribing to magazines, because they are primarily a tool for advertising and can increase your feelings of dissatisfaction with life. I'm down to Country and my mom gets me Guideposts, both of which have minimal advertising. (Well, Guideposts has an awful lot of pharma ads, but I ignore those.) So when I recently purchased Shape magazine to read their interview with Lori of "Finding Radiance", I was struck by all the ads, and articles masquerading as ads for stuff. I much preferred the stories about real people and their experiences with gaining health and fitness, which to their credit, they did have several.

Maintaining Blood Glucose Levels!  Overall 7-day average is 109, fasting 7-day average is 109. My only out-of-range reading was a 124 before breakfast on Sunday, and I'm guessing it was the party food on Saturday. (Boo hiss, because it was 101 at bedtime!)

Trying New Recipes! Well, one was new (yummy "Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake" from askGeorgie.com) and one was a new twist on a favorite (another askGeorgie.com recipe, "Roasted Crunchy Garbanzo Beans," but with different spices). The first was a glowing success, the latter...okay. I liked the batch I made before better, the spice combo I tried didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

I want to...

Keep on photo blogging the eats.  It's still fun!

Keep meeting goals.  I want to stay consistent with my goals, especially fitness ones: Get out and play 30 minutes x 5 days; play with weights 2x per week; do at least 1 swim, bike, and run per week. Revel in the last month of being able to feast on fitness, because the school year makes everything much more complicated.

Speaking of goals...I read an article over on Zen Habits the other day, "The Best Goal is No Goal" . It provoked a very strong "Yeah, try applying that one at school and work, pal!" reaction in me...and then I had to pause and wonder where such a visceral reaction came from. I couldn't help but think of the compulsory nature of school and work, of how stressful and hard it is to keep the kids on track with their homework, with how it's even a struggle for me to keep on track with everything at home and work that needs doing. Somehow, I doubt that my kids' vision of "you wake up and do what you're passionate about" would include going to school and doing their homework. This summer, it's looking more like playing with toys, riding bikes and scooters with friends, and playing stuff on their computers (and watching videos of other kids playing stuff on their computers via YouTube...oh the recursive horror!).

What do you all think?

On the other hand, I think it's valuable to not become too attached to specific goals. Because, as the author says, "I end up in places that are wonderful, surprising, great. I just didn’t know I would get there when I started." Also, too much attachment to a goal can sometimes make me dissatisfied with the journey; things eating me can cause me to eat too many things. I mean, I need to do fitness things to stay healthy, but the more I can find joy and fun in them, it means I'll be more likely to stick with them. Angst is not fun.

Keep those blood glucose levels happy. (average <120 overall and <110 fasting).

Keep on reading.  I'd like to finish "Savor" before the library demands it back again.

Guest Post over on FoodFoodBodyBody

2010-07-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

Guess who's got a guest post today over on Foodie McBody's blog, "FoodFoodBodyBody"?

Me?

No, not exactly. But you're close: my extremely supportive Opposite Family shares their secrets for healthy and happy living!

Unfortunately, I didn't ask Foodie what the best format for a post appearing on Wordpress would be, and the post isn't formatting very gracefully. (*sigh*...what happens when I ASSuME...) For easier reading, right-click the post and select (depending on your web browser) "View page source" or "View source." In the source view, scroll down to about 105 or so, the actual line number varies, depending on your web browser's page source viewer.

Weekly Update, 7/21/10

2010-07-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

I am...

Photo blogging my eats! I think the few of you who are interested have already wandered over to take a look at "Pubsgal Eats". For those who haven't, it's mostly photo food log, with a pinch of food review, a dash of recipes, a sprinkling of suggestions and discoveries (who would have thought Laughing Cow Lite Garlic would be so tasty mashed up on steak?), topped off with a quirky caption or two.

It's made me more aware of a few things: I tend to dive into my food and start chowing down without really *looking* at it first. I'm more self-conscious about what I eat around others, whether that's "in person" others or "virtual" others. Taking pictures also helps with "food amnesia." I took a photo of a piece of corn, to remind myself of the 3 bites I'd eaten. I totally forgot about it when I went to blog about it, and there was the photo to remind me.

I've also found that photographing my food in front of my family, and their curiosity about it, has opened to door for me to talk about why I'm doing it. That didn't happen with my paper journal or the tracker on my phone. This morning, Thing 2 asked me if I'd taken a picture of my breakfast yet. "Not yet. I'm still making it." She went and brought me my camera. "I just wanted to remind you to do it," she said.

An unexpected plus: photo journaling and writing about my food is fun for me, probably because it gives me yet another way to really savor my food. I still enjoy eating, even though a lot of what I eat these days looks like either the dog's dinner or the rabbit's. I really thought I wanted to be a solely "food is fuel" person--because heaven knows having a dispassionate attitude about food would be a lot easier--but I think "food is fun" will always be part of it, too. Discovering what parts make it "fun" for me and best adapting those to my "fuel" needs itself is kind of fun. For example, what spices can I discover to make veggies more exciting? What new, healthy recipes can I try? What new foods can I find that are healthy and tasty? How can I add humor to my food photo blog? That sort of thing.

Playing! I'm getting enough activity to meet my goals (mostly), but still feeling like I'm not training hard for the triathlon in August. (OMG! It's only 3.5 weeks away!!! I'll be able to finish it, but I can't say that I'm really taking it as a serious step in moving up to Oly distance next year. I have mixed feelings about that.) The fun part is that Thing 2 is now riding on 2 wheels instead of 4, and we went for a couple rides around the neighborhood last week. I loved this! And even though it's not intense, riding around the block a few times can rack up the mileage. (Loving my bike computer for telling me this!)

Maintaining blood glucose levels fairly well. Weekly overall average: 110 and Weekly fasting average: 102. I had a sharp uptick one evening after eating a slice of potato bread (after 2 "low carb" flour tortillas that had a net fiber of 14) to 150 post-meal, which only went down to 120 before bed. Mild exercise (16 minutes on a stationary bike) squashed it back down to 92 before I went to bed.
Yawning at the scale. Up .2 this week. Meh.
Reading...slowly. If I spent as much time actually reading "Savor" as I do checking for new blog posts to read, I'd be halfway through it already! There's some good stuff in there! I sure wish my library had it on CD, because I find it a lot easier to listen to books like this than make the time to read them.
Going to do the Las Vegas Rock & Roll 1/2 Marathon FOR SURE! Just registered and got my plane tickets last night! (Thanks to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy for booking the flight and supporting me in yet another crazy scheme!) Gotta admit, my personal preference would have been for the "MizBooRun" to be somewhere like Hawaii, but somehow I don't think MizFit and RenMan would have gone for a Don Ho impersonator renewing their vows.
Knitting! I'm working on hat #3 of my "pay it forward" goal. Still need pom-poms on hat #2, but I finally put the finishing touches on hat #1. I'm not too crazy about the pattern for hats 1 & 2 (and making pom-poms is pretty tedious stuff), so I've adapted a pattern I like better, but I'm knitting it in the round. We'll see how that turns out. (Jill, now you see why knitting is nearly as perilous for me to be doing as canning pickles would be....as for the rest of you, get on over if you haven't already and check out Jill's Unfolded Laundry!)

I want to...

Keep on photo blogging the eats. But not getting overly wrapped up in this. It's a fine line now, with all the technical logistics of getting the photos up there. And if you have suggestions for what you'd like to see over on Pubsgal Eats, let me know!
Keep meeting goals. I want to stay consistent with my goals, especially fitness ones: Get out and play 30 minutes x 5 days; play with weights 2x per week; do at least 1 swim, bike, and run per week. Making the swim a priority this week. Revel in the last month of being able to feast on fitness, because the school year makes everything much more complicated.
Keep those blood glucose levels happy (average <120 overall and <110 fasting).
Read more consistently. I'd like to finish "Savor" before the library demands it back again.
Try a new recipe. It's been too long since I did this.

Wee Little Hat

2010-07-19T08:22:00.001-07:00

The pompoms sort of show why I don't cut my kids' hair, though. Who'd
have thought it would be so hard to make them?

P.S. - Lori's comment made me think that I perhaps need to knit one of these for modeling wee little hats upon?

Weekly update, 7/14/10

2010-07-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

Just a few things...

Mindful Eating Experiment, Continued: After hearing much positive buzz about it, I'm testing one week of a photo food journal in blog form. I strained a few brain cells coming up with the scintillating title: it's called "Pubsgal Eats." Here's how I introduced it over there:

Today was the first day of my "Week of Eats": a photo food journal. All the cool kids seem to be doing this now, with the surge in
mindful eating from the Two Fit Chicks podcast.
Foodie McBody started one, inspired by
Mary of A Merry Life's food blog. It does seem like a good way to make oneself pause and contemplate the food that will be fueling one's body.

Anyhow, I'm going to experiment with this for a week. If it feels like it helps, I might keep it up longer. If I find it too crazy-making, out it goes. Maybe I'll even incorporate it into the regular blog, but then I'd sort of feel like I was copying Lori of Finding Radiance
and Biz of Biggest Diabetic Loser

I've only done it for a couple of days so far, but it's an interesting experiment. When I don't have a "whoops" meal--photographing empty dishes and wrappers--I find myself taking a little time to present the food and look at it, to appreciate the colors and textures before I eat. It made me realize that those "7 Guidelines" that flicker through my mind are kind of a heavy cognitive load. Why have 7, when 3 will do? I'm going with the old crossing-the-street saying, "Stop, Look, and Listen." As in, STOP just grabbing and shoving stuff in my mouth, stop when satisfied with the meal, definitely stop when eating starts feeling like a "forced march." LOOK at what I'm eating, take a little time to be thankful for it, and notice when the eating situation doesn't feel good (too distracted, multitasking, etc.). LISTEN to my hunger/fullness signals during meal time, to what I really want, to my feelings when I want to binge or want to eat when I'm not hungry.

Gym situation: So far, so good. Some classes are very different. The new ownership does not do licensed classes like BodyPump anymore. But our same darlin' Brazilian drill sergeant is there at the same time slot, kicking things up a notch with her Cardio Sculpt class...I've had to go lower on the weights for all body areas. It's scary-good what her newly unleashed creativity is coming up with. Other classes (non-licensed ones) are same, with the instructors and the course content and times kept fairly similar. But all class names have changed in a fit of creative writing. "Spin class" is now "The Ride." (Haven't been in awhile, so not sure if it's different...each instructor had their own style and music, so I imagine each class is still similar.) "Pilates on the Ball" became "Belly, Butt, and Thighs Bootcamp," although the instructor says that name is changing to "Power Ball." One change on the schedule had me puzzled: the Pilates instructor used to have a "Pilates on Foam Roller" class, and the name and description changed to "R&R," as in "rest and relaxation" (a flexibility class). The instructor said ignore the schedule, the class is the same; in other words, a complete misnomer. If they need a creative new name, I'd suggest "OWWAFEST" - as in, "Oh, when will (my) abs finally ever stop throbbing?"

So far, no rate changes, although I have a feeling they will eventually. If they change much, I may have to re-evaluate this gym. It doesn't have a pool, so I already have to go elsewhere for swimming. Right now, there's a community pool that I spend about $16.50-22.00 per month using, on top of my gym fees. So if the gym fees go up more than $15, it would be comparable to two other facilities that have a pool included, and I'd consider changing. The *almost* priceless part about my current gym is that it is right next door to my work, so no additional drive. The others are fairly close en route, but it would add extra time to my cram-in-a-workout schedule, probably an extra half hour at least. (Which explains why I typically only swim once a week, it's 6 miles round-trip out of my way.) Anyhoo, we'll see what the future brings.

Meet the Summer 2010 Neigh-bors: We have some lovely new faces on the other side of the back fence! You can't seem them too well, but there are two adorable foals in there with the mares.

Progress This week
7-day fasting blood glucose average: 107
7-day overall blood glucose average: 105

Weight: +1 pound this week. Considering I hit redline over the weekend, I'm happy that I was able to rein it in and get that down to only +1. (To put it in perspective, though, I'm still 3 pounds up from last month, where it finally looked like I was heading out of the 190s.)

Food goals:
* My goal was "Apply the '7 Guidelines', aiming for high fiber choices." I don't have time to do a detailed analysis at this point, but I'd say I did so-so on the guidelines and well on the fiber choices.
* Read "Savor" - Just got this and the vegan baking cookbook "Babycakes" from the library the other day and browsed a little bit last night.

Exercise goals: Here's the chart from my Daily Mile log. Love Daily Mile!

Misc. goals:
* Got about 7 or more hours of sleep most nights, exception being Monday night, where I got about 6.
* Morning tooth flossing works for me!

Goals for Next Week

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: below 120.
Weight goal: Maintain or progress.

Food goals:
* Complete "Week of Eats" over on Pubsgal Eats, aiming for high fiber and "Stop, Look, and Listen" behavior.
* Continue reading "Savor"

Exercise goals:
* 30 minutes of activity 5 days/week, tracking through Daily Mile.
* At least one run, bike, and swim per week.
* At least 2 strength things per week.

Misc. goals:
* 7 or more hours sleep/night.
* Morning tooth flossing

Scenes from the Weekend

2010-07-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

Overall, it was a fine weekend: I enjoyed my time with Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and Things 1 & 2, and we helped my sister-in-law celebrate her birthday. The kids got to play with their friend who lives a couple of doors up from us; it's one of the best plus sides to where we live. I made a dent in the to-do list. I ate entirely too many macadamia nuts.

However, some of my weekend was spent in a grey funk that I wasn't really sure how to shake...

See that grey stuff along the hilltop? This was Friday night, and my home is swathed in it. While most of the California is bright, bouncy, and energetic on a sunny summer weekend, we coastsiders get gloom. It's enough to make an Eeyore out of the bounciest Tigger. By Saturday evening, I had that soul-squashed feeling going on. (Of course, I can't only blame the fog. Two days without a good workout might have had something to do with it.)

So Sunday afternoon, I went for a little bike explore...

First stop was Quarry Park for a ride into a eucalyptus forest. There were some serious hills for me, and my lower gears tend to slip a bit, so it was tough going. I had to get off and walk several times.

I cruised through El Granada (more hills), past the harbor and through Princeton-by-the-Sea (picturesque name for a rather scruffy industrial area around the harbor), and to the Pillar Point trail, which I'd never explored before: the parking lot has always been too full when I tried. Not a problem with the bike!

Along the marsh, there's this huge log. At first glance, it looked like just a log...

...but closer inspection revealed little carvings!

Here's the beach behind the breakwater; lots of dogs romping in the water and fetching things. Out in the ocean on the *other* side of the breakwater is where the famed Maverick's surf contest is held. No wave action today, so the young man whom I told "Out there" when asked, "Where's Maverick's?" probably did not believe me.

Another curiousity along the trail: a labyrinth! It faces due east, so on a clear morning, this must be an especially nice spot. Of course, I had to stop and walk it, although I'm not sure I achieved much of a contemplative state.

I started my ride with a jacket on, but after awhile I got kind of warm. This is my "See Jane Tri" t-shirt, of which I'm ever-so-proud. I received many bemused glances. Mental click! I suddenly felt like a walking billboard for cannabis.

After exploring the harbor, I proceeded south on the Coast Trail, past the boat launch and beachgoers, past the surfers, with a brief pause for a bake sale (and a homemade chocolate chip cookie-yum!).

Here's the luscious Cypress Inn B&B. Ah, memories! We spent part of our honeymoon here, and then made another visit (had to use a travel gift certificate before it expired) when I was pregnant with Thing 1. Oh, that was too sad: I'd been diagnosed with gestational diabetes and it hit me fiercely. Insulin shots and missing the evening dessert were no fun. Nor, also, was the nocturnal mosquito swarm! Generally, once can leave screenless windows open here and not get bitten, especially by the beach. However, we forgot about the nearby seasonal creek, which was probably standing water by then. For once, Mr. H&H got bit worse than me. I understand that they added screens to the doors and windows after our stay, though.

Just past the Cypress Inn, there's an unusual building. It was kind of impossible to photograph at a reasonable (for its inhabitants) angle, but I did catch these fun planters on the gate.

As I turned up my street, a huge group of cyclists went down the highway: flashy jerseys, nice road bikes, going fast. Too quick to get a photo. *sigh*. I try to not compare, and I'm generally not one of those "I-must-go-out-and-buy-all-the-best-sporting-equipment" type of people, but I did have a brief "feeling shabby and back-of-the-pack" moment. But having gotten a good workout and checked out a few nooks I hadn't explored before, that feeling didn't stick around very long.

Finally, I have to show you my neighbors' fascinating agave plant. I've been watching it since this enormous stalk started erupting from it. Agave take a long time to bloom, and they only bloom once in their lives; sadly, this plant will die after it is done blooming. But it's putting on quite a grand finale. The photo is kind of dim, but you can see that the flower stalk is taller than the street light. I'll see if I can get a better shot with a proper camera one of these days.

"Life is Good" Award + Update 2x

2010-07-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

Jill over at The Sassy Pear gave me a "Life is Good" award. Thanks, Jill! I'm finally getting around to this!

Of course, it comes with a condition: you have to answer a few questions that the Award-er makes up. Jill came up with some ring-a-dingers:

1. What do you do in the privacy of your own home that you would NEVER do in front of anyone?

As someone else said (was it Debby?), why on earth would I describe here something I would do in complete private? Sheesh. I guess there is one "safe for blogging" quirk: I don't like working out to exercise videos in front of other people, even my family. I don't mind taking classes, as you well know, probably because there is a whole group of people ripe for embarrassing themselves in some way or another. But there's just something skin-crawlingly awkward about having onlookers as I shake my groove thing to the 15 Minutes Dance Express or contort myself along with Rodney Yee (um...well, now, come to think of it, that does sounds a little sordid...we're talking Yoga positions, people!). I'll finish my workout video with my family in the room if I must, but I much prefer it when they blissfully sleep through the whole thing or are preoccupied with their computers or something.

2. If you could be someone else for one day, who would it be?

Do I get to pick which day, too? Maybe Chrissie Wellington at the Ironman Championships last year, provided that "being her" meant my consciousness would be just tagging along for the ride, not actually "driving." :-)

3. What’s the bravest/scariest thing you’ve ever done?

When I was in college, I went to live in North Carolina for a 6-month internship. I knew absolutely no-one in the area (nearest family was in New York). I drove cross-country with one of my best girl friends. What a blast! This was long before Google maps--*gasp*! However, my parents had gone to AAA and had them make for me a little custom map booklets, from my starting point to my destination. It was like having a hardcopy of the driving directions, in flip book form, and it came in really handy. Putting my friend on the plane home was sad, though! Those 6 months turned out to be one of my most amazing life experiences and it gave me a lot of confidence, but it was a little scary, too.

So now I'm supposed to nominate people and have them answer questions. I want to nominate everyone, so if you're reading this and want to play along, please consider yourself nominated, and link up in the comments! Or add to the comments instead, if you want. Here are my questions for you:

1. What's the most fun travel experience you've ever had?
2. Who are your self esteem heros? (Nod to Dietgirl for that one.)
3. What things make you feel that "Life is Good"?

Update x2

Some thoughts on feeding: Well, it's been a couple of weeks since my last update! I've been dabbling with...not sure "intuitive eating" is the right term, I'm going for something like "eating like a person who is sensible about food would eat." I think that is, in fact, what I've been training to do over the past couple of years: eat what my body needs (and, within reason, what it wants), without having to track it or follow a set meal plan. If I need to go back to those, or other tools, I'm fine with that, too.

So far, it's been 5 weeks since I tracked calories or followed a written plan; the "what" of my food plan is pretty much habit by now. It's been really nice in some ways. I wouldn't call it an unqualified success, even though scale-wise, I've stayed about the same (as of yesterday, I was down a couple of pounds since 6/2, but am back up to exactly the same today). The "when" and "how much" and "put DOWN the nuts and step AWAY from the jar" and "I'm feeling bored/stressed/like eating that" is definitely not 100%. There's the usual "is it emotional/craving or is it hunger" thing to listen for, and I'd say there's progress there. However, physical hunger alone as a cue to eat doesn't always work for me as a person with diabetes, as I've written on some of your comments. I've had experience in which my stomach was rumbling, yet my blood glucose levels tell me that the last thing I ate was still sustaining me just fine, thanks. I've also had experience when I'm feeling content, hunger-wise, even when I could stand to eat something (such as before or after exercising) if I go by my meter reading. Letting myself get "hangry" doesn't serve me too well, either, although I tolerate the tummy rumbles pretty well if I know I'm close to a meal and it won't hurt me to wait a little bit. And what to do with elevated fasting levels? Do I just not eat breakfast, even though I'm hungry and the elevation might be from my liver making some extra glucose because I haven't eaten in awhile? For me, I have to apply common sense of timing along with the bodily cues, cross-checking with my meter as needed, and including "refresher courses" on my portions for some foods.

14 day blood glucose average: 106
14 day fasting blood glucose average: 105 (There were some funky fasting numbers with this vial of strips: 125/123 the day I started the vial, and 119 another day. Control solution says these strips are good, but I'm wondering if I got some bad ones in this batch. Those numbers are way out of fasting range for me.)

Exercise: I have been faithfully tracking over on Daily Mile; had 3 rest days out of the last 14, and I definitely got at least 30 minutes per day. Cardio intensity has been lower, though; more walking and workout videos, plus strength classes at the gym, but I haven't been to spin class since before my last tri and I haven't been running as much, either. I'll need to step things up a notch before that Lompoc Tri in 5 weeks.

One thing that has rocked my fitness world is that the gym next to work changed to a different franchise altogether! I'm hoping that they won't be raising my rates, or if they do, it will still be within my budget. I've investigated other options, but I'm hoping it I won't have to change gyms. I really like the instructors for the classes I'm taking--even though those are changing a bit--and I love the convenience of it not involving another drive.

Sleep: You'd think this would be good, being summer and all, but our whole household is staying up later and later, and I don't get to sleep in. Averaging about 7 hours/night.

Teeth: Haven't tracked, but I have been better about flossing. For some reason, mornings are great, because it seems I find it easier to convince myself to do things when I'm half-awake, and it doesn't seem quite so "last hurdle before bed."

Goals for Next Week

7-day blood glucose average goal and fasting numbers: below 120.
Weight goal: Maintain or progress.

Food goals:
* Apply the "7 Guidelines", aiming for high fiber choices.

Chia seeds for your tea, anyone?

("Slimy, yet satisfying!")

* Read "Savor" (it's waiting for me at the library)

Exercise goals:
* 30 minutes of activity 5 days/week, tracking through Daily Mile.
* At least one run, bike, and swim per week.
* At least 2 strength things per week.

Misc. goals:
* 7 or more hours sleep/night.

Race Report: "Tri the Coast" Sprint Triathlon Relay

2010-06-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

The 2nd (and hopefully annual!) "Tri the Coast" sprint triathlon was held on June 6, 2010 at the Colony Club in Half Moon Bay, California. The event is hosted by "Pre and Post on the Coast," a local provider of pre- and post-natal nutritional and fitness coaching. It was billed as a "non-competitive sprint triathlon...great for those who are new to triathlons as well as for the seasoned triathlete looking to practice for upcoming events." I really wanted to do this one, since it was local, but it was the same weekend as everything else that was going on. No way did I want to do the whole thing by myself, and be useless for the rest of the day (which saw the birthday party with the blue cupcakes...at the same location, coincidentally!).

However, it turned out to be an excellent opportunity to fulfill a wish from my last event: involving friends in a triathlon relay and sharing the fun! When I emailed my neighbor, J, about it (hi, J!), she wrote back that she had just been reading my Treeathlon race report, and that she would like to try the swim portion. (Oh, how I love a coincidence that seems contrived! :-) She also knew a mom at her son's school, S, who enjoyed running (S did the Nike Women's 1/2 Marathon as part of...you guessed it! Team in Training!), so we had our runner. And I was delighted to take the bike portion.

Sunday morning dawned dim, foggy, and early. I tiptoed around, eating...oh, heck, I forget what it was now. I think it might have been "spackle" (oat bran+flax+peanut butter+sugar-free syrup), but it might have been my flax toast with almond butter and sugar-free jam. And coffee. Definitely coffee. S and J showed up and we hopped into the van. Loading the bike took a little umph, but we got it wedged in there. (BIG thanks to Mr. Handsome-and-Handy for doing my pre-race tire and bike check...*sigh*...love my support crew!)

We arrived at the Colony Club, a posh facility shared by Ocean Colony and the Ritz Carlton hotel. The swim was held at the Colony pool, with the bike portion making two loops through the grounds and onto adjacent trails and roads, and the run circling through the coast trail.

We parked and headed up to the transition area, which also served as the registration area and finish line. We checked in, and were each given a swim heat time. (In this triathlon, two swimmers shared each of the four lanes, and the next heat started when the previous swimmer finished.) We all looked at each other, feeling that "uh oh" feeling. "Um," I said, "We signed up as a relay team. J is going to swim, I'm going to bike, and S is going to run." I was feeling a little embarrassed, but Meredith (the owner of "Pre & Post") came over and knew what I meant about doing a relay. Whew!

We then discovered what the "non-competitive" part meant: No bibs, no timing chips, no body marking. No timing of the participants at all. I worried a little that J and S were going to feel like they hadn't gotten a "real" triathlon experience, but I shouldn't have. It turned out to be exactly what they wanted: a chance to get out there and do a triathlon relay out without pressure. This also worked out pretty well for us, in that S didn't need to wait until I was done with the bike to start her run.

We sat around and chatted until it was time for J's swim. She did great! We were impressed by her even, methodical front crawl. She finished quickly, I think it was about 13 minutes for the 500 yards. (J, if you're reading, feel free to correct if I was wrong about that.) Woo hoo!!!

We wandered up to transition, and they saw me off on the bike. The bike was a fun but bumpy course. It comprised two loops, going out past the Ritz Carlton, up Miramontes Rd. (a moderate hill), then back the same way, almost to the pool building, but onto the coastal trail and past the golf course. As the trail left the Colony Club grounds, it got super steep (I had to get off and walk), went over a wooden bridge, then a very narrow dirt trail through a fence. The event web site said that the event "allows families to participate in the run and bike portions of the event with their children," and that "strollers and bike trailers are welcome," which is extremely cool, but I think it would have been tricky to navigate a bike trail through the dirt trail part. On the plus side, with the swim going in heats, there was never a bottleneck of riders in the narrow parts, even if there had been more participants.

After the narrow dirt trail, there was a bit more coast trail, then a segment along Redondo Beach Rd., which was rolling hills and lots of potholes! I had my camera tucked in my vest pocket, and I wondered if *that* was going to be the thing that fell off during the bike, but no worries. I also had to windshield-wipe my glasses now and then with the thick fog. It would have been a much lovelier ride on a sunny day, but it was fun, seeing all the smiling faces, several lit up with that "Oh-my-gosh-I'm-really-doing-this-thing! I rock!!!" look. Loved it! Another loop of the bike course, and I was done. I took about 45 minutes for the 9 miles.

S had started on her run about 10 minutes before I got done--I'd seen her go when I was finishing up my 2nd loop. The 5K run went past the Ritz and onto the coast trail, where it meanders through the golf course. It was somewhat hilly. There were two loops: a shorter loop around the course, then a longer loop that went down to an overlook, then back past the front of the Ritz. I have only walked part of that trail, and I really want to run it myself, it looks like it would be a beautiful run. S enjoyed the course quite a lot, and I'm not sure exactly what her time was, but the glimpse I caught of her watch looked like about 33 minutes. (S, if you're reading, please feel free to correct in the comments!)

So we picked up our t-shirts, which featured the cutest logo! There were bagels, fruit, and water for the finishers, but we didn't feel like eating.

"I'd like to write about this on my blog and share photos, if that's okay with you," I said. They were fine with it, and I said I'd use initials, or a pseudonym, if they preferred. "We need handles," said J. "I can be 'Mermaid.' S can be 'Lightfoot.'" "I can be 'Biker Mama,'" I laughed. "How about 'Biker Babe?'" suggested J. Perfect, in an "opposite" kind of way....

We headed back to my house, chatting about possible future triathlons, and agreed that it would be really fun to do part or all of them together someday. S and J walked back to J's house, and I pulled my bike out of the back of the van. And the tail light fell off! I laughed loud and long, because *something* always falls off my bike on triathlon days. At least it wasn't me!

And now...the photos!

Our triathlon relay team, rarin' to go!

"Mermaid," pounding out the swim!

The transition area

"Biker Babe," heading out for the bike

"Lightfoot" approaches the finish, making it look easy-peasey

¡Lo Hicimos! We did it! (*And* we got the cutest t-shirts!)

Opposite Life

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Weekly Update, 3/7/11: The "Hanging in There" Edition

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Yes, I'm Still Here!

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Week 4 of the Holiday Hoedown!

Week 3 of the Holiday Hoedown!

Quickie Update

Week 2 of the Holiday Hoedown!

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Weekly Update, 9/22/10

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Race Report: 4th Annual Lompoc Sprint Triathlon 2010

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Weekly Update, 8/11/10

Weekly Update, 8/4/10

Weekly Update, 7/28/10

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"Life is Good" Award + Update 2x

Race Report: "Tri the Coast" Sprint Triathlon Relay

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