this blog is moving!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my desire to move the blog onto my own domain, and I have finally done that. You'll find it at www.braveathena.com

The old entries (everything but this one) are already there. Please come visit, update your links, resubscribe to the new address—and I'll try to make it worth your while!

back at work

So, I'm back at work. My symptoms are not bad at all, except for the inability to do anything physical without wearing myself out. So no planned exercise today.

As if to remind me of my pathetic state, I ran into one of the M-W-F gym regulars on my way into work. We both just smiled and nodded, and I thought, dammit, he just came from the gym. I was jealous! Soon, I'll get back to this stuff. Soon.

home sick

Well, I'm sick again. This is terribly disappointing. Yesterday I started with the hot and cold, constant sneezing, constant nose running, and exhaustion with simple activities. Sigh. So I'm home so I don't share it with others.

The worst of it is that I am sick. Simple activities, like bringing my coffee cup to the kitchen, winds me, and bringing clothing upstairs covers me in a head-to-toe sweat, drenching the waistband of my pajama bottoms.

Saturday morning, a few of us PFitters met at one of the running stores. They had a fashion show, and then offered us 20% off. They had some really cute things. And of course, they had nothing in my size in women's clothing. I was surprised to find out that they didn't have anything that fit my best pal J, who is much smaller, really, an average-sized American woman. "You know," she says, "I bet they'd sell a lot of clothes if they had a broader range of sizes". Well, duh. But who is making them?

One of my goals with losing a little weight this winter is not just gaining speed, but also being able to buy cute women's workout wear. I want to be able to buy clothes, not mail-order, but in a store—and not socks! I am so far away from that. I am trying to get there, but I am so far away.

I looked at exercise equipment afterwards. Treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes. Fun. Love working out on the machines in a store. I don't know that I'm getting any closer to buying. I keep thinking, I could get up at 4:30, and I could drive to the gym and workout a couple hours and drive the car back home (or somewhere—I can't afford to park downtown), and then I think—how realistic is that, really?

bicycling

I biked into work this morning. I felt a bit creaky—no doubt from yesterday's walk, Monday's bruises, and not having ridden in a couple weeks—but it also felt pretty good.

The bruises from Monday have really come out now. On the bad arm, I have a big swollen green bruise from wrist to just above the elbow. The shoulder, which I had iced immediately, doesn't look great, but looks nowhere near as bad as the one a bit lower on that arm. I'll see the chiropractor today, who can give me a better idea how much damage I did, exactly.

Stepometer

My sweetie and I saw my mom in May. We talked a lot about walking—we were both doing PFit at that point, and had that beginner's zeal. Mom mentioned that she had got a stepometer at McDonalds, and that she was enjoying wearing it.

At that point, I owned a pair of walking shoes and that was it. No pedometer, no heart rate monitor, no garmin, no technical fabric clothes, no hydration system.

Anyways, fast forward to the trip last week. Mom gave me her stepometer. Like the rest of my pedometers, it's off, running about a third high, but it's still kinda fun to see the numbers.

Yesterday, I hit 36 thousand. So that's probably really 24,000 steps. In one day. Not too bad!

25K

Well, I just got back from doing a 25K, or 15.5 miles for those of you playing along at home. I did the whole long, slow distance thing, so it took me over 5 hours.



(The map to the right will give you an idea -- though the purple line is not the route I took)

The weather was beautiful--a perfect day to be outside moving around. I went from the beginning to the end of Alameda Blvd, and then up and around Rocky Butte, and back.

I didn't have any sort of real discomfort until I had been walking about 4 hours, which I thought was great. My goth toe was uncovered and unhappy, and my legs were tired, but otherwise I felt like I could walk on and on.

This route was interesting as there were a number of hills involved, not the least being Rocky Butte. When left to my own devices, I like to charge up hills, which I'm not convinced is the right way to tackle them. I tried today to keep my heart rate at my walking pace, which meant slowing down a bunch--really slow. I was pleased with as well as I did, and surprised how fast I had to scramble to make the heart rate going downhill.

Afterwards, I went to breakfast at my favorite place, that I usually can't get into on the weekends, and then took the bus home. Now I'd like to nap <grin>!

Fresh slate

Well. Yesterday I went for an hour-long walk with Jill, which felt great at the time, but afterwards I had a headache as well as the it-hurts-to-think/move/breathe fullbody sensation. I ended up bailling on the Anthony Bourdain talk and dinner because I felt so icky. I had planned the trip to my mom's around this event. I am seriously bummed.

But today is a new day, right? Fresh slate, all that. I managed to get out of the house at 6:15 and onto the bus downtown, so I made it to the gym by 6:45. It felt like old-home day -- all the Wednesday morning regulars were there. I decided I would do as much of the upperbody workout as I could without causing myself pain, and I did manage to get through a lot of it. And then I got some quality time on the treadmill.

A cool thing -- Mark, the RBF Godfather has created a running blog map. If you want to be listed, Mark has how to participate in his blog, natch.

grumble

I feel, still, pretty stoopid. Oh my gosh, I can't even think and walk down the stairs. This does not bode well for me. So I hurt, almost universally all over. My eyes hurt. I wonder, really, how hard I landed on my head. My walk to the bus this morning hurt.

I'm trying to keep a sense of humor about this, but I'm having a hard time forgiving myself this.

I'm trying to look at the good side of this. I did manage to clean and declutter a quite a bit last night before I did my gymnastics. I brought about half of the clothes upstairs. I have a backpack full of magazines to bring to the gym, and I cleaned up about half a grocery bag of newspapers.

I read a forum thread about buying a treadmill, and then did some further reading at Runner's World where they say, don't put your exercise equipment in the basement—out of sight, out of mind. They're right: I hate my basement and I doubt even with "remodeling" that it would be that pleasant a place to hang out.

Oh. And I got my student loan payment thingee. Payments start next month, and they're 2/3rds of my mortgage cost. Sigh. I get a raise next month, but I doubt it's a 2/3rds of the mortgage type raise.

Sweetie and I had talked about goals over the weekend, and for both of us, we wanted to eat better and eat at home most of the time, unlike our current bad behavior of eating out as a habit. We figured it would save us some cash too, that we could put into the house. Or, the student loan payment.

Argh!

Do you ever experience that slow-mo sensation, that everything has slowed waaaaay down, and yet you can do nothing to change it? The future is already written, you just have to follow-through, and you're powerless to do anything different?

Well. Not the greatest day. Missed the pilates class when a manager came in to chat. Came home, let the dog out, and started cleaning house, you know, at a fat-burning heart rate. Taking pieces of clothing upstairs, one at a time. Natasha, one of the cats, was making a game of plopping in front of me at the top of the stairs. I was trying to discourage this, and I was coming down the stairs thinking that I might step on her (bad) or that I might trip over her (bad). And then all of the sudden, I was tumbling down the stairs.

I feel pretty stoopid about this. I bruised both arms, my knees, and one shoulder is really unhappy. I hurt now, two hours later--what will I feel like in the morning?

Goals

One of the many nice things about visiting my mom includes having the downtime to think about goals. As either Mom or I was sick at all times during this visit, we had lots of time to sit in front of the TV. Since we have really different tastes, and Mom controlled the remote, we mostly watched what she wanted: Lifetime, and Court TV. I'd try not to watch, and daydream.

Essentially, I've committed myself to a course of improvement.

• Working on the outside of the house: we have a failed tropical-scary garden in the front yard. It's overgrown and overtaken by wisteria and fennel. Everything must go! At least, somewhere else. I am torn about having a wildly exuberant front yard--I want it, but I don't do the work. I need to remember that, and not move in that direction again!
  How to make it happen: spend 15 minutes a day on it. Work on only one thing at a time.


• Working on the downstairs: my clutter is everywhere. My horde of magazines threaten to fall off shelves, and are dragged around by cats. I want to get the house back into sufficent shape that if someone says they're coming over, I or Sweetie don't totally freak.
  How to make it happen: spend 15 minutes a day on it. Work on only one thing at a time.


• Getting a toolshed: We have no garage, no carport, no shed. The lawnmower lives on the basement stairs, and the bikes in the living and laundry rooms. Our laundry room is full of garden tools. This stuff has got to go!
  How to make this happen: we've priced sheds. Now we need to figure out how big we need, and where it will work in the yard.


• Lose some weight: I realized that while I was hoping to lose weight, I was just hoping. To really do this, I need to have a plan, goals, etc.
  How to make this happen: my goal is to lose 3 pounds every 2 weeks. I'd love something more dramatic, but realistically, well, I gotta be realistic. I have a job and workout goals and other things going on. I plan to concentrate on eating whole foods and lots of veggies, eat more frequently, and eat smaller portions


• Workout more: this piggybacks with the losing weight--I want/need to do more fatburning exercise. This works well with needing to do more LSD walking.
  How to make this happen: ugh. Keep biking to work, keep squeezing in exercise whenever I can, start looking at how else I can exercise now that it's dark whenever I am off work (like active housework, decluttering, walking the loop around my first floor).


• Clean up part of the basement so I can get some exercise equipment: this piggybacks with the shed, and with exercise. Once the shed is there, I'll be able to get down into the basement, and start cleaning. Right now, the stairs and the basement are an obstacle course.

Do you think I have enough on my plate?

Is it time for a nap yet?

Well, I'm back at work, and I am so very happy to be here. Out the windows, the trees are all crimson, and everything looks soft and smudged in the fog. I still have the crud, and got winded with grocery shopping and cooking yesterday--and I feel no better, so I didn't ride in or even visit the gym.

Which fills me with panic, honestly. I'd like to do the Seattle Marathon's half 11/28, but between the trip and the crud, I haven't been putting in the mileage. And I know I have to. And I don't know if this is just a cold, and I'll feel crappy for a full week no matter what I do, or something else that might respond positively or negatively to activity or rest.

I'll do pilates on my lunch, and I had thought about having a long session on the treadmill tonight, but I guess we'll see.

I'm baaacck!

I'm tired and I have a bit of a cold, but it was a good trip. A trip where I got the stomach flu, and Mom had a cold. I did two hour-long walks, outside of pacing in airports, and I "ice skated" for the first time since I was a teenager. I put that in quotes because it was more like 'go forward on skates for 50 ft, grab the side of the rink' rather than any sort of real skating, and let me tell you, it was hard. But it was dead fun, and I spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how I could get back to the rink.

My road rash is still there, but much less painful; my goth toe lost its nail.

It's always good to see my mom, and always nourishing to see the area where she lives, which just looks right on a cellular level. But the conservatism and homogeneity make it really hard to spend a lot of time there. Here's a weird example (that really has nothing to do with conservatism or homogeneity, but hey) that happened this trip:

Mom asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I couldn't think of anything. (Sure, there's stuff I want, like technical fabric clothes, and home exercise equipment, but... ) Well, how about magazines, she asks, knowing magazines are cheap and something that I seem to never think I have enough of. Runner's World came immediately to mind, and do you think we could find a copy anywhere in her town? Well, um, we did find two copies--one at the library (yay, library!), and one at the Waldenbooks--but that was a copy from September.

At WalMart, we saw a copy of Running Times, which I immediately bought. I had never seen that outside of a sports store, so imagine my surprise (I only go to WalMart with my mom). While I do buy RT, I don't do it with the compulsive regularity of RW.

Even at the not-so-small regional airport two-and-a-half hours away -- no RW.

We landed in Chicago, and not only was it a balmy 55 degrees, immediately I saw African Americans, mixed-race couples, people who weren't Christian, gay men and lesbians. I immediately felt about 50 lbs lighter. People were smiling at me, and I am sure I was smiling back. And the first newsstand: the new Runner's World.

One thing that I had not expected was my mom's pride in my having done a marathon. I chatted with one of my favorite aunts, who congratulated me on doing Portland, and said, 'You've walked 26 miles, you know, Vicki, you can do anything, anything at all'. Wow. A quilting buddy who came by said something similarly complimentary.

Dear Rodale

Dear Rodale,
I purchased Women's Health (you and improved) with some enthusiasm. If you want me to become a regular subscriber, here is what I want to see:

• an emphasis on health, primarily the areas that Rodale does so well with other publications: running, cycling, fitness, nutrition, supplements


• I don't want to read or see spreads on fashion or makeup. I don't want to know what he won't tell me or sexy things I can do with him or for him or why opposites attract. I don't want to know how to dress slimmer, or why layered hair is good--every other women's, and notably women's fitness, magazine already does this.


• I don't mind diet stuff, but that shouldn't be the emphasis of the magazine. Start from the idea that women are okay the way they are, but they want to be healthier, stronger, more fit, more successful.


• in the best of all possible worlds, you would be like the original Women's Sports and Fitness, targeting an audience of all active (and wannabe) intelligent women, or like Dandelion (ditto)


• there's an audience waiting for a new mainstream women's health magazine--but this isn't it. This is a weird mating of Men's Health and any women's fitness magazine out there. We're smarter than that--and so are you