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17 May 2013

Confidence? Reality? A spoonful of sugar?

“To do your best, you’ve gotta believe in yourself. There is a functional link between physiology and psychology. If you have the confidence to do something, your body will respond. With confidence you can cope with various race day obstacles, but even slight problems are magnified if you lack it. Achieving goals – long training runs, consistent mileage, increasingly faster times in speed workouts and races – builds confidence, which results in further improvements in performance. Reflect on these successes as you approach a race and during it to keep your confidence strong.” Bob Glover, The Competitive Runner’s Handbook

It’s ugly at the rundogcatcatme household this morning and it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day. And, yes, coffee: on the third.

Chunker must feel the tension because she is prowling about mewing and chirping at her stuffed toy ‘babies’. Just now she climbed up on the washer and dumped her kibble into the washing machine. Now I’ve got cat food pellets stuck under the agitator. I mean under the agitator in the washing machine, not the agitator in fur, mewing.

CHUNKDAMMITYOULITTLESHIT

Oddly just minutes before we were discussing yelling at our furry children and that our furry children didn’t have middle names to make the shout effective like it did when I would yell TRAITOR MIDDLE NAME CHILD DAMMIT I TOLD YOU BUT, NO, AND NOW WE HAVE TO GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM. AGAIN.

Apparently Chunker does have a middle name and I had just forgotten it.

Last night we gave the lake swim another try. Heather bravely faced the lake and announced there had better not be any &^%%&** snakes this time. I felt fine, buoyed by my new-found comfort and lack of fear in the lake Tuesday. Unfortunately I failed to realize I had a couple factors against me. First I forgot to use my inhalers yesterday and a front had come in (my trigger). Secondly, and much more importantly, Hubs was home. Home, and on the boat following us in the lake.

I have performance anxiety. I don’t mind failing or struggling in front of others (too much) but can’t stand to do so in front of Hubs, which is ridiculous because I usually manage to screw something up on a daily basis so I should surely be used to it by now. It embarrasses me, and he tries to fix everything which frustrates me (it’s a guy thing, isn’t it?). After all these years I should get over it. For some reason he’s fascinated by the thought of me swimming. He keeps saying, “I’ve never seen you swim” which means every time we’ve been to a pool he’s been struck blind? Or perhaps that doesn’t count if it’s not laps or something? I don’t know. I just know, at this point, that the pressure is on and it’s building and I cannot stand it.

B&H are two of the most mothering and nurturing people I have ever met, polar opposite of me. Becky stayed back with me when we set out. Every damn time I looked up there was that boat with Hubs, watching. The water was cool, I didn’t warm up and within a couple minutes my chest said Ciao, see ya later and shut down. I’d doggy paddle for a few minutes and set out again, Becky waiting and watching. I told her to go on, I’m fine. I swam a bit and floated a bit and doggy paddled a bit but I could never catch my breath, wheezing and pissed off, knowing that Hubs was watching me struggle. Finally I saw a dock and headed for it. I held on, trying to catch my breath, looking at our dock across the cove, a million miles away. Hubs and the boat swung around. I got on. ”I’m done. I’m fine, but I’m done.”

The reality, with no sugar-coating, is that inhalers or no, Hubs or no, I am not a strong enough swimmer to go even 400 yards. I will have to stop and I will have to stand in the 6 inches of marshmellow-y fish poopy fish burial mud until I can catch my breath and then I’ll have to start again. I’ll just have to boil my feet when I get home.

Well, SH*T.

One of my BRFF’s, Lisa, called yesterday to see how I was doing facing this weekend. She did her first Tri last summer. She told me how helpful Hubs was at the race start, consoling her with positive reinforcement. “You can FLOAT, cantcha?” he asked her. She nodded. ”You can DOGGY PADDLE cantcha?” She nodded. ”OKAY THEN, you’ll be FINE,” he boomed. She nodded.

Someone posted the quote above this morning. I can’t decide if the issue is that I don’t believe in myself enough and I need to pump myself with spoonfuls of sugar-y positive thinking and reinforcement all day, or if the issue is what I stated: I am simply not a strong enough swimmer at this time.

And if the reason is the fact that I am simply not strong enough at this time, is it negative to admit that? To be afraid, and to feel angry because I’m afraid?

Posted in Triathlon and tagged cat, coffee, exercise, fitness, healthy-living, Journey, muddy lake, positive thinking, Run, running, sugar coating, swimming, training, triathlon

16 May 2013

5 Comments

Good luck with that.

I’m sure it’s the same for you two faithful followers of my world-famous, mind-numbingly fascinating blog in which I constantly whine about butts falling off, snakes, crappy weather, and tigers in bathrooms; probably you, like me, think that everyone around you is somehow doing just a bit better, somehow just one percentage point less nervous, less worried, more happy, more confident. Probably the boss likes them one little bit better than they like you. Probably they’ve never walked out of the bathroom with toilet paper hanging out the back of their shorts.

A while back, when Becky and Heather were finally medicated to an acceptable level and allowed back out in public, they would message me.

HEY! I’m going swimming tomorrow, wanna go?

No.

It’ll be fun!

No.

Come on, you’ll like it once you try it.

No.

The entire time I was saying no I knew I needed to do this. This was where I had a choice. Become a smaller person, saying no, tightening my circle just a bit, then a bit more, then a bit more. I’m sure a lot of people are the same way, but there’s only me living in this head and in this life, only what I interpret. I assume there are more of me out there, struggling not to get smaller, not to live a more circumscribed life, scared and uncertain how to achieve it, but I only know myself.

Heather and Becky make it look so easy that I figure they’re cool with it all. They use words like “fun” which makes one think more of things like birthday parties and cake and ice cream. Or coffee. Or wine. Or anything other than swimming with the eventual goal being getting out of the pool and into a fish poop filled lake. After the snake issue on Tuesday, however, I realized that they have just been doing a better job than I of hiding it. Becky doesn’t like her wetsuit and neither of them like snakes at all. The messages are flying.

ARG! I woke up next to the bed beating the invisible spiders I just dreamed of!!

ARG! What’s the lake temp??

ARG! I can’t breathe in that wetsuit!!

LOL, snake code:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Snake
_____________ Dead snake
—___—___— Oops, just ran over a snake.

ARG! Just because ARG!!!

After realizing this was not the Bataan Death March – which was truly a horror – seriously, I’m not gonna die. I’m not going to lose my family or job or anything, I’m just going to swim in a freeking lake - which is only 4 feet deep and I’m 5’8″, so standing up is an option. Then I just have to ride my bike, which I could fall off of, but then I’ve already stepped on my own finger; at some point you have to accept that stuff happens. And finally I get to do my favorite thing: run. So I managed to switch off a couple of the Panic Buttons in my brain.

I’m a believer in signs, albeit a rather fair-weather believer. Obviously when things line up like I prefer it’s got to be a good sign. If the signs are bad I may or may not give it some consideration. For instance, the sign that says Speed Limit 55. Because personally, that’s just stupid and I’m not going to give that any consideration. I’m sure most people are like me, but there could be some who prefer bad signs and not having anything line up well. Those people probably also do 55 in the 55mph zone. Then they probably also get yelled at by me, which will surprise you both, that I would be in my car yelling &^$$# driver (*&^ your mother is a $#@!!!!

I have a chin hair roughly the width and tenacity of a piece of baling wire, which I’ve had since the twins were still in high school, making it about 10 years old. A quick internet search shows that the anagen phase of growth of a hair follicle is an average 2 to 8 years. My chin hair, which I should probably just go ahead and name since we’ve grown so close, has obviously surpassed this lifespan. If it were a person it would be my Grandma Alice, who lived to 103 years, only she was nice and did not resemble a piece of baling wire in any way.

The reason I mention this is that I managed to pluck the damn thing out in one try yesterday morning. This is an incredible stroke of good luck on my part, having ruined several pair of tweezers over the past 10 years, not to mention accidentally slamming my hand against the mirror repeatedly when the tweezers fail. That hurts. Hey, at least I never broke the mirror, right? Otherwise for sure the damn thing would live another 7 years. I expect that, having outed my chin hair in this public manner, I will no longer receive anonymous emailed marriage proposals or offers for £1million to be deposited directly into my bank account. So you see how much good luck that is!

Then Heather saw another dead snake on her bike ride yesterday, making it two days in a row of dead snakes! That’s a much better sign than live snakes. And when we were first starting out on the bikes, before we even started, I almost fell over! So that was good! The almost part, I mean. After the ride I got in the car and it was 12:34 which is my lucky number. And THEN – I got Taco Bell for lunch. That is a very good sign. You might think a person can get Taco Bell any day, but you can’t. If you have no money in the car, you have no Taco Bell in your tummy. Yes. Now you understand how tenuous the hold on luck can truly be.

So you see, luck is in the eye of the beholder. Well, except when it’s actually your real eyeball and it’s the bug that flew in Becky’s on the bike ride at the very same time a rabid ant was in her cycling shoe biting the stew out of her foot, which seemed rather unlucky. Although it was a lot unluckier for the bug and the ant, both of whom got squashed rapidly.

I’m telling you what, with all this good luck floating around I expect that I may not have to worry about the swim, for all I know I’ll be able to walk on water by Saturday.

Posted in Triathlon and tagged BFOS, Butt Falling off Syndrome, exercise, fitness, good luck, healthy-living, invisible spiders, Journey, lake temp, Run, running, swimming, swimming in a lake, training, triathlon

13 May 2013

6 Comments

OCD much?

Hubs and I were out of town last week. You might think I would feel completely free to leave town now the kids are grown and gone, no worries, enjoy the trip, relax, eat drink and be merry.

But, no. First, I no longer have that burning desire to desert Rome as it burns, my mother and four children waving forlornly as we back down the drive, desperately repressing the jiggling as my legs begin the Happy Dance under the dashboard. NO VOMIT! NO DIAPERS! NO CRYING AND FIGHTING AND STEPPING ON DEADLY LEGOS! I’m FREE!

I can lazily drink coffee and read the paper daily now. I don’t have to put on adult clothes to take the kids to school and work the phones in the office from 8am to noon or help in the clinic wiping snot and blood. I don’t have to camp out in a hotel to have a bathroom all to myself. I don’t have to hide the chocolates in a tampon box. I don’t have to worry about organizing soccer/cheer/homework/scouts/cupcakes for the birthday party before leaving everyone. No worries, now. Free Free Free.

Instead I spent three days prior to leaving town waking at 3 and 4am worrying about — The Damn Cats. What if they refuse to eat? What if they pee on the bed? What if they … I don’t know … jeeze, they’re CATS – how much could go wrong?? But, no…wake, roll over, worry.

Obsess much?

Meanwhile – no pressure here – every damn day hubs insists that I need to try on his wetsuit and be sure it fits. Fine, I tried it on. OK, right, it was on backward but what the hell. It’s not like it’s gender specific. If it fits backwards it should fit frontwards. No, apparently it didn’t count, backwards negates the experience so now I have to try it on … again.

Then, after I try it on again, he thinks I need to take it to the Center and swim in the damn thing. Remember the pool running incident (here)? Where all the senior water exercise class people glared at Becky and me in shock and awe? What do you think it will do to them if I show up at the pool in a f*cking wetsuit? How long will it take management to get all the exploded brain matter out of that water? And can they sue me for the damages?

Still hubs remains – daily – sincere in his insistent insistence that I must absolutely without doubt swim in water with the wetsuit. I pointed out that if I fail to do so prior to the race, and it is a wetsuit legal race, I will swim in the water to warm up and I will be wearing the wetsuit. I think that counts as swimming before the race. I mean, what if I swim in the wetsuit at the Center and I find out it doesn’t work so well? Is that going to change the temperature of the water Saturday?

Last week I ordered a tri-suit. It was in the mail when we got home. I pulled it out of the packaging. This sucker will not fit a skinny pre-pubescent 13-year-old. I don’t know why they wasted a 9×13 envelope to send it to me, it would have fit fine in a letter sized and saved some postage, which they handily charged me. Now I’ve spent $79 + tax, shipping and handling on something that weighs about four ounces and I may wear only once in my life – if I can even get it on. And hubs is happy I spent the money. If I buy a new lipstick and he sees it he asks me how much it cost. Tri-suit? Wet-suit? Bike? Helmet? Bike shoes? He’s throwing money at it like it was beads in New Orleans and he might see some boobs.

I spent one morning at the hotel swimming, then got on the spin bike and did 13 miles, then ran three. There, I’ve done the distance, so mentally I got that out of the way. What I realized is that I do not care at all about this triathlon like I have all the races I’ve trained for. I’m just as obsessive about getting everything organized, not forgetting anything, hoping I don’t bonk, but I don’t really care about doing the event. All I really care about is getting it over with.

Training for halves, fulls, 50K’s, I check weather for weeks, mentally preparing for wind/rain/floods/solar flares and meteors. I’m scared, nervous – but it’s an excited nervous fright. It can still get ugly – marathoniritationitis (with a graphic, here) is nothing to laugh at, but there’s still an excitement about the whole thing. This one: if it rains, oh well. If it’s hot, well damn. If it’s cold, well sh*t. Oh, well. If I get there, and I don’t like the weather, I might just decide not to do the event, and right now I cannot dredge up any impending regret, other than I’d be forced to register for another one and go through all this again.

Last night I dreamed I had a curse that if I talked to someone it would take away one of their powers. Unfortunately Becky asked me a question in my dream. I replied without thinking and it stripped her power to do triathlons.

Obsess much?? This is going to be a bitch of a week…

You can’t fall off a marathon, and you can’t sink in a 50K, and all you need is some shorts, a shirt and some shoes.

The truth is: I’m cranky and pissed and obsessed about the cats because I’m scared of this one and it’s not an excited nervousness. It’s just fear.

Posted in Triathlon and tagged 50K, bike, biking, cat, exercise, Felt F80, fitness, half marathon, healthy-living, Journey, marathon, marathonirritationitis, mental-health, Run, running, tri-suit, triathlon, wetsuit

20 Apr 2013

3 Comments

Never leave home without it

Tuesday was the one year anniversary of my dad’s passing (I like the word “passing’”. Passages. Life is a series of them.) so I was visiting with my mom for the past week. She lives in the hills about 1-1/2 hours north/northwest of Phoenix. The town is not that small but I was reduced to 2G on my iPad, which sucked since I’m attached at the hip to the internet and have no life to speak of. I felt rather as though one of my arms had been torn off. Probably by Zombies. This was particularly irritating when area TV stations kept emailing MRTC to see if we had any runners in Boston and could I give them their personal contact info. We have 3400 members, I don’t know and I’m not giving you their personal info if I did know, but thanks for asking. That, however, took 12 minutes to type every time, apparently you can’t type too fast on an iPad with 2G or you crash it. Repeatedly.

Hey, at least I didn’t have to call AT&T, right?

Mom lives in a bi-level house built on the side of a steep plot of land, the backyard about 1-1/2 stories above the street. The guest room is downstairs and the window sill is level with the yard. I look upward to watch chipmunks steal sunflower seeds from the bird feeder and see the lizards amble past. It’s cool and dark and I’ve named it The Bat Cave.

Every evening we watched movies on AMC, which, as an aside, I’m kinda pissed at AMC. Mom’s AMC is having a special this month with little notes popping up throughout the film about the actors, funny anecdotes, etc. I was so excited. I was going to watch AMC the rest of the month and learn all kinds of useless pieces of info. For instance I learned, while watching Willie Wonka, that all the little Oompa Loompas liked to rent a limo every day after filming and bar hop. This was particularly funny to me, and totally not PC, because I kept having a mental image of the little dudes hopping up so they could see over the bar: HOP “Scotch” HOP “on the” HOP “rocks, please” (bar? hopping? right?) So I apologize if either of you are an Oompa Loompa and also that I’m an insensitive un-PC bitch.

But, no. No little notes on my AMC. Dammit.

Oh, well, I’ve been distracted by the talking heads on CNN anyway.

Mom is of an unstated age that allows her to pick and choose what she feels like doing and I expect she’s earned that right. Personally, however, I do think she should have felt like killing those large red ants with the big mound of ant mansion in her backyard sometime in the last few years. I particularly think she should have killed them before one of the little bass turds bit my foot. Dammit, that hurt.

I grabbed some rubbing alcohol and some cortisone cream and some anti-itch cream and sat with ice on it while we watched the Oompah Loopahs roll away the large blueberry girl (one of my favorite parts, although I’m sure it wasn’t fun for her as she apparently wore the Styrofoam ball all day long and couldn’t eat while the rest of the crew had lunch because her arms couldn’t reach her mouth. Seriously? No one could spoon a little soup in her mouth?) Then I started worrying about her. What if she needed to go to the bathroom?

Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?

Sorry, I’m back now, I was gone for a while there ^^^ Chunk is on my desk hovering over my keyboard, trying to smack my hand every time I type. Apparently the typing is keeping her awake or something. So sorry, Princess, your constant jumping on me is the whole reason we’re all awake at 4am. Think about that tomorrow. Anyway, now she is distracted as the sun is coming up and she can see the birds outside so she’s at the window chirping, tail twitching, and no longer trying to kill the dreaded Fingers of Typing. That’s some tail, I tell you. I had to move my coffee cup.

After Charlie gave Mr. Wonka the Everlasting Gobstopper back (which, BTW, they do make Everlasting Gobstoppers in real life but they actually only last 16 minutes, thank you, AMC) and proved he was a great guy and got to own the whole candy factory I retired to the Bat Cave to read a while before bed. Of course then that damn ant bite started itching like fire. I didn’t want to go back upstairs to get all the anti-itch stuff because every step you take in that 40-year old house makes the cups rattle slightly in the cupboard and I would wake mom, so I sat there for a while trying to ignore it. You know how that goes. Pretty soon the ant bite was the size of a basketball and it was all I could think of, itch! itch! itch!, the way a mosquito in the night ends up the size of a 747 and the next morning the bedroom looks like a war zone because you’ve thrown everything you could find at the damn thing and now you have to buy a new lamp. Not that I ever did that.

I kept thinking there had to be something I could put on it to sooth the itching, something in that bathroom had to have alcohol in it, right? Dad’s old aftershave? Something? But, no. Mousse, Ajax, extra lightbulbs, I dug everything out of the cupboard – nothing. I started digging through my overnight bag, furiously rubbing my foot against my leg uselessly trying to stop the burning itch which was now half the size of Alaska.

And then, voilà:

It worked! Or, maybe it was just mental, but either way, the itching finally stopped, I fell asleep in the cool darkness of the Bat Cave and slept not like a baby until the sun came up.

We had another fun day and went shopping and eating and shopping and eating. I had a nice run in the hills – at 5,000 feet it takes a while to get acclimated to the thinner air so I had to do some stopping and starting but it was a beautiful day and I was so happy to be running my beautiful Arizona. You can’t feel too sad when you have a view like this:

And this:

Beautiful, huh?

That evening we watched Ground Hog Day and read all the little stories at the bottom of the screen which my AMC doesn’t have, not that I’m bitter or going to harp on that all month. Then I went to the Bat Cave to read my second book since I’d finished the first book I’d brought. This new book was one of those that Oprah’s kingdom has deemed worthy of her honor and they’d slapped a sticker on the front. But the sticker was a little loose in one spot, which was irritating because I could feel it with my fingers while I held the book. So I tried to pull it off but I think they use Gorilla Glue or something on those things so all it did was tear in half and then when I tried to read it was sticky. This was even more irritating. I tried scraping it off with my fingernail but that started to mess up the book cover, which was currently new and smooth. If you’re going to read a book it either needs to be new and smooth or totally worn out, not sort of new and sort of worn out. There had to be a way to get that sticky off the cover. If only I had something with a little alcohol … or … something…

So now my book reeks of mouth wash.

But – it’s smooth and new and the sticky is gone.

I’m telling you: do not leave home without it.

Posted in Running and tagged ant, ant bite, antiseptic, cat, coffee, exercise, fitness, healthy-living, Journey, mouthwash, Pet, Run, running, Zombies

17 Apr 2013

8 Comments

I haven’t been right here. Where were you?

I was abducted by Aliens!
I was sucked into a Black Hole!
I was transported to an alternate universe!
I fell deeply asleep for forty years!

Ok, maybe I just got busy and then went out-of-town. Sorry, I know both of you have completely stopped breathing while waiting for a wonderful, life changing post. You don’t look so good, not breathing and all that. Maybe you should get a life?

Anyway, taking up where we left off two weeks ago on the last tantalizing and mesmerizing post about how hard my poor life is, AT&T was firm in its resolve that I was not getting anything fixed for five days. Whether they have too much stuff that breaks or not enough people to fix the broken stuff, either way they were intractable.

I made up a song about the issue:
It’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to rant if I want to rant if I want to.
You would rant too if it happened to you

Well, unless you were the Hubs who has the patience of Job, only not as many cows and wives. ”Ok, I’m accepting, I’m accepting,” he said when I told him. Well, sure he was accepting. His work still had internet, right? What was to accept on his end? Working and getting things done? That’s tough.

I said something cranky. Imagine that.

To continue with the comparison of Job: this is why Hubs, with the patience of Job, if he were Job, would have lots of cows but would balk at more than one wife. One is one too many most of the time, I suspect. Also, you pronounce it JOBE. Even though it’s spelled JOB like “I have a job”, it’s pronounced JOBE, like I said. Like, “I have a JOBE.” Of course, if you tell people you have a JOBE they will think you have a dog or a friend or something named Job pronounced JOBE and will think you are a ne’er-do-well who doesn’t work. I think you should just shut up at that point, but that’s just my opinion. Go ahead and try it. Don’t come crying to me.

I felt irritated and cranky until it occurred to me that what we are dealing with, here, is a First World Problem. Put on the Big Girl pants. Which I did and then I went to BeckyB’s house and borrowed a cup of wireless for a couple of hours to be sure any work hot spots were stomped out. AT&T showed up the following Tuesday (which was about a year ago at this point, thankfully I have a good memory) – at my house – a live person – who immediately detected the location of the issue, found that in the box at the end of the street where my service arises out of the deep dark hole of underground life were two wires, a black one and an orange one. When these two wires are dangling, loose and unconnected, voilà! No Service! When they are connected, voilà! Service! And then he stayed until I got everything hooked back up and working. Nice guy. I have his name and number. Let me know if your internet quits. Black connects to black, orange to orange. Crazy sh*t, I know, it takes an expert.

So then, since I had nothing else to do that week before I had internet resurrected, my crazy friend and I worked out with Killer. Then I went to my anonymous crazy friend’s house, where BeckyB set Matilda up on the Cycleops and we did Suffer-O-Rama Spinnervals for 45 minutes (seriously? Suffer-O-Rama? How can this possibly be good??) and then quick like little bunnies we hopped off, put on our running shoes and did 1.7 around her neighborhood. My first Brick. With mixed emotions I have signed up for the Memphis in May Sprint Tri. When I told hubs he started to smile and then he froze as though Big Foot just showed up on our front lawn. Don’t move Don’t move Don’t move, you might scare it. Carefully moving nothing but his lips he said, “oh, good.” Pat Big Foot softly on the head. Nice Big Foot, there you go.

I thought about that a lot – the triathlon, not Big Foot – the next day as I swam back and forth back and forth like a hamster running on its little wheel going nowhere. I thought about how I have a few more weeks to learn to swim 400 yards without holding on the side of the pool every 25th yard. I thought about being in a lake and looking down as I swim, seeing nothing. I considered closing my eyes while I swam in the pool, to practice not seeing, but I didn’t really feel like bumping into the side of the pool in front of everyone. I wondered if maybe you see stuff but it’s kind of slimy and squishy, and some of it came out of a fish? Or do you see fish? I bet you don’t see fish. They’re probably too smart to swim where crazy people are. I hope so, anyway.

Finally I had internet and to spare. The next morning I sat on the patio, Jamaica Me Crazy in my steaming mug, foggy and zero visibility. I could see the trees, random black outlines twisting and curving against the grey fog, a cacophony of birds cheeping chirping tweeting and squawking and an awkward squirrel ran down the side of a tree, little shards of bark breaking loose and falling in front of him.

I was reminded of one of my favorites from Morning Prayer, the Canticle of Daniel:

Every shower and dew, bless the Lord.
All you winds, bless the Lord.
Fire and heat, bless the Lord.
Cold and chill, bless the Lord.
Dew and rain, bless the Lord.
Frost and chill, bless the Lord.
Ice and snow, bless the Lord.
Nights and days, bless the Lord.
Light and darkness, bless the Lord.
Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord.

Let the earth bless the Lord.
Praise and exalt him above all forever.
Mountains and hills, bless the Lord.
Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord.
You springs, bless the Lord.
Seas and rivers, bless the Lord.
You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord.
All you birds of the air, bless the Lord.
All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord.
You sons of men, bless the Lord.

Thankfully, although I forget to do this most of the time, the birds, squirrels and budding plants remembered. I need to watch them more often.

Isn’t this better than internet?

Altho there could be some Zombies out there…

Posted in Biking, Rants, Ruminations, Running and tagged coffee, exercise, fitness, healthy-living, Journey, Run, running, swimming, training, triathlon, zombie, Zombies

07 Mar 2013

9 Comments

It’s all fun and games until the clowns show up.

If you are an athletic type – and I mean any type of activity, walking, running, swimming, cycling, exercise classes – you know how hard you had to work to achieve whatever level of fitness you desire and you know how much easier it is to lose it than to gain it in the first place. Also, as you both know, one thing I’m really excited about right now is that I’m enough out of shape that I’m burning extra calories doing my regular workouts trying to get rid of the extra weight I got from being out of shape.

The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round, ’round and ’round…

Another cool thing is that it’s all fresh and fun again. There are more chances to have a feeling of accomplishment – I did 5 miles! I haven’t done that since September! I did 7 miles! I haven’t done that since September! I swam a mile! I haven’t done that since Septnever!

Now that Becky’s foot is on the DL she’s concerned about maintaining fitness at just the time she planned to ramp up her triathlon training. She can still swim and cycle but her running is being cut in half. She is also, apparently, off all meds. Again. Every single time she gets on the Crazy Bus she gets me a ticket too. And then I get on the damn bus with her. And I’m ON my meds.

*BOINK*
Terri! LOOK:
“If you start pool running for several days doing high-intensity workouts, you’ll notice something odd: you will be able to eat much more than usual! Even though your workouts are of a similar length to before you were in the pool, the thermal load of the water will spike your metabolism.”
AND: “Since water is a much better heat conductor, it will force your body to generate more heat to stay warm (and therefore burn more calories). As detailed in Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Body, this is how Michael Phelps is able to eat over 7,000 calories per day. It’s a combination of the time spent in the pool and the effect of the water.”
HE CAN EAT 7000 calories a DAY!
WHAT??!!

I say, obviously someone needs to take away Becky’s Googling rights.

I found myself digging aqua belts out of the pile at the pool where the Senior water working-out class was going on. I had the brilliant idea of wearing my HR monitor and putting my Garmin inside my hat to keep it dry. The Garmin wouldn’t stay on my head long enough to get the baseball cap over it. Finally I held it in place and Becky put my hat on me, except then my hand was stuck in the hat and when I tried to pull my hand out I ended up with the Garmin strap as a new kind of earring. In the end, when I got home, it was for nothing because apparently the radio signals from the strap to the watch won’t go through water.

I say, smart radio signals.

Of course we had no clue what we were doing, strapping those stupid belts on and heading for the deep end. As we got deeper in the water the belts started to try to float and soon the aquabelt was asphyxiating me. I struggled to shove it back down on my waist and choked on a mouthful of water which I then snorted out my nose. OUCH that burned. Do not laugh when the water is at your chin. Of course Becky found that hysterical, and then the Senior water worker-outers started staring at us. I think several of them were former schoolteacher nuns. Fortunately rulers are not part of the Waterworks Class equipment.

We bobbed forward, legs spinning out behind us. We bobbed backward, legs spinning out in front of us. We bobbed up and down. We kicked back and forth and up and down and snorted water while we laughed like idiots in bumper cars rolling in circles. ”RACE YOU TO THE OTHER SIDE!” We took off ‘running’ going the speed of slow, pumping our arms and running like mad, going nowhere. I would be talking to Becky and realize that my back was to her because I’d spun off in another direction. We could not quit laughing, and I kept thinking of the circus clowns who all climb out of the tiny little car and go running madly in circles, bouncing off one another. The Senior water worker-outers were really cutting their eyes at us now. Hey. Exercising in Water is Serious. Cheer down right now.

In about 5 minutes my HR was up enough that I had to stop for a minute and catch my breath. The problem with having to catch your breath is if you quit the pool running you tend to start tipping over again, so if you’re out of breath, you have to make your way breathlessly to the ropes or the edge. You can bob up and down again like the bobbing bird toy I had as a kid if you prefer, but you might end up snorting more water. We kept going, back and forth. Then we ran in circles, doing laps around the deep end. One old guy in the water exercise class finally quit altogether and just stood in the pool, watching us working our a$$es off going nowhere. He kept looking at us with the same expression Mo gets when he sees the coffee pot start: head slightly to one side, intent, curious and slightly baffled.

“I see it, but it makes no sense.”

Posted in Running and tagged aquabelt, exercise, fitness, healthy-living, Run, running, swimming, training, water running

05 Mar 2013

7 Comments

Calories Calories everywhere…

Since I’m so ecstatic about being out of shape so I can burn more calories, calories now show up everywhere. It’s like when you get dressed up all nice to go out to dinner. Then, on the way to the restaurant to meet your friends, you realize that the rogue chin hair you’ve been waging battle with for so many years it’s gone and turned grey – but hasn’t died – has suddenly sprouted to 1/2″ in length. Overnight. Now all you can think of is this stupid thing sticking out of your chin like a lighthouse beam. You’re pretty sure it’s picking up signals from Jupiter. Others in the restaurant seem to be staring at you. Your chin, specifically. Although certainly you are just being paranoid.

Not that it’s ever happened to me, like, Friday night.

Meanwhile it’s become obvious that the kitty chow I got last month was very yummy and loved greatly by Munker and Mo, who were asking me about every 90 minutes for more. Even more obvious than the frequency of the requests was the unmistakable thickening of kitty waistlines and the greatly more audible THUMP of Chunker hitting the floor. I have responsibilities here. We do live in an earthquake zone.

Yesterday we ran out of the Crack Kitty Chow. I bought some ‘Adult’ cat food with reduced calories. Now the kitty food bowls remain full while cats look at me questioningly. ”Mom? What happened to our food?” Fortunately they don’t seem to connect the crappy new food to me and Kroger.

I told Hubs I’d bought adult diet cat food and not only did I think the reduced calories would help them slim down, the fact they wouldn’t eat it would probably rapidly increase the weight loss. Hubs thinks this is a great policy to pursue with the cats and not at all optional for humans. I don’t think it’s very workable anyway, since basically the only thing I won’t eat is Brussels Sprouts and slimy stuff like eels. I haven’t seen eels at Kroger.

So, the calorie thing now seems to be lit up like a Vegas show. As evidenced by this post, which popped up a while ago:

What. The. Heck? That SUCKS. 674?? that’s all??

However, my good running buddy (and Mo’s first stepmom), Elizabeth, turned to Al Gore’s most awesome creation, the Inter Net Web Thingie, uncovering the data that an M&M has, in fact, 3.44 calories, making the total amount of M&M’s you can eat after running a marathon and burning 2900 calories 843.02325 and not 674 lousy candies.

The good news here is that, probably, if you are out of shape but still manage to stumble through a marathon, you might could eat even more M&M’s. If you had enough energy left to chew. Maybe you could just lie down face first in a pile of them, then you could eat them without any extra energy expenditure. Perhaps the RD’s of marathons should consider a pit of M&M’s like the pit of colored balls in the kiddie section of McDonald’s. Runners could finish the race and jump in, swimming through the M&M’s, chomping away.

Also I did the math, if you burned 2900 calories on a marathon you could eat 6.17 servings of an Enchirito and a Mexican Pizza. If you called it even and only ate 6 servings you’d be at a net calorie loss.

And people think runners and marathoners are crazy.

Posted in Running and tagged brussels sprouts, calories, cat, cat food, Enchirito, exercise, fitness, food, healthy-living, M&M, marathon, Mexican Pizza, Pet, Run, running, Taco Bell, training

04 Mar 2013

10 Comments

Wild and Crazy. Nothing stopping us now.

I saw Dr. K this morning and my back is definitely better, so I headed out for a slow easy 4 miler in the neighborhood to practice my stride. Beautiful morning – sunny and breezy, it was great to be outside. Yesterday afternoon, just to have a reason to be outside in the pretty afternoon sun, I swept leaves. Carefully, slowly, with my back straight, abs tight. Just a few leaves. Someday I’m going to count how many trees we have, I don’t actually know. I can see 14 just looking out the window over my desk. We have a lot of trees. It will take four adult men two days to get rid of these leaves, so my little sweeping of the front porch and sidewalk was just a hobby. Sort of like me doing a slow four miler when some friends did the Mississippi 50K and 50 Miler Saturday…I’ve done 50K a few times – but 50 miles? Wow. That is some mental strength for sure. Plus the 50K friends beat my best time by well over a half hour.

I’ve discovered a really great thing about being on the DL off and on for a few months. When you get back moving again you’re not in as great shape as you used to be. You’ve lost efficiency, your aerobic capacity is reduced, and of course you aren’t as strong physically. So everything takes longer and more energy. This is a good thing, because, personally, I’ve also got about five extra pounds to get rid of. The five pounds isn’t so awesome, but the extra energy required right now is; when I got home my Garmin and HR monitor announced proudly that I had burned 538 calories. When I’m in shape it would be about 400. So I have a net 138 extra calories burned.

Sweet!

Now I only have 9,862 to go! YAY!

When I had three boys living at home food pretty much disappeared with little need to remove it from the grocery sack. If there was anything I wanted to have around more than three hours it had to be hid. I put my chocolates in an empty feminine products box. Never once did the boys find those…

Every once in a while I would start getting a craving for one of my favorites - one of my favorites other than the hidden chocolate, which I had every day. One year Fr. Ernie said it was ‘no fair’ ‘giving up chocolate’ for Lent, you needed to come up with something that would be a reminder of the reason for the Lenten sacrifice, something that would have a daily impact. I said, I eat chocolate 2 or 3 times a day. He looked stunned. What the heck? Doesn’t everyone eat chocolate 2 or 3 times a day??

My weaknesses back then were Panchos cheese dip with Fritos or a DQ Peanut Buster Parfait. There was never a specific reason; I’d be vacuuming or looking for the missing sock in each load of laundry when suddenly my brain would announce ”PANCHOS” or “PEANUT BUSTER PARFAIT!”

I’d wait for the perfect day – kids all at school, maybe I was extra hungry or I’d been busy shopping and was tired and I would get the DQ, or buy the Panchos and have it for lunch, that’s all, just the cheese dip and Fritos. Then I was done and I’d leave the rest for the kids.

More recently my favorite blowout has been Taco Bell. (hahahaha playground snickering, “blowout” “Taco Bell”) An enchirito and a mexican pizza. I eat the enchirito first, then the pizza. I eat the enchirito first because then I cut the pizza carefully into quarters with the handle of the Spork; apparently people who frequent Taco Bell cannot be trusted with plastic knives. Or spoons. Or forks. Just Sporks. So you can see that otherwise I’d have Taco Bell all over the handle of the Spork if I ate the pizza first and that would be messy. I use one package of mild sauce per quarter. All washed down with a diet Dr. Pepper with just a bit of real Dr. Pepper on top because, of course. What else is there?

The biggest issue I have with losing weight (really, what is not to like about losing a few extra pounds, right?) is the eating less part. I don’t know about you two, but I think someone missed the ball when He was up there in Heaven creating calories. I plan to discuss this with Him but not right away. I’m willing to wait a bit for the talk.

Also I’m going to ask him what the hell – wait, can I say “what the hell” to Him?

I’m thinking.

I think, yes. Yes, I can. If anyone ever proves there’s a scoreboard I’ll quit cussing, but until then it’s open season on the swear words. As evidenced by miles 10-13 of the Oxford Half.

So I’m going to also ask Him what the hell was He thinking when He made mosquitoes or arranged for their evolution or however it happened that things worked out. Seriously? Mosquitoes?? Probably it will turn out, at the end of time as we know it, that mosquitoes were actually the Super Glue of the cosmos and held everything together, and here I am, bashing them. Then I’m going to be all like, OK then. Sorry. Please don’t bite me. And I will be forced to fight them all off with a Spork.

To encourage myself to eat less and lose five pounds I announced publicly to Becky that when I lost five pounds we would have Taco Bell. Being a good sport Becky acted like Taco Bell would be awesome. The day arrived! I texted: “BECKY! TACO BELL!”

I was SOOOOO excited. I’m wild and crazy. There is NO stopping me! We swam first and I was so hungry! I’d burned even more calories since I’d weighed! This was going to be incredible! TACO BELL! ENCHIRITO! MEXICAN PIZZA!!! SPORKS!!!!

I was giddy with excitement. I clasped my hands excitedly. The lady at the register looked at me oddly. “I know what I want!” I announced. Becky perused the menu, but I couldn’t wait and maybe I did a little skip up to the counter. The lady behind the register looked at me oddly. I placed my order and described my Diet Dr. Pepper with the little bit of real Dr. Pepper on top. The lady behind the register … looked at me … oddly. I was starting to wonder if not everyone is as pleased to be at Taco Bell as I was.

Isn’t that sad to think? Not everyone is happy to go to Taco Bell?

nah. It’s gotta be something else.

I tell you what: that enchirito and mexican pizza were awesome. I felt so happily guilty, my diet blow-out, my wild and crazy diet reward, it was doubly sweet.

The next day Becky and I were working out with Killer. I described to Killer in minute detail the awesome Taco Bell reward we’d celebrated the day before. Calories be DAMNED! We were unstoppable! We threw caution not just to the winds but to the hurricanes! Swept away! Washed ashore in a distant land!

“Yeah. So, about that big celebration?” Becky asked. “I looked it up. Your enchirito and mexican pizza? 470 calories, crazy woman. Way to blow it out.”

SONUVABITCH.

Posted in Running and tagged 50 miler, 50K, calories, Enchirito, exercise, fitness, food, healthy-living, Mexican Pizza, Run, running, spork, Taco Bell, training

02 Mar 2013

2 Comments

There goes the castle.

It’s a grey cold windy day with flakes of snow blowing sideways past my window. None of it is sticking, although we woke to enough to lightly blanket the grass and the deck was white. I have Italian herb bread in the bread machine (I cheat, but it makes such a nice dough! Then I bake it in the oven, not in the bread machine.) and minestrone will soon be on the stove. Murphy is curled up in the bed and Chunk and Mo are off somewhere asleep. They should be, they were crazy this morning. thudthudthudthud thundering down the hallway. thudthudthudthud back down the hallway. thudthudthudthud up the stairs. thudthudthudthud down the stairs. Suddenly the happy little felines went thudthudthudthud through the kitchen nearly knocking my coffee mug out of my hand. Near death experience for cats.

Don’t break my new coffee cup!

I Love Grumpy Cat. *heart* *heart*

Everything went well in Oxford and Sunday I was surprised – I was not sore at all. Rather like someone who just bought a matching set of Ford Pintos, I was, however, feeling deeply remorseful over the Fbombs exploding in my head Saturday and showering all over poor Maggie, who happened to be running next to me when they started igniting, and was regretting my effing slightly effing negative effing attitude. Not that I’m always Little Mary Sunshine anyway, but I’m thinking I may have also been spitting pea soup in a circle on the course.

Unfortunately Monday morning I apparently tried breathing or thinking or something and suddenly my lower back went “EFFFINGSUNUVABEECH” only louder and with a lot more intensity. Who knew, we actually have live wires that run through our body and my back had stuck its finger in the socket. I moved and it hit again. My back was in labor. I already have a back. I don’t need to birth another. I’m not even registered at Babies BackwardR Us. Thank God for Lamaze classes, little did I know decades later I would be using the breathing techniques again.

Tuesday it was no better and I called Dr. Krackurback – who is out of the office on Tuesdays, oh yippee skippy – and got an appointment for Wednesday, resigning myself to spending the day walking around like a puppet on a string, jerking erratically. Hey, it gave the cats something to look at. Murphy slept through it all, curled up on his blanket. Just don’t touch his blanket. Ever. He jumps like it just exploded and looks at you: WHAT? WHAT? WHAT DID I DO? all sleepy-eyed and confused. It makes you feel really guilty. Especially the 7th or 8th time.

Wednesday Dr. K explained to me that muscles are like a castle wall. Muscles are the first line of defense. If the muscles hold the castle then all the kings and queens and little knaves and knavettes are safe. If the invaders start knocking the wall down, and the wall is already rather rickety – maybe made out of bamboo instead of bricks – pretty soon the wall gives in, the castle is invaded and everyone starts screaming and trying to shove knives into the knaves and pouring boiling oil all over the place.

He’d already figured out that my Quadratus lumborum is weak and gave me some exercises to do but noted it would not be a quick fix, need to get the muscles strengthened and that takes time. (Seriously. Quadratus! lumborum! Doesn’t that sound like some made up word that Harry shouted at Voldemort? ZZZaaaaat!)

No, it’s just a stupid muscle in your back. The short of it is I slightly sprained my SI joint (castle) because I strained the QL (rickety wall of bamboo) because it’s a sorry a$$ 99 pound weakling at the beach, all white and puny and skinny getting sand kicked in its face, stupid thing. Probably it got a bit tuckered out, poor weak little jerk, feeling sorry for itself because my butt never invited it to the Falling Off Party and later when everyone else was all laughing hahahaha at inside jokes that happened at the party the QL got jealous and decided to go remedial.

So, it’s all good. I know what happened and how, I know what to do to fix it, and I can be patient working on it. I took it easy this week and moved carefully in order not to re-strain anything; every day it’s better.

I can’t feel too badly about any of this – I’m in a lot better shape than Becky, who’s got a stress fracture of the 5th metatarsal and possibly 6 weeks off running. Today we swam. I used the swimming buoy so I didn’t kick (no need to upset QL, the whiny brat, I’d go down like a rock) all arms pulling which is great as they also need to get stronger. I did OK, got 1750 yards. I wanted 2,000 but was losing my form – no need for that, just another way to get hurt.

While I was swimming, backandforth-backandforth-backandforth, for the first time I thought, this isn’t too bad. I could breathe well enough. I didn’t have to hold onto the side at each turn. It felt … good.

Posted in Running and tagged BFOS, Butt Falling off Syndrome, cat, coffee, Coffee mug, dog, exercise, fitness, Grumpy Cat, healthy-living, Journey, Keurig, Quadratus lumborum, Run, running, swimming, training

24 Feb 2013

4 Comments

Promise and new growth

It’s a beautiful late Sunday afternoon and I’m watching the sun set behind the trees across our little cove of lake. Earlier this afternoon I felt the first hint of spring in the air, that indefinable scent or feel, somehow different from a winter day with the same weather. Perhaps it’s a slight change in the look of the sunlight or the stirring of the animals. We have a bluebird couple at our suet and a flock of cedar waxwings stripped our holly bushes bare last week. A few daffodils and crocus are popping up and their bright colors on the rather monochrome landscape seems especially cheery. Geese and ducks have been absent for a while and this afternoon I can see several little groups floating around.

Tomorrow’s forecast is rain, thunderstorms and winds, with the days following in the 40′s/30′s. Since I’m seeing posts from people trying to decide to run inside or out with a 13″ snowfall I have no problems with our forecast returning to winter for a few days. It will fight its way back.

Saturday morning the alarm went off at 5am – not a completely indecent time of day. And it wasn’t a kleighorn blaring like an oncoming cruise ship, which made the entire transition smoother.

I did question what I was doing, thinking I could do another half. Yet there I was, and there was hubs, and there we were in the car on the way to Oxford, Mississippi at 5:45 am in order to make race day packet pickup. It was little surprise when we got there and it was grey, cloudy, 34 degrees and windy.

This race had everything in common with the Greenville race: cold, grey, windy; fantastic volunteers, very well-organized, excellent course support, cheering townspeople; endless beer and pizza at the end. So, to one-up Greenville, Oxford, however far in the distant past, decided to be built, not in the delta, but in the rolling hills of middle Mississippi. Unfortunately, I overlooked that fact.

My main concern going into the race was that I wasn’t in shape for these hills. It didn’t occur to me that my butt would attempt to fall off at mile 9. Butt has been behaving so well lately.

There has to be something in the stride going uphill which pulls that piriformis/sciatic nerve and I’m truly looking forward to talking to Dr. K about this next time I see him. He loves to talk about his work and explains everything so well. I find it fascinating so I’m a good audience. I like knowing the how and why as I’m sure you do.

Sure enough, by mile 10 I was walking every hill not because I didn’t have the strength to run them, as I’d worried, but because my leg was singing soprano. Who needs an iPod? I was mad because I was scared, and every negative tape that could possibly play in my head got air time. I walked the final (uphill) 1/2 mile to the finish line. Poor hubs, smiling at me, and all I could say is “I have nothing good I can say right now”. Pizza, a small beer and dry clothes went a long way. We headed home and I wiggled and twitched the entire way. Butt was definitely feeling worse. I cared – but I didn’t. I knew this was part of fighting my way back, one way or the other.

We had a wonderful Saturday afternoon running errands and celebrating the 3rd birthday of the B’ster. There’s no way to feel in the dumps watching a three-year old open gifts of cars and trains and spooning in pizza and ice cream with chocolate sauce. I look in those beautiful dark eyes full of total joy and melt. I hold it in my heart and try to absorb it.

Yesterday evening hubs was online. “Terri, it looks like you’re 3rd in your age group.”

WTHeck? Sure enough, none of the fast women showed up and someone Mastered out of the age group. I placed third. I’m not being facetious here, I know my time and I know the area runners. I placed because they were not there.

I don’t care. LALALALALALALA! I placed! Happy Dance! At mile 10, if I’d known where the finish line was, I would have thought about walking off the course. I wouldn’t have walked off, but I would have given it some very serious consideration.

I will take that finish and 3rd place and put a bow on it.

AND – this morning Butt was back to where it was before the race, still there but much better. I’m less stiff and sore from the race than I was from Greenville two weeks ago!

The joy of this is not only in the running. The joy is that I’m learning to work with this. I’d like to be a person who can immediately stick an issue in the correct slot in my brain and not go off track, but apparently I’m not. I expect most people are the same way but I’m not trying to figure them out, I’m trying to figure me out. I don’t know where the manual is. Maybe when we die part of the afterlife is that we all get our owner’s manuals back and everything finally works and makes sense. I hope so. Still, I’m happy that despite the fact I could not think of anything good to say at the end of that race, I eventually shook it off. It took a while, and some focus, but I made peace with whatever the next day would bring.

I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m changing.

At this juncture of winter and spring, as we begin to see the promise of new or renewed life, the somber greys/browns slowing budding with fresh green, the bright yellow or purple of buds frozen in the earth, what promise do you see in your life? What new growth do you reach for?

Posted in Running and tagged BFOS, Butt Falling off Syndrome, exercise, fitness, half marathon, healthy-living, iPod, Journey, Run, running, training

Run. Dog. Cat. Cat. Me.

Everything you need to know about running and life and any other random crap I find bouncing through my mind like a ping pong ball. And always be sure your shoes are happy.

Archive for the tag “running”

Confidence? Reality? A spoonful of sugar?

Good luck with that.

OCD much?

Never leave home without it

I haven’t been right here. Where were you?

It’s all fun and games until the clowns show up.

Calories Calories everywhere…

Wild and Crazy. Nothing stopping us now.

There goes the castle.

Promise and new growth

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