Faster than a Galapagos Tortoise

 

The great thing about technology is this: With just a few clicks, I can find out interesting facts about the Galapagos Tortoise, which I knew was a slow-moving creature, but until today I had no idea just. how. slow. that could be. 

Did you know it would take over six hours for a Galapagos Tortoise to go one mile? For real. I'm assuming that it would take a fair amount of motivation, as well. Food perhaps, or an especially sexy Tortoise of the opposite gender to wink knowingly and urge the poor beast along.

Hormonal tortoises aside, did you know it didn't take me six hours to go one mile today? I'm almost as surprised as you are. In fact, I covered just over one and a half miles in 30 minutes today. Hey, I can't help it if I'm setting land-speed records....for tree sloths...

I'm actually super happy I got to run today!  (Ahem. I suppose I'm using the term "run" loosely, as noted by the aforementioned distance and time.) So at this pace, I will be able to cover an 8 mile hellish obstacle course after approximately 67 years of training.

Seems legit.

Here are the treadmills at my gym, looking all pretty and bright underneath the skylight:

                                                                        

Here's my treadmill. I didn't get a shot of me while using it because, duh, I can't jog and take my picture at the same time.

That's my drink! (You care.)

Annnnnd...voilà, la pièce de résistance (which is a fancy French way of saying "This is the cool part"): My mileage. Isn't technology awesome? The machine tells important things like how much ground I would have covered, had I been on the ground (and not on a, let's face it, slightly easier smooth surface with a moving track to keep me going), and it tells me how many calories I burned. Today it shows that I went over a mile and a half! Most of which was accomplished by actual running. Well, maybe half of which. Okay, not quite half, probably just under half. Possibly a third. But it was running. Okay, it was jogging. Almost speedwalking but not quite. It was definitely a jog, even if it was slow.

Jogging happened here today! Well, something happened.

At least it wasn't Galapagos Tortoise slow.

 

Victory and Defeat in the Time of 60 minutes

Didn't do a class today at the gym, instead went on my own with the surreptitious plan of trying a bit of a jog on the treadmill. Surreptitious, as in, I was going to try to sneak it in on the body before the knee could figure out what was going on and put an end to it. 

First, 30 minutes on the Nordic track machine: 

 

Music: Interpol, "Say Hello to the Angels" - Killers, "Sam's Town" (not the crappy acoustic version either!) - NIN, "Head Like A Hole" - Pink Floyd, "Run Like Hell" and AC/DC "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)"

After all good and worked out on this machine, I figured it was time. 

Time to get back on a treadmill. Time to take the knee out for a little jog.

I should've taken a picture of how pretty that treadmill looked, bathed in soft white light from the skylight above. I grinned to myself as I got on the machine and started it up. 

After a slow start, I punched it up to a whopping 4.5 mph. Found out the knee is most definitely NOT down with that plan. Slowed down, increased the incline. For the remainder of the workout I kept messing with incline and speed, to make it just challenging enough that I was actually working out and not just lollygagging along at a useless staring-at-the-art-in-a-museum pace. 

Towards the end of my 30 minutes, I had this great idea: I would sneak up the speed little by little, till a slow jog would be achieved.  

Hooray! This seems to have worked! My new theory now is that the knee has to be gently cajoled into a jog, and the slower the transition, the better.

So, imagine me, smiling like a fool, this huge triumphant grin on my face as I am jogging along at a positively glacial pace, when all of a sudden the machine stops. Out of the blue. How did this happen? Not smiling anymore. Stupid machine. What in the world?....

And I see it. I see it. The stupid thing that keeps the treadmill on. Most treadmills I've dealt with have a sort of key you insert into a slot, and that's what keeps it on. But noooo, not this one. This treadmill - apparently all of them at the gym - have instead a ridiculous little bobbly thing with a magnet on it that sticks onto this shallow indention. That's what keeps the machine on. It looks like a little Pokemon ball. Apparently I swiped that thing by accident - must've been while I was raising my arms in victory, like a runner completing a marathon - and that's what turned my machine off.

I was just a tad bit miffed at that point. I slapped the stupid machine with my towel, then went to ask the manager if the lost information could be retrieved. Because, you see, clearly the most important thing is not the workout, but that I can take a picture of the readout afterward. Alas, the manager told me what I already had guessed: that you can't get the information back once it's been turned off. 

Man.

But hey! I got to jog a little! That was kind of awesome.

 

Live from the grocery store: BIG NEWS!!!

Reached a milestone today....a slightly embarrassing one, but in a good way. More about that in a moment. 

The big news? That I got while leaving the grocery store?....I have been offered a job! It's for a full-time French position. Surprisingly, I think this is probably the PERFECT job for me this year. I'll be teaching French 1. That's it. Not French 2, no IB or AP French, just...French 1. It's surprising to me to think this is perfect, because for a long time I was soooo convinced I really wanted only to teach upper level French. But, see, upper level French usually means you're teaching French 2, 3, 4, and maybe 5, plus AP and/or IB French.

If you're a teacher - you will understand when I say that upper level French means I could have 5, 6 or even 7 preps. If you're not a teacher, well, let me just say that each prep requires a lot of work, so the more preps you have, the more work you have. Three or four preps is kind of a lot. More than that is nearly insane.That's why it's a blessing to have only one prep. Some teachers work for years to get to the point where they only have one or two preps. And that's why teaching upper level French would be a daunting proposition, as there would be SO many preps.

So I'll be teaching French 1, on a campus with what appears to be a very supportive administration, as well as a foreign language section leader I think I will really enjoy working for. I will be assigned a mentor - probably a real mentor, someone who is actually helpful and willing to spend time with me - and I will also be collaborating with other electives teachers during our mutual conference periods. This is SO different from my previous experience! 

Now, for the other news, which happened while I was still at the grocery store:  my shorts almost fell off me! Right there by the cheese and sandwich meat! I could feel my shorts sliding down, then a little more down, and I had to stop to actually pull them up so they wouldn't fall all the way down. Woo-hoo!

Now, if only I could get my thighs to stop rubbing together...

Friend Vacation, and Weight Update!

When you go on vacation, do you worry about keeping up a healthy diet? 

What about if you don't leave to go on vacation, but the vacation comes to you? Let me explain: I had a dear friend in town this weekend, and I knew we would be busy sightseeing / hanging out / possibly doing tourist-y kinds of things. That's kind of like a vacation, isn't it?

I was worried about being able to work out - this turned out not to be much of an issue - and also, I was worried that I would be able to keep up with logging my nutrition. 

Well. I didn't need to worry about working out. We spent so much time walking (HOURS and HOURS, I'm not even kidding) around the museum and the aquarium, I still managed to burn calories. And food? We were so busy gabbing we didn't have a lot of time left over to stuff our faces. Although, we did go out for a rather expensive (calorie-wise) Mexican dinner with my family....but no biggie, it was just one meal. 

Here's a pic of us at the aquarium:

My friend left today. Which makes me sad, because I miss him, and I miss the freedom we had when we were younger to just hang out pretty much whenever we wanted to. Things are different now. I've discovered it's hard to hang out when you live half a nation apart. Also, it's hard to hang out when you have children, or grandchildren, or actual, grown-up-type jobs. (Between us we have all these things.)

So after a brief moment of staring out the window when he left, and after wallowing nostalgically in some '80's music, I went to the gym to work out. Because I'm not a teenager anymore. (And I have the waistline to prove it!) 

First, I figured it was time to actually weigh myself and take measurements. I haven't done this yet. I did weigh myself a couple months ago, but haven't bothered since then...I was too horrified by how much I weighed, and I was hoping that by avoiding the scale it would somehow magically make the weight start melting off of me. This doesn't work, just in case you were wondering. Anyway, the last time I weighed myself - and if I were to be honest, I might admit it was more than a "couple" months ago; it was probably around 6 months ago - I weighed (ahem) 171 lbs. I knew I'd gained weight since then so when I started on the Really Cool Website To Help Me Get Healthy Again and Get In Shape For The Spartan Race (Let's call it the RCW, or Really Cool Website, for short), I said I weighed 180 pounds. 

That may or may not have been the case. I don't know. I will never know, because I tried to pretend I didn't need to weigh myself (because guessing is so much better, right?), so I just assumed my top weight was about 180. (It was around that, though, for sure. But it could've been more. I'm positive it wasn't less, because my clothes were fitting even worse than they had at 170.) 

I took my measurements at home, and let's just say the results were not inspiring. Moving on.

My gym has this really nice scale. It's like the scale at the doctor's office, the one with the bar at the top with the little weights you move around until the arrow on the right floats upward.

Good news! I've lost at least 6 pounds, and I'm strong enough to actually move the pin on the free weights to 25 lbs!  Hooray! 

Also, my fat pants are fitting kinda loose now!!! Yay me!! That's not a direct result of weighing and measuring, either, in case you were wondering. No: I've noticed the pants were loose the past few days. This means, I've actually lost some weight. Hooray!

To celebrate, I had some chocolate wine tonight. 

Okay, I know what you're thinking. 

"Why would you celebrate your weight loss by consuming a calorie-laden alcoholic beverage? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?" And you may have a point. But I was feeling quite sorry for myself that my friend was gone, and that we're not teenagers anymore, and that there is not, in fact, music still on MTV. So I think you would agree with me that a judicious glass of wine was necessary to help me wallow in the feelings of being sad and old.  

And I will STILL lose weight!!! Because, guess what, I'm still tracking everything I eat or drink, and I'm still working out!! So there!!!

And now, for something completely different.

We will be using Time4Writing as a summer writing program for the next couple of months.  We are excited to get started with the interactive lessons.  Our online tutor will correct our work and give us writing tips on how to sharpen our writing skills.  Come visit in a few weeks to see how we like it.

Supplements

Supplements, in a day:

Breakfast

 

This is the morning routine. Before breakfast, B-12 with vitamin C, creatine mixed with sugar-free drink, and chromium picolinate. Then, with breakfast, multi-vitamin and evening primrose oil.

Oh yeah - also, a daily antihistamine. In the morning.

Lunchtime

 Creatine with a sugar-free drink, and Ibuprofen. 

Dinner

 Creatine in a drink, and iron.

Bedtime

Calcium and Benadryl - apparently they work well together to help you sleep. And Benadryl helps me stay asymptomatic when the allergen counts are high.

Worst 3 Musketeers ever

This is the WORST 3Musketeers Bar I've ever had. Simply terrible. Don't do it, don't eat this. 

Worst. 3 Musketeers. EVER.

If you really want a 3 Musketeers Bar, do yourself a favor and go get the real deal. Indulge in the 3 Musketeers Bar's traditional airy sweetness wrapped in mouthwatering milk chocolate goodness. Please. Please, in the name of All That Is Holy! Please enjoy the real thing. Do it for yourself. Do it for all the dieters in the world who try with all their might to pretend that food tastes just as good now is it ever did, but that's a lie, because compared to junk food - compared to the 3 Musketeers Bar - healthy food is about negative-100 on a 1 to 10 scale of yumminess. 

Most importantly, do it for me, the chubby lady who can no longer indulge in the chocolatey perfection of the 3 Musketeers Bar, and who devoutly wishes 3 Musketeers were in the business of making protein bars that taste like a 3 Musketeers.

Looks can be deceiving. This is not, in fact, a candy bar.

Chromium Picolinate = My New Best Friend

Holy moley, I cannot believe this stuff works!

Dear Hubby suggested I start taking chromium picolinate to support muscle growth. I kind of remembered taking this years ago...hoping to lose weight...but back then, it didn't seem to have a serious impact on either my appetite or my waistline, so I gave it up. But today? TOTALLY killed my appetite. Wow. I mean, I was not hungry, at all. In fact, food didn't sound appetizing to me at all. Not even chocolate. (!!!!) What manner of witchcraft is this? To not even want chocolate? How is that possible?


I had a normal breakfast, but by lunchtime my appetite was pretty much zero.  Since it was Father's Day today, the kids and I took my dear husband out to eat, but I only finished about half my meal. Hours later I was still not hungry. My food tracker indicates I only took in about 650 calories today, but still, no hunger pangs.  Finally, about 9:00 tonight, feeling sort of weak, I did manage to swallow some dinner.  Man. How bizarre is that? Normally if I'd only had 600 calories, I'd be starving by now, ready to sink my fork into the nearest flank of animal. But no. Not tonight. I'm not hungry, and food doesn't sound good to me either. 

Workouts this week / 336 days till the Spartan!

Chatty description coming up, after family obligations. Briefly: good news, I worked out! Bad news, I'm still fat.

...Okay, here's the wordiness.

The two pix below are snapshots I took of the screen on the treadmill stairclimber Nordictrack whatever that machine is at the gym, where you get on it and you do this sort of gliding motion with your feet, while at the same time you busily push on this lever-like thing with your hands. Whatever that thing is - it's okay for the knees, apparently, since my knee doesn't really complain on that machine. So, two workouts on that machine. (Not in one day.)

 

Now, what you can't see here are the classes I took at the gym this past week. One class has you throwing weights around. Shamefully, I could only deal with, like, zero weight to begin with. I mean, I did at least have the weight-less bar to push around like some sort of loony-bin escapee ("Why, yes, there are weights on this bar, don't you see them?....No, I haven't heard from Commander Zog today, but I'm sure the Martian invasion is still on.") Luckily, after a couple sessions of this class, my body started to catch on to the fact that, yes, we do even lift, bro! and so I added some weights to the bar. Hardly much of anything, but more than zero. I should've taken a picture: those tiny, bitty 2-kg weights on the bar looked super dumb! Mice could lift more. Dwarf mice. Dwarf mice with a debilitating muscle disease! Thankfully, God In His Infinite Mercy allowed my body to graduate to 5-kg weights. They look bigger on the bar, and yes, they're heavier. Most importantly those bigger weights make me look like less of a blubbery wimp.

The other class I took was some type of Core / Cross-Fit class. It's where you slave away to lift various parts of your body into various contorted positions for miserably long amounts of time, while the teacher cheerfully bellows at you to keep your "Elbows In!" or "Just TEN MORE!" or some other tyrannical nonsense, that all just means she is secretly trying to kill you through floor exercises. I think I'll try this class again. I didn't actually die, although I wanted to; and it does seem like a good way to maybe someday eventually get into halfway better shape than I'm currently in. Most importantly I suspect the teacher's verbal abuse is similar to the kind that gets dished out at the Spartan race. Might as well get used to that now.

Now, here is a picture of me, today, not at the gym. I just finished 1 mile:

Much to my continued chagrin, I was not, in fact, able to run even part of that mile. I could not even muster up a ridiculously slow jog. No, that was not possible today. Was it the knee? you may ask sympathetically. Yes, it was the knee, a little bit. More than that, there was some kind of leg/hip pain that didn't want to go away. I'm sure it was a hip flexor complaining about over-use, since it was so badly abused in that evil Core training class yesterday...but since that particular leg is the one attached to the wonky knee, I figured it best not to push it. I did keep trying, hopefully, to trot around just a bit; alas, every single attempt was met with a sharp shooting pain and a tiny little hip flexor sigh of exasperation. So I walked. Then about a third of the way into my walking mile, the knee did start to feel slightly uncomfortable. Which meant it would be good simply to finish a one-mile walk without destroying any currently functioning joint or muscle in my body. So, no jogging for me today. A couple of barking dogs, yes, but no jogging.

And finally, we have this:

 

 Dearest darling hubby, the light of my life, my best friend and soul mate, has recently brought it to my attention that I may not be as young as I used to be, once, a long time ago; and in fact, it might be a good idea to take anti-inflammatories after a workout. 

Oh, the humiliation. Not only am I fat and out of shape, I'm taking Motrin just to keep moving.

But it's all good, in the end. So what if I have to take NSAIDS after a workout? At this stage, it's good that my butt isn't velcroed in to the sofa. If it takes some Motrin after a workout to deal with the pain, at least I'm working out. And I don't think I'll do this every time. Mostly, just after an intense workout, or after working out some part of my body I never knew existed until then.

Just 336 Days until the race!

Zero to Spartan in less than a year....yeah, that's do-able, right?

 Hooray! You're looking at my blog! How'd you get here, are you a friend? Then, please, let me apologize in advance. I'm not a great writer. I'm not a great athlete. I'm probably really not great at anything aside from spelling. (SPELLING. That's a super-valuable skill nowadays, isn't it? I mean, who really uses spellcheck...) So if you're my friend, and you're looking at this blog, I apologize that you got roped in to reading this crap. Seriously. You should probably go watch "Biggest Loser," it's bound to be more entertaining, and besides, at least you know right at the beginning that people will actually be losing weight, and getting in shape, which is all somehow satisfying in a story-book kind of way: you know that the contestants will face obstacles, but most, if not all, of them will struggle through to lose massive amounts of weight. And they will be able to run a marathon by the end of the show. Sadly, unlike a season of "The Biggest Loser," I cannot make any kind of promise that I will lose weight, even if I do somehow get into marginally better shape than I'm in right now. And, come to think of it, I cannot promise I will actually finish the Spartan. So if you're looking for a surefire feel-good story, this probably isn't the blog for you. 

If you don't know me, then I am really, really sorry you are here. Who coerced you into reading this?....oh, wait, maybe it's an office pool or something like that?....you're waiting to see the train wreck? I understand. You may quite possibly see a spectacular train wreck. On the other hand, I cannot promise you massive public shame, humiliation and failure. It's possible that I might indeed complete this journey; I may, in all honesty, lose a lot of weight AND finish the Spartan race. So if you are here, popcorn in hand, gleefully expecting epic failure, I'm sorry to say you may not get that. 

If you are my family....good heavens, you have to live with me or else you have to see me at Christmas, isn't that enough? Surely you have better things to do. I'm related to mathematicians, doctors, PhD's, business owners...surely you ought to spend your precious time coming up with a formula for the Theory of Everything, or you've got murderous crimes to solve, or students to teach (even peripherally), or businesses to run....Please, you have more important matters to attend to. (Hey, yeah, I know I ended that sentence on a split infinitive. Deal with it. It's my blog, don't get all English-y up in my grill. I might just take my gift back this Christmas.)

Why the Spartan? I don't know, honestly. A couple of my church friends did it, and I was jealous and insecure, and I said, "I'll do it with you next year!" because I want them to like me and because I imagine that possibly there might be some kind of moral support forthcoming from that impulsive declaration.  Also, I know I need a goal in order for me to bother getting up off the sofa and to stop eating barbecue potato chips. I need purpose. Definition. An outside force. Something, anything, to get me back into shape. 

Because I was in shape a couple years ago. I was, in fact, training to run a half-marathon. I was really looking forward to this event. I was going to run with my dad, who is super-fit, and of course he's my dad so I really, really want his approval, and what better way than to run 13 miles with him? He really digs exercising. More than anyone else I know. Maybe more than Jilliene Michaels. (Supposedly she hates exercising. But I guess she's super-motivated to look a certain way, i.e., thin and gorgeous, so that's enough motivation for her to work out. Whatevs. My dad could kick her butt. Not that that's saying much, but, well, it kind of is. And my dad is REALLY OLD compared to Jilliene. So that makes it more impressive, right? ) 

Anyway, I was training for this half-marathon - really training, not sitting on my sofa theoretically thinking about maybe possibly going for a run; no, I really was running. Quite a bit. I would go for a short, 4-mile run most days. Then about every ten days or so, a longer run. My longest run? Sixteen miles. That's right. SIXTEEN. Count 'em. Yep, I ran sixteen miles once. (On a treadmill. Don't judge. My longest street run was ten miles.) It was right about this time that I took a week off for the holidays, and that week turned into two weeks, and then I realized this was a bad trend, so I decided to go for a short, four-mile run one day. And that's when it happened.

Right down the road from me - where the road takes this perilous 90-degree turn - my knee started to hurt.

No big deal, I thought. I'll push through the pain.

Ha. Ha. Ha. In about 30 feet I was limping like a horse that is about to get "put down" with a shotgun. About 10 feet beyond that, I about fell over from the pain. However, figuring that getting run over with an actual moving vehicle would be slightly worse than a throbbing knee, I managed to stand up and careen over to the side of the road. For a few minutes, I considered, then rejected, the possibility of calling a taxi. Or maybe an ambulance. 

Ultimately I rejected both of these ideas, and managed to limp / drag my foot pathetically behind me like a zombie, home. 

Then I spent the next five years pouting. Because, you see, I liked running. It was fun. Nothing else was fun. I didn't have a reason to go work out. Oh, sure, I tried to "keep up my physical fitness" by going to the gym, but that made me want to stab my eyes out. What was the point? Why sweat on a machine, staring into outer space / at other, more fit people on their machines / the wall? I couldn't even watch anything on the TV screen, it just bored me SO much. 

I tried classes, too, but you know how it is when you can't dance, you can't keep up with everyone else, you can't get the moves down...it's just sad. I couldn't do that anymore either. 

Working out at home? No, not so much. My kids were small and thought that "home workout" meant "time to join in and laugh a lot," which I, very maturely, interpreted as "making fun of Mom," and I just couldn't do the home workouts anymore, either. Even if they were just kids being silly I felt like a complete idiot dressed in Spandex and jumping around in my postage stamp-sized living room.

Eventually, all that pity and loathing pointed inward turned into me mostly sitting on a sofa all day, periodically eating potato chips or cake (possibly a whole cake, once, but I can neither confirm nor deny). Shockingly enough, pouting does not burn very many calories. I know, right! How can this be? Especially when one puts so much effort into pouting. Such elaborate face-saving stories that are told to justify the pouting. Such sighing to be had, when certain very kind-hearted people would try to solve my problem (of basically un-gluing my rear end from the reclining chair). You would really think the calorie investment would be greater. 

Alas, it is not. Pouting will not make one physically fit. Neither will sitting around and thinking about how nice it would be to join a gym, throw around some weights, and maybe eventually heal the bad knee. This I have learned.  

Which brings me to....today. At the gym. Impossibly, I was at some kind of weight-lifting class (low weight, high reps) and I found myself looking the instructor in the eyes and saying "I plan on competing in the Spartan race next year." Yes, I said that. Yes, she's a weight-lifting instructor. Yes, it seems I have finally, completely, yet not unexpectedly, lost my mind. But I said it. And I meant it.

It would be great storytelling if, at this point, I either finished on a high note: I'm stronger than I thought I was! or, better yet: I tried valiantly but after wallowing in a pool of sweat and vomit only five minutes in, I gave up. Neither of these things happened. I'm about as shapeless as I thought I was, and I could barely keep up even with the lightest baby weights (you want to know how light? Try one-pound weights on either end of the almost hollow, nearly-weightless barbell. That would be TWO POUNDS. That's right. TWO. Deux. Dos). 

About ten minutes into the class I knew I would be suffering tomorrow from horrible soreness, and since I'm such a wimp I immediately made a plan to track down some young, chiseled trainer to find me a recovery drink. God in His Eternal Mercy provided me a smoothie bar wherein one may order a smoothie, with a shot of L-Glutamine. If you've never heard of L-Glutamine, and you work out...what are you, some kind of masochistic pain freak? Please. There's no need for that kind of misery. (Unless you like that kind of misery. But that's a whole 'nother thing, and that's not what this blog is about.) L-Glutamine is a magical amino acid that helps you feel less sore after working out. In all honesty, L-Glutamine is the only reason I will push it, even a little bit, in a workout. If there were no L-Glutamine, it would take me approximately 137 years to work up to the kind of 30-minute "Chair Yoga" session usually reserved for the silver-haired crowd. Seriously: L-Glutamine is The Bomb!

Which brings me to now. Here I am, contemplating the sheer lunacy of telling EVERYONE IN THE WORLD that I plan to run in the Spartan next year. 

And it seems like a story that should be told. That I need to tell, if for no other reason than to learn to loosen up and laugh at myself. But maybe, the real reason is this: I need to have a goal. And the deeper reason might possibly be: I need to do something outrageous. 


Postscript: I DID NOT read this blog before making my big (dumb) decision. It just so happened this guy wrote this blog entry and it's on the Spartan site tonight. I like to think it's God's Way of Telling Me I'm Right To Do This. 

http://blog.spartanrace.com/note-to-self-remember-to-train/ 
                                                          

Going under barbed wire, through mud.

Running through fire. Yes - FIRE.