May 27, 2000
Another yuck
workout. I had a 1.5 hour scheduled but I hung on only for halfway -- 45 minutes.
Good clip though, so I am happy about that. My best time was one 11 min mile on
the cross trainer. What I am not happy about is that the gym was as baking as
outside. The AC is weak and the a-holes guys from the downstairs free weight area
keeping unplugging the ceiling fans whenever they come up to do cardio and then
don't plug it back. Hello? heat RISES? People overheat?! We are shorter than you
hulking men, we can't jump and plug it BACK even though you guys can jump and
yank it OUT! When you ask the gym peopel to fix it they look annoyed because then
they have to get a ladder. Well, make it so nobody can undo the fans! :P These
are the days when I wished I was in an all female gym rather than Bally's. Some
of the guys are nice, it's this one brat pack I shoot ball shrivelling laser looks.
Grr. I drank a lot of water and right now I am typing with an ice pack in
a sock on my head. Today the heat index is 100 deg F and it's rumored that we
are going to have another huge problem with fires this summer. This pisses me
off. My environment is going to pot! What am I going to do about training in this
heat?! Walk in the middle of the night? Why isn't my gym 24 hrs?! Paul and
I are going biking tonight to destress. Hopefully it will be significantly cooler.
Right now I am going to lay naked on the cold terrazzo floor and think about lemonade,
glaciers, snow, Xmas, sorbet, San Francisco, being bald, skinny dipping...
posted by Astrophe 7:13 PM
May
26, 2000
Very odd.. last night was an incomplete training
walk for me too. I got one lap down and got really lightheaded. I think it may
have been due to lack of food or air, but I've made some improvements and think
that tonight will be much better. I am worried about a couple of things:
1. the incomplete training walk last night now means that I am doing 3 hour+ walks
in three days.. culminating with my first 5k on Sunday. Is that going to adversely
affect my performance on Sunday?
2. it's a long weekend and blogging from
home is inconsistent at best. How am I going to update? We'll see how it goes..
posted by Adrith Bicchieri 2:55 PM
May 25, 2000
Afternoon post brings me the NF long-sleeve
training T-shirt for meeting my first $300 benchmark in fundraising. Ok, it's
cute. I'm glad I'm doing ok on fundraising. It's encouraging and that's wonderful.
Yet I am laughing like a loon because, dear friends, with the heat index at
a baking 97 deg F, and it looking to creep higher in the days to come, the LAST
thing I want on this planet is a long-sleeved shirt! What I do want is more water,
more ice, more fans, more AC, to be naked, and shave myself bald-headed! While
I normally don't gripe too much about being overweight, dude, get this freaking
35 lbs of fat off my body NOW! It's only making me hotter! :P I put the shirt
up with the winter clothes. I'll be more appreciative of it come November or December.
Want to know what the next incentive prize for meeting my next benchmark is? The
NF sweatshirt! Haaahaaaa hoooheeee haaahooooheeee! Sweat! Sweatshirt!
Floridian July! Haaaahaaahooo heeeheee!(wild, insane, overheated maniacal laughter)
posted by Astrophe 3:29 PM
Ugh! I just got back to the house. I am drenched in sweat and I was only
out for 30 minutes! The heat is unbearable! I don't want to count that pathetic
endeavor as an hour's training walk, so tomorrow I am going to try it again. Right
now though, I need WATER. Ugh! I am parched! This is going to suck. I can't imagine
spending all summer going to gym for workouts, especially those several hour long
ones. At the same time I can't imagine being out there in the FL heat. Mall walking
isn't even an option. So gym it is. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh! I'm starting to get
nosebleeds too. From the dry air. Paul said he'd get a humidifier after work but
then was so tired he didn't. I can't imagine sleeping another night like this
but I guess we'll hFve to. Holly said she's been having a really dry nose too.
Why don't I live in San Fransisco? Of at least on the sea in FL where there is
chance of a breeze?
posted by Astrophe 8:44 PM
May 24, 2000
Being sick is really starting
to get frustrating. I have moments (or rather, short term episodes) of respiratory
clarity, alternated with much longer episodes of tissue-box-hugging. Grrr.
But I have high hopes for today's 30-minute walk -- I'm going to recalibrate the
pedometer sometime during the workday (depending on the schedule), and then as
soon as it lets up a little bit I'm going for yesterday's thirty minutes.
posted by Adrith Bicchieri 9:54 AM
Guess what? It's not raining... If only it will hold off
for another two hours, I'll get the walk in today! Whoohoo!!
posted
by Adrith Bicchieri 3:19 PM
training walk number 18
Guest Walking Buddy: none
Locale: the Kitty
Tour
Minutes: 29
Mileage: 1.5
Total mileage: 33.2 Three laps of
the Kitty Tour.
9:39.96
9:59.22
9:23.73
ALL OF THEM SUB-10:00!!!
I'm making progress...
posted by Adrith Bicchieri 6:12 PM
May 23, 2000
Garsh, I'm expecting a
pretty long entry here. So thanks in advance to everyone who can hang on through
it with me... Synopsis: I got sick. I've been out of commission for two days
(except for a brief walk on Sunday to test out my new NB 653's and pedometer).
Exposition: Friday was a complete bust for making up Thursday's missed 60-minute
walk. I got home from work, started in on all of these things, and never got to
the walk. Just another reminder that the training walks need to be my First Priority
after work and refueling. Saturday is when I started to feel pretty ill. I
did go out for the 1h15 training walk, with split times of 10:47, 10:26, 10:32,
10:49, 11:05, 10:35, and 10:17. I found it very interesting that my last split
was the fastest of the walk, considering that I was starting to feel pretty ill
at that point. (Maybe it was the fact that I knew at the end of the lap I could
go into my apartment and sit down for a few minutes!) This walk was awesome, even
though I was feeling bad -- the group of kids that had been outside playing stopped
me on that last lap and asked how many times I'd gone around and what I was doing
-- and was really impressed that I was training for a marathon, and could make
myself go around the complex seven times to get walking in. They gave me a "good
job!" which was so heartening to hear from these teenage kids. *big smile* And
then one of my neighbors who had been working outside with her kitty and her perennials
asked me pretty much the same thing, and wished me luck. I was on a buzz by the
time I was done that last lap -- which might also account for the low split time.
That night, I sleep on the futon in front of a fan, trying to get enough air.
I don't get a whole lot of sleep, and distinctly remember two episodes in which
I am rocking back and forth, mumbling "Please God, let me breathe.." All of the
crap that has settled in my lungs is keeping me from taking a full breath.
Sunday was not so great. I went out to dinner with Dad and his lady friend Joyce,
and they took me out to Olympia Sports and bought me a pair of New Balance 653s
and a pedometer to help me with my training. I was so excited that I got home,
changed, calibrated my pedometer (so I thought) and got my new sneaks on. Silly
me, I tied my new sneakers just like I would have tied my old ones .. not stopping
to think that the material in my old sneaks had compressed, allowing me to tie
them tighter. About halfway around the loop, my feet started to hurt. Also about
halfway around the loop, I noticed that it was starting to hurt to breathe.
I get home, and check the pedometer. 0.337 miles in one loop. I distinctly
remember clocking that loop at 0.5 miles with the car.. I determine that I must
have calibrated the pedometer incorrectly, and vow to recalibrate it on Monday.
I go into the house, and collapse on the couch with my cats and my water and a
book, and there I stay for the remainder of the day. Monday was just as bad.
I go in to work because there's no office coverage in the morning; K is out of
town. When D comes in, I go home. I lie in bed with the same accoutrements as
the day previous, and my life is improved distinctly by the addition of allergy
medication. I get out of bed to eat dinner and play Tekken 3, and that's about
it. So here we are on Tuesday; I'm taking the drugs regularly, and feeling
much better than the two days previously; I'm excited about the thirty-minute
walk tonight, because I feel that that's manageable in my current condition. I'm
distinctly hoping for some healing between now and Thursday, though, when I'm
scheduled to do my next 60-min walk. I'm thinking that I will just write last
Thursday's training walk off; with my being sick I don't know when I'd get to
making it up.
posted by Adrith Bicchieri 9:44 AM
Training Walk 17 - Focus: Go
long for 20 minutes
- Duration: 20 minutes
- Where: Gym, Cross Trainer
- Miles:
1.8
- Ave. Speed: 11.1 minutes per mile (5.4 MPH)
Training
Walk 18 - Focus: Speed Work for 30 minutes
- Duration 30 minutes
- Where:
Gym, Treadmill
- Miles: 1.5
- Ave. Speed: 20 minute miles (3.0 MPH)
Dropped
Paul at work and went to my old gym (with the better equipment) and caught up
on my cardio. I did the first rather fast and without problems or pain on the
cross trainer. Then I did the second on the nice treadmills and About 15 minutes
into it I got the calf pain in my right leg. Not as bad as before, and no ankle
pain. So I think I've gotten the ankle thing covered again and the calf cramping
at this point is just muscles learning to deal with all this walking I do now.
I started at 3.5 - 3.7 MPH, but then once I cramped up I had to drop down to 2.5
to recover and then eventually I got back to 3.0 but it was killing me. At 28
minutes, it went away but then my workout time was over and I had to go see Karen. NOTE
TO SELF: Before doing long walks or any races I MUST go walking for 20-30 minutes
before hand to work out the cramping. I MUST stop slacking on stretching! It's
screwing me up! Gained some weight on 2000-2200 cals, so Karen dropped me
back down to 1800-2000, but is keeping me the same with protein, so now I not
only need to work on high protein vegan food sources yet keep carbs lower since
I already do low-fat. But with less calories I have less play so I REALLY need
to think about what I am eating. I have less of a margin now to get everything
squished in. Blah. I could get what she was telling me, but she couldn't
give me many practical terms. She suggested drinking hot drinks to help curb appetite,
trying to work in more satiating foods, more bulk. I'll have to go poke on the
veggie boards for practicalities. By "practical" I mean recipes, food brands,
etc. It's great to tell me to try to work in more variety, but in real life I
have a problem with that because I'm one person, and if I buy TOO much variety
in goods they go bad before I can eat them! We are a couple, it takes us days
to get through a thing of soup or stew or whatever. I can buy low sizes of ingredients
to a point, but if I go lower and use half a can of X, in the recipe what do I
do with the rest?! Asked her to do my body fat percentage: 36% I'm
not pleased, but at least I have a benchmark for that now. I zipped to
Whole Foods and picked up a mess of soy-based or gluten-based analogs for deli
cuts, sausages, meats, etc. I figured I need to be hitting 20 g protein at each
meal to even come close to what I need to be at. Anyone interested, Smart Deli
brand "cold cuts" has the most protein per serving size. More than Tofurkey,
WhiteWave, Yves, etc. That's the kind of thing I need to hear. PRACTICAL! I have
to see if there is a
newer edition of Pennington's book to include new brands of alternative foods.
Right now I have the 15th edition, it's getting dated. Amazon has the 17th, but
that runs til 1997. I wonder if there is a 2000 edition? Then I got Paul
at work so he could drop me off at home so he could have the car the rest of the
day. I told Paul I'm buying a freezer next weekend or the weekend after
to put in the garage. I can't hack this food thing on just our regular icebox/fridge.
There is not enough room to freeze and I can't work more variety without
getting the food storage problem solved otherwise all this grocery money is going
to pot because the food is going bad. On top of that, I predict our grocery budget
is going to go up for a while before we figure out what are new staples will be,
and once I know that I want to bring the cost back down and buy in bulk. Crazy
morning.
posted by Astrophe 2:52 PM
Afternoon post is in bringing me good stuff: my missing movie
And Then There Were None, an updated NF budget sheet (ha! I KNEW my friends
had sent in their stuff!), Vegetarian Times magazine, and best of all a surprise
from Adrith. I was THIS close to sending her a tape -- talk about ESP. So now
I have new gym music for my next workout. Thanks, buddy! :)
posted
by Astrophe 4:13 PM
May 22, 2000
I fell asleep and missed my 20 min walk yesterday in the evening with Paul.
Argh! I need to get more sleep! This schedule is pooping me out! Something
I forgot -- yesterday at the gym I took the fit test on a recumbant bike at level
2. I scored a 37 -- "above average." This pleases me, but I want to test again
in a few weeks and see how I improve.
posted by Astrophe
3:32 PM
May 21, 2000
Training Walk 13 (?) - Focus: Go long for 60 minutes
-
Duration: 60 minutes
- Where: gym
I went to gym and made up
that one walk that I missed last Sunday. Later tonight when it cools down I'll
do the 20 min one for today. The sneaks are still doing fine, no major weirdness
other than my left foot fell asleep a bit. Gotta check on the laces -- might be
lacing my shoes too tight.
posted by Astrophe 1:10
PM
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