Takoma Park 5K

I'm just back from the Takoma Park 5K, an event for which I was sadly undertrained.  However, I did my best and that satisfies me fine. I don't have the official results yet, but I had three different devices tracking me (!) and the unofficial results are a pace of about 13:20 and a time of about 41 minutes.

EDIT: OFFICIAL RESULTS

545 278/327  190/219    480 Nan Shellabarger      F 59 Silver Spring MD    00:41:06 13:14 00:41:35 13:23   

It means I was 278 out of 327 (190 out of 219 women) and my time was 41:06 for a pace of 13:14.

I ran the first mile, and from then on, alternated jogging and walking. My heart rate had gotten quite high - over 150 - and I really couldn't maintain that for long. It seems that for this morning, at least, that heart rate was the edge of nausea - my redline.  So I walked until the heart rate dropped and then I'd jog till it got back up and stayed there for a bit.  The first time, I was looking for the recovery rate of 120 but then I thought "wait a minute, this is a race, just go as fast as you can" so I'd recover to under 140 and then push into a jog again.  Just before the end, my left calf started to hurt but I barely noticed it. It's quite sore now, however.

I had half a berry-and-nut smoothie (no dairy) beforehand and a small cup of coffee (I'm just re-caffeinating from the detox). Plenty of water.  No water along the way (didn't think it would help the nausea).

Before the race

PsychoKiller blaring on the sound system. I'm adding to my playlist!

Milling about in the starting pen

We're off!  (Into the sun)

Fast runners heading back the other way

I'm now back with the children and strollers and walkers

The finish!!!

Homage to BitchCakes. Plus I'm strangely reluctant to remove the number.

Detoxification: 2

How did I conceive of this plan, ill-timed as it was?  It started with this article in the New York Times. It described how Bill Clinton was not a vegan any more but was healthier and trimmer than ever. So he and Hilary consult this guy, Mark Hyman, on not only their own health, but on health policy issues. He is all about "functional medicine", treating a whole person, not the disease. And he knows that rampant sugar is the evil that makes so many of us fat, and he's got a bunch of books on managing your blood sugar and weight loss.  Oddly enough, I read this article while taking a break from re-reading Diet 101: The Truth about Low-Carb Diets.  I had been looking for some way to control my evening overeating, and I was considering getting a blood glucose meter to check my blood sugar regularly as recommended in Diet 101.

So how legit can you get? Bill and Hilary's doctor, recommending we should eat the way I've been trying to eat since 1997!

I was put off by his web site. He's all about selling on the web. There are many products he sells, including packages of supplements, coaching, and seminars, and books. How is it that someone who claims to follow in the tracks of Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.") likes all these protein powders and supplements? If we're eating real, fresh, organic, fresh food, and cooking for ourselves at home to avoid hidden ingredients, why do we need all supplements, and hyper-processed protein powders?

But I digress. I was looking for motivation and possible solutions to my current bad feelings and behavior, and he had a basic message that I was ready to hear, because I already agree with its broad outlines. It was the details I wanted.

I downloaded The Blood Sugar Solution, and began reading. Frustration: too many pages about how sugar and insulin and fat work in your body. Yeah, yeah, I got all that. Atkins, Carbohydrate Addicts, yada yada yada. But what do you DO?  I'm sure its in there somewhere, but back on the website I read about the 10-day detox diet, so I went and got that book as well.  Again, pages of explanation, but finally, what to do and what to eat.

I am not really a slow and steady kind of person. I'm prone to full out enthusiasms between periods of remaining motionless and unmotivated. I can do ten days of almost anything, and I want the gratification.  I asked my girl, on a lark, if she would want to do it too, and was surprised but thrilled when she said "yes".  So I was off and running.

Detoxification: 1

I just finished ten days of Dr Mark Hyman's Blood Sugar Solution 10-day Detox Diet.  I couldn't post while I was doing it because I felt bad the whole time.  But I still have a lot to say about it.

Quick summary of what "it" is:  a very low carb, gluten free, dairy-free, caffeine and alcohol-free high fiber diet, with breathing, exercise, baths, journalling, and volumes of vitamin supplements, designed to drive out "toxins" from your body and create a lovely and serene good feeling body to build on for future good health.

Why did I do it?

• Because I felt bad.  Not all the time, but much of the time. Body aches, sore knees and back, headaches.
• 
  
• Because I was out of control on sugar. Most days started out fine. I would have my cheese and/or meat for breakfast, a vegetable salad with meat for lunch, and a reasonably healthy meat and vegetable focused dinner. Then I'd have just my one small treat. Over the course of the rest of the evening, I would be on a search-and-consume mission to find every bit of chocolate in the house (very few treats have no chocolate). 
• 
  
• Out of curiosity, so see if it made a difference. To see what I felt like as "me", not "me on sugar, gluten, dairy, and caffeine". 
• 
  
• Because my girl agreed to do it with me, and I am constantly worried about her eating and food habits.

So I have muddled results, and I need to think about it. Of course, I wish I had done more writing and tracking during the process (which is actually meant to be part of the process), but I routinely entered some data points into my multiplicity of tracking systems, so I'll have some real evidence to look at. I want to establish what I did and how I felt, and compare to before (and now) - because I have to keep reminding myself that the reason I did it was because I was feeling bad.

This was a really stupidly bad time to take this on, because there is a lot of work required to make food and do the other steps and my always demanding job grew more hectic with a new boss, the logistics of life became complicated because they are working on my road and sometimes I needed to park blocks away, and because I am going to run a 5K tomorrow and it made me feel so bad I didn't even keep up all my walking much less any running.

More later. I'm burning daylight.

Pink

I am not a pink girl. Not only am I not a girl, I was never a pink girl. I've always had a thing about it, according to my mother (though she is increasingly unreliable about these things).  I don't think in my early childhood there was quite the layering on of all the pink on little girls that exists now. It's big, and its every where, and it makes me very annoyed. Back in late 2008, when I first had to go shopping to get clothes for my then 10-year-old girl, I went to the Sears girl's shop and was almost physically ill from the pink environment, which I fled. Luckily for me, my girl was more of a purple fan and we could happily agree on many things.  (I happened on this blog post from the Geek Moms, of whom I am a great fan - so I'm not the only one with this problem!)

My aversion to pink came to the fore when I walked in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. Hard to get away from pink when dealing with that. Being fundamentally a pragmatist, I embraced it (for the occasion at least), bought a hat, and we formed the Aviation Divas fundraising team.



But now I'm buying fitness clothes to keep myself motivated to get out there and move. Since all the winter stuff is on clearance, I have to take what I can get. I really wanted a light vest, and had just gotten a long-sleeved top, in a shade I thought of as purple and which could be called magenta (which is a shade of purple, right?)  So this is what I ended up wearing on Sunday.

(Still working on my selfie technique.)

February Adventure: Hiking

This was an extraordinarily terrific weekend. It was unseasonably warm in this winter of unseasonable cold, and wonder of wonders, the best weather fell on the weekend!  I had not done much planning for my February Adventure until Thursday night, when I realized it would be silly to not take advantage of the weekend. So I thought on it and thought on it. My dog Rocky is only just off exercise restrictions, and he has been really enjoying the short walks around the neighborhood.  On the other hand, I've been running on the treadmill, and perhaps it was time to try running outdoors again, in some new place? Or maybe, I should get the bike out of the shed and take it somewhere new?

The dog won out, so I dug up a couple of old books I have on walks and hiking in the DC area. There are many cool places to go around here, but one of my self-imposed requirements for it to be an Adventure is it has to be novel in some way, something I haven't done before (not just something I haven't done in a long time). Greenbelt National Park won out.

 This is a tiny park by National Park standards - more like a county park. It was farmland until the 1930s or so, and so its second growth forest. I've been hearing about this park since I arrived in the area, most notably from Mark Garland, a naturalist I know who grew up around here.  (I actually heard him extol the virtues of camping in this pocket park on local NPR station where he often does bits on the local environment.)

The park is wedged in between the Capital Beltway and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and as I walked the Perimeter hiking trail, I heard the noise of the highway almost constantly. There were a few quiet places, and I was pleased to notice how quiet it was when I was near the campgrounds.  Maybe Rocky will get to spend the night in a tent here some day.

 We walked around the perimeter trail, about six miles. In places, it was very muddy, and there was one spot where I had no choice but to walk through an inch or two of running water. I was pleased to discover my hiking boots seemed quite waterproof.  There were areas of green - laurel and azalea and holly. I imagine there is a very beautiful time in the spring - April? I think Mark Garland may have written about it in one of his books - I'll check.

 This was the farthest I've ever been with Rocky, and the first time in the woods. He's just finished an exercise restriction for medical reasons, and has been doing well on walks around the neighborhood.  Expeditions like this are a reason I wanted a dog like Rocky, and we had a good time. I kept a close eye on the set of his ears and the angle of his tail. He drooped a bit in the middle, and we took a break for almonds and kibble. He has mostly slept since we got back, unusually for my busy boy.

Let's hear it for more good weather and new Adventures!

Some Virtue, Some Results; Some Transgressions, Some Other Results

I'm filled with self-congratulatory virtue this morning about my activity levels. I don't need to go to work today, and yet I was at the gym for personal training at 6 this morning (surprising cold this morning). I stayed after to run on their treadmill, and then took the dog for a long-ish walk (more than the minimum) right afterwards.

Perhaps all of this activity was at least partly sparked by my incredibly high reading on the scale this morning. I know I've been eating poorly, but didn't think it was that poorly. My food tracking sparked by the last post just a week ago only lasted a couple of days, so I don't have the data to analyze, but I have a distinct memory of a chocolate ice cream sandwich in there somewhere, not to mention the wonderful fajitas last night out with the family.

I've had the vague theory that all I needed to do was keep the activity up, mind most of my eating, and treats would be ok. Maybe they would if treats were small and occasional, but not big, constant, and more than once a day.

So I think I really really need to track. It's a pain, but it really makes a difference. It seems to do a couple of things for my motivation.  Knowing I'm going to write it down causes me to change my behavior in advance. Having the proof in the data afterwards when I'm disappointed in the scale readings also is useful. It is really annoying, but I need to do it - if I care about my weight. And I do care about my weight.  So tracking is an action I need to motivate.  Yes, it's only a means to accomplish a different activity: eating better. But it seems to work, so motivating and rewarding tracking in and of itself - regardless of what I actually eat - is a meta-activity, or the high leverage point to accomplish what I really want: eating better and losing weight.

I sure wish there were even more seamless ways to track my eating. There is at least one app out there where you can take a photo of your food and it tries to estimate calories automatically. I don't know how well it works, but since I'm at least as focused on what I eat as how much, I don't think that would do it for me. I've found the single best food tracker to be My Fitness Pal. It has the normal annoying assumptions about what I'm supposed to eat which I reject.  But it has the most comprehensive database of food, the ability to snap barcodes from the iphone, and versions for iphone, ipad and computer with all the data living in the cloud. It also talks to many other apps, so it exchanges activity data with my magic BMF activity tracker (raising its estimate of how many calories I can eat) and my scale, and the apps for those devices also pull in the food data.  The one thing I don't like about the app (besides having to enter data at all which I can't find a way around) is the inability to export data for my own offline analysis.  In fact, because MFP talks to my BMF activity tracker, I export summary food info from BMF instead.  It's not very satisfactory, since it lacks a lot of detail but it's better than typing in data.

I've found one way to fuel my motivation for diet and exercise is to spend money. I make myself comply with something, and then if I do, I buy stuff. After running for three weeks, I bought three pieces of workout clothing.  I was absurdly pleased last night to lay out my clothes for 5:30 this morning including my new bright blue miracle fabric workout tee, and even more pleased at the gym this morning to realize the shade exactly matches my blue-and-green running shoes. (I always say, attention to detail is the keynote to fashion success.) Now, I have to find stuff I really want for it to be motivating. Sometimes I shop first (online) and save my shopping cart for later.  It also requires me to have discipline about not buying stuff just because I want it when I want it.

I have to do some work to find my quest object. I've also found that I need to not make the finish line too far away - a couple or three weeks.  So we'll see how it goes.

Back to Basics

The results of heading to the store without a clear plan.

Why is it every vow to "get back on track" in my eating leads to a $100 tab at the food store? I'm focused on eating the right things and not eating the wrong things. This means having the right things lying around easily accessible.

I'm not sure what will be happening with family dinners this week, so my shopping focused on breakfast and afternoon snacks.  I eat protein in the morning but am always looking for how to add vegetables or something interesting to the mix. I got lots of cheese, olives, and celery, which will work for breakfast or afternoons.  I got sausages for more breakfasts. I have a couple of lunches already in the fridge from leftovers from this weekend.

I got a box of shrimp, boiled and peeled. Cheaper than their shrimp rings. I'm thinking they didn't sell as much for the Superbowl as they thought they would.  Shrimp pretty much works for any meal.

I have eaten really badly for a while now, and yesterday felt physically bad from all the bad stuff I was eating. Today, I focused on virtuous chores and at noon realized I had neither eaten nor worked out. So a quick protein-and-vegetable lunch from the freezer and out the door to do other family things.  In the late afternoon, I realized I really really wanted to do my treadmill run to keep on track with the C-2-5K plan I'm following. It was all uphill, it seemed, I wasn't able to do the full routine called for, and I didn't feel very good while I was doing it, but I'm so glad I did anyway.

I'm going to lower the speed even more if necessary. At my gym I was reminded of the best test on intensity:  Can you sing a whole verse of "Old MacDonald had a farm" without gasping repeatedly for breath? Ideal is grabbing a deep breath between phrases; too hard is not getting through a phrase without gasping. I think I was too hard today, even though it seemed really slow.

Hopefully, if I keep plugging away, I'll get to a better level.
Excelsior!  Olives and fresh mozarella awaits me for breakfast!

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