Tracking on a Wedding Weekend

I'm doing a couple of things to keep me tracking, though not necessarily on-track. First, I'm doing the occasional blog post here, though I haven't really made you any promises, have I? Second, I set up an account on Beeminder, and I set a goal there of tracking seven days a week. I'm doing the tracking through WW on-line cool tools, and it's so easy. I get a text once a day, and respond with a "1" if I tracked every bite, some kind of ration eg 1/3 if I only did some tracking, and silence if I didn't. Because of the way it works, pure arithmetic on a graph and a penalty if you fall below the trend line, I have incentive to track even partial days, and that is keeping me mindful.

Stress is out the top of the roof around here. Work is truly awful and will be for some time to come, with a major problem that is my responsibility. My mother can't remember anything for more than 2 seconds and is very anxious and scared about all that portends (as are we all). My brother-in-law is trying to run his business remotely and is on the phone constantly. The teenager with us sits in an iPhone cocoon, in a world of her own. The older boys have various issues to be dealt with from afar: how do you get cash across the country to the happy go lucky college kid without a bank? MoneyGram! My alarm at 6 am to send a text to the high school kid: Did you wake up to get to your rescheduled AP exam on time? Who exactly is giving you a ride to rural Virginia for the weekend?

And the wedding... Involving two blended families, with step-parents and in-laws and a tiny two bedroom house to be set in order for an unknown number of up to 100 guests, including the governor of South Carolina (and associated security), stress was very very high for my brother. Our job was just to figure out what could be done and do it. Thus the trip to Lowes in my wedding finery, to buy another couple hundred bottles of water for the 90+ degree day.

But everything was beautiful, especially the bride. Happiness welled up from everybody and it was glorious.

But what about me? I tracked to a new highest point total EVER the day before the wedding, and that got me out for a run the last two mornings, to earn back some activity points to try to cover the whole. It didn't, but it's got to help. so taking just a moment to track, so easy, is having an impact.

Math

It's no secret I love the numbers. I find them very motivating. I love beautiful graphs. I love how meaning and insights can be gained by rearranging numbers, sorting them, using them to draw pictures, teasing out meaning by emphasizing one part of the data with color, intensity, or size.

But sometimes its the most simple recording of numbers that is all that is needed.  Once I stopped trying to lose weight, the weight started going back on. I still weighed in every day, but somehow the numbers I saw there were disconnected from my behavior during the day.  But then I hit a truly alarming number - the highest in over a year.  So back to the most simple and easy tracking system I've found - Weight Watchers. The commitment I made to myself was only to track, to meticulously enter everything I eat.  I did not make a commitment to even stay within the allocated points, only to write it down.

Look at how this impacts my weight:

The lesson to be learned here is so obvious, it's smacking me in the face.  TRACK. Keep my behavior front and center all the time. Do not eat unconsciously.  Last night, with a stressful week behind me, I ate ice cream. But I tracked it - I even used the cool tool where I could scan the bar code on the package and load it into the WW tracker automatically. So easy, and it so makes a difference - because I will eat less today to keep the weekly numbers down where they need to be.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about how mathematical analysis can shed light on messy real life. And here is the last bit from the article:

"There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life."

A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity

Uncontrollable Outcomes and Immediate Gratification

I continue to lie on the couch while reading about motivation, self control, and activity. The latest batch of things I've been reading about have been on how to use social and immediate behavioral reinforcement to be more successful at long term goals. Apparently there is always something going on in us called "hyperbolic discounting". This is a very fancy math-based term for how we always prefer the immediate gratification versus the long term goal. An oft cited piece of research is ordering groceries on-line: when ordered for delivery that day, the order is loaded with cookies and snacks. When the same person orders for delivery next week, fruits and vegetables and healthy food dominates. This reflects our future good intentions. There is a constant dialog inside each of us between present me and future me, but present me controls all the actions we take.

This is tied to our difficulty in tying current actions to future outcomes. Today's doughnut will not necessarily affect tomorrow's weight exactly, and just this one has very little impact on our goal weight six months from now. Plus, there is ultimately a very uncertain relationship between eating, activity, and weight- we are not precisely controlled physics experiments. We are learning more and more about how so many more things impact how we take in and use energy and how it translates into fat, muscle and body weight. There is ultimately a long term and imprecise relationship between energy in, energy out, and weight.

But there are many things we can control much more precisely, things which logically will lead to the weight loss outcome. I'm trying to focus on those things I can control in my day-to-day life, and looking for those techniques which make the rewards and consequences of today's choices more immediate and stark.

The 5K run was definitely an epic win. It was a New Year's resolution, and seemed very far off when I signed up for it. If I hadn't been so public about doing it, I certainly would have trained less, especially once the first month or so of enthusiasm and rapid progress had worn off. I probably would have bailed entirely when I got frustrated. But fear of public humiliation is a powerful tool. Still, there were plenty of times when I elected to sit on the couch rather than get down to running. I had plenty of opportunities to make up the time later.

I love technology, and The Internet is filled with plenty of tracking, todo, and goal achievement websites. A recurring theme is to "gamify" the process- make it social, and make it fun, but adopting elements of successful computer games. There is plenty of advice about tying long term goals to short term actions by breaking down big tasks into little ones, and how to apply rewards and penalties. I've just stumbled across a website that has a slightly different take on this: Beeminder. Their plan is to set a long term quantified goal, and then (this is the different part) they plot a course to get there. You then report progress along the way (daily if appropriate), and if you fall off the path along the way-if you defer too much- you have failed and the penalty comes right then. There is clearly a band of variation along a strict path, and you get warning before you fail, but they have some good math behind their ranges and if you fall too far, they have a point where you simply can't get to the end in time.

Their business model is you pledge money for the goal, and you pay them if you fail. They do let you start for free, however, and so I'm playing around with this. Their number one use, of course, is weight loss, but I'm not setting a pounds goal. I'm focussing on things I can do today that I believe will eventually impact that. So, in a very meta use of the tools, I'm starting out to track in Beeminder [link when I'm at a real computer] how successful I am at tracking in WW. This is simply counting how often I track not whether I stay within points. This is very very easy and entirely within my control. But clearly I see a relationship between the tracking and what I eat.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Quick Check

I definitely want to keep running for a while. I managed to get myself down to the treadmill just now. I think my body doesn't want to do this more than two or three times a week. I've got another race on Sunday, and in the last one I pushed hard and it tuckered me out. So for the time being, I'm going to aim at two runs a week. It gives me plenty Of time to recover between.

I definitely am feeling the joy of having stretched my legs and my heart just now, though it was a brief time.

 

Epic Win!

Yay me!  I made it!  
326th out of 378!
326 211 Nan Shellabarger 57 F Silver Spring MD 38:53 38:30 12:24

How about that!  These are the official race results - my official time is 38:30, for an average pace of 12:24.

It was a crisp and cold morning - around 41 degrees when I left the house. I got up at 5 am, so that I'd have a chance to drink significant coffee before running. I got there really early, because I wasn't sure how it would go.  There were lots of people hanging around on the plaza, and I walked around anxiously, trying to keep warm.  

I huddled in my sweatshirt, but I knew I'd get hot as soon as I started. They had a "bag drop", however, so with about 15 minutes to go I shed the layer and wandered towards the starting line. 

There was a big crowd!  Nearly 400 people, I found out.  There were far too many people to all cross the starting line at the same time, but they have electronic timing with some kind of disposable transponder in the race number "bib". I didn't know much about protocol, but I figured out the fastest runners should start near the front - so the one to cross the finish line first would also end up being the ones with the fastest time. 

Loud music was playing, and they started the race exactly on time.

People jostled a bit in the first few yards, but we sorted ourselves out to different paces pretty quickly.  I never fell into pace to run alongside anyone, but I did keep overtaking the same people. I maintained a steady jog throughout, but there were a lot of people who ran past me, then walked for a while and I passed them, then they took up running again and left me behind.  The course was out-and-back, and I saw people coming back the other way before I got to the half way point.  The fastest time was about 17 minutes!

I had visions of emulating Sheryl Yvette who constantly snaps on the move, but I just took the one picture after we started.  I had my phone in my hand, using it as an ipod, but it was just too complicated to compose a shot while moving - especially not one of myself!  

The music definitely helped me keep going, especially on the brutal hill that made up the last 3/4 mile of the course.  The only time I fell into a walk was for thirty seconds or so on some of the steepest parts.  My heart rate stayed in the high 140's for most of the course, and only went up above 150 as I pushed to the end.

Here is more detail than anyone could want on my stats:  Earth Day 5K.

I really liked the adrenalin rush. I ran faster and harder than ever before. I was going faster than normal on the first part of the course (downhill) and knew I'd be slow on the up-hill no matter what, so I figured I should just get some distance behind me.  And then I did put on a pretty big push at the end, just because it seemed the thing to do. There were official cheerers, and guys handing out water bottles.

I came home afterwards and looked for more new races to sign up for!  I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been so public about signing up for this one I would have given up the whole running thing a while back.  Now I need more deadlines to keep going.  I am running another neighborhood 5K next week, and after that I'm not sure.  I'd like to keep going. There was a definite strut in my step afterwards, and I liked the feeling.

Running with Friends

My first ever 5K is tomorrow. I'm not at all ready. I've only run (without walking) the whole distance a couple of times. I had hoped to run tomorrow's course as a practise last weekend but when it was time, it was pouring rain, so I ran it on the treadmill instead, sans hills. I have never run in company before, and am not really sure what that part of the experience will be like.

Tomorrow's number looks like a lucky one!

Every bit of my running is consciously layered with my thoughts of my friends, however, so I'm never really running alone. I first got the notion to do this around Christmas time, but I was partially prompted by my friend KCF, who wrote of venturing onto the city streets with a trainer back when she first started blogging. Honestly, the notion had never occurred to me, at least not for years. And my iPod has some of the songs she recommended for the running playlist back then. My friend Liz wrote of her handy treadmill, and helped solidify my desire for one this year. I remain in awe of her pre-dawn swims, even in the dark and cold winters. My friend Z was the only fitness fanatic among my college friends - and besides the inspiration of her 22 year-old self dedicated to running and swimming, she gave me the tip to keep the treadmill at a slight incline always: "better on your knees".  And I have friends I've never met who run beside me as inspiration: Alice, a runner in high school, now with her boot camp, her bike rides, and now her training for a much longer run than me. And folks I admire and look to for inspiration: Jack Sh*t, Jenette Fulda, formerly known as the Pasta Queen, still running four years into an epic headache, and, chief among them, the empress of all  weight loss and fitness blogs: Sheryl Yvette. This is a woman who rides her bike to 5Ks, and who will be doing the NYC marathon soon.  "Run when you can, walk if you must, but never quit!".

I'm woefully undertrained for this event, but I know I can finish.  Frankly, I've been in such a funk for a few weeks that if I hadn't told y'all I was doing this I probably would have just quit.  But I'm going to do this, and I'll do another one next week (with less of a hill!) and I'm going to look for a run in the fall, to try to keep myself honest all summer.  I have some private goals for how I'd like to finish for this, but last year's last finisher took 64 minutes, and I know I can walk the whole thing faster than that! So my only public goal is not to be last.  Let's hope the slowpokes show up again this year.

Heartbeats

I took a couple of runs outside yesterday and today, as well as on Monday. Wednesday I ran on the treadmill. I'm upping my endurance, but the first race is just three weeks off, and there is no way I'm as trained as I'd like to be for it.  But, there is nothing quite as motivating to me as a deadline, which is why I signed up in the first place. It's also why I actually got out there yesterday and today.  I know myself. These things can actually work.

What I learned from Monday's run and yesterday's was that it was really hard to push myself to get the heart rate up. Both runs peaked at a 144 beats per minute heart rate, and averaged much lower (there are walking intervals included there.) On Monday, breath was the limiting factor. Yesterday, besides gasping for breath, my legs felt like lead. After my little emergency room incident yesterday, plus the leaden legs, I was thinking about giving myself a pass today. When they took my blood pressure in the ER yesterday, it was higher than I've ever seen it. Plus, one thing all exercise books agree on:  the older you are, the longer it takes to recover. From anything.

But I headed up to the boat to do chores. Originally, I was thinking about kayaking, but 15+ knot winds and a very sore finger convinced me not to venture out. Instead, I went for a jog around the community. I wanted to stretch my legs, and right now walking seems a bit boring, too time consuming. Might as well kick it up into a run.

I had worn flexible pants and some casual trainers, thinking I might do a run, so I didn't even bother to change. That meant more bounce, but it was ok.  What really startled me was the heart rate.  It went immediately to 165 bpm. What's up with that?  I didn't feel bad, so I jogged on and looked at it again. Slightly higher. This seemed so odd to me, that while I thought maybe it was just reading wrong, I slowed to a walk while staring at the numbers on my wrist. They plummeted, in seconds falling below 120. OK then, I started up the jog again. In about the same number of seconds, it was up over 165!  I thought about it, I felt like I was working but I had plenty of breath, and so I just kept going.  Over the course of the next few minutes, I kept up a steady pace and the numbers on my wrist fell down to around 140 bpm - right around where they should be.

This loop is totally flat which is a real bonus compared to my neighborhood. I pretty much kept up a steady jog for the whole thing, a mile and a half. I was not totally blown by the end, either. So the training is making some progress.

Looking at the recorded stats uploaded from my fancy device, it says I hit a heart rate of 170 beats per minute. My theoretical maximum heart rate is 171. I've seen no indication anywhere else that the monitor is off base, so I'm not declaring "instrument error". I think the heart rate really did soar, and then settle down. I am curious why my body would go to such an extreme.  Hmm.....  It doesn't really matter, though, as long as it settled down and let me get it the run.