Fashionable Fitness

I think an extraordinary amount about what to wear while working out. It's part of what motivates me to get out there, along with all my gadgets. But at the same time, I'm all hyper about not owning too many clothes.  Back in late 2012, I re-did my closet and decided I could only own clothes that fit in my room - no spilling out over the whole house.  I'm at capacity again, and need to decide how to proceed.

When I look back at how I've spent money on clothes in the past year or so, it is almost entirely on workout / casual clothes.  There is some overlap between pure gym clothes and casual hang-out-and-do-chores clothes, especially in the tops. Plus, I generally sleep in sweats and a tee, so shopping at the casual / gym places works for me on many levels.

I've gotten by without buying any work clothes for a couple of reasons. One is that my weight has never been more stable in my adult life.  My weight continues to bounce within a ten-pound range, for what is coming up on four whole years now. And within the last 15 or so years, I've been around this weight range before. So I was able to harvest some good quality classic clothes from my big closet archeology - ten or more years old and they fit and weren't worn out - because I forgot about them when they no longer fit.  For the past summer, my go-to work outfits were dresses (or skirts and tees) and bare legs (we nominally have an all-summer casual dress code which allows a lot of wiggle room, but even in important meetings women have bare legs in DC in summer).

My weight in perspective: since 1988!

I have a closet full of tailored slacks, 15+ pairs, only one pair bought in the last year. They are navy, black, and grey, with one pair of brown.  I have about 10 silk (read dry clean only) knit tops, and an equal number of washable cotton ones, that need upgrading, but I'll probably do that on-line. This is more than I need to own in total, but I want to be ruthless about getting rid of the less-than-perfect ones.

I have bought several pairs of shoes, both casual and for work. I haven't worn heels since and never ever will again since I didn't wear them to meet the President (it was Clinton-that's how long it's been!)  I got a catalogue in the mail from an English company, Hotter, and found cool shoes that are wide enough for my bunions. I've added four pairs to my closet, and I'm out of room.  I'm getting rid of those I don't like, but again there are more that I like and that fit than I seem to wear in regular rotation. How many of those should I hang onto?

So the only "shopping" I do is for casual clothes.Shoes are clearly a fitness tool, and since I'm running and walking I think having a couple of pairs in rotation is good. My Very Hungry Labrador regularly prunes my sock collection, despite all my precautions, so I keep getting more of those.  But I can easily do laundry once a week, and so how many clothes do I need to own?  Not so many.  But I consider it money well spent if the buzz of excitement for dressing in new clothes is some of what pushes me to get moving. And I'm being ruthless about either returning clothes or donating them if they are not perfect for me.

Here are my go-to places for casual and work-out clothes - almost all the shopping I do is on-line, except where noted.

Athleta.  Hands down my favorite, but pricy. Serious workout clothes, and yoga clothes, and fashion.  I've bought dresses and sweaters from them as well as workout clothes. My biggest complaint is they don't have a lot of petites, which I need for full length bottoms - since I'm the ultimate pear shaped woman, needing Large on bottom but Medium on top.
City Sports. They are in my neighborhood, across the street from Whole Foods and almost next door to my new gym. I most often buy bottoms on-line (to find L Petite), but stop in for sales on tops, socks and shoes. This is where I got my running shorts from, in an on-line sale I got lucky.
Title Nine. Serious athletic clothes and fun dresses and tops. Love love love their catalogue, but disappointed that often when I go to order, they don't have my size.  They also have bra-whisperers, and an associated line of fashionable bras called Bounce. Since the pear-shaped thing means bras are not a big issue for me, I've always resented spending real money on them, but those of you more endowed might enjoy what they have.
Fabletics.  This is brand new to me.  I got a blind junk email from them, and whimiscally clicked through, and actually bought.  They are on-line only, and push to sign up to a SUBSCRIPTION FOR OUTFITS - very very nicely priced, but you have to actively opt out if you don't want to buy on a monthly basis. Knowing my history with these kinds of things, I'll have to close my account soon, but I bought their intro offer - complete 3-piece outfit for $29 - and am wearing it now. It fits well with Large and Medium bottom and top, respectively, for me. They seem to carry extensive sizing, and I liked the idea of a coordinated outfit. After one more outfit, though, I think I'll probably declare my workout clothes storage full and just stop.  I notice they fit well, and feel comfortable, but they are not as "technical" as the clothes from City Sports or Athleta or Title Nine.  I mean not necessarily miracle wicking fabrics or reflective.
REI. Long established camping equipment store, also has store brand and other brand outdoor and workout clothes. I love REI - I went there once for a spork for my boy's extensive camping trip the next day, and walked out with $250 total in purchases. Their store brand clothes is not always of the quality of other brands, but I shop the sales there and recently did well on yoga clothes seasonal closeout. I only do in person shopping there because I want to examine the quality. I often buy purses and back packs there.
LL Bean.  Of course. They always have petites and I buy most of my weekend long pants there. And fleece. I have a couple drawers full of LL Bean fleece.

Sustainable Training

For the third time this year, I didn't run in a 5K I had signed up for. This one was the best excuse yet - only a week since The Attack of the Killer Tree - but it's way too much a pattern. I wasn't supposed to run after the concussion, and I considered going and walking. But wouldn't you know it - it was a themed run - Flee the British - and the setup included Dolly Madison in costume leading off with the portrait of George Washington under her arm, and followed by British soldiers in costumes with muskets and bayonets. The last thing I was up for was being last in the pack - a very real possibility - and the onlookers all cheering on the redcoats behind me.

(Aside: I am bemused at how we are celebrating one of the most humiliating defeats in U.S. history - the capture by the enemy of our national capital in 1814 with all kinds of amusing "run away! run away!" festivals.)

I bailed on one race earlier because I signed up in expectation of friends also going and they didn't. I bailed on another because it was the day before a 25-hour plane trip and I was afraid I would push myself in the run and hurt the knees, which would then freeze up during the interminable time sitting still in steerage.

So I actually have run in two 5Ks this year - one in May and one in July. My time in July was better than the first one - hooray.  I'm signed up for two more in October - the Dead Man's run in the Historic Congressional Cemetery at the beginning of the month and a huge running festival in Baltimore in the middle of the month, with my friend I was with for the Annapolis race.

When I split my head open, I was actually on my way back from a run with the dog. I had been pretty good at doing run/walks with the dog 2-3 times a week, and longer walks on other days. But it was very unstructured with no accountability, and no sense that I was getting better or progressing in any way.  So after bailing on fleeing the British, I decided to get a more structured, and hopefully sustainable, training plan. Using my Runkeeper app on the iphone, I picked a plan labelled "Beginner's 5K - to finish" and jumped into the third week of the workouts. This was so I would be done with the plan by the time of the next race on October 4. It certainly builds slowly, and actually, even at week 3, took me back a couple of notches from what I had been doing on my own. It involves just three runs a week, with the midweek runs as timed intervals and the weekend runs longer distance-based intervals.  From the beginning, I've been tacking on a little bit extra - one or two extra intervals, but at the timing they suggest.

I have got the dog more in tune with running.  Since there is nothing my Very Hungry Labrador likes more than food, I'm using food to encourage him to keep up and match my pace.  I think perhaps switching back to the relatively short intervals is also good for him. So I no longer feel like I'm engaged in dog abuse.

I also did some runs in running shorts. I bought the longest ones I could find, but they are much shorter than I would normally allow myself to be seen in. I'm more comfortable with the tight but longer running pants. The shorts are good when it's steamy, though I feel like I have to change right afterwards. But paying attention to wearing clothes I like is part of my motivation.

Now my problem is the shortening of days.  It is pitch dark when I roll out of bed. Some days it's hot and steamy, other days its frosty, but it is always dark.  This past week, I changed up my routine. I had been going first down to the stream valley park by my house and doing a mile or so up or down stream, then returning through the neighborhood. This week first I went through the neighborhood, and came back as sunrise was approaching and the trail by the stream was less dark.  I think I may need to switch in a week or so to treadmill running inside, which does nothing for the dog who will still need to be walked.  Or else find a way to switch my schedule to either go to work later, or to run in the evening (I can't imagine running at lunch - no time to change, run, shower, and change back - that would be 90 minutes at least, lunch is more often around 30-45 minutes for me.)  My neighborhood is built on a steep hillside with most of the roads going up and down hill - not good running turf though great walking exercise - and so running out of my neighborhood to somewhere else... not a lot of good choices there either. I'll figure it out, though, and having the specific structure of specific workouts to do on specific days for my chosen training plan is good discipline.

So I'm hanging in there, and looking forward to running for the next twenty years at least. Sustainably. I can't capture here today all the other things I've thought of for blog posts - eating, wardrobe management, etc., but nothing else earthshattering is going on. School has begun, and my girl is settling in. We're establishing new routines, and it is working out fine.  Big boy has his own apartment finally, and middle boy is happy in in his school. Mother is hanging in there.

So that's it for today - the basement and the dump beckon me!

Sustainability

I've been thinking a lot recently about sustainability.  It's just another word for maintenance, but it's maintenance made easier, at least the way I think about it.

The red line is my weighted average and the light grey line
is the actual scale reading from every day.

I have maintained my weight for over four years now, most of the time within a four pound band. I found this cool website that takes in my daily readings on the wifi scale and calculates a fancy weighted average, to show what it figures is my "true" weight, the weight underlying all the daily bouncing around from water and other minor changes. When you look at the trend over the last year, its calculation of my true weight shows even less variation - and in the last three months, varying less than a pound. And this is weighing myself every single day!

So clearly, like it or not, I'm in maintenance.

Having realized that, now I'm starting the push the boundaries of what is maintenance. I think I've written before that not actively trying to lose weight translates into gaining weight. What that really means is a lack of focus, a lack of effort, allows me to slip back into bad habits that cause the weight to pile on. The reason I stop trying to lose weight is its just so friggin hard. It's too much work. What my new friend Darya at Summer Tomato would tell me is I have to learn good habits, so when I relax the weight doesn't creep back. Or at least doesn't come piling back on quickly. I think I like to eat ice cream enough that eternal vigilance is required, but it would be nice to relax into good habits.

My cooking and eating totally awesome vegetables lasted about two weeks. Then I needed my life back to do other things, like go hiking with the dog, empty things out of my basement, see friends, attend parties, and go sailing.  I tried to find convenience foods that mimicked the food I would make at home, but it's not at all the same.  I didn't carry my lunch to work, and butter chicken at the food trucks is not, in my current parlance, a sustainable lunch. I have had time to walk, and to walk far enough to get good salads, and that is helpful. I have consciously kept my caffeine to two cups (mugs) of coffee each morning, usually my own, and I have added an afternoon habit of walking across the street to Starbucks for unsweetened iced green tea. I think the walk is as reviving as the tea, and I'm in a position where the $2.70 for something I could make myself for pennies is sustainable, though the grinch in me begrudges the money.

I spent almost the entire weekend making family dinner for tonight, Sunday night.  I had a full table - seven people - and my girl helped me pull it off successfully. We cooked phenomenal amounts of food, more than I served, and there is a good chance I'll be able to make it last all week, for lunches and dinners. I did get the kitchen cleaned up tonight, but parsing out what needs to be frozen, what can be divided up into lunch portions, will have to wait until tomorrow.

But this was a weekend more or less dedicated to celebrating summer food. I can't do this every weekend. I can't in a food weekend make enough food for a month. So how can I create a sustainable way of eating fresh awesome food much more often?  Ideas, anyone?

Walking

I'm doing a large amount of walking, not do much on the running. This is partly for the dog, who is not a runner. But I just bought some new running shoes, and I'm going to train for the next 5k on August 24. 

Here us what I wore for today's Rock Creek Park walk / hike. I really like this skirt. 

Yum!

I'm really trying to embrace the "Life should be awesome" philosophy of The Foodist and only eat incredibly wonderful food, the best of which only comes from cooking at home with incredibly wonderful ingredients.  I'm really really trying, but it's really really hard.  So far, I seem to have convinced myself really wonderful food is totally worth it, and that is helping me pass up much less-than-wonderful food.  But getting fresh wonderful ingredients and finding time to cook from them is hard. But very rewarding, I have to say.  And I couldn't have picked a better time of year to try this.  I am making medium sized batches of everything, because prepared vegetables and meat stay awesomely good longer than their untreated forms.

I had a farm-delivery perfectly ripe small cantalope for breakfast, with a "parmesan cracker" I made last night after dinner. For lunch, I had the last of last week's airy cabbage cole slaw (which was still good, though losing its luster) and a left over magnificent crab cake from Sunday's epic three hour lunch out.  For dinner, I was on my own but knew I had a house full of vegetables that really needed attending to.

I made this tonight! Mine looked almost as good and was YUM!

Imagine my surprise to sit down to read the NY Times tonight after work to find a recipe for corn, squash, and tomatoes. OK, maybe not so surprising given the season. But, I was planning to cook my corn, squash and tomatoes I just happened to have sitting around. And this was Thai influenced, not yet another olive oil and basil thing. Cooked in coconut oil, with cilantro and (yes) basil, and garlic and ginger.  And I had every single ingredient (except vidalia rather than red onions).  So of course I had to make it.

I sat down to eat an hour and fifteen minutes after I started cooking. But, I also made chicken (with bottled Thai green curry sauce) and roasted a couple of eggplants that also needed cooking, which I plan to use a different night. My word, the eggplant is good - I ate a couple of pieces after my dinner, standing up in the kitchen, and had to consciously stop myself from making a whole second dinner!

Dinner was - very good. The chicken was what I expected - it is organic and from Whole Foods - and the sauce was good and meshed well with the vegetables. I'm really focusing on the vegetables, trying to put the time and effort into them, and making them the centerpiece of my plate.  Very good, even though the corn and squash were past their prime, still very summery.

Now I have leftovers for several more days of lunches and solitary dinners, while my girl is off visiting family in Ohio. No more 75 minute meals. 

So I'm sitting here all virtuous about all this lovely deliciousness I've created, when there comes a knock at the door. It's the UPS guy, who dropped off a small box I wasn't expecting. I finally figured out it was a sweet food gift from the company that replaced my roof at great expense a couple of months ago. "Oh no" I'm thinking, "here I've just stuffed myself on vegetables and someone walks right up and hands me dessert!!!"  But the good news is it's very resistable, even though good. It is a tin of pretzels enrobed in some airy sugary white confection - nary a scrap of chocolate to be seen, thank goodness. I had a couple (just to be polite to the imaginary person from the roofing company who ordered them, you understand). They are tasty - but they also pretty much embody everything I'm trying to avoid - white flour and sugar and not much else!  Off to work they go tomorrow.

But still, today was totally YUM!  And I think I'm well poised to make tomorrow similar, but with a lot less work.

Annapolis 5K

Yesterday was a women's only 5K sponsored by a running club in Annapolis. (There was a run for men afterwards.) Adrian, a friend of mine from my sailing club, had signed up for it and I joined in. It was very different from the TKPK5K - hot, humid, smaller, no headphones allowed.  Adrian is pretty much my only running friend at this point. She is a couple of years older than me, mostly retired, and lives a nomadic and very active and outdoor life, splitting her time between the sailboat and the camper trailer.

Bottom line: I did better than in the Takoma Park - I read the print out of race results, not available yet on-line, but I finished in 40:09 from the chip timer. (TKPK5K was 41:06.) Obviously I need to set a new goal of under 40 minutes from here on out.

I drank a lot of water in advance, and munched a bit of cheese on the drive over. Plus a couple of cups of coffee - so nice not to be seriously dependent on coffee, but it really helps.  Despite the brutally humid conditions, I decided not to carry water on the run - there were sure to be a couple of water stations if I needed it. In general, I'm inclined to follow a rule of anything less than an hour doesn't require water during it, and certainly not sugary fuel to keep going.

I wasn't sure what to wear, but ended up with some compression pants and a very loud wicking top. I got some new running shorts, but hadn't worn them in any workouts and was concerned they might have unexpected awkwardness like bunching up. Didn't seem the time to experiment.

Pre-race homage to Bitchcakes. I did put on shoes, of course. 

Pre-race jitters.

This women's only race was different from others I've been in. There were many more women our age, and as I jogged along, there were lots of women going more-or-less my speed.

I jogged most of the first mile, and from there on walked up hills and jogged most of the rest of the time. I kept the heart rate up and only had one break where it went down.

Many small hills - why did there seem more ups than downs even though we ended back and the starting point?

 We hung around for the awards, including the age-group awards. The top 3 in each age group - including 70-79 - beat my time. Only the sole 80+ runner had a time slightly worse than mine!  What a motivation to keep doing this!

BTW, my running friend just got Younger Next Year from the library - I told her about our friend Chris and that she should really love this book!

Post-race happiness. Note red face.

What's Working and What's Not

I'm cooking with awesome fresh ingredients like a fiend. This is working well. I'm focused on using the food I bought, and it is truly more delicious than just getting takeout again. I made my cole slaw - with a great vinaigrette, good olive oil, white wine vinegar, and cilantro from my garden. Who knew cabbage could be light and airy and full of summer?  I made a braised chicken dish with my Amish chicken, following a recipe from Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food.  I served it with mixed beans soaked and cooked from dry - instead of grains, I am going to try to carb up a bit from where I was, but by using beans as my filler.  And tonight my girl and I had fun creating a zucchini lasagna, not from a recipe, but making it up together as we went along. The squash was sliced length-wise and used instead of pasta noodles. It was soupy, but delicious, with four different cheeses (and canned spaghetti sauce). Making dinner as joint entertainment is not what we usually do, and I'm not sure what the magic formula was that made it work tonight, but how fun! Now I've got delicious leftovers for delicious lunches, and maybe even another dinner, before I have to shop and cook again.

I'm also really enjoying just relaxing about my eating habits and my weight. I'm darn stable in my weight, and can experiment a bit and enjoy myself doing it. I've found a "paleo" granola - more nuts and seeds than grain - and have enjoyed it with blueberries and almond milk in the morning. This is closer to what normal people eat. I'm liking the idea of less meat, without resorting to grains, and I'm enjoying the quest for what works for me.

What's not working?  Breaking bad habits. It seems what I really want in the evening is excellent chocolate, and standing up in the kitchen to get it is fine. Tea doesn't do it. Cosily tucking myself into bed with tea and my book doesn't do it. Sigh. I was looking for an intelligent way out of my terrible habit. I can add over 500 calories to my day's intake in 15 minutes at the end of the day. Sigh.

What else isn't working? Running with my dog. The Very Hungry Labrador does not like the heat, not one bit. He's not wild for trotting fast while I huff and puff at a jog, either. Especially because he has had heart problems (worms in his heart) I don't want to truly strain him. We can walk forever, though if it's hot he starts to droop (and he always droops when I turn around, as if to say "let's keep going!").  But after a mile of my jogging, he slows his trot to the point where I'm dragging him.  So I have to figure out how to do some training for running, which I really like, but without him. Seems such a waste to be outside without him.  This weekend, when it wasn't hot, we walked over 4 miles each day, and he liked that fine, so that can be my every-other-day from running.

I'm also thinking it's time to find a new gym and get more social with my strength training workouts. There are more than a couple gyms in town, I'll need to check them out and look for sales. I'll check out the Y, but it is just that little bit further away to make it a barrier at 5:30 in the morning.

Some pluses and some minuses. Excelsior.