June 2008 Archives

Western States is cancelled.

My heart and thoughts go out to those who trained for such a huge race. Not only is it 100 miles, it's THE 100-mile event for ultrarunners. There are a lot of questions left in the wake of the cancellation; it will be interesting to see what happens.

iRunFar has a post on making lemonade out of the news; I'm curious to see what people will have to say about what they'll do instead or how they'll use this.

On other news, I have not really been running; however, I've been going to the gym about 3 times a week and am working on strengthening my body. I've also managed to create a habit of eating 5 fruit/veggie servings a day! That's awesome. What's not so awesome is that I've also been eating some higher fat stuff in the last two weeks. So, next up: cutting the (bad) fats out.

I'm still planning on training for Pemberton 50k in February. I'm so slow - I feel like, what's the point of running short races? I'll just come in close to last, and I know I can run shorter distances. At least with longer distances, I feel like I've accomplished something. I may be slow, but I can go far! (Provided I take care of my body, which is what this summer is about.)

Ash has been on vacation with his dad. I can't wait till I get him on Saturday morning :)

inspiration

I took a vacation and - gasp! - didn't take my computer.

Yes, in response to the e-mails I received, I am alive and well :) My knee did not allow me to hike Humphreys, so my friend Mo and I decided to head back in the fall and give it a go.

So here's what I was doing:

Oh yeah, and a little bit of this:

I ran this morning. That's right, you read that correctly, no you don't need to get your vision checked.

I ran!

Okay, so it was more like jogging, and I walked part of it. But whatev. I went for a run.

And it felt great. The knee didn't hurt until I started thinking about the hike I'm s'posed to do with my peeps in two weeks: Mt Humphreys, the tallest summit in AZ. 12,633 ft. 8-9ish miles to the top, 3000+ feet of climbing. Then my knee slightly twinged. But really, I think that's just psychosomatic (sp?). I hope, anyways.

And then I mapped out my strength training and run schedule (complete with baby steps for speedwork!) for the summer and plugged it into my calendar and sychronized that to my smartphone. And when I got home after work, I did my knee strengthening exercises, just like my smartphone nagged me to do! I love it!

And today I moved to phase II of my diet plan, which I haven't blogged about yet. I decided a few weeks ago that I was ready to be serious about getting healthy. And instead of focusing on what I shouldn't or didn't want to eat, I decided to focus on what I wanted to eat. Positive reinforcement, right? (It goes hand-in-hand with a fascinating techinque for public participation - my field of work - that I got to learn a little about last week called Appreciative Inquiry. Basically, the idea is that when people find what works in human systems (societies, organizations, cultures, family units) and then focus on doing that, they have a much better success rate than those who focus on what doesn't work.) Which dovetails nicely with my (usual) state of Pollyanna Positivity (the last three weeks excluded).

Where was I? Oh - the diet plan. Focus on what I WANT to eat. Okay - that means veggies and fruits. That means a specific target for caloric intake at each meal (except for dinner). It takes time to build new habits, new grooves in the brain, so my first thing to remember is baby steps. And grace. No "thou shalts" here. Flexibility and positivity is the focus.

So the last few weeks I focused on eating 1 veggie per day. Do you know how hard that was?! Wow, I hadn't realized that I wasn't in the habit of eating even 1 veggie per day. I averaged 1/day for maybe 4 days a week. I want consistency - every day (the idea being that I get in the habit of reaching for fruit instead of pudding or cake for a snack). The other focus was on waiting when I got hungry. Waiting just 30 minutes from the first sort of "I'm hungry" thoughts. Because usually, I'm not actually hungry. I'm just stressed.

Last week, I realized I could get two servings of fruits/veggies in one (awesome tasting) cup of new V8 fusion pomegranite blueberry juice. So that quickly upped me to 3 servings/day, just like that! This week I decided I'm going to aim for four servings/day. I made it today already! I like this, it gives me a goal and I feel good when I reach it (because I keep reaching it) and I know I'm building new grooves and new habits and before long it'll be second nature. Yay!

I'm still working on the waiting to eat thing - it's hard - I'm very much an emotional eater. But I did decide I'm ready for the next baby step: portion control (yikes!!!). Paying attention to my portions is the first step, along with leaving one bite behind. (Just one bite. That's easy.)

I'm telling you, I'm really digging this focus on what I WANT thing. I'm using it with my son, even. Talking with him about what I want for our family, getting his ideas on what he wants, giving him expectations, discussing how we interact. (We'd been having difficulties.) This feels good. Yay for baby steps to progress! (And three cheers for endorphins!!!)