Archive for the 'Sports' Category

Well, that was a great way to spend a Sunday

Published at May 8, 2011 in Health and Sports. 1 Comment

I had my last long training run before the half marathon, 11 miles, on Saturday.  It went really well, though my mouth was terribly dry the whole time (probably due to taking a Claritin) and my legs started cramping at the end.

On Sunday, I woke up feeling fine.  I had some yogurt and raspberries with coffee for breakfast.  About an hour later, I started feeling crampy.  I thought maybe the yogurt had gone off, or I was cramping because my period was coming.  I went to bed, but things only got worse.  My kidneys started feeling sore.

Protip: if your kidneys start hurting, DRINK SOME DAMN WATER.  I didn’t, for quite some time, because unlike on Saturday, my mouth wasn’t dry.  I even thought it was appendicitis.

I got to the point where I thought it would be a good idea to get some medical attention, so I called my insurance company to see where I could go.  They gave me two urgent care centers, both of which were closed.  An ER visit would run me $100 for a copay and probably take all damn day.

I finally got some water, and that helped the cramping, so I drank more.  And I went out and got some Pedialyte.

So I guess I’d gotten way more dehydrated yesterday than I’d realized; I’d consumed two 20-oz. bottles of water and a 20-oz. Gatorade during the 2 hours and 23 minutes I ran, so I thought I was adequately  hydrated.  I probably didn’t realize how much water I was losing because in this climate, I don’t really sweat (or more likely, I still sweat buckets, but it just evaporates instead of hanging around soaking my clothes and running in my eyes).  Also, this hadn’t happened on any of my other runs.

I’m now mainlining water and Pedialyte, and I’m peeing again, so that’s good.  I will pay much closer attention to my hydration on race day AND the day after race day.  That was hellish.

All the world is in tune on a spring afternoon when we’re poisoning pigeons in the park!

Published at February 10, 2011 in Cali, Health and Sports. 1 Comment

Seriously, it’s spring here already.  Daffodils and everything, and it’s not even Valentine’s Day yet.

I am all discombobulated.

My training is going well (it certainly doesn’t hurt that I can run outside), though I have a small ache in my left foot near the base of the big toe.  I’m hoping it’s not the beginnings of a stress fracture.  Frankly, though, I can easily give up running if there are going to be stress fractures from doing it.  I can lift instead, since my shoulder is well-healed by now and I’ve got a gym available at work.

And! I have health insurance, so I don’t have to just guess whether it’s a fracture, I can actually find out and get treatment.  What a radical departure from the last 10 years.

It’s that time of year again

Published at January 2, 2011 in Domesticity, Health, Home improvement, Money, Library stuff, Sports, Clotheshorsery, Vanity, Frivolity, Food, work work work and Travel. 5 Comments

Time for resolutions I won’t keep!

I’m going to try something different this year and set some concrete goals that will be easier to reach than something vague like “Eat better.”  Many of these goals are craft-related, since I inherited my mother’s propensity for starting projects and not finishing them.

1. Speaking of Mom and projects she never finished, finish the sweater she started knitting for me, oh, ten years ago (she died just over eight years ago).  Finishing this sweater was the reason I took knitting lessons in the first place, but I kept putting the bag with the unfinished sweater aside, or in a closet.  Part of that was due to it being kind of painful to look at the thing after she died, part of it was that I gained a lot of weight after she died and wasn’t going to fit in the sweater even if I did finish it.  But now I can look at the thing without getting teary, and I’ve lost enough weight over the years that I can wear it.  Plus, it’s motherfucking cold in my apartment and I NEED a big fuzzy sweater.  I’ve now got the skills to do it, too.

2.  Quilting projects: I’m making a quilt for my sister, and I also want to finish a quilt that my great-grandmother pieced and never finished, both because it would be a great way to honor Babushka and also because of the aforementioned state of motherfucking cold.

3. Home decorating: I need to locate my stud finder, so I can hang the pictures I already have, and then I need to go out and get my other pictures framed and hung.  I have a desk to paint, chairs to paint and re-cover, and at some point I should get a few more chairs and a vase or two.  Plus mirrors.  I also need a filing cabinet, badly.  This may not be a year in which I do anything with my bedroom, but I’m okay with that for now since I don’t really have a vision for it like I do with the rest of the place.

4. Sports: I haven’t lifted weights since last July, when I fell on the sidewalk and injured my shoulder, and then re-injured it in September.  I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction, doing a combination of yoga, running, and eventually some scaled-back weightlifting.  Running has gone very well; unlike in years past, I seem to have resolved some of the issues with my knees so that I’m not wearing my patella in some strange place after only a few weeks of the C25K plan.  I’m on Week 7 now (actually for the second time — I’d reached it in September, right before my second fall, which also rolled my ankle) and so far, so good.  My knee’s a little tender, but the exercise is actually doing it good.  I’d like to do a half-marathon and marathon this year, using the Jeff Galloway run/walk program.  Brooklyn Half-Marathon is in May, with the particular day yet to be announced, and I’ve signed up for the lottery for the NYC Marathon.  I’m also planning on doing the Bay to Breakers 12K in San Francisco in May, which will probably be the week before the Brooklyn Half.  If I don’t get into the NYC Marathon, I’m going to try for Chicago or Marine Corps.  All of these will be not only goals in and of themselves, but also opportunities for travel to places where friends and/or family are.

5. Food: I’m back to being mostly vegan, which is pretty easy since it’s a little hard for me to eat out much here if I have to walk everywhere I go; I also work in a place where the lunch options are very very limited.  I’ve got access to a really great food co-op and live around the corner from a grocery store, so I can easily get good, fresh ingredients and do a lot of cooking.  I’ve got a freezer packed full of individually-portioned meals I can just grab and go, and I’m working hard on using my cookbooks for more than just the old standbys.  My big goal this year is to stop eating mindlessly and to pay attention to and enjoy what I eat.  I’ve also made a special effort to clean off the dining room table, now that I have a dining room, and to have dinner AT my table with napkins and placemat and candles.  Bonus: the dining room is the only room that really gets heat.

6. Appearance: I managed to weed a lot of crap out of my wardrobe just before I moved, so I do wear a lot of what I have.  But I’m not wearing all of it, so I need to figure out why not and make any necessary adjustments.  For example, if I’m not wearing something because it doesn’t fit, I can make it fit or get rid of it; if I’m not wearing something because I don’t really like it after all, it has to go.  It *is* pretty nice having a lot of closet space free.  I also want to figure out this year what my style is, so that I can have some kind of consistent look.

7. Financial: I’ve started using Mint to track my money, and my new job has TIAA-CREF, so I’ve gotten started on a retirement plan (matching doesn’t happen until I’ve been employed a year).  I’ve identified several areas where I spend disproportionate amounts of money, so I can work on cutting that back. I’m also saving for a car; I plan on spending less than $2500 for a mid-90s Honda or similar that will run for a while.   Just like with the eating out, living here has curtailed my spending because I’m not passing stores and places to spend money all the time.  I’m also not reading like I used to, so my book habit is not being fed. My book habit really is shameful; I’m a librarian, after all, and I should be borrowing books rather than buying them.  And I should be selling off what I have; I see Amazon keeps asking me if I’d like to sell some of the books I’ve bought through them, so I may just take them up on that.

8. Personal: I’m still not into the idea of dating, but I want to make some friends here outside of work.  The yoga studio I attend seems to be a good place to meet people, especially since you’re asked to introduce yourself to the people on adjoining mats before class starts.  I’m also a member of the food co-op, and that seems like a good way to meet people as well; working there is optional, so I plan on signing up soon.  There are also extension classes to take and the local running shop organizes group runs every week, which will help with my half/marathon training and get me out a bit.  I’m also planning on taking advantage of the first paid time off I’ve had in about 10 years to do some travel, including a horsepacking trip through backcountry out here as part of the extension classes.

9. Professional: I’ll start teaching legal skills in the fall, which will give me some great experience.  I’ve also committed to writing a couple of articles, I’m involved with some committees and caucuses in my professional association, and I also have opportunities to do some outside work for pay and recognition.  I’m doing all this partly because I’m positioning myself for a return to New York or a move to another big city for my next job, and partly because I really do like my new career.  I made a good choice.

My transformation into a brute continues apace

Published at April 28, 2009 in Iron, Aging gracefully or not and Sports. 5 Comments

Just moved on to Stage 3 of the New Rules workout! I’m taking my time, making sure that when I have injuries, or something doesn’t feel quite right, I take a step back and rest up instead of trying to work through it. What with the being old thing. And that’s working quite nicely.

But one thing is going to kill me in this stage — the body-weight matrix. For one of the workouts (you get an A and a B, and you alternate them), I have to do the following all at once at the end of an already-grueling session:

  • 24 squats
  • 12 lunges, each leg
  • 12 lunge jumps, each leg
  • 24 squat jumps

Rest and repeat.

That’s really fucking HARD at the end of a tough workout! And to make it more special, I did this first body-weight matrix in a dark playground by the on-ramp to the BQE Sunday night because I got to the gym too close to closing time to fit it in while there and had to finish on the way home. Which is just as well, because I was able to hold onto a piece of playground equipment with a death grip while doing the lunge jumps, which I thought were going to finish me.

But even though I was sure I couldn’t make it, I did. And then I visited a Mr. Softee truck on the way home.

Next up: getting involved in Scottish heavy events. I can throw 28 pounds. I might not be able to throw it far, or well, but I can throw it. The biggest hurdle is finding a place to practice, preferably somewhere that already has all the weights so I don’t have to hump them onto the bus.

Bounce

Published at November 26, 2007 in Sports and I see fat people. 6 Comments

I ran across this column about unwanted bouncing during exercise. And not just of breasts:

For many overweight exercisers, every step of a workout comes with an unintended cascade of motion — breasts bounce, belly fat shakes and thighs rub. The added jiggle and friction of moving body fat is more than just bothersome. It can alter people’s gait and make them more prone to injuries and joint problems. The discomfort prevents many overweight people from exercising altogether.

“Almost all of my clients end up expressing this, how uncomfortable the bouncing around feels,” said Kelly Bliss, a fitness instructor and author in Lansdowne, Pa., who works with overweight people. “They say, ‘I turn right and part of me is still going left.’”

Oh, boy, is that familiar. Body-fat management is one of my personal bugaboos. For instance, while the biggest jiggly bits I have right now are my breasts, properly supporting them during exercise (or, let’s face it, just during the workday) creates other issues — particularly with back fat,* which does not sit comfortably on either side of the bra band. I can have the band above the back fat and sacrifice some support, or I can tug down the band, which keeps the breasts up better but pushes the fat up into my armpits and causes rather irritating rolldown on one side. But there are other issues as well, notably my thighs and hips, which start to remind me that they’re jiggling after a while, particularly when I’m retaining water before my period.

Not surprisingly, there hasn’t been a whole hell of a lot of research done on the way body fat moves — even the way breasts move, which you’d think someone might have noted before now since they’re right there on the fronts of female athletes:

But the jiggle factor, familiar to the overweight and the large-breasted, has been largely ignored by exercise researchers and most sports-gear makers. Only a handful of studies have tried to document the challenges and strain endured by large bodies in motion.

“There’s very little research on the biomechanics and locomotion of obesity,” said Ray Browning, research instructor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, who has conducted several exercise studies of the overweight and obese….

Recently, British exercise researchers found that breasts of all sizes move far more during exercise than previously realized. Joanna Scurr, a scientist at the University of Portsmouth, studied breast biomechanics in 70 women for two years, using cameras and light beams to measure breast movement during various activities, including standing up from a chair, climbing stairs and jogging. Her research, presented in September to the British Association of Sports and Exercise Sciences, found that women experienced an average of about four inches of total breast movement, and some experienced more than double that amount.

And while most breast research has focused on vertical movement during exercise, Dr. Scurr’s study showed that breasts moved in three dimensions: up and down, side to side, and even in and out as breasts compressed against the chest and heaved outward during movement.

I say “not surprisingly” because even as fat people are harangued ever more shrilly to get off their asses and exercise, the model of a person who exercises is an already-fit, thin, most likely male athlete, and nobody bothers to accommodate anyone else with research dollars or gear. About the *only* sports gear I can buy from mainstream suppliers are socks and sports bras, which for some reason I can buy in more-or-less my size (almost nobody makes an actual G cup, so I just go up a band size and down a couple of cup sizes, which *really* does not help with the armpit situation) from, say, Title 9, even though they don’t sell a single shirt that will then fit over the bra they just sold me. Athleta is a bit better, but they still don’t have much of anything that will actually fit me (their sizes stop around 20). Which leaves Junonia, and I’ve found their order-fulfillment less than optimal (I’ve ordered from them twice now, and each time at least one item that was listed as in-stock mysteriously winds up being on backorder).

But, hey, if you can’t work out because it physically hurts, you must just be a lazy fuck who doesn’t want to exercise because you’re too morally weak, right?

I will say this: one thing this column misses is that, as bad as the jiggle factor can be when you’re fat, it can be much worse when you’ve lost significant amounts of weight. I lost about 130 pounds during college and was left with sagging, hanging skin that was much, much worse in terms of motion and jiggle than fat-filled skin was. There was a lot more slack, so it could whip around a lot more. I’ve since had a good deal of it trimmed off, but certain areas — such as my hips and thighs — didn’t get done because I just didn’t have the money. I kept that weight off for something like 15 years before I regained a bunch of it in a depression-trauma-injury-and-alcohol-fueled downward spiral in the past few years, and I’ve definitely noticed that my now-fuller thighs are less of an issue while I’m running than they were the last time I did much running, about 70 pounds ago. Even in the water, that felt weird, because it would ripple around as it met the resistance of the water. I always sort of wondered if I was doing damage to myself; it hurt too much to think that I wasn’t, but not enough to stop.

____________

* There’s a tagger in my neighborhood whose nom du Krylon is “Back Fat.” Every time I see one of his tags, I mentally check my bra.

Gosh, I’m sorry you don’t feel special anymore

Published at November 3, 2007 in Sports, I see fat people, Woman-Hating and Dipshittery. 10 Comments

From the “Everything can be blamed on a woman” files: Oprah Winfrey is single-handedly responsible for ruining the marathon.

The piece is an extended, and dishonest, whine about how they let just anybody run marathons nowadays, instead of special, dedicated men who did it for the thrill of competition and the frisson of self-denial — oh, and Americans aren’t winning marathons like they used to, which is Oprah’s fault.

The American runners of that era were propelled by a “double wave” of self-abnegating philosophies, theorizes Tom Derderian, who trained with Rodgers and Salazar at the Greater Boston Track Club. They were “heirs both to the warrior mentality of their World War II fathers and the new consciousness of the 60s and 70s,” he told author John Brant for the book “Duel in the Sun,” an account of the 1982 Boston Marathon, considered the last great American distance race.

And did I mention the generous helping of fat-shaming?

I had to give up marathoning just as everyone else was getting into it. Not just the rest of the running world. Everyone. The mid-1990s gave us two new long-distance heroes. The first was Oprah Winfrey. If Frank Shorter inspired the first running boom, Oprah inspired the second, by running the Marine Corps Marathon. And it was a much bigger boom. This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia. If Oprah could run a marathon, shame on anyone who couldn’t. . . .

Once the supreme test for hardened runners, the marathon became a gateway into the sport. Soon, gravel paths were crowded with 5-mile-an-hour joggers out to check “26.2 miles” off their life lists. Team in Training, which raises money for leukemia research, promised to turn loafers into marathoners in 20 weeks. I met a lawyer who started running because, “They say if you can run a marathon, you can do anything!” The marathon was no longer a competition. It was a self-improvement exercise. . . .

Like Oprah, Bingham deserves praise for luring insecure, overweight novices off their couches and into running shoes.

God forbid those flabby, overweight loafers everybody’s always after to exercise might just do so, and do it in public. I mean, don’t they know that *real* runners are trying to get past their fat asses on those gravel paths in public parks?

In the last 15 years, the Chicago Marathon field has increased tenfold, to 45,000. But with this change in the running culture, the average finishing time for men has dropped from 3:32 to 4:15 — not far from the Oprah Line, or my own performance.

Note that he’s conflating a few things in the piece: the lack of American men winning marathons and the average time of American men running marathons. Yeah, if you get a bigger field, with more first-time runners, you’re going to get slower average times, for a couple of reasons: one, more first-time runners means more slower runners, which will bring down the average; and two, in a gigantic field, it’s very hard to run at any sort of pace until the field starts breaking up; it could take you half an hour just to reach the starting line. If you’re in the back of the pack, you’re not going to be setting any world records. However, that’s why they start the elite runners up front — and those elite runners continue to set world records, course records and personal records even as the average finish times of the overall field get slower. That more American men aren’t at the top of the heap of elite runners has a lot less to do with the democratization of the marathon in America and a lot more to do with the quality of international runners, particularly the Africans. Who, after all, weren’t running the Boston Marathon much in the 70s.

By the way, did you happen to notice that there’s a sizable gap between 1982, when the “last great American distance race” happened, and the mid-90s, when Oprah supposedly ruined marathoning by making it accessible to middle-aged flabsters? Yeah, I thought you would. In a case of burying the lede, McClelland acknowledges that maybe Oprah and the Penguin Brigade aren’t actually primarily responsible for the decline in American (men’s) marathon times that began long before they got involved:

You can’t just blame the Penguin Brigade for messing up the curve. The last year an American-born man won a major marathon? 1983. (We have produced one first-class female marathoner — Deena Kastor has won in Chicago and London — although we’re still waiting for another Joan Benoit Samuelson, gold medalist at the first Olympic women’s marathon, in 1984.) The running bum — that post-collegiate dropout who works in a shoe store so he can train 100 miles a week — has almost disappeared. Despite the fact that marathon fields are the size of Sauron’s host, more guys broke two and a half hours in the 1980s.

It could just be that the running bum has moved onto other sports, or has figured out that if just anybody can run a marathon, why not up the ante and get into triathalons, particularly the Ironman, which has not just a marathon, but challenging swimming and biking components? Or it could be that, what with the professionalization of the sport, those running bums have sponsors. Plus, it ain’t as easy to live on a shop clerk’s salary anymore, what with the cost of proper equipment, travel and race fees.

Oh, and McClellan shows his ignorance in another way: his assumption that last month’s Chicago Marathon was stopped because of novice runners:

Last month’s Chicago Marathon had to be shut down mid-race, because undertrained five- and six-hour marathoners couldn’t handle that much time in the 85-degree heat.

Actually, that kind of heat is a danger to *any* runner, no matter how well-trained, as Frank Shorter discussed in this piece (and since McClelland mentioned the 1984 Olympic Women’s marathon, he can’t possibly have forgotten Gabriela Andersen-Schiess, who staggered into Olympic Stadium, dehydrated and suffering from heat exhaustion, and literally fell across the finish line. I’m still a little traumatized by that). The issue with Chicago was not that novice runners couldn’t handle the heat because they were untrained; it was that they were still on the course after the temperature began to climb. The elite runners finished well before it became 85 degrees.

Race day

Published at November 3, 2007 in Sports, New York Fugging City and Vanity. 3 Comments

Did my road race today.  Yay me!

Note to self: bring your number, and not just the safety pins, next time.

Also: Running seems to be very popular among the Dutch, judging from the number of people in orange in the race.

Training update, again

Published at October 20, 2007 in Sports and Vanity. 4 Comments

Just finished Week 5 of the program, which means that I ran for 20 minutes without walking.

Albeit, not without breaks.  There were three attempts at pooping before we successfully managed it (and the fact that the first attempt was not only unsuccessful, but right in front of a damn garbage can annoyed me), plus about three stops for water at the still-functioning* water fountains.  Didn’t cheat on time, though, since I shut off the watch whenever I stopped.

And I was slow, for sure, barely shuffling along faster than my top walking speed.  But I did it!  I did my 20 minutes.  Which means that in a few weeks, when it’s Thanksgiving and I’m running the Prospect Park Turkey Trot,  I may not be able to do all five miles, but I’ll do at least three.

____________

* They usually turn them off around November 1, and they stay off until April or May.  One of the water fountains was taken out by a fallen tree during the August tornado, which ripped up some huge-ass trees in the neighborhood.  The tree that took out the fountain also took out a park bench, which has not been replaced.  Another tree twisted one of the iron fences around the park.

Yay for me

Published at October 6, 2007 in Sports and Vanity. 5 Comments

Another week down on the running plan.

Next week: almost twice as much running!

And yanno?  I can do it.  My knee’s actually about 95% now, too.

Whoohoo!

Published at September 26, 2007 in Sports, Vanity and Junebug. 6 Comments

Not only did I have a good run* this morning, but timely application of an icepack both when I first got home and then when I got to work has prevented my knee from stiffening up and refusing to bend!

One has to look for victories where one can.

_______

* Despite getting derailed almost from jump because Miss Thing decided that nothing would do but that she had to take a dump 30 seconds after I started, in spite of the fact that I’d been walking her around for 10 minutes prior to getting underway.