Category: Fitness and Diet

Running Outside

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Since I started this venture into the world of running, I’m happy to say that only a few times have I gone on a treadmill. Most of the time I’ve spent running around my neighborhood, and when I went to Chicago in July, around my friend’s neighborhood. Seattle’s slip into the rainy season has driven me to the treadmill at least twice, and when we recently visited family in NY, I was compelled to use the fitness center at the hotel we were staying at.

This morning, I’ve never been so grateful to run outdoors. My route takes me on a nice, mostly flat path, past well manicured gardens and beautiful, large houses. More important, though, it takes me past other people who are enjoying the morning by walking, jogging, running with their baby in a running stroller, or conversing with friends on the sidewalk. The neighborhood has an uncharacteristic quiet hum and the morning dew makes the smells of autumn sparkle as I pass the neighborhood P-Patch. The air is bracing when I initially step out, but by the end of my jog, I find my long-sleeved t-shirt is a little too warm.

Contrast this with stale damp air, blank walls, humming, thrumming equipment, silent TV’s flickering and if you’re so lucky as my last gym, throbbing dance music. Yeah. Easy contest to win, at least for me.

The problem comes with the fact that today was a mild autumn day. The sun was shining most of today, often brightly, and I wore my fleece unzipped a greater part of the day. I’ve purchased a light waterproof and breathable jacket for jogging (and unfortunately found a better one for half the price today), and a reflective cap for warmth and visibility. My problem is that it’s now time to shell out for some capris and pants, perhaps a vest, and some tech-tees that are long-sleeved. I rather shell out for these things than pay to use a treadmill through the winter, however, I can’t seem to find the will to fork over the $200 that would be required to gear myself up for my 3 days/week of jogging. My new venture into yoga has been blissfully less expensive, as that bare feet cost nothing, and when I’m practicing at home, my pajamas work great!

I look forward to heading out again tomorrow morning, on what will likely be an even quieter morning.

How I Dry my Scuba Gear

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Scuba gear drying.

I put up a few photos of my scuba gear drying in our scuba closet aka bathroom. One of the things that was frustrating as I was getting into scuba was figuring out how to best wash and dry my gear – the bathtub was a no brainer, but hanging it up left a bit to figure out (esp. since so much is so heavy when wet!) I hope that the above Flickr set will be helpful to someone other than me!

Week 8 and beyond… the Fitness Update

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OK – sorry this is coming so late! I’ve been busy (well, as unemployed life goes) these past few weeks. The report on the running is that I’m not making the progress I wish I was – that is to say, I’m doing the “slow and steady” bit, and so far, am not improving time-wise, but seem to be improving endurance. This is great for the long haul, but I wish my success was instantaneous. The good news is that I’m still doing at least three sessions per week, and I’m mixing it up with some inclines because this is Seattle, long flat stretches just don’t come often, and get boring after awhile.

I’m considering entering a 5k fun run at the end of the month, just to give it a shot. I know that I might end up walking part of the way, but maybe I should just do it. I’ll consider it after next week.

So, what’s been keeping me so busy? Continue reading “Week 8 and beyond… the Fitness Update” →

The Week in Fitness: Week 7

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http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/v1/swf/scrapablewidget/rundetail.swf

This week I paid a lot more attention to my heart rate monitor, and less to the distance. This means that the day after yoga, I was a lot slower. Yesterday (see above) I went farther than usual thanks to my accidentally setting a program on my heart rate monitor. Instead of it beeping at me when I was at 76% of my max hr, it was waiting until 84%, which was a lot harder on me. I’m happy that I got a good distance at the end of the week, but it was exhausting and not terribly enjoyable. I set my hrm back to the moderate pace, so next time I hope to not be so strained.

I was thinking of switching my running to 3x/wk instead of 4, but I think I’d miss it. I also want to do yoga at least 1x per week, if not 2, but I need to get my body warmed up to that idea. Then there’s scuba, which I’d like to do at least once every two weeks. We did a brief dive on Saturday, but the viz was horrible and at 68 ft, when it started to clear up, it was dark enough to need a light (this was during midday).

So this week, I try another yoga class, continue to jog with my hrm and train a bit better, and mostly just try to relax.

Today’s Lesson in Fitness

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75 minutes of yoga is powerful stuff. I went to my first real yoga class in many years last night at a local studio, 8 Limbs Yoga. I was able to do a lot more than I feared, and came out feeling fantastic. My muscles were a little sore today, but felt good. I decided to do my regularly scheduled 30 minute jog and found that I went the shortest distance I’ve done in a month.

I was a bit annoyed by the short distance, then I came home and read up on using my heart rate monitor for training, realizing that I maybe just need to throw this distance thing out of the window once and for all. Here’s another clue – my muscles were sore BEFORE I went out. Maybe going a shorter distance was expected by my body, if not exactly what it needed. Then there’s the thought that maybe I should have skipped my jog today because right now, I hurt!!

Today’s lesson, in sum, is yoga is a lot tougher than it seems and overworking my muscles does nobody any good.

Ouch.