Oh, oh

I'm having trouble keeping this blog going. I think it's important to continue--that it's part of staying connected to my commitment to fitness. I need to schedule a time everyday to blog. And it can't be at 10:30 at night like it is now, when I should already be asleep.

Out for a Spin

I feel so great after spinning class. I feel thinner and more muscular, even though there can be no real change from before I went to class. I'm really glad the workout yesterday focussed on the upper body, because even though I got what I asked for yesterday in terms of soreness, I didn't use any of those muscles spinning. Both my abs and my triceps are REALLY sore. I'm a little sore in my deltoids. Surprisingly, given all the pushups I did, I'm not sore in my pecs.

My friend Ruth suggested that I think about getting a recumbent bike with an extra wheel, so I don't have to worry about falling and breaking something. My first reaction was, a bike with an extra wheel is called a tricycle, and no way in hell am I riding one. But I've been mulling it over in my mind--maybe with the aging of the population there is some kind of bike-like thing I can enjoy riding and get a good workout outside on, that doesn't scare me to death on these hilly, pot-hole filled roads. I'll check out the local bike shop, and actually, I'll look online now. I do want something I can do outdoors when the weather gets nice. I spent the whole summer inside last summer and I want to make up for it this year.

Doubt and Worry

I haven't posted in a couple of days. It's hard to stay focussed on it on days I don't work out. I rearranged my Fitness Together schedule so now I'll do spinning on Mondays and Saturdays and Fitness Together on Wednesdays and Fridays. I tried calling my doctor's office today to see if I can add in running but kept getting the answering machine with no recording option.

I'm finding myself worrying about whether I will stay on my fitness and nutrition regimen without the level of overview I was getting from Fitness Together. I wasn't aware of how much it influenced me knowing someone was looking at everything I ate and that I had a commitment to someone else to workout 4 times a week. I've haven't been over my eating points ever since I started, but I did have a beer tonight. It tasted really good. I have to keep in mind that if I think my diet is heading south, I can always ask the people at Fitness Together if I can send it in every week. It's not as if asking for support is some shameful thing to be avoided at all costs.

I had a great workout today. I told Savanah that I wanted to be sore tomorrow, so she gave me a workout where everything I did, I did for 20 seconds, rested for 10, and repeated 6 times. I started with pushups--the last 2 sets were murder. Then I did squats with 12 pound weights at shoulder level, going into a press when I stood up. Then I did ab work, starting by sitting on the floor in a vee with my arms and legs in the air, holding a ball and lowering it to the floor on the right side and then the left side, followed by crunches with my legs in the air, reaching my hand to the outside of the opposite leg.

Then onto dips on the bench, lowering myself to work the triceps. Finally, rows using the rings. My body was at about a 45 degree angle from the floor, holding myself with straight arms with the rings, and then pulling myself up.

All in all, just the kind of workout I asked for. When it was happening, I was unhappy that I had requested such a hard workout, but it felt great when it was done. I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow. Fortunately, it was mostly an upper body workout, so spinning shouldn't be painful.

It's Sad, So Sad

I got a comment from my niece Sarah about my blog about the year the family triathlon, which we called the Ironola, fell apart. I'm sure that only in the interest of historical accuracy, she corrected my account and let me know she was 9 the year she won, not 11. How humiliating! I was 39, and all but 2 of my siblings were younger than that. The person who suffered the worst humiliation, however, was the boyfriend of one of my nieces. He was going to the University of Minnesota on a track scholarship, and I'm sure thought that he would be teaching all of us a lesson about how real athletes perform. I don't remember where he placed in the competition, but the idea that a 9 year old girl had beaten him was too much to take--he hid in his cabin the rest of the week. Poor guy--I wonder if he still recoils at the memory.

Sara, here's my wish for you. See this picture of your adorable daughter:


I hope that we reinstitute the Ironola this year and that it continues, and that 7 short years from now when Naomi is 9 and you are 37 (about the age I was when you won the Ironola), she beats you in it. Then, and only then will justice prevail.

The proof that yesterday's workout was as tough as I thought came through today. My muscles are so sore! I've been getting out of my chair like a 90 year old and creaking around until my muscles get a little warmed up. I love that feeling, especially at a time like this when I've been working out regularly--I know I'm pushing myself to a new level of fitness.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I Think I've Got It!

I've still been struggling with how to plan my workouts so I get the most out of each one. I want to work out 4-5 times a week, and with that schedule, it seems crazy to work out at Fitness Together in the morning and go to spinning class in the afternoon on Mondays. When I get home from spinning, I'm completely shot and I have to spend the entire day eating to account for the 1,000+ calories I burn. There would have been a time when that would have been a fun problem to solve, but because I'm not eating desserts or drinking alcohol or anything with sugar in it, i's hard to consume an extra 1,000 calories and I don't want my body to think I'm in starvation mode and slow my metabolism.

Monday is the best day for spinning because Peggy teaches the class and she's amazing, most of the rest of the week spinning is at 6am, and I'd rather be sleeping, and while here is a class on Wednesday at 6pm, it's meant for beginners and Wednesday evening is when I try to hang out with Avery (Heidi and Gina's 14 year old son). We're having fun watching old movies that I love.

So I finally figured out what I hope will work--go to Fitness Together on Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30am, do spinning on Mondays and Saturdays, and fit in another class if I'm in the mood, like spinning or yoga at the Y on Sunday. I have a message into Fitness Together to see if my old Wednesday time slot is still open.

I haven't been putting pictures in my blog for a while for a pretty silly reason. I like doing my blog on my iPad. I'm on computers all day long, so switching to the iPad in the evening feels like I'm doing something completely different. I couldn't figure out how to insert pictures, though. So since I'm having such a brilliant day, I thought, why don't I google "how to load pictures on a blog using an iPad" and of course there were a bunch of solutions. I picked the $2.99 solution of buying an app called BlogPress. I'm writing this blog using it. It's easy to use and even easier for inserting pictures than using Blogger directly. I just transfer my pictures from my iPhone to my iPad, open BlogPress, touch the picture of the camera, touch the picture I want to load, and shazam, it's there! I love apps, I love technology, what a great time to live.

I had a great lower body workout today. Lots of squats and lunges. I will be pleasantly sore tomorrow, which is always my goal. Mark took pictures of three of my favorite exercises today. For the first one, I had a 15 pound dumbbell in one hand, leaned forward to bring the arm with the dumbbell down toward the floor and the leg on the same side up until it was parallel with the floor, like this:





Hmmm--my leg isn't exactly parallel, I'll blame it on Mark for not catching me at the perfect time. Then I stood up without touching my foot to the floor and curled and pressed the weight like this:



This was great for balance and strength. I wish I could say that I did all the reps without my foot ever touching the floor, but I'm very principled about not lying on President's Day.

Then I did 4 sets of walking lunges, starting with 20 pound dumbbells, like this:



One set involved lunging the length of the room forward and lunging in reverse back to where I started. I have to admit I rejected a lot of the lunge photos because it is hard to keep your back straight while lunging with weights.

Then my very favorite--squatting while pulling up a weight stack. What I really loved about this today was that I squatted the entire weight stack--85 pounds--as you can clearly see from this picture:



All in all, a fun day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:N Farms Rd,Northampton,United States

How Satisfying

This has been a very satisfying week. I'm down 5.3 pounds from Monday. I know some of that is because I had a more salty diet than normal on vacation, but I'm down 3.4 pounds from before we left. I know that losing weight is never linear--there will be times that I'll stay the same weight for a week or so and times I'll lose more quickly, but it sure has been satisfying to get on the scale every day this week and weigh less.

I feel like I've really changed my eating habits. I really like the way I'm eating and how I feel as a result. One day on Ometepe I had 3 beers over the course of the afternoon and evening and ate ice cream. I really didn't like how I felt that evening. I want to remember that evening when I'm feeling tempted. The other important thing is that if I have a day like that, it can be a unique event, it doesn't mean I have to eat or drink like that regularly.

I feel like I'm back in the swing exercising, too, even though I don't have a specific event I'm aiming for. Wednesdays may be difficult until I find something I enjoy doing that day that I enjoy and is challenging. My niece Sara has proposed a running race at the lake this summer. We used to do what we called a triathlon at the lake--it started with three events--rowing, swimming, and running, but we cut it down to 2 because there weren't enough row boats, and the ones that were there varied so much in design it wasn't an equal contest. It was a great time. Being the competitive family we are, we gave out trophies and kept expanding the categories we gave trophies to--first place individual, first place team, first place over 40, and the most absurd, first person to finish who hadn't one a trophy. It all came to a crashing halt the year Sarah won. She was 11 or 12. My generation could see the future and it didn't involve any trophies for us, so that was it, we stopped doing it. So it will be fun to start it up again. I say we should still call it a triathlon--if we could call it that for 2 events why not for 1? I have to call my doctor to she what she thinks about me running--keep your fingers crossed.

Slip Sliding Away

Ever since I broke my leg and was told that if I fall, I will break a bone, I have walked through the world incredibly cautiously, watching each step. I've held people's arms in places that felt dangerous and when I went into Lake Nicaragua last week, I generally had one person on each side of me helping me because the lake bottom has periodic large rocks. I've felt like I was 90 years old when people have helped me, but feeling old is better than feeling broken.

The winter has been a particular challenge. Northampton turned into a sheet of ice when we were gone and when the weather weirdly was 60 degrees yesterday, I carved a path through the ice in our driveway so that when it froze again, I would have a safe place to walk.

Yet all it takes is a moment of inattention for things to go quickly awry. That nearly happened a few minutes ago. We were part of a plan for Quinn to have a surprise 11th birthday party. He was over at our house for the afternoon and we were taking him home after the guests had arrived and were hidden. He decided for some reason to go in the front door--we usually use the back--and I was so focused on when the surprise was going to happen, I didn't notice that the sidewalk was a sheet of ice. I slipped and did the whirly, whirly thing with my arms, and regained my balance. In my head, though, all I could think about was what would have happened if I had fallen. What would have broken. What a distraction it would have been from Quinn's party while we awaited the ambulance. How upside down would my life have been turned if I broke a hip. How I would have to start over again in a few months getting fit.

I'm trying to get myself into the present. I didn't break a bone. In fact, what happened was exactly what happened when I broke my leg in 6 places. Then when I tried to regain my balance, my leg broke in 6 places. This time, nothing happened. My bones must be stronger. I am going to return to watching my every step and remember to stop walking if I'm distracted.

I had a fabulous time at spinning today. If you've never tried it, I strongly recommend it. It's an amazing workout. I burned 844 calories in an hour. I was worried that the fact I hadn't done any cardio exercise for 2 weeks was going to have an impact on my ability to keep up in the class, but the fact that I burned that many calories meant I was able to keep my heart at at a high level. That felt great. I was really aware during spinning of how much time I spend evaluating myself--how am I doing compared with other times I've been spinning. Was I able to get my heart rate to 140 as quickly as last time? To 150? To 160? It is the way of our culture--always evaluating, always wanting improvement. I tried to be in the present--how am I feeling, what am I capable of doing now, but it's very hard to stay in the present. I noticed the same thing yesterday--how do the weights I'm lifting compare to the last time, can I hold a plank as long as I could? What ever happened to living for today?

Dropping Anchor

Wow--something's happened since I got back. I've dropped 4.7 pounds since Monday. I'm eating the same foods and amounts. I'm exercising less than I was, because my schedule's been such that I haven't been to a spinning class since I've been back. Whatever it is, it sure is motivating!

I did workout by myself on Wednesday, but it's really hard to push myself as hard as my trainers push me. It's easier to take a class and have the instructor set the pace. I'm going to talk to Mark tomorrow about what he thinks about doing Fitness Together routines twice a week and cardio classes 3 times.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me comments encouraging me to keep going on my fitness goals--you make a big difference!!

Keeping Going

I'm having a bit of a struggle continuing this blog. My major motivation had been recording the process of getting in as good a shape as I could during the two months I was getting free training, so I would be as strong as I could be in Nicaragua. Now that I've been to Nicaragua, my goal is more nebulous--to continue to improve my fitness level. But I don't have a specific reason for doing it. Well, I guess it's so I can be as healthy as I can be, but I work better with a more immediate, concrete goal. In the past, that has been things like running a specific race, completing a triathlon, and in recent years, completing the North Shore Inline Marathon in a specific time. I don't really know what I'll be doing in the way of athletics. for example, I have thought about setting a biking goal, like biking a specific distance, but I'm not sure I can bike the hills of Western Mass without fear of a tire popping, crashing, and breaking bazillions of bones.

I feel like I'm back in a good pattern of eating, although we still haven't gone grocery shopping and the amount of food in our house could barely feed a Who's mouse. I went to Fitness Together 7:30 yesterday morning to work out with Savanah, which was difficult to do because all I wanted to do was sleep after arriving back from Nicaragua the night before. I'm now working out at Fitness Together twice a week, so I need to push myself to work out without a trainer tomorrow morning. I'm going to talk with Mark at Fitness Together on Friday to help me to set a goal.

Amazing Grace

We're back from Nicaragua. My training made a huge difference in what I could do while I was there. We built the walls of a 9 foot high, 43 foot circumference house, which involved literally pouring tons of wet dirt into 50 pound bags and placing them on the ever-growing wall. I wasn't able to work as hard as I would have wanted to or as many hours in a day as I wanted to, but I worked as hard as I could for as many hours as I could. My ankle got increasingly swollen, and has not yet gone back to its normal size.

Now that I'm home, I can get some perspective on the week. When I was there, I would feel guilty when I couldn't keep up. I was fine with other people taking breaks or moving to easier tasks, but I hold myself to a different standard--I think that as one of the leaders of the group, I have to set the standard--work harder and longer than everyone else. I clearly didn't do that. There was a victory in listening to my body. I didn't come home having hurt my leg so badly I would set back my recovery. But I didn't feel good about making the right decisions.

I was somewhat better than I would have been in the past about my nutrition. I didn't have much control over what I ate. We were staying at a retreat center where we ate most of our meals, and there wasn't a choice in terms of what we ate. But I did watch my portions, and focused on eating more of what was better for me. When we did eat out, I don't think I ever ate all of what I ordered--I ate until I was full, which usually meant that 1/4-1/3 of the food was left on my plate. I ate dessert a couple of times and drank beer regularly--after doing physical labor for nearly 8 hours a day in the 90+ degree heat, a beer seemed like the best option for recovery. That and a leisurely swim in Lake Nicaragua. I love that lake.

The scale said I put on 1.4 pounds in the 10 days I was gone. I think I ingested more salt than normal, and expect to be down to the weight I left at in a day or two. I could feel myself wanting to revert to my old habits today, but forced myself to record everything I ate. It wasn't the most nutritious day--I'm exhausted and we have very little food in the house-- a bad combination.

What was the amazing grace? It was the gift the family we were building the house for gave us of letting into their lives and their hearts. It's a four generation family of 34 people, living in their one room homes on property they lease on the lake. Their homes are small and are mainly filled with beds, so they spend most of the day outside. That is their living room, dining room, and kitchen, and it was where we spent our time from 8:30 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. We got to experience another culture, a different way of life, in a way that tourists rarely do. We could see that while this family lives in poverty far beyond what exists in the United States, they have created lives for themselves that are happy and full of love. The night before we left, I started crying thinking of our home--four bedrooms and three bathrooms for two people. Two more bathrooms than this family of 34 has. And probably more square footage than those 34 people live in.

The Tale of the Tape

I had my assessment this morning. I'm very pleased with my progress. My overall fitness score is 69 (on a scale from 1-100), which is described as above average, and more importantly, only 2 points below the assessment I did in April, a week before I broke my arm. My score in April was the highest score I'd had since I started taking these assessments in 2007, and this was my second highest. I started at 31 in 2007.

Here are the findings I'm most pleased with:

My percent body fat went from 39.7% to 33.6%. My lowest since I started taking these assessments was 33.2%.

I lost 13.2 pounds of fat--13.2 pounds in 8 weeks. That's a pound and a half less fat every week. Think about what a stick of butter looks like. I was losing the equivalent of 6 sticks of butter every week! That feels good. I'm only 2.4 pounds above my lowest level of fat in the past 4 years.

I gained 6 pounds of muscle. That's nearly a pound a week. I'm only a tenth of a pound from my highest muscle weight in the past 4 years.

And all that happened in 8 weeks! I improved on nearly every measure in the test, but those are the measures that meant the most to me.

And this is just the start. It's clear to me that in 8 more weeks, I will be in the best shape I've been in in the past 4 years. Brandon said that I won't be able to continue gaining muscle at the rate I have been, so as I continue to burn off fat, my weight will come down faster. But it was wonderful to see confirmation that my perception that my fat was melting away and that my muscles were growing confirmed by the assessment.

We leave for Nicaragua in the morning. I most likely won't be able to post from there, so I'll probably make my next post on 2/14--Valentine's Day.

This Is it!

It's the last day before my assessment. Tomorrow night I'll post about my results, but today I'm focussing on what I've accomplished. In the past two months, I have:

Worked out a minimum of 4 times a week--3 times at Fitness Together and at least 1 time at a spinning class

Gone from thinking about every minute of my Fitness Together workout to being surprised that the 45 minutes is done

Gone from only being able to complete 30 minutes of spinning class, and that at a fairly low level, to being able to do the full hour at a high level

Recorded everything I ate every day

Kept below my calorie goal every single day, including through 5 Christmas parties, an office party, Christmas eve and Christmas day celebrations, New Year's Eve, trips to LA, South Dakota, and wherever else I went in the past 2 months

Kept my commitment not to eat any desserts

Kept my commitment not to drink any alcohol

Made eating well-balanced, nutritious meals a way of life

Tomorrow I'll see what doing all those things has meant. And the day after, I leave for Nicaragua. No matter what I find out tomorrow, I know I am going to be going to Nicaragua in much better condition to do my part in building a house out of earth bags. I will have limited access to the Internet while I'm gone, so I'm unlikely to post until I return.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Winter

We are having the most incredible winter--the most snow we've had in the 39 years I've lived in Massachusetts. We were only supposed to have a light snow today, so Mariah (my assistant) and I headed north toward New Hampshire at 6:30 this morning for a 9:00 meeting. We got about 20 minutes out when the radio announced for the third time since we left that we would be having snow with intermittent freezing drizzle all day. That freezing drizzle scared us and we turned around. I wish I had known that before I set my alarm for 5 am this morning.

We drove back to the office and I had the meeting by phone. By noon we had gotten an alarming amount of snow, so I decided to head home. It's normally a 10 minute drive, and in about 10 minutes, I was within 50 feet of my driveway. That was just to make me mad--I didn't get into the driveway for another hour and a half.

We live at the top of a 2 mile long hill, which is very steep just before our house. I had gotten a good head of steam up, but my car really didn't want to go up the last section. A kind woman stopped and tried to push me, to no avail. A nice man with a plow plowed a section behind me so I could get some steam up, but that didn't help. Then 2 city snow plows came roaring up the hill and passed me, leaving me in my little island of snow. I tried backing up onto the section they plowed, but still couldn't get enough traction. People kept suggesting that I go around and approach my house from the other direction (about a 10 mile drive--I live in the country), but as I said, I live at the top of the hill and while the hill is much shorter from the other direction, it's also steeper.

So I backed Up about a half a mile down the road to a flatter section to see if I could get enough momentum to get up the hill now that the road had been plowed. A nice neighbor gave me a pail of sand in case I got stuck. I got going really well and thought I was going to make it, but I needed to go onto the left hand side of the road to bypass the snow island where I had been stuck, and just as I was approaching it--could it be, yes it could, the snow plows came roaring down the hill, forcing me back into the snow island and stuck once more.

So I backed down again and tried it again. I got past the snow island and was really close to home now and lost all traction. Two men from the fire department stopped to help me spread the sand and push me. We made a little traction but the damn city plows came along again and plowed away my sand.

At that point I decided to park in my neighbor's driveway and walk home. I tried backing in, but guess what, I couldn't get over the pile of snow from the snow plows to get in her driveway. I got in enough to turn around and decided I would try the long way home. I was amazed, but I had no trouble on any of the hills and was about to start celebrating when I turned into the driveway and got hung up on the pile of snow from the snow plows--half in the driveway, half in the road. I tried rocking the car back and forth--I was going no where. I decided if someone was going to hit my car, it would happen whether I was in it or not, so I got out and went and got a snow shovel and dug my car out. It really felt good to pull into the garage.

What does this have to do with getting fit. Who cares--I needed to share. Actually, the point is that I have been training for 2 months, 4 appointments a week at Fitness Together. Tomorrow was supposed to be my final appointment before my assessment on Thursday, and it is cancelled because of the storm. No perfect attendance record for me. I'll consider it a day of tapering to improve my performance at the assessment. I have to do things like step up and down off a step for 3 minutes to a metronome and have my heart rate checked, see how many sit-ups and push-ups I can do in a certain time period, etc., so I'll be nice and fresh, especially if Liz is in charge of snow removal. It's a good reason for her to do it, don't you think?