Find more bodyweight exercises at Greatist.com
I can absolutely CAN fit this in twice a week, right? Odd how I can create a new money saving habit, a new kitchen cleaning habit, and can push myself to run greater & greater distances on the weekends (even every day of a 3-day version), yet I am failing HARD at the mid-week full body workouts at home.
Ah well – March is a new month – let’s do this!
Fun money update: $62.78 as of last weekend
Workout update: Oh, well..not doing so well mid-week still. Only did a 20 minute weight & ab workout one night. But..I ran 4 miles of hills on Saturday and then I ran ELEVEN miles on Sunday!! Yet another PR 
It was double the fun because my friend Audrey who is just getting started running joined us for the first out and back and got her OWN PR by running more than 5 miles. Renee went 16 – I hooked back up with her on the second out and we ran back together (sort of…if she slowed down enough to let me be within shouting distance!)
Anyway………..it’s time for another round of Consumer Reports!
Two new companies crossed my radar in the last month.
The first was the result of a facebook recommendation - graze – a healthy snack company that ships out perfectly proportioned snack packs each week for just $5. This was the first box I received:
Those apple cinnamon flapjacks in the top right corner? AMAZING! Everything else was really good too. And, like I said, the perfect serving size for my morning snack at my desk. When you go on the site, you can immediately start pre-rating the selections meaning they will control whether they send you items or not. Since I am a skosh picky (cough)….I immediately went through the list and marked all the items with banana or coconut as “never send”. I thought it was pretty awesome that since there is a little bit of a Russian roulette game going on when they choose your next box (you CAN go in ahead of time and control things too, but yeah…I’m rarely ever going to remember to do that weekly!) it is nice that I can eliminate some.
Week two has a nice mixture as well – all different flavors and types. Today I ate the “bonnie wee oatbakes with red onion chutney” and they were surprisingly yummy together!
The bottom line is – check out their site – they are in a trial launch in the U.S. right now. I got in via an invite and I’ve already given out the one invite they allowed me. But I think if they keep getting positive feedback from those of us already enrolled and then get tons of others submitting their emails for future sign up invites, then they will commit to the US 100% a lot faster.
And honestly – what was I bringing in or eating for my morning snack before? Something that easily cost between $1-2 per day and POSSIBLY was as healthy and fulfilling but most likely NOT.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Next up is a website called Happify. This one literally showed up in my in box last week. Despite the message that I put in my contact page here stating that I *do not* take guest posts because this is just a truly truly 100% personal diary type blog – I still get emails at least once a week.
Now, I am not rude – I don’t just delete them and leave them hanging like that.
OK – who am I kidding? I tried that tactic at first and it didn’t work because they FOLLOW UP dammit
I learned to kindly turn them down, wish them good luck and ask them to read the contact page note and send them on their way.
So when a Happify founder emailed me, I did read the message but when I saw it wasn’t a guest post request I was ABOUT to hit delete. I mean, me? On a site called Happify? Someone who makes merciless fun of people who constantly spout out puppies hearts and rainbows?
But…I had a moment of weakness/curiosity and checked it out, because – on the OTHER hand – I have been also trying to apply the Silver Lining rule to my mindset this year. There’s just so much in life every day that is out of your control, but you CAN control your reactions to those things. It turns out – this site is pretty damn in line with my way of thinking.
Check out the Science page - I love that they use Science! This is another site that is in the launch phase. I have no doubt that blogging in the category of motivation is what got me an email invite. So far, everything is free and I am not entirely sure what they are up to, but in the meantime, there is no harm to me to participate. In fact, this little site is adding to my life on a daily basis in nice little ways. Plus it asks me to do something I think I do pretty well – cheer on others. It’s always helped my own mental outlook to make sure that I pick up/cheer on/compliment people around me.
If you are at ALL curious about joining Happify – drop me a comment/email because I do have 4 invites to this site and I think many of you would enjoy it.
That does it for this segment of Consumer Reports!
Now, I get to log off an contemplate how I *really* feel about the fact that the last person I interviewed for the temp job I have in my office started off this morning by saying “Oh, I knew it was you right away because you look JUST LIKE the photo of you on the internet I found after I Googled you!”
(!!!!)
Catching up from last week, I put $7.25 into the change fund so that is up over $44 as we rolled into Feb.
If I can keep up a $40/mo total I will be plenty happy at Christmas!
FWIW, what I do is get $20 cash every Sunday just to have something on hand for small things, usually snacks at work When the following Saturday rolls around I empty out what is left into the change fund. Last week was a little lower because I had to give 16 money for school supplies he needed to get for the start of the the 2nd semester and I instructed him to shop after school for what he needed so he got $10 towards that.
Meanwhile, on the working out at home front – I have done three workouts in the last 6 nights.
The first night it was:
It was a rotation situation, but then I also added extra squats at the beginning and end because I really want to get my hill running legs built up.
The second night I worked on my arms using some bands and the 10lb weights:
Finished up with hip flexor steps with ankle bands (40 steps) and then 90 seconds of bicycles for the abs.
Tonight was totally without equipment of any kind:
Each night’s workout was 30 mins long (no longer than 35 though) and I was sweating and growling through the last few of each set every night. I was damn sore after that first night for sure!
I took the first and third workout almost totally from the videos on this site:
http://www.runnersworld.com/workouts/ironstrength-workout
The other one was from exercises we’ve done while cross training with coach Tanja over the years. I bought some resistance bands and hand weights so that I could duplicate a lot of what she showed us in the gym on my own time.
So far, so good! I’m trying to stay really disciplined keeping to a daily schedule of both work, chores, working out, and rest/reading/tv time. The workout tonight was MANDATORY no matter how tired I was and I am really glad I stuck to my plan.
Monday night was all drama because my car died on the way home from work and it HAD to get fixed because Tuesday night 16 and I had tickets to see The Who in concert. I bought those tickets in August for his birthday so we have been waiting a LONG time for this event and I couldn’t believe the car failed me so close to that! I guess that was still better than having it die ON Tuesday…anyway…it was thankfully a quick and not horribly expensive fix so we got to the concert without issue last night and it was FABULOUS as we expected but then that meant two nights of missing my routine so I to re-establish it tonight.
The aggressive work plan is already paying off - I started out Feb having to enter 30 leases into the new system with just 19 work days in the month in addition to my regular work load. Less than a week later and I’ve knocked out 10 of those so now I have 15 days to convert 20 leases and I am a lot closer to a very manageable 1 lease per day rate. The key has been working at home! Saturday I knocked off a LOT in just 4 hours and then because of the car situation I had to work from home on Tuesday and I got three leases entered all before 5pm! I know some people have a harder time working from home what with the various parts of the house calling out for attention (wash me! sweep me! dust me! pet me! OK, that’s the cats but still..) but I haven’t found that to be a problem for me.
IOW – I can ignore cleaning like a champ!
So, it was nice to take this mental break tonight and log an entry, but now I must shut it down and gear up for another three day push of tasks. Including getting new tires for the troublesome car on Saturday. Because, oh yeah, there’s chord showing through on the tread of the front tires. Nothing like crossing your fingers every trip out that nothing happens until then!
Because I sort of forgot that I am not 17, or even 27……and yesterday AFTER a nice 1+ hour trail run and then some serious latte drinking and burrito gulping….Renee, Eve and I were feeling the need to go for a walk to not feel so stuffed. So we walked to the school and park near me where – hey look! There are MONKEY BARS!!
(I swear we didn’t spike our lattes with any booze – really!)
I think it is good that no one thought to take any pictures and that the one video I did take didn’t actually record as I expected (you are so lucky Renee!) because we spent quite a bit of time goofing off doing pull ups and just generally hanging from the bars and rings on the playground. Yeah, we thought were big time gymnasts or crazy cross fit elites or some such. Actually, Renee kind of is pretty good at that and pulled off quite a few hard core pull ups. Way more than I could.
BUT – the thing is that I COULD do some! That is largely thanks to the weight training that I started a couple of years ago so once I realized that I COULD, I had to repeat it right?
Lord…
Lemme just say that around 2am I woke up with a burning pain in my neck and shoulders like no other! It’s taken two 800 mg doses of ibuprofen to calm down the pain to a tolerable level and still I moan if I have to lift my arms even a teensy bit.
This is all my way of saying – hey, wanna come join our crazy group of nut job fitness geeks who think sore muscles are the bomb?
OK, we don’t really think that, but anyone who knows me knows that getting me to graduate from walking to circuit training and then to running was not an easy psychological leap for me.
It took the motivation and then the support of a cool group of people to get me motoring along. It doesn’t matter how far away you are, if you are even remotely interested in getting or keeping fit, please sign up here:
http://my.corporatetriathlete.com/
It’s free and you can drop in and read and post questions in the forum and find people who will be able to answer your questions and help get you motivated. Here’s a snapshot of the topics in there now:
See? Not intimidating at all! It’s really for people who want to get started just moving in general like I did.
And no, you don’t need to make yourself as sore as I did! Also, there is a GREAT link to a cross training video workout (30 mins) that anyone can do at home. That’s in the Cross Training topic. I’ve done it twice now while watching TV and it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s not EASY – but it’s also totally something you can build up to and do.
Meanwhile, I am going to stay away from those damn monkey bars. Evil things.
Yes, I am a runner now – as of just over a year ago – but for my first 46 years…ok…maybe I shouldn’t count those first couple eh?…my favorite mode of exercise was walking. I could walk forever. A few times I even walked 60 miles over 3 days
Mostly though, I walked or more specifically, hiked, because I am also a bird watcher.
It’s kind of hard to see and properly identify birds while running! Though, I do try (maybe that explains the chronic kink in my neck?!)
After hiking in the local chaparral you can’t help but start to notice and learn how to identify the plants and flowers around you. I mean, it’s a lot easier when birding with friends to say “Thrasher in the sage!” vs “Thrasher in the bush with the silver fuzzy leaves and purple flowers!”
I am glad that I learned that the pretty little red flower that the hummingbirds seemed to like is called a Monkey Flower:
Monkey Flower – from Save The Chapparal
I mean, how much fun is that to say?! Also, you should check out that Save The Chapparal link – some gorgeous photos with proper identification of the gorgeous flora and fauna in my area.
My friend wrote about the benefits of walking as exercise here: Take a Walk
While leaving a comment there I remembered all the ways last year that I maximized my steps while wearing a pedometer during my company wide Steps to Wellness challenge.
I was incredibly competitive and got not a little silly about it all! I thought it was more efficient to list those steps here and to clog up her comments with a full on blog post of my own.
I know I am forgetting some but honestly, if you get yourself a pedometer and follow the daily guidelines from Corp Tri’s post, you will get caught up really quickly in figuring out ways to take extra steps.
And that means you are moving, which is never ever never a bad thing!
Plus you get to stop and smell the flowers – which is something not entirely encouraged while running
Don’t get me wrong, I do love running now. Well, no, let me rephrase that.
Eve taught me a little trick for setting a good pace while running which is to mentally chant “I love running” and then to keep your feet moving in that rhythm. It works really well especially on really rough days or going up hills to keep my mind focused on getting through the run.
It’s also a lie.
The real truth is “I love stopping running” That is to say that I love the feeling of accomplishment and sometimes even strength that I have when I finish a run no matter how short or long. That “Rowr, I did it!” feeling is fantastic.
But you can’t STOP unless you START so….someone in between those two, you simply have to run.
I miss walking though. My time now is all taken up with figuring out how to get in that 30-35 minutes to run a 5k route. I used to find the time to WALK that!
So today, I purposefully planned 60 minutes allowing myself 20-25 minutes of trail WALKING after the run.
And that?
I really DID love!
Last year at this time we had just finished up a wellness campaign at work where we counted our steps on a pedometer. There were conversion rates from other types of exercise into steps. I loved that things like gardening & vacuuming were on there. Because doing an hour of floor cleaning sure as hell felt like workout #1 today!!
After lunch I met up with my running buddies for a 45 minute trail run. Which became closer to 40 since a couple of us got there a little late (oops). This was my first run in a week and BOY was that OBVIOUS! I was huffing and puffing and still fell way behind the others. Just struggled the whole time. That’s what a week of being a slug will do dammit.
Back to the house after to get 15 & circuit workout supplies (weights & mat). 15 drove us to the park for our workout with Coach Tanja which also utterly kicked my ass. And my shoulders. And my quads. Lawdy I’ll be a whining, sore mess tomorrow!!
We all went out for sushi dinner after though so it was worth it. Well, 15 got chicken teriake (sp?) since he hates fish but anyway – love hanging with the Leg Up peeps! Great end to the weekend again.
Of course once we get home its homework time & after tackling English 15 focused on preparing for a Wed math test. He has been complaining (shock!) that he doesn’t know HOW to study for tests (bigger shock, eh?) I told him I would give him tips but then he remembered that there were some formulas he needed to memorize & he had them there and wanted me yo quiz him.
But first he had to translate to English for me!! I mean, how the eff do you read out loud “csc (-u) = “???
Anyhow – he actually knew them very well & we came up with a few tricks to help with a couple & I’ll quiz him the next two days too.
So color me dazed & confused today from some hard workouts for my body & brain. Great prep for the week ahead, right?
😜
Pre-race coaching
Beautiful morning along the bay
Yes, people raced in Halloween costumes. I paced myself with Superman and Batgirl
Cheerleaders taking a break while I slaved away
Still smiling half way through
Coming in for the finish - notice the cowbell. That's head cheerleader Alex.
I finished in 30:36 with a pace of 9:52 – which is well under my goal of 33mins – I broke the 10:00 mile pace! Wahoo!!
45 mins after my wave – Alex and I traded places:
It's easy to look so fresh at the start
Hmm...is he looking tired?
OK...maybe not...darn kids.....
OK, NOW he really does look rough - turns out he was about to barf.....which he thankfully did OFF camera around a corner - while still running.
A little lighter now - he sprints to the finish.
YES! He's TIRED! Makes his dad and I feel a little better anyhow.
Alex didn’t quite meet his goal of a sub-20minute run. But considering he stopped to throw up at around the 3 mile mark and has not run this distance since the Spring Sprint triathlon (when he ran the same course in 25 minutes after swimming and biking) – his time of 21.03 was still pretty awesome. That’s a 6:47 pace. Boggles MY mind and body! And, he finished 2nd in his age group only 20 second behind the winner
Podium!
The Leg Up Team
Coach Tanja towers over us in many ways – she’s the reason I even got off the sofa and started working out. She graciously took on the challenge of a teenager in her circuit training classes and then she, Matt (not pictured), Renee and Evangeline have supported him with coaching, hand me down equipment and overall encouragement. Renee and Eve took on an even bigger task – when I expressed a crack in my armor of running loathing – they jumped right in and gently walked me through getting myself into running. They took me out on their training runs and patiently let me jog at my own pace and build up distance and then speed. Without the support of all four of them – yes, I count Alex in for pushing me even though there is no way in hell I can *compete* with him – I could not legitimately call myself a runner.
And tomorrow? I have an even bigger challenge – I have to take pictures and cheer on all of THEM in the triathlon event. Pretty sure I’m going to be DONE around 10am tomorrow.
Final stats:
It is so damn odd to have Sports Boy here during the month of July! I have felt so disoriented. Every summer for the past five (six? seven?) years he has hopped on a plane to Sweden pretty much within a week of school ending. Sometimes the very next morning. He would return the last weekend in July because pop warner football practices would be starting Aug 1. Even though he started high school last year, he still went on his trip because he could get away with missing the summer weights program as an incoming freshman. The next three years? Not so much. As a JV or Varsity player you had better participate. There is a mandatory No Contact period for two weeks beginning the week of the 25th before two a day practices start so football families are expected to plan their vacations accordingly. This year he is saving the Sweden trip for Christmas. It will be his first winter over there and while I will most likely whine about it, I have also known for three years that he would go there this year. Great grandma turns 90 at the end of December and yeah, he needs to be there for that.
So this summer has been a whole new experience. Weight training 4 days a week. Passing league (since he is a wide receiver) for a couple of hours after weight training two of those days. Sometimes the passing league is away at another school so they can compete in a touch football style game. That means driving since there are no buses taking them anywhere over the summer. Then he has his dog sitting job providing him with a little spending money which has been just perfect. The house is around the corner from mine and once we gave them his football schedule they have inserted a few hours every week for him to give their new puppy a break from the crate while they are at work. We opened a teen bank account for him this week so that he can deposit the checks he is getting and I’m sure it will be fun teaching him cash management!
Then there is my fitness routine. No longer is it an after work for an hour class thing. Now it is me finding time to run – often in the morning no less! It just makes sense in the summer to go out before work. No school drop off to rush to and it is a much more pleasant temperature. I can get in a good 30-40 minute run and still get into work by 8am without too much effort other than actually getting OUT of bed when I wake up vs lounging around with the cats watching TV until 7am Since I am trying to run 3-4 times a week that means at least one or two morning outings. The other times I usually join our teammates on their training runs. This week I did intervals for the first time. That was interesting! You try to run faster for intervals of 5,4,3,2 and then 1 minute with short 1.5 minute rests in between to get your heart rate down. I kept it still fairly slow the first 3 intervals but then I really tried to keep up with Eve on the 2 minute one and I ran flat out with her on the last one. My heart rate shot up to 184 at the end and I was starting to get a bit fuzzy vision but it was pretty fun! The good thing is that my recovery was no problem. No soreness or pain anywhere after.
I’ve also started helping out a friend on a business idea which means me doing more writing. Which cracks me up to no end! Me? I *hate* writing! Well, yeah, but I also hate running and well..see the paragraph above. Apparently I need to be careful about what I declare that I hate because sure enough, that will be the next thing the universe puts in front of me that I just cannot avoid. On the other hand, in just about 20 minutes I’ve written over 700 words for this blog post so – I guess it’s not so bad eh? So if I can find a way to make a little extra $ then I am on it. Plus, it’s pretty interesting and fun. That’s the best right? When you can do something that sparks your imagination and interest?
That’s the first half of my summer so far – how is yours going?
After lugging around a very NICE camera in Minneapolis and taking lots of pictures there, I was feeling decidedly unenthusiastic about photo taking this weekend so I left my semi-decent digital at home and mentally shut down my photo taking part of my brain. Which naturally means there will be photo ops galore, right? Yeah…oh well.
Saturday was all day passing league event for SportsBoy and his JV football team. I thought it would all be in a stadium setting meaning way too far away for my little camera to capture anything decent, but of course the first two games were played on a back field where I *could* have had some close up shots. Instead, I captured the team at rest once those first two games were done:
You can't see SB in this one, but I love the sun beams
There he is!
They ended up coming in 2nd place in the round robin event that had about 20+ teams from all the local high schools. SB caught 5 passes, 4 for touchdowns (it was touch football, passing lays only with defensive players). Two in his typical dramatic “will he catch it or wont he?” style complete with one spectacular tumbling bouncing off the turf fall. Even without pads the kid plays as if he is pinball!
So that was all day Saturday in the hot son out in east county.
Sunday I was up at 4:15 to perfect my role as LegUp Head Cheerleader as Renee launched her triathlon race career with a damn impressive second place finish in her age group. First time out! She’s clearly a natural.
The two R's pulling on their wetsuits. Not so easy.
Sometimes it helps if you do a little dance while getting assistance
Ready to rock n roll!
Swim over - running to hop on the bike. One mouthful of deisel fuel consumed (ew)
At this point thanks to this race course, Eve and I couldn’t see anything but the finish. Eve did her run for the day following the same four mile run route the racers would take. I hopped on a shuttle I *would* have run but since I am still new to the whole thing most likely I would not have been able to go fast enough to be there to see Coach Tanja finish. Or even Renee for that matter! It would have been close anyway. As it is, Tanja passed up Eve. Since Eve wasn’t racing she had her phone with her and got this pretty cool shot:
Tanja had no idea - supreme focus!
Renee heading for the finish line
Podium gals - Renee in 2nd, Tanja (of course) 1st in her age group.
Phone quality difference – this last one was taken with an iPhone 4 vs my 3GS – way better camera on the newer ones!
The teams - racers + cheerleaders
So now you can see why I still haven’t finished writing up my NN11 experience. I should be catching up this weekend since its a long one. And figuring out how I can upgrade my phone
I’ve been following a blog about a cat lovin’ woman in Alabama for about 3-4 years now. She lives on a small farm with pigs & chickens & dogs & a shit-ton of cats. OK, to be fair, she is a foster kitty mama and has perfectly set up rooms in her farm house to keep fosters or pregnant mama’s and babies segregated from her Permanent Residents. Of which, right at this moment, there are 14 I believe. Given that she currently has one cat who literally blew in after a tornado, a mama cat who birthed 6 kittens and yet another litter of 3 kittens that she is fostering – that is now 25 cats in the house! 25!! Yes, I did coin the phrase on her current blog header “My gawd, there are cats everywhere!” I’ve followed closely enough to have shed tears when Mr Boogie died and to cheer when fosters are eventually adopted, and yes, even when they end up becoming Permanent. I’ve had Andersen Kitty calendars hanging next to my desk the last two years. Over the years I’ve noticed in the comments that people write about the Crooked Acres clan appearing in their dreams. Robyn gets a huge kick out of that. This week, it happened to me and I woke up just cracking up (my cats everywhere phrase came from the dream). I even specifically talked about the current family of kittens (McMaos). Seriously damn funny to dream about people and animals you have never once met in real life! To be fair though – Robyn has posted videos of herself and the cats and just tons upon tons of pictures so in my subconscious mind it would seem like we regularly hang out
What may be odder still than dreaming about an online only blog friend, is to dream about someone from twitter. Who has never posted a picture of themselves and who you have NEVER heard speak. There are a handful of folks there who I know 100% in 140 character increments only and I engage in conversations with them nearly daily. It hasn’t happened yet, but I assume it is inevitable as many of them have reported twitter friends appearing in dreams. I often wonder if I will picture them as their avatars (some use cartoons, some use generic animal photos etc). Will Socratic show up as a badger in my dreams someday? It would be weird, but I probably shouldn’t be surprised!
Also, how does it happen that in a very large city, and all the hours available in a day, that I would end up running into my supervisor and his wife at Macy’s two weekends in a row?
Then there is my quirky, cranky hip. Honestly if I think about it, this annoying pain has been there since my youth. I must have hurt something dancing or doing PE in high school or both or who knows….but as long as I could remember if I do any intense distance walking/hiking or make even a half assed attempt at running it would hurt. In fact, I used the chronic hip as an excuse NOT to run for all these years because it was a guaranteed trigger. And when it hurts – it HURTS. Getting up from a chair, putting on pants & socks & shoes or anything that requires putting weight on only one leg at a time becomes a challenge. I think I mentioned earlier that I thought the circuit workouts which had some good hip flexor exercises must have helped because the whole months of April & May I ran pain free. And then…..I sort of thought I felt it late last week. I noticed that I could touch my hip bone on the outside and that the muscle over it was tender. But it was very mild and went away quickly. Then I noticed it again running yesterday towards the end of my run specifically when I turned to look over my shoulder for cars so I could cross the street. Bad move. TWINGE. But, I got home, cooled down, stretched and it faded. It didn’t hurt this morning though might have felt tender to the touch sort of? So when I went out for my planned longer trail run this morning with The Boy & Renee and Eve, I wasn’t too concerned. Yeah, there was some awkward trail terrain, but it was fine. A little twinge here and there, but nothing too bad. Then….a damn freaking bumble bee or june bug flew up and I had to stop suddenly and dart to one side and TWINGE TWINGE TWINGE. Both times it was towards the end of the runs too so I was plenty stretched & warm. But…this time it is officially flared up Big Time. Now 7 hours after the run and it has hurt like hell all day. So I finally looked it up online and voila:
IT band - sitting over the bursa over the top of the outer hip bone
Trochanteric Bursitis. Caused when the IT band is too tight and so rubs against the bursa jamming it against the bone and causing it to become inflamed. The symptoms match mine exactly. Nice to finally know what it is. And to find some stretches to help with it once it heals again. So, my feet will be up for a couple of days. Targeted ice massage & stretching. Also, perhaps I shall be more careful about shifting my weight while I run. The bug thing? Well, that was a quirky event. But I can try to remember to stop before crossing the street from now on. No need to do it on the fly & risk this again.
Bursitis. Great. Totally sounds like an old person’s injury right?
Oh. Yeah. Shut up.
