<p>Ask and you shall receive…;)</p>
<p>Middle of week 4 of couch to 5k. Going well. Legs still feeling well. Second Abasket’s recommendation of the running store. Went last year and went to a stability shoe, legs and feet feel much better. Bonus saw the exact shoes at Nordstrom Rack for $30! Maybe this should go in good buy of the day.</p>
<p>I’ll third the recommendation of the running store.</p>
<p>Wow Deb922 you are moving along - week 4!!!</p>
<p>Great deal on the shoes! </p>
<p>Reluctantly passed up the donuts someone brought for National Donut Day at work today - I do LOVE a good donut! But we have a wedding to go to tomorrow night and I’m anxiously awaiting a piece of wedding cake to savor.</p>
<p>I should have looked in the other kitchen for doughnuts.</p>
<p>deb911. Yeah, really.</p>
<p>I think the adjustment on the eating has been very hard with respect to running. Not all that hard in terms of getting enough to eat and being tempted. Well, a LITTLE tempted maybe. I do feel more lean and have kept the 3 pounds off. I think each run is gradually a little better. It’s been really humid, so there’s that, too. The 9 mile run we did in Charlottesville on Sunday really took a lot out of me- I even had to walk a little, which is unusual for me. I think my body was very used to being fueled by simple carbs. I am eating a lot of fruit- I’m sure much more than you eat, iDad. We have peaches, watermelon, strawberries… I poured a little almond milk over the fruit this morning and also had a hard-boiled egg. I need to hire someone to come cook for me. NOTE: I did have a beer last night. We brought back some great craft beers from Virginia (great beer store there) and one was a peach beer from South Carolina. It tasted like drinking a peach. It was SO good.</p>
<p>There is a fantastic lunch restaurant here (forgive me if I already posted this) near my work that recently opened. You pick your grilled fish and they have fantastic grilled sweet potato pieces and one other side (I passed on the rice)- I got bean/corn salsa. There are toppings for the fish- I got pineapple chutney. A little pricey (DadII would not be going there for lunch)- but it’s sort of the Pei Wei model where you order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. Very nice but certainly not fancy. </p>
<p>I’m going to try 10 miles in the morning so we’ll see how that goes. I’m not going to join one of the groups since I don’t know how I’ll feel and may need some walking breaks. I know I will adjust to this- I just hope it’s before next Saturday when I have a VERY difficult, hilly, hot 10 mile race that is a local tradition. Moon Pie-RC Cola 10 miler in Bell Buckle, TN. This is a FUN event with a festival. I guess I’ll have to pass on the fried Moon Pies!</p>
<p>MiamiDAP- I know you don’t read my posts, but for everyone else’s benefit…The one problem with swimming as exercise is that it does NOT help bone density in any meaningful way and is a poor choice as an “only” fitness activity for women, in particular. I was cautioned over and over about that by my Dr. when I was doing a lot of swimming back in the 90s.</p>
<p>Had people over last night and made some new appetizers. Since some of the crowd were young college students I made mini mac’n cheese muffins. OMG! I have stayed away from pasta for so long but I did try these and remembered again why I love macaroni. 
There was a Ritz cracker and melted butter mixture to make a crust in the muffin pan and then macaroni with a great cheese sauce. Bake and pop out of pan and you have a new finger food. Thank heavens they are now gone so I am having mixed berries for lunch. I did notice how puffy my face was this morning after having more carbs than I am used to…or maybe it was from that extra glass of wine. ;)</p>
<p>No barefootin’ for me. In fact, I just took advantage of the LLBean sale to get [a</a> summer pair of hiking boots](<a href=“http://cdni.llbean.com/is/image/wim/155037_1116_41]a”>http://cdni.llbean.com/is/image/wim/155037_1116_41). Same thing I already have, but leather and fabric instead of all leather, so they are little cooler. I have completely chewed up the leather pair in six months. Good and broken in, but they look like they’ve been thru the wars, covered with gouges in the leather from the rocks.</p>
<p>I found a great [video</a>](<a href=“Hiking Mt. Lafayette, New Hampshire, 8/6/2011 - YouTube”>Hiking Mt. Lafayette, New Hampshire, 8/6/2011 - YouTube)that shows the trail up agony ridge. Not too many barefoot hikers on this stuff, although you do see a lot of people in trail shoes – probably about 50/50 trail shoes/sneakers and hiking boots. The place where they are scrambling up with hands and feet is probably the toughest stretch I’ve done. Most rock in NH is rough granite, so the footing is pretty secure. This was some kind of mirror glazed rock with really sketchy footholds. Coming down, I resorted to turning around and coming down backwards on hands and feet for one little bit as you would definitely not want to lose your footing standing up!</p>
<p>It looks like my running will be down for a week so it’s a good time to crank the calories down to about 1,500/day for a week or however long I can stand it. I haven’t pushed them down low for a while because I’ve been running regularly and I get really hungry if I’m running and trying to limit calories.</p>
<p>On knee problems - running on tracks, especially small tracks, is not good for my knees.</p>
<p>It may be time for new shoes too. I have over 300 on the current pair. It’s just a matter of lacing up a new pair from my stack of five boxes in the basement.</p>
<p>I’ll be breaking into a new box here soon, too. Bought the extra pair when I was able to get them for, what, under $70? Full retail would have been around double that! Newtons full retail might be more… I’ve found good deals through Running Warehouse and Amazon on Mizuno, but to me it’s important with the first pair to learn what you need, eg neutral or stability, and at running stores this is what they do.</p>
<p>iDad, so the huts have bunks, with mattresses then? A trail with a hut (or huts?) sounds like a great way to go for a two day hiking adventure. Nice!</p>
<p>absket,
"Reluctantly passed up the donuts someone brought for National Donut Day at work today " - I had them for you, lost count, maybe 3 and they were not even good. I worked hard to compensate for you.</p>
<p>It was one donut. I followed it with stability ball, Bodylastics, reverse lunges, and the like.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yep. Bunks with thin mattresses and blankets. Indoor composting toilets. But, no showers. They serve dinner and breakfast – sounds like carbs, carbs, more carbs, and then carbs for desert. $118 bucks a night. Looks like mid-week, I can probably wait 'til a favorable 10 day weather report and still get a reservation. I am definitely going to stay in this one and do Franconia Ridge, sometime. I know that is doable. And, I’ll have to do stay at the Lake of the Clouds hut and do a two-day Mt. Washington climb sometime. Getting the 3.5 to 4 hour steep climb up to either of these huts out of the way on the first day makes the additional mile or two climb and then the full return downhill easily manageable on the second day. Both of these climbs are just too long for me to do as a day hike.</p>
<p>Logistically, I don’t know how to make a Garmin GPS watch go for two days without a recharge. I get low battery warnings by the end of a six hour hike. The handheld GPS I can manage because it runs on either a rechargeable battery or 3 AA batteries. I could be a real geek and take a tablet and watch movies! I could always take two iPods.</p>
<p>They do have limited electricity (solar and wind), but I forgot to ask if they let you recharge iPod/phones.</p>
"It was one donut. I followed it with stability ball, Bodylastics, reverse lunges, and the like. "
-My 3 or so were preceeded by 1.5 miles swim outside (55F air, 70F water) and intermixed with 3 miles walk during lunch (thankfully also about 59F and no sun, perfect). If my H. is up to it, we will go for about 2.5 miles walk in a evening, no weights today, but several times stairs up to the 4th floor to my office)
<p>I think that my 410 has a stated charge life of about 8 hours so it’s probably more like 6 or 7. I’ve been thinking about solar chargers but it’s probably a headache to carry one on a hike. Someday, there will be flexible solar materials that you can wear as clothes.</p>
<p>You must have been at Beer Run, MOWC. A favorite of D’s. NM, feel free to include me in any get togethers! Yum!</p>
<p>MoWC- if you read her posts, Miami also does a lot of walking, which is supposed to help with bone density. I have done both swimming and weights and walking, and my bone density is still on a slight decline. Have you found all your running to help with your bone density issues?</p>
<p>I might not agree with Miami all the time, but I like her attitude…I think sometimes we, (well maybe me, I shouldnt speak for others) can get too serious about this fitness/nutrition thing. I do the best I can, but I don’t want to be a slave to fitness routines anymore, or tracking calories, or heart rates. I try to do what I enjoy now, and throw in a donut now and then! Otherwise, I rebel. :)</p>
<p>san-dee Miami was clearly inferring that swimming made her stronger (true) and would help with bone density issues. I wanted to make it clear that swimming does not help with bone density. I’m glad you enjoy her attitude. To each his or her own.</p>
<p>I don’t think too many of us get too serious about the fitness/nutrition thing for extended periods of time. Geezers generally recognize how it all fits into the overall scheme of things. Life gets in the way. We like food. We get tired. We aren’t Olympians! We are geezers. And so it goes.</p>
<p>I can only assume all my running has helped with bone density issues. It’s what is recommended (weight bearing exercise). I still have bone density issues. I am small-framed, white, and have genetics against me. I suspect if I didn’t run it would be a lot worse. If I didn’t drink diet sodas it might be better.</p>
<p>“Geezers generally recognize how it all fits into the overall scheme of things. Life gets in the way. We like food. We get tired. We aren’t Olympians! We are geezers. And so it goes.”</p>
<p>Great words of wisdom, MOfWC!</p>
<p>I passed up the donuts in the kitchen today (not just any donuts, but TopPot donuts!!!), but ate a slice of cheesecake (discarded the crust) later in the day. I will call this dinner 
and just drink some Perrier after my evening run.</p>
<p>well i reread Miami’s post, and she says swimming made her stronger but she does do weights for osteoporosis. Well at least I think that’s what she said. I enjoy her posts cause they are so … unlike just about everyone else’s posts.</p>
<p>although this thread talks a lot about geezers, I think many of the posts I read are pretty serious stuff. Not saying thats bad, its just … intense. I guess I am just reflecting on my personal experience of 40 years of intense exercise, that has left me with a bunch of nagging injuries. That’s all.</p>
<p>Back to the basement after a day of hiking sandwiched between two days of absolutely nothing. Tough workout. It’s amazing to me how different the exact same workout with the exact same weights can be on different days. But, I punched the clock. You know what they say, “Just git 'er done…”</p>
<p>Actually, I guess I did crank it up on one part of the workout. I did three sets of 16 swings with the 50lb kettlebell.</p>
<hr>
<p>san-dee:</p>
<p>At least for me, the heart rate monitors and stuff are good in two ways. First, they keep me interested in working out. I mean, let’s face it, setting aside some time to go get sweat and pant like a dog isn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world. So to add a little gee-whiz techno factor to it makes it a little more fun. </p>
<p>And, on a more serious note, I use the heart rate monitor as a tool to make sure I’m doing appropriate workouts – getting enough intensity so that the workout is accomplishing something, but not so much that I’m killing myself. Doing intervals based on heart rate recovery is actually a VERY conservative approach to exercise because it tailors the intensity and the rest to my exact state of physical fitness at an exact moment in time.</p>
<p>Another example, wearing a heart rate monitor while I hike has made me consciously work on hiking slower. A guy my age has no business trying to go at 90% of my max heart rate for hours at a time. Those kinds of heart rates should be like sweet desserts. Just a little bite here and there – not huge portions, every day.</p>
<p>Personally, I think everyone should use heart rate monitors for exercise, but especially geezers.</p>