For those of you who worry about your kids’ racing events… my son competes in formation parachuting. Don’t you all feel better now? Friday on Facebook: “had to deploy my reserve, first time I’d packed it myself.” It was today before I could bring myself to call and ask about that. Turned out it was the fifth time he’d been in a situation where he had to cut away his primary… he just hadn’t mentioned the first four times because “it was no big deal, mom.” However, I do feel better about the parachuting than I did about the very-deep-water rebreather diving he used to do.
And to keep this vaguely on topic: I had a dog thing Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Outside on grass, which was wonderful. And I still ran at least a mile all three days, which brings MY streak to 21, which is way less than MOWC’s, but it’s mine and I’m proud of it. (I was in Eugene, home of runners everywhere, and there were lovely FLAT trails, which was a nice change.)
I cannot imagine surviving a child who competes in parachuting. I would be in panic mode all the time.
I’m back from a long weekend away – had really bad travel karma on both legs so I spent more time traveling than I spent at the place I visited. Flights cancelled, flights delayed, alternate methods of transportation used. I got in a lot of steps just wandering around airports. The only positive side of this travel disaster was that I had to sleep at a friend’s house one night when the airline couldn’t rebook me until the next day – I ended up running 7 miles at her house. I wouldn’t have done that if I’d landed on time.
In the short time I was away, I ate really poorly. Not just the airline food, but the event I was had a lot of junk, and I ate it all. It’s really a good thing I don’t have junk food at home, because if you put bowls of pretzels, Doritos and M&Ms – and some pints of ice cream – in front of me, I will eat them all day long. What I tell myself is that this happens so rarely (I can’t remember the last time I had Doritos), I’m allowed a few slip ups.
I just mentioned this to my hubby. His jaw dropped. Yes, we feel relieved…
Gorgeous day here today! We walked the Beer Trail and ended up at one of the wineries. Decided to celebrate Fathers’ Day with a glass of local wine. Walked back to the car for 15,000 steps total.
A step story- I’m never awake at midnight. My flight landed close to 1am the other night, and my first thought stumbling through the Nashville airport was, “These steps are on Saturday!”
Congrats MOWC on your son’s success in the triathlon!
@PlantMom, think about the gears on your bike in terms of cadence and not bike speed. You want to find a cadence that is efficient and sustainable for the terrain you are on and then use your gears to maintain that leg speed as the terrain changes. As you get stronger, you will be able to maintain that sweet spot cadence with bigger gears and that’s where increased bike speed gets developed. So, for example, on a relatively flat road, your efficient sweet spot cadence may be between 90-100 rpms. You may hit some short rollers or a slight incline and change your gear to stay in that sweet spot range. Climbing a hill, you may feel like a good cadence range is 75-85 rpm. Pick a gear that enables you to maintain that and if the pitch of the climb changes, adjust your gears to maintain that cadence. As the terrain changes, keep adjusting your gears so that you can stay at a comfortable spin. As a general rule, cadence on flats should be somewhere between 85-105, on climbs between 70-85, never below 65 and no reason to go above 110 unless you are sprinting. Somewhere in those ranges you will find your own sweet spots.
70 minutes of MAF this morning…and unbelievably, it’s getting better. I still have a hard time with HR spikes but overall improvement. My legs were tired after the marathon trek at a snail’s pace on Saturday. Also ate way too much this weekend!
This article was in the Post this morning - thought it was a good read that I’d pass along - tips on balancing your diet when you’re eliminating foods or tweaking your nutrition plan.
sabaray- I had to accept that MAF would involve a lot of failure and certainly a lot of spikes. Especially with any sort of hills or shifts in terrain, your HR will go up. It’s frustrating, but it’s part of the process.
“For those of you who worry about your kids’ racing events… my son competes in formation parachuting. Don’t you all feel better now.”
You know, we really all should just watch more TV. No one ever got hurt binge-watching Orange is the New Black, which is what I did all day yesterday. We’re having a major heat wave - 108 forecast for today- time to huddle indoors. There were a couple of heat-related deaths yesterday - one hiker & one cyclist.
I did do an 8-mile hike on Friday, followed by an 8-mile run on Saturday, prior to the heat wave. I got blisters on the hike, probably because I wore cheap cotton socks. I never get blisters from running. No more hiking without good socks!
It was a busy weekend. Saturday night was the Outrun the Sun 5 mile (and 5K) Race Against Melanoma. It was a great event and we did it with Back on My Feet. Just a lot of fun and great to see so many members run well and enjoy themselves. It really is eye-opening to see how much pushing themselves with running and accomplishing things they didn’t think they could do really builds these guys’ confidence. One major tear jerker moment with a member who brought his 5 and 7 year old sons to run the 5K with him. He is a guy who has gone through some tough times in life. He is a recovering alcoholic and a couple years ago he lost joint custody and visitation rights with his boys because of his alcohol issues. He went through re-hab and joined Back on My Feet last year when he was in the homeless shelter. He doesn’t drink anymore, has a decent job, and moved into his own apartment two months ago. He has visitation rights again and his boys are the light of his life. We were all cheering for him as he and his boys ran across the finish line all holding hands, but most of us were in tears. Truly a joy to witness such an amazing turn-around in a guy’s life.
And then yesterday I spent 6 hours in the car driving to visit H’s Dad for Father’s Day. Had a mediocre lunch and spent the afternoon stuck inside watching golf with them on a glorious summer day. Arrgghh!
dmd - wow, just wow. Formation parachuting? I can’t even imagine!
I saw that, Bunsen…and then someone shared her FB post about the ordeal to one of the running groups I belong to there. She is very lucky to be alive! Part of me feels very badly for the bear who was only doing what bears do - protecting her cub.
Has anyone tried these? http://www.rxbar.com/ “Whole food” Paleo and Whole 30 compliant. Doesn’t seem to be any added sugars but still look like 14-15 grams per serving, 12 grams of protein.
That’s a scary story about the bear. Both my sister and my son have run into a huge black bear in the Poconos, where they live. WildChild got a picture of it and texted it to me a few weeks ago. He was trail running. He didn’t seem afraid. I will not be trail running up there when I go in a few weeks.
Love that story, C3B. People can save themselves- with help.
I’ve seen and heard of the rxbar, but haven’t tried it. I seem to have settled on Picky Bars.
Sabaray, those bars look good. As soon as I realized that “3 egg whites” was not meant to imply they had raw eggs (most likely those were baked into some sort of meringue), they began to sound delicious. I have to try some of them plus, of course, Picky Bars.
The black bear story spooked me, too! We have a cabin in the Maine mountains. Our neighbor is a registered Maine Guide and told us that our 48 acres in particular have a LOT of black bears on them. We have a bunch of beech trees that bears like. But we’ve never seen a single black bear on our property! In 25 years, we’ve seen exactly ONE black bear, on a paved road probably five miles from our cabin.
We wouldn’t let the kids go out by themselves when they were young, and we make a point to make lots of noise whenever we walk through the woods. When our son used to run long distances on the logging roads, we made him take a small airhorn that he could blow if he saw a moose or a bear.
