That’s so cold NM! (and we will have it tomorrow) Please be careful! I hope you are carrying a phone somewhere when you hike. (although the other day when I ran outside in about 25 degrees I noticed my phone in my hand quickly drained- would cold affect it?
Yes…phone battery drains VERY quickly.
1214 - love Zion! Are you going to Bryce as well?
NMinn- wow. Good job. Yes, my phone completely shuts down if it gets too cold.
Yay NMinn and 1214 and everyone else! 
Hi everyone. I finally have a moment to take a breath. My father’s stint in the hospital has turned into quite an ordeal requiring hours of involvement in dealing with doctors for days on end. We are really not sure at this juncture whether his situation is going to have a good outcome. Between that, still screwing around being a lawyer, training clients and fitting in my own training, I’ve had little time to just sit and chill out conversing online.
ohio, the Kickr is a great training tool and getting it at $999 is a good price. Whether it is worth it or not depends on how you want to train. If you want to do wattage based training, it’s one of the best trainers out there. If you want to be able to interface with third party training applications that can control the resistance, its open source architecture gives it the widest choice of programs you can use. There’s even a program from Kinomap that enables you to play a video shot from within a peloton riding epic rides including the Tour de France and as you ride along with your “fellow riders”, a signal embedded in the video alters the Kickr’s resistance to match the topography of the route. If none of this appeals to you and you only want to do hr training then the Kickr is likely overkill for you. You could do quite well with a high end fluid trainer like a Kurt Kinetic (my favorite) or a Cycleops.
As to holiday fitness toys, there’s a box that got delivered that I’m not permitted to open until Chanukah that I know contains an IWatch Series 2. It’s sitting in plain view causing me existential angst :).
We are glad to hear from you Michael - hoping for that good outcome. 1214 - that sounds like an awesome trip.
Winter has arrived. 22 degrees currently and winds - wind chill advisory, but managed to get out for 6.1 miles with my two diehard running friends. I was ready to bail but they guilted me into it and after reading NorthMinnesota’s routine, I feel like a real wimp! Saturday doesn’t look promising for a long run so it was good to just get it done. My Pilates teacher is back from vacation and I am looking forward to tomorrow when I can do some serious stretching - I wish I could get Mr. Sabaray to help me.
Hoping for a good outcome for your father, Michael.
You are tough, Sabaray!
Michael, I’m sure your dad appreciates you being his advocate. Sending good thoughts and prayers for improvement.
I am not feeling OK, and it appears that I am very dehydrated. My husband said he thinks this virus takes away your thirst instinct and that we both got really dehydrated. I can understand it with him, because he had all the stomach stuff with it, but I’m surprised that I am so dehydrated. I felt horrible on the treadmill this morning. I mean- horrible. My HR was high at 11:45 pace- and it did not feel easy. I tried cranking it down to 11:06 for a brief stretch and it felt like the end of a 5K. I struggled through 2 1/2 miles and then drank a huge glass of iced tea. Weight was low (not complaining, but I know it is from being dehydrated). I didn’t have an appetite for breakfast until I got to work and saw the greasy biscuits and gravy at our “feast” (Day 2). I’ll be fine- it’s just strange. I’m going to force fluids all day today.
I am sitting on a ferry right now trying to ignore the fact that the ride is very rough and I get seasick easily. Bagged exercise for 2 days to close our vacation place (on an island–hence the ferry ride).
I signed up for hot yoga tonight to get myself back into the exercise mode.I can get really lazy and that is bad news for me. Also signed up for the stair climb on March 4; youngest D and boyfriend will do it with me.
Just got an email for the new Fitbit Charge HR 2. (I have the first version of the Fitbit Charge HR). FBChr2 has some new features-- the reminder to get up each hour, a mindfullness/meditation feature and a few other things. Going to put it in my Christmas list!
Hope all goes well with your Dad, Michael.
45 minutes on the Cybex Arc + 1 mile walk.
26 degrees here at the moment, but with the wind it feels like 11. Higher winds coming this afternoon, and then bitter cold tomorrow. But then in the low 40s on Saturday. Yup, gotta love New England weather.
Hope you feel better, MOWC. And all good wishes for your father, MNK.
Edited to add: I also got that email/notification from Fitbit re: Charge 2. I’d really like either that or the Alta, but my (old style) Charge HR I have works just fine, so I really can’t justify it. There will always be something new coming along …
MOWC, I don’t know why you aren’t in home and in bed. You should just take this time to relax and watch a movie or sleep, for a couple of days until you feel well. If you don’t want to break your exercise streak, take a couple of two pound weights to bed and do some upper body stuff (how my injured dad exercises sometimes), and count that as exercise. It sounds dangerous for your to do what you’re doing, and the best thing for you (and the people around you) is to just rest and relax!! Sometimes I even kind of enjoy being sick (if I don’t feel too awful), so I don’t feel guilty lounging around the entire day. Take advantage of it!
Thank you everyone for your thoughts about my father. One of the things that is frustrating and infuriating is that the hospital incorrectly put him on meds to lower his blood pressure when he should not be on that and it is contraindicated and also took him off a med that prevents excessive heart rate which he was on to prevent afib and throwing a clot. We repeatedly corrected things at the hospital but the changes never made it to his chart and now at the rehab facility, the same faulty records have followed him. We have spoken to the rehab facility and were assured things would be corrected but we discovered this morning that they were about to give him the same incorrect BP meds. Then, they wanted to give him sleeping meds so that he would not wake up at night to go to the bathroom. In the meantime, we are trying to determine whether his reduced cognition, constant sleeping and lack of responsiveness are signs of a spiraling decline when in reality these symptoms could be caused by the screwed up meds. I am going to strangle someone!
MOWC, please, please take care of yourself! I know you have the heart of a warrior but it’s ok to give yourself a break to recover, it really is, lol :).
I’m reading about everyone’s efforts to maintain their weight during the holidays and am both impressed and a bit envious on another level. As I’ve posted, I’m experimenting with trying to gain more muscle mass using a 5x5 strength weight lifting routine that is based on bench presses, squats, deadlifts, rowing and barbell shoulder presses as the primary exercises. To gain significant muscle mass, you have to eat to gain weight. When you eat to gain weight, the weight doesn’t all go on as muscle. So as my chest and arms are getting bigger, my body fat is also increasing around my stomach area. After spending so many years working to develop and maintain a lean appearance in the abdominal area, this is very unnerving! It’s not that I’m getting “fat”, I’m just not lean like I was. I just keep telling my self to stick to the game plan. Come the end of January, I will change up the weight routine to sets of 8-12 for hypertrophy and will change my diet to lean out again but until then, I’m plodding along with trepidation!
Michael, that it is really infuriating. Big hugs.
MOfWC, please make sure you are getting enough electrolytes. Fever, sweating, and stomach issues, especially all combined, will make you lose salts. You might be drinking a lot and yet it does not help with the dehydration because it is all imbalanced.
Working on my final class projects. Fingers crossed, beginning tomorrow, I will be a free bird for a couple of weeks. Still doing weights and whatever I can.
Good suggestions, Bunsen and I hope freedom is as close as it appears!
Over-prescribing and incorrect medication is such a problem. I’m glad you’re overseeing your father’s care, Michael. How frustrating.
Michael- that is awful and sounds SO much like what we went through with my mother when she was in and out of hospitals. My sister is very medical and stayed on top of it, as you are, and caught all kinds of mistakes.
Busdriver- I don’t have an exercise streak. I have a running streak. It will end someday, but not today. The virus I had wasn’t all that bad and I was very over it by Wednesday morning when I came back to work. I’m not tired and certainly can’t be off from work. I was working from bed on Tuesday! I barely had stomach stuff- that’s what’s so odd about being dehydrated. I’m drinking a lot today. I’m pretty careful and certainly wasn’t going outside in the 10 degree wind chill for my run! The good thing about running is that it sort of regulates itself- I do what I can do, and then that’s it. It happened to be slow and harder than it should have been today, and short, but it got done!
MOfWC, it sounds like your Sonic drink might be really good for you right now. Get the real sugar version!
I lost 2 pounds in the past month without doing much exercise or curbing my eating. All that mental work must be burning my calories!
CBB: I really want the reminder feature of the new Charge HR 2–original Charge HR doesn’t have it. I’m disciplined about getting an hour or more of exercise 5-6 times a week. However, after reading about the study showing that the benefits of exercising every day for a defined period can be blunted by not being active/sitting around the rest of the day, I realized I needed to get more active during the times I’m not in the gym or yoga studio.
I work part-time as an editor and when I’m working, I get very focused and will easily spend 2-3 hours sitting at my desk. The reminder would be great for me. I work from home so I can easily get up and move around my office and/or walk outside for 10 minutes. Here is a synopsis of the research. http://time.com/3672428/exercise-sitting
Yeah sometimes when my Alta buzzes for steps I find myself saying “seriously? An hour has passed already?!”
I know a few people who have had that “bug” that MOWC describes where the main symptoms were fever, achy, tired and little appetite BUT no stomach issues really to speak of. My D’s roommate had it the whole last week of school - pre and during exams - I was amazed D didn’t pick it up.