<p>The trainer said I might be ready for “real” pushups at the beginning of the year. :o</p>
<p>One Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup here. At the neighbor’s, which was my plan. I gave out Gummi/Skittle/Starburst/Sticky crap that I don’t like. That said, from the cannoli Friday night to the wine & taglietelle Bolgnese & cheese cake Saturday, to the neighbor’s famous sausage minestrone Sunday night it was a big eating weekend. Only up .2 this morning.</p>
<p>Hope all the injuries are on the mend. NorthMinn, I’m so glad you chose the trainer prize. You’ll be amazed by your progress!</p>
<p>Week 6 of Bridge to 10k. The instructions are pretty simple: Run for 60 minutes. Happy to report I did it. Then I walked for 2 minutes and I still wasn’t home, so jogged the rest of the way. 66 minutes to complete my 6.1 mile loop. I may try to tweak the loop to add another .1 to get to a full 10k.</p>
<p>Wow!!! Wow-O-WOW Chintzy!!! This running gig is working for you! You must be so proud of yourself! Heck…I am proud of you! You are so incredibly inspiring. Thanks for the update…it will keep me going! Thank you!</p>
<p>Wow chintzy, that’s impressive! I am up to 1.5 miles slow pace or 1 mile fast pace. I’m doing a 5k race on Thanksgiving, and I do believe I still won’t run the whole thing.</p>
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<p>I finally just said, “screw it” and started doing them. It was rough at first (couldn’t get all the way down to the floor, couldn’t do very many), but doing them led to doing them better and longer. I actually haven’t done a straight pushup for a few weeks. I might have to give it whirl today just to see if I’ve progressed. Maybe that’ll be my little something extra today as burpees and pushups in combo with stabilty ball roll-ins are the only pushups in this particular iPod workout. I can’t do very many of either of those. I’ve also got a new Workout Muse (“Crank it in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1”) iPod interval soundtrack I want to try: 10 seconds hard, 50 seconds recover. I think it will be good for all-out Airdyne sprints.</p>
<p>Rachel Cosgrove suggests doing pushups elevated with your hands on a box or even on a stair step at first. Angling the body reduces the effective bodyweight. I did them from my knees for a long time.</p>
Even though I am sick I felt like I had to move. I went to the gym in our subdivision and did 35 minutes on the elliptical listening to their programmed (cardio theater) 60s music. Then- I got on the dreadmill and planned to do a very slow mile. I started at 12:00 pace and got it down to 10:00 and made 1 1/2 miles in 16:25. Didn’t do any damage. Didn’t cough a lung up. I’m not supposed to run, but I sure feel better for having done that little bit.
I have an “event” this Saturday. It’s called The Tyler Cup and it was started many years ago by the CEO of (then ) Tyler Corporation in Dallas. It is an invitational for senior executives (upper levels of a company’s management team) over 40. Frank Shorter attends every year. It is held in Dallas at The Cooper Aerobic Center- Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s facility. Dr Cooper always participates. There are walking heats and running heats. Many of these executives (overwhelmingly male, but a few women) are really getting up there in years- I’m talking 80s and older in some cases. It is truly inspiring. I was always quite competitive and my company team actually WON the Tyler Cup (3 runners total times) in 1996, which was a huge honor. It was the first team (and only team) to win with a woman on the team. My CEO was our lead runner and BEAT Frank Shorter (12 years younger) head to head. It was one of the highlights of my athletic career. Well- fast forward to this August when I decided to return to Dallas for Tyler Cup since I appeared to be able to run. George W. Bush is getting the Cooper prize and will be there. This isn’t about politics- it’s about commitment to fitness. He was a member of the Cooper Center for many years before he became Gov of Texas and many of my friends ran with him every day at noon. I changed my entry a few weeks ago to the walking heat. There is also a Clockless heat for those who truly don’t want to be timed. My position has always been (and I’ve stated it loudly) that if I EVER enter the clockless heat I should be shot right then and there. I can stand the walking heat-but not the clockless heat. Today I changed my entry back to the slowest run heat because I know I won’t be able to stand to walk with a clock running on me and it won’t be fair to the “real” walkers if I do some running. So-here’s hoping I can navigate two flat miles at a reasonable, safe pace. I am honored to be invited and looking forward to it.
<p>Chintzy- Great job on the 10K training. Awesome to run an hour (really an hour plus)! My daughter and her husband ran 5K race on Saturday. He never ran a 5K before- just walked. They did 28:45 and were thrilled. Goal was to break 30. I’m so proud of them. They have been working hard at it. </p>
<p>NMinn- Great job on the upper body work. I agree that pushups on a slant (slanting with head higher) are the way to start. You will get better and better at it and soon you will be doing iDad’s insane workouts!!</p>
<p>NMinn, you are a beast! I still think my 5 lb weights seem heavy.</p>
<p>I’ve had this salad aversion for a while. I posted either on this thread or another that I’ve developed an oral allergy to some salad dressings…always the ones from restaurants, never the bottled ones from home. Today (after eating too much wonderful fresh kettlecorn over the weekend) I ate a big salad for lunch…had the most pedestrian low fat ranch…just a little of it…and now my tongue is swollen. I just don’t think I can eat dry salad.</p>
<p>missypie…H puts low fat cottage cheese on his salad. Can you do balsamic vinaigrette or vinegar and oil???</p>
<p>I don’t eat store-bought salad dressings at all. I always make my own from scratch. It’s so simple: just extra virgin olive oil, some kind of vinegar or citrus, some salt and pepper, maybe some blue cheese, maybe some parmeggiano reggiano cheese, maybe some anchovies, maybe some dijon mustard, maybe some blender scallions. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what is causing your allergic reaction in restaurant dressings.</p>
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<p>You’re kidding, right? I once had an allergic reaction to some beef quesadillas at Chilies…they were kind enough to send me their list of ingredients…there were 187 ingredients!!!</p>
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<p>Once you go from 5 pounds to 8 or 10 pounds, the progression starts to accelerate a bit. Remember that you are only looking to do five to ten reps with your heaviest weight. If you are doing 12 to 20 reps with a weight, it’s time to crank it up a notch and go a little heavier.</p>
<p>It also depends on the context. I can’t use the heaviest weight I can manage when I’m doing these exercise circuits or supersets. I’m too gassed to keep good form unless I dial back the weight. Everything I do is time based, so there is a trade-off. Lighter weights mean faster reps, heavier weights generally mean a slower, more deliberate pace as I can sometimes only do eight reps or so.</p>
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<p>I think these workouts are manageable for anyone here. They are kind of self-levelling in that you adapt to do them has hard (or easy) as you can at that particular point in time. You quickly figure out just how hard you can push with an exercise (weight, tempo, and reps) to go the allotted time. The one caveat would be that there is a progression of core exercises that would be hard to bypass. For example, you’ll never do pushup position dumbbell rows until you are solid doing plank.</p>
<p>missypie that’s just so weird. I think in your shoes I’d bring a little bottle of my own dressing.</p>
<p>At one time I ordered a whole lot of single serviing packets of dressing and would take them with me. The disturbing thing about today’s reaction is that, as I said, it was a very pedestrian low fat ranch. I’m wondering now I’ll be reacting to the bottled dressings. I really don’t know where to turn unless I can figure it out myself. I’ve had an oral allergy to nuts since I was young…(TMI, but they cause big sores in my mouth), but at the allergist, I don’t test as allergic to nuts.</p>
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<p>I don’t think there is anything “pedestrian” about a processed “low-fat” salad dressing. Those things are loaded to the gills with gum this and gum that, this preservative and that preservative, MSG and who knows what. I’m not picky about processed foods, but I bet the ingredient list of that dressing is a mile long.</p>
<p>I would start with the basics: 2 tablespoons of olive oil, one tablespoon of balamic vinegar, a little salt and pepper, and build from there.</p>
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<p>I agree that they are loaded with all sorts of bad chemicals, but my point was that what was at this salad bar was probably very similar to what I buy at home and I haven’t reacted to that in past.</p>
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<p>Good idea but it works better at home than out at a salad bar with ten people behind you waiting for you to finish your concoction.</p>
<p>missypie…for years I couldn’t eat salads when we went out to eat. Made me teribly ill and was even hospitalized a few times. I never had salad dressing so it was the greens…I think it was whatever they used to treat the greens with. Now that there is organic stuff I can eat them but I am very careful not to venture far from home.</p>
<p>I may have to test your theory that it’s the greens and not the dressing. BUT, the depressing thing is that I can’t figure out what low cal thing to eat for lunch here at work if not salad. Lots of options, none of them healthy. I just can’t eat a turkey sandwich from Subway…way too dull.</p>
<p>If you’ve got a microwave (and aren’t on a salt restriction), a can of Progresso soup is a fine low-cal lunch. 200 to 300 calories for a full can (plus whatever you jazz it up with) that is very filling.</p>