<p>Yeah. I’m not sure but what the extreme dryness during these cold snaps doesn’t screw with the heart monitor readings. I know mine needs some moisture (persperation) to work and in the winter, I actually moisten the chest strap before I put it on.</p>
<p>I was getting screwy high readings on the first two intervals today. I mean, dumbbell swings and burpees are hard and all, but 100% would be unusual for the first interval. It seemed to calm down later in the workout and I was seeing numbers more like I would expect: peaks in the low 90% of max range.</p>
<p>Decided to stop beating myself up with my mileage goals and streak. Said goodbye to both and went to my first Hot Yoga class in about 2 1/2 years. It was incredibly hard, but I did better than I expected- probably because of all the PT exercises. I think Hot Yoga will be good for my hips and hamstrings, as long as I am careful not to over-stretch. It was a 75 minute class, and I started to get pretty dizzy towards the end, even though we were in the floor part by then. It is a great workout, and I looked like I had gone swimming. I used to go about 3 or 4 days a week when we lived in Dallas and I wasn’t running competitively. I had to regroup after class before I could even make it out to the car. It takes a few classes to get used to the heat. I am going to try for twice a week. It isn’t particularly convenient and presents some logistical issues with the day job, but I’ll do the best I can. I’m looking out the window half thinking I should go out in the cold rain and run a mile to keep the streak alive, but I won’t. I am going to do what’s right for ME and not what’s expected in my 2000 mile a year internet forum!</p>
<p>Thank god! Praise Jesus! Can I get an “amen”? Amen!</p>
<p>I never run across anyone who thinks that running every day is a healthy strategy. I don’t think it’s smart to do **any **one kind of workout more than three days a week (four tops) with no recovery days in between.</p>
<p>Blankmind: At least you weren’t cukoo for Cocoa Puffs. (And I feel your pain – while I can ignore the Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa Krispies are banned from my house because I can and will eat the entire box. H likes Captain Crunch, but fortunately that calls me not at all.)</p>
<p>Livestrong: I’m still not seeing it. When I put “nonfat milk” into the What did you eat? search box, and then hit search, I’m given a list of possible entries. Picking the Kirkland Signature Nonfat milk (since it is verified), it then comes up with a screen with a big green “I ate this” button, with my only choice being yesterday, today, or some other date. Could this be a mac issue? </p>
<p>If I have a “recipe” on the other hand, I can see how I can pick foods and then choose the quantity from the pulldown menu. Is this how everyone is doing it? I entered my tamale pie recipe as a recipe and that worked fine, but I didn’t think I’d have to enter in a recipe for nonfat milk.</p>
<p>Dang. That sounds like something I would do with a 1 pound bag of red twizzlers or a cannister of Pringles. You should see me go to town on a jar of Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts.</p>
<p>Oh, well. Just let it go. It’s only one binge.</p>
<p>But, Cocoa Puffs? If I’m gonna pork out with an extra 1000 calories, I’m going with something seriously good like homemade pasta or fried chicken or maybe even a plate of french fries I haven’t had in a year. Heck, I porked out friday night with beer batter fish and onion rings. One time deal. Blew a ton of calories on a splurge meal and that was that. I got the cereal out of the house a long time ago. That stuff is poison. And, I can’t stop eating it.</p>
<p>You are searching foods. Try this instead. Click “MyPlate”. That will take you to a page with everything you’ve eaten TODAY. There will be a running tally of your calories today versus your goal. About half way down the page is “What Did You Eat” box.</p>
<p>Enter “low fat milk” and wait. Then, select the Kirkland and wait. It will appear in your “What Did You Eat” box with a How Much box next to that.</p>
<p>BTW, searching for grocery store brands is a good tip. That’s often how I get accurate calories counts for stuff like chicken breasts.</p>
<p>Speaking of livestrong, I just entered my affair with cocoa pebbles, with skim milk it’s like 1670 calories, lol! What’s more amazing is that I’m still a little under for calories today, although I feel like there’s a balloon in my stomach.</p>
<p>Honey Nut Cheerios were my weakness. Although Corn Flakes with half n’ half and a ton of sugar is pretty irresistable, too. Man, those late-night snacks are killer. No wonder I had 70 pounds to lose. My weakness now is Lindy’s Italian Ice, but it’s 100 calories, not god knows what a big bowl of cereal with sugar and half and half adds up to – I don’t even want to know.</p>
<p>Really annoying day yesterday. Brought my gym bag to work, which I do on days when I’m going to the gym. (Duh.) Went to transfer my ipod from my briefcase to my gym bag (I keep it in the briefcase so I don’t leave it in the freezing cold car) and realized I didn’t have my damn gym clothes in the damn gym bag. (I moved things around during snow last week, so that I needed to carry fewer things into the house.) What a let-down feeling. Tonight I will do more, to make it up.</p>
<p>I know a lot of runners with streaks into thousands of days. You DO take easy days (1 mile for me- others do a minimum of 3 or 5 miles). It isn’t smart, especially for an older person who needs more rest, but it IS a good way to build up mileage and, if you stay healthy, it’s sort of fun. The fact is, to race long distances you have to have a good mileage base and I can’t handle running 6-8 miles too many days in a week, which means I need lighter days that aren’t zeros. BUT- that’s done for now.</p>
<p>Well, Rafael Nadal got bounced out of the Australian Open last night due to a leg (my guess is knee) injury. I watched him in earlier matches and he seemed to be cutting through other players easily and I would have picked him to win it - if he didn’t have any injuries.</p>
<p>That’s the catch, though. I was reading one summary of reserach that shows 60% to 65% of all runners suffer an injury in a typical year that causes them to miss training:</p>
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<p>And, that the two best predictors of injury are prior injury and running on consecutive days:</p>
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<p>I’ve been worried that you haven’t been able to put your hamstring/hip/back issues behind you and it never seemed that trying to run through the injury was likely to work. I hope that, when I get injured, you guys will urge me to lay off and let the thing heal. I totally “get” that it can be riduculously hard to stop doing workouts that you really love, but it really does seem that preventing and managing injury is the single most important thing for those of us in the over-50 crowd.</p>
<p>My current string of injuries started a few years ago when I was walking 4-5 miles on trails, 5-6 days a week. I think that I could reasonably say that I was addicted to this walking, though people who know how very much I dislike sweating would probably have laughed at the very thought. (Though my doc was rather amazed at my HDL level, which apparently reacts quite strongly to aerobic exercise.) But the yo-yo plantar fasciaitis, achilles tendinitis, and hip flexor/IT band problems just kept coming. It is frustrating, but the reality is that I can’t do a hard walk (for me) more than every other day, and sometimes every third day. After this round of injuries and surgery, I am trying to figure out how to love a mixup of exercise. It isn’t easy.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that running on consecutive days increases the risk of injury. So does speedwork and racing. There IS a big risk of injury with running, and it is something we have to accept. Running slow and short would reduce the risk.<br>
My particular injury (this time) is truly about the hardest to resolve. Every medical practitioner and article confirms this. They also confirm that at a certain point, NOT running doesn’t help. I still have some discomfort- interestingly, more in the non-injury hamstring. I don’t know if this is from the strengthening exercises (presses, curls etc) or is all related to some back stuff. We’re still working on it all. That is one reason I’m not interesting in maintaining 40 mile weeks or preparing for races. It simply isn’t 100% comfortable to run. It’s not bad, but it isn’t wonderful. If I can do yoga and then add in cycling this summer, while still doing enough running to maintain a level of running fitness, I’ll be happy. The injury is improving, but it is requiring a lot of work on my core strength and hamstring strength and I only have so much time for it all…
I turn 60 in the fall of 2012, and I would like to be back racing when I hit that easier age group.</p>
<p>Anyone ever have hand problems? Seems like when I do weight training or kettle bells 3-4 times a week, my hands pay for it at night. They get tingly/numb and I have to get out of bed so that they feel better. I used to do lots of editing (working less than half-time now since all the work that my company did went to India) and had the same problems. I was able to figure out ways to prevent them–my ortho guy told me I had repetitive use syndrome–with ergonomically correct equipment. Anyone have tips on prevention? Exercise for hands?</p>
<p>Not that it will be a comfort, but that was pretty much the symptoms I had for carpal tunnel, during the saga of which I learned that this is not a symptom you want to just ignore because you can do permanent (non-reversible) injury to the medial/median nerve. Had I but known…I would have gotten myself into see an occupational therapist with certification as a hand specialist years ago. (If you have insurance, OT is probably covered under your insurance.)</p>
<p>I sensed that starting to happen with me at the end of the summer. I was starting to walk four days a week (on top of three days a week of workouts). And, pushing the mileage up to 4 miles, 5 miles several days a week. I started to notice that I just felt run down on the walks.</p>
<p>I made a conscious decision to not walk on back to back days and to limit my walks to 5k, with maybe a little longer walk no more than one day a week. I also made a point to try to change it up – go for bike ride instead of walking or whatever. From a fitness standpoint, I think it was better to do less walking and do it at a more aggressive pace. Even if not, I could see that constantly increasing my mileage was going to lead to inevitable wear and tear problems.</p>
<p>Running/walking is a tough exercise with 1500 to 2000 repetitions per mile, each one with an impact of 2 to 4 times bodyweight. If you went to a gym and the trainer said that you were going to do 5000 pushups today, you’d say he was crazy. It would not be hard to guess that you’d be seeing repetitve stress injuries from that kind of workout. Mechanically, running and walking are putting a lot of force on the joints.</p>
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<p>There’s also a balance issue. Trainers are starting to understand that you shouldn’t do one exercise without an equal amount of the complementary exercise. For example, meatheads who love to do bench press (a pushing exercise), but never do pulling exercises and can’t do a chinup end up with shoulder injuries. Runners end up with hip/hamstring injuries because they are constantly working the same muscles. So variety not only cuts down on the number of reps for any one exercise, but it probably gives you a better chance of including working all the complimentary muscle groups each week. Mike Boyle talks about this as a serious problem with his young football players and hockey players. They focus so much on the front of the body (the “mirror” exercises): thighs, pecs, biceps, etc. that they are like the Leaning Tower of Pisa structurally with all the backside muscle groups comparatively weak and inflexible, including some really important ones like being able to hinge the hips. In the lingo: “anterior chain” versus “posterior chain”.</p>
<p>New Rules of Lifting for Abs again today. Sixth time around with this workout. Should be getting easier. I guess it is, but as I’ve learned the exercises, I’ve been bumping up the weights and it’s no walk in the park. Bumped up the single-leg one-arm deadlift to 35 pounds today. Did all 72 reps without falling over, so I guess that’s an accomplishment. I even did more than half of them without having to reach out to the wall for balance.</p>
<p>Bumped up the alternating dumbbell press to two 30 pound dumbbell for the first set of 12, but could see that I was in trouble, so dropped back to 25 pounders for the second and third sets. I don’t need to be dropping a dumbbell on my head. This is just an insanely sadistic exercise – hold one dumbbell outstreched over head while pressing the other one up and down 12 times, then hold the other one overhead while pressing the second one 12 times. It doesn’t sound hard, but you have to really work your muscles to stabilize the dumbbell held up in the outstretched arm. It can get really wobbly.</p>
<p>Did the overhead squats (barbell held overhead with straight arms and a wide grip) with a 32 pound barbell. Not a lot of weight, but that exercise is a real bear. 3 sets of 12 feels like an eternity. It’s hard going down and hard going back up on each rep.</p>
<p>Did plank (4 sets of 25 seconds) and side plank (2 sets of 25 seconds on each side) with my feet up in the TRX straps. Man, does that burn the abs.</p>
<p>Running was never for me even when I was a teenager (more than 30 years ago, I am close to 50 now). My feet would just feel hurt. I do not particularly care about building muscles, which I never thought look good for females (just personal opinion). My younger daughter (D2) and I have been doing 30-35 minutes exercise daily since June, 2005. We have been consistently doing this for 5 and half years and will continue with our exercise. We basically do line dances in our family room following music. This is one of the few types of exercises that does not hurt me at all. It is also a good chatting time between myself and D2 (her complaining time about too much homework assignments).</p>