Five for Friday

1. I tracked all last week on Weight Watchers-both my food and activity points!



This is a very big deal to me. I even tracked my food I ate on my long run.  Result? A two pound weight loss. That is not any additional weight loss, it's almost back to my lowest weight.  I was up several pounds, and the trending was going UP, not down, so that was why I buckled down and decided to journal everything.

It's been a long time since I have successfully tracked every day.

2.  I don't think I am eating enough for my weight loss goals.


In the last week, I was listening to an old episode of Marathon Talk, an interview with Matt Dixon, from Purplepatch Fitness, who coaches or coached Ryan Hall in last year's Boston Marathon. There were a few interesting points I took away.

The first was his quote: "I have yet to meet a training endurance athlete who fuels enough to support their training and health needs." The whole article is here.

As endurance athletes, we may be fueling during the event, but are we eating enough later in the day?

The host of the podcast, Tom Williams, coined a phrase that Matt Dixon agreed with, and I thought was rather fitting also:  instead of being overtrained, we are perhaps actually under-recovered. 
 
While I love the WW program, it does not really fit in with an endurance athlete lifestyle.  I was reading on their website, about how many Activity Points (APs) that WW recommend daily, is six. My average, last week, was fifteen.

After viewing my WW chart, I have two conclusions. One, I am drinking too many of my activity points (APs).  So that is an easy enough fix, need to cut way down on the wine!  Two, I need to eat those activity points.  So that is my mission for this week, drink less, and eat more.  I am also planning on tracking my points for the week also.

3.  It is time to plan the garden!  I've been looking through seed catalogs, circling items, trying to plan my garden out for 2012.  I will be putting some work into the garden in June, with being out of town for my two weeks for Hardrock,  so I have to make sure it's pretty low maintenance for the husband.

I'm planning on buying mostly heirloom seeds this year. I am going to start saving my seeds, for both economy and for market crashes. That way, I will have my vegetables for future years.

4. CE's  I report my Continuing Education credits this year for my license. We do this every three years. I need to have six credit  hours.  I found my file, with a paper clip on a bunch of papers, where I've got 3.5 hours totalled up so far.  Now I need to find all the loose CE certificates around my office-which means, it's time to clean and organize the office!

5. Three Day weekend!  A co-worker needed Wednesday off, so I gladly traded my Friday for her Wednesday, so that is why I am sitting here, posting a F-for-F post instead of working! Happy Friday, all!

Bread Baking Wednesday

I finally got around to experiment with the 5 minute, no knead bread method.  This is from the book: "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day".

 

This is Attempt Number 1 !! 

The bread came out a bit dense.

I am not sure I had the proper whole wheat flour, as it said "whole wheat graham flour". I am going to buy some new whole wheat flour for another try.

It really is dummy simple. Mix the dry ingredients, add the water, let rise. No kneeading. Throw it in the refrigerator. On baking day, take out, make round-like, let rise for 90 minutes, then bake.

Okay, for running content-no run today. I have had a bit of pain in my adductor muscle, the adductor magnus, I believe. This is probably due to the uneven surface snow surface at Mohican on Sunday. Instead of the 10K run planned, I elected to walk on the treadmill and get my pushups in.

I am planning on running 20 miles for the Winter Buckeye Trail FA, in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Saturday. I would really like it to be 50K, but I will see how I feel. I have to keep in mind I do have a 100 mile event coming up soon and I do not want to be overtrained-or under-recovered for that.

It felt Like Spring

The temperature was a balmy 36 degrees this morning. In the daylight it felt like spring, after the cold winds of the last few days.

Today was hill repeats. I drove over to my hill.  It is about 3 miles into my normal 10K loop, but performing hill repeats on the hill in the middle of the 10K does not give me enough time in the morning to get all this in.

My 10K loop is a nasty road to drive on, as it's mainly slidy mud right now.

I am glad I got out for these hill repeats, because I can tell my improvement on this hill from last year.   I could have done more repeats had I not run out of time.  I was not that fatigued climbing the hill as I was last year.


This was an interesting kind of observation/quote from Frozen Ed Furtaw, from the Barkley List:



I like the way this concept was stated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
"It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist."

With this interpretation, one's estimation of their abilities is irrelevant.  What is important is how one proceeds or acts, regardless of preconceived estimations.  At Barkley, we must proceed as if we can succeed.  If limits of our abilities do indeed exist, they will smack us in the face in due course, regardless of our beliefs.  Of course, those smackings occur sooner for some runners than for others.

Ed

I will keep this in mind for The Wild Oak Trail. 

Pictures from Mohican

Of course there are pictures!

Run at Mohican

I had seen on FB that Terri and others were going to run at Mohican on Sunday, but I was just planning on 20 miles on the roads here around town.


Then Mikey called and personally requested my presence. He's going to be moving soon, and might not be back on the beloved trails of Mohican any time soon. So of course, I am off to Mo for the run.

Mike, myself, Terri, Mark, Zach, Don, Nick, Rob, Mark all convened at the pavilion at the Class A Campgrounds.  There was still quite a bit of snow at Mo-4 to 6 inches.  We were already downgrading the proposed 50K down to something managable.

We asked Terri what we were running...it seemed the plan was to run the Mohican 100 course loop.

So off we went.  The first mile of trail had been broken by a snowshoe trekker the day before.  Then Nick took the lead and broke trail as we crossed across the river to the mountain bike trail.

Lots of talk talk talk on the trail.  Lots of joke, smack talking.  We were trying to ignore the fact that the snow was rather deep; there was much more slogging thru snow than alot of running.

We lost Don, Nick, and Zach after a few miles, as they peeled off on the road to complete their runs.

The rest of us trodded on.  It was quite funny in places, as we tried to figure out where we were, exactly. (The group had more than one thousand Mohican miles between us.) 

Mark had a brillant idea when we got to the mountain bike trailhead, nine miles in. He proposed we just turn around and retrace our steps..since we now  had a broken in trail to run in, with the slight wind behind us.  This was readily accessable.

Rob elected to bail with Mark L. here, to continue on with his training plan of the day, so it was down to Mike, Mark, Terri and I. 


It was slower going back, but still a good time. Terri need to make her mileage an even 20, but I was fine to bail at 18 trail miles for the day.

GREAT to be back at Mohican and even better to spend some trail time with Mikey!!

I had a good run today.

It was cold-about 21 F at 11 am, and windy.  I donned long johns under my Marmot Precip Pants, and on top wore just one merino wool long sleev tops and my Sierra Designs windbreaker. I also brought along my $32 dollar wind mittens, along with my cheapo knit gloves.

I also decided to try out the Ultimate Direction bladder that my new Wink pack arrived with.  I was rather dubious of its design.

As my rotten pics show, there is no screw on lid, or clip for the UD pack.

It has this kind of sandwich bag type seal. But I could not get this to seal together.

Then you roll down the plastic bladder.

 

 And secure with the velcro.  Now this does seem kind of secure.

 

 And then into the pack, hanging off it's little velcro hook.

The reason I decided to try this today was, the hose is insulated.  (And I could not take it off this bladder for use on another.)  It worked out just fine, but I am kind of hesitant to use this in a long race. I may use this again tomorrow, and see how it works out.  I am just hesistant about having this filled up at an AS and not having it sealed or cinched down properly.  As an old AS worker myself, this would also be a hydration pack that I would make the runner close up themselves.

Has anyone used this Ultimate Direction bladder in a race? Feedback?

Ok, back to the run.  It was cold, the wind was strong, and I was miserable. I was very glad for all the windbreaker clothing I had on, it was needed.  Miles 0 through 4 sucked.

Once I climbed up to the ridgeline, it was the point of no return, if I did retreat it would still be 4 miles back.

At mile 5.7, I paused. I could take the side road, for more mileage-original plan-or I could continue down the road to finish up a bit shorter.

Well, what would the point of that be?  My husband went out of town for the morning, so I couldn't even use the excuse of that.  I turned left.  This is a township road, so it was just like running on a snow covered trail, since it's mainly a dirt and gravel road at best.

I ate a Payday mini bar as I climbed up the township road and crossed the road for the big downhill section. I also clicked the Zune over to "music".

And, at mile 7.9, the calories or sugar hit from the candybar simultaneously with the music starting, I was running downhill, and it was GREAT!!

It did not hurt that this is about a big one mile downhill.  The rest of my run was great. I smiled the rest of the way.

The husband was just returning home as I ran down the hill, so great timing!

I'm glad I suffered through the wind and my attitude for the first few miles.  Must remember this!!

PSA: Screwed Shoes

It actually is a record; it's the 20th of January and I just screwed my shoes this morning.

For anyone not familiar, this is the old school, cheapo, better way to traverse on ice in the winter months.  It will cost you about two bucks to go buy some sheet metal screws.  The hexagonal ones, not the round. The round ones won't help you at all.

This was the first post I ever read about screwing your shoes, and it tells you everything you need to know.

The rusted screws are from last year.  They were worn down, and many had fallen out, so I just decided to add to the others.