The scale is on the fritz

Seriously.  It's not just me not wanting to post my weight, though I wouldn't love doing so.  On Sunday I noticed that the battery symbol was on, so I flipped the scale over and checked the battery type (and of course it's not just AA or something simple that they have at the grocery store; I'm going to have to hunt for these).  The next morning Daniel and I both found a 4 pound weight gain -- and he had been running on Sunday and had barely eaten that day, so the gain seemed rather improbable.  A 4-pound jump would be improbable any day.  I don't know if it got re-calibrated after I checked the batteries or what, but I can't compare this week's weight to last.

Nevertheless, the new number has been scary so I've been watching my intake a little better.  I got out for a walk one night last week but haven't been out since; the weather hasn't been fully cooperative except on that one Sunday, but I didn't want to rush out when Daniel got back and I never got around to it otherwise.  I'm making excuses, I know.  I did at least walk all over town yesterday and to a pretty good extent today as well.  But no further than a 3-year-old can walk, so it's not that much.

I realized this week that when Alexander jogged a mile in the St. Mary's fun run (jogged the whole mile without breaking stride -- he just kept going) he was just three and a half -- younger than Cecilia by a good four months.  She whines if she has to walk two blocks.  So I'm making her do a whole lot more of her own walking right now.  She's slowly getting used to it.  But this takes away one component of my exercise:  I was building upper body strength and increasing cardio benefit by carrying her a lot, at least whenever I could find non-icy sidewalks!  When the weather clears I'm going to dig a bike out of the storage room here and see if it's rideable.  The kids around town are all on bikes now (there were about three days between skis and bikes) so I'm itching to go for a ride.  So is Mary!  I've promised we'll look for something to use in Oslo.

142.4

Down from last week, thank goodness. I was pretty vigilant with food for about half of the week (and not terrible the other half--I just didn't track calories obsessively), and I got in two days of running, two of swimming, the two hour bike ride and one walk with the dog, so a total of about 6 hours of exercise. This week will be a bit more difficult--Connor has dental surgery tomorrow so we have to be at the hospital at the crack of dawn, and on Friday night I've got training at work during the day and an overnight with the scouts that night. So it will be difficult to get any exercise tomorrow and essentially impossible on Friday. And usually after these overnights I don't have much energy to move at all the next day! We'll see how that goes. In the meantime I biked to work yesterday and will be swimming at lunch today.

Craziest charity ride idea ever

Last night I signed up for another charity ride. I'm not sure I can do the distance, but I had to sign up because it's such an insane idea. It's called the 100 Miles of Nowhere and is a fundraiser for the Livestrong Foundation. This fundraiser is the brainchild of a guy who writes a blog called fatcyclist (who is not fat anymore, thanks to the cycling part) and who is madly raising money for the Livestrong Foundation for cancer research, largely because his wife has terminal cancer.

He's a fabulous, funny writer and I love reading his blog (crazy stunts are pretty much par for the course with him) so when he posted this one, I decided to sign up even though I'm not entirely sure I can ride 100 miles. But the idea behind it is that on May 23, you get on your bike and you go nowhere for 100 miles. Ideally you should do this on rollers or a trainer at home, but you can also do a short outside course. You can also use an exercycle. And you can also cheat and only do 25 or 50 miles, because no one is counting. I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do--if I can find my old trainer in the basement I'll use that and just guess the distance, but I might resort to the exercycle in the gym at work (which would really be torture--those are uncomfortable and I'd have no control over what I watched on t.v.) or even to going in circles at the playground (I'd get dizzy, though, so maybe just 10 miles of that).

Every person who enters gets the ubiquitous charity ride t-shirt, plus a bunch of other free stuff (better than most it seems), but best of all you are absolutely guaranteed to win your age/gender/region/category group. Since this will be the only time in my life I can hope to actually WIN an event, I couldn't NOT sign up, right?

More info on the event here: http://www.fatcyclist.com/2009/04/23/register-now-for-the-100-miles-of-nowhere/

1200 calories later

I'm just back from the Kennedy Krieger autism ride. I had so much fun--I want everyone to do this with me next year! The weather couldn't have been any more perfect (not something we can count on in April, and today is warm even by May standards). The route was gorgeous--out of Oregon Ridge and through the valley, then up to Boring (really!) through little country roads that reminded me of England, then back down to the valley on Byerly and Dover, across Butler Road, then down Cuba Road back to Oregon Ridge. The cue sheet said it was a little over 27 miles, but my computer told me it was a mile less than that (not sure which one is more accurate). I did the ride in just under 2 hours. When I got back to the start, I met up with a guy riding another Miyata touring bike, so we geeked out about them for a bit. You don't see many people on touring bikes in general, and when you do they are never Miyatas. I also had a great spinach salad at the end of the ride, courtesy of Wegmans (one of the sponsors of the event). Who knew spinach salad could be a good recovery food?

I think my commute must be the best bike training in the world. The hills I deal with on my commute are so far way worse than anything I meet on other cycling routes, so I never seem to have much problem getting up other people's idea of a hill. Today's worst hill was VERY steep at the end, but the distance wasn't far so I didn't have to get off and walk like I saw several others doing. I'm also getting better about getting out of the saddle and standing up to climb short hills--not something I ever used to be able to do.

It was a good workout week in general. I took Monday as a rest day, but I alternated running and swimming the next four days, then of course today's ride. I'm also back to doing crunches/planks/push ups in the evening. I always tell myself I'm going to do these and then I never do. I get good for about a week, and then I stop again. The trick this time will be to NOT stop when I get lazy.

I'm like an elevator

My weight is just going up. I was 144.6 this morning. Ugh. Gotta lay off the Easter candy (which will be easier once it's gone). Why is it that it takes months to lose weight and I can just gain it all back in two weeks? So not fair.

I only exercised twice last week. Of course one of those times was the triathlon, but when you get down to it that was only a glorified workout. I got out at lunch for a run today. Yay! Intervals on the actual road instead of the treadmill. After two weeks away from my usual routine I need to remember what I was doing and get back into it--only four months left to train for the "real" triathlon.

How am I supposed to post after that?

I can't possibly post anything as interesting as Sarah's triathlon post, when I'm just here for a usual Tuesday post.  My weight was 145.2.  It likes to jump up a pound or so every Tuesday, even if it was lower during the week -- the highest I saw all week was 144.4.  Ho, hum.  Nohting interesting going on in my diet or exercise right now.  I was going to go skiing today (we wanted to get video of the kids on skis before the warm spell that's coming) but it has been raining, snowing, and sleeting all day, with a sub-freezing wind chill but above-freezing ground temperatures, so we'd be cold but skiing in slush.  So much for that idea.  So it's back to no exercise for me, except for holding a sleeping 30-pound child for 10 minutes in the driving slush while waiting for a bus.  At least I'm getting some muscle work in.

The long version

Besides making it through the race yesterday and spending the rest of the day feeling smug, here's the rest of the story if you're interested.

First of all, it was rather anticlimactic. I didn't feel like I accomplished anything notable--it just felt like a nice, varied workout with a lot of other people around.

I started the race with a serious sleep deficit. Connor apparently heard I was doing this triathlon to support autism research, so to celebrate he showed off his best autistic behavior--up until 4 a.m. on Friday night, then until 2:30 a.m. Saturday night (I guess that's actually Sunday morning), then I had to be up at 4:15 to get ready, eat, and load my bike on the car. I wanted to be down in Bethesda at 6, and while it should only take 40 minutes, you never know what might go wrong. Like having no gas in the car, which, as it happened, was the case. But I got there in plenty of time and had time to cool my heels (and then warm up--don't want to do a race with cool heels), lay out all my stuff, wander around, talk with other uncertain first timers, etc.

I had been most worried about the swim since I really hate swimming, but since I wasn't trying to be competitive at all and since the swim was so short, this turned out to be the nicest leg of the race. I put myself in the slow group (I heard someone define fast as being able to do 500 meters in 8 minutes. I figured I'd be lucky to do the 250 meters we had to do yesterday in under 8 minutes!) but it turns out I'm average or better for the slow swimmers--only one person passed me but I passed multiple people. When I got in the water, everything I ever learned about form and keeping my head down went right out the window--my primary goal was to just not get kicked/hit or kick/hit anyone else! Even though we were starting 10 seconds apart, I kept ending up in these gaggles of swimmers blocking certain areas. But everyone is so darn nice (at least in the slow group!) so it was fun--lots of chit-chatting as we worked through these areas. I finished the swim in 6:43, about exactly what I expected.

The bike leg was three laps on the road around Georgetown Prep. It was a nice ride--one long but not steep incline, one flat section, one road with a couple of rolling hills, and then a section on Rockville Pike that had an incline down then back up, but again very shallow. The first lap was fun because there weren't many people on the course. By the third lap it was getting crowded. I got passed quite a bit by people on fast road bikes, but did a lot of passing myself--mostly of people on rusty mountainbikes and hybrids. I know they say the engine is more important than the bike, but I can't help thinking that MY engine would run more efficiently on a lighter bike! Almost all of the passing I did was going uphill--touring bikes have GREAT gears for hills. And these were easy hills compared to my commute, and I wasn't hauling panniers filled with clothes and my lunch. I'm pretty sure mine was the only bike there with fenders. I have no idea what my time was on this section (or on the run, just so you know)--I looked at my watch at the end of the swim and that was pretty much it until the race was over.

The run was the hardest for me. I did that brick a couple of weeks ago with a two mile run after a ten mile bike ride, and this wasn't much different for distance (slightly less than 10 miles on the bike, 2.5 miles running) and that brick was not a problem for me at all, and the 6 minutes of swimming shouldn't have taken that much more out of me. But the course was hillier than I normally do--it was a steep downhill to start, then up and up and up for the next mile and a quarter, then a quarter mile down, then a half mile flat or slightly downhill, then more uphill until you hit the track at Georgetown Prep to finish. It really felt like a lot more uphill than down, and I think the lack of sleep was catching up with me. I was tired and couldn't keep my heartrate where I usually do while running and slowed down to walk a few times to get my heartrate under control. I remember passing only five people, and four of them were mother/disabled child couples!

My final time according to my watch was 1:17, but I have no idea what my official time was--I don't know how long I took in transition, and I'd like to know what my times were on each of the legs. I hope they post that information soon. I'd also be curious to know what the top speeds were--I figure if four minutes would be a fast swim time, and winning cyclists generally average 22 - 25 mph, that portion could be done in under 30 minutes. Top runners are usually doing 5 to 6 minute miles, so another 15 minutes there. So I'm betting the top times were well under an hour. Pretty humbling.

I was finished with the whole thing just after 8:30 and home just after 9:30--when everyone else was just starting the day! I'm glad we got the weather we did--we could have been doing this race in today's weather (rainy, chilly, windy for those of you in Norway). I'm not sure I would have gotten out of bed at 4:15 if that were the case.

I haven't posted for the past couple of weeks.

I've just been lazy. And mortified that my weight is going back up. I was 142.2 last Tuesday, and 143.6 this Tuesday. Ick.

My first triathlon is this Sunday and I'm taking the idea of "tapering" to the extreme--last week I got those great workouts at the fitness center overnight, but the rest of the week only included one run, one (longish) bike ride and one swim. The whole week off, and that's all I did. And this week is worse--I'm having one of those weeks at work that just don't include breaks. Two days of training, and then today I have to leave at 3:15 for scouts. Tomorrow I'll be in a half day training session starting at noon. I was hoping to get in a few light "maintenance" type workouts this week, but now I'm wondering if I'll get any kind of workout at all! Thank goodness this is a short triathlon.

The real reason I'm posting today is because I found this website that lets you put out a contract on yourself--you commit to a goal (of any sort--they have some standard ones like "stop smoking" and "lose weight" but you can also set a custom goal like "clean out my basement" or "do my taxes in February for a change."), enlist someone to be a referee (who will verify the accuracy of your reports), and set yourself up with supporters/cheerleaders, and then best of all, set up a financial disincentive for failing to meet your goal. You can set it up so that if you fail, a certain amount of money goes to a charity (or better--an anti-charity, one you would never in a million years want your money to go to!) or a friend/foe.

I wonder if I'd get back down to 135 pounds if I knew the George Bush Presidential Library would get $50 if I failed? I think I'll talk to Brian about this tonight--he might push me to exercise more if he knew that was the result of me failing too.

144.2

I think.  It was 144-something.  Lower than last week -- but it was down in the 142s on Saturday, so this is the proof of two or three days of Easter gluttony.  The Easter Bunny did bring me a basket (OK, a basket-shaped crystal thing that he apparently found atop the cabinets in the apartment) full of truffles and other gourmet chocolates, but it's not the eat-until-you're-sick level of loot of other years, and the leftovers from Easter dinner are all but gone as well, so within a day or so I should be back to normal eating habits.  Skiing season is virtually over; we had a dusting of snow last night, so I might be able to squeeze a little in this week, but then I have to find some other exercise.  I looked in the storage shed today for a stroller, but no luck; there might be one in the attic, but I think it's a pram, and Cecilia's too big for that.  She's not up for the level of walking that would be exercise for me, so now I'm back to having to wait until Daniel's home before I can exercise.  Fortunately, with the level of sunlight increasing to 18 hours a day now and 20 by next week, I shouldn't have to worry about being out after dark!

Holding steady

Seems every time I get excited (moderately) about nicer weather staying around here for good, another cold front moves into town. Oh well.

So my routine has been pretty good but it can always be better. But I continue to trim, especially from my upper body. My poochy stomach continues its stubborn ways but I'm making inroads to eliminating it.

I started a push-up routine that will eventually lead me to do 100 push-ups in a row. It's only three days a week and takes less than 10 minutes. So far I'm progressing.

I went for a 7-mile hike on Sunday with the nickname the "roller coaster." Yeah, my calves are still screaming from that and my knees didn't like it much, but overall I burned a lot of calories and it was great to be outdoors.

I'm going to have the tires changed on my bike to a slightly thicker tire so I can take the bike on some rougher roads. I'm camping at Assateague in a couple of weeks and want to be able to ride on the beach and on the roads around the area. My other tires are slicks and just don't work so well off road -- I proved that a couple of years ago when I wrecked the bike.

This weekend I'm headed to Phoenix to visit friends who have a 5-month-old and we're going to head to the Grand Canyon. I planned this trip very late so I won't be hiking to the bottom of the canyon but I do hope to get in one good hike.

With Congress in recess I hope to get in some extra workouts and set a good pace for the next couple of months.

Stuff

My weight was same-same this morning. I am glad that I have been holding steady, but more and more I am thinking I need to do something to now start moving downward... I have been dreaming about exercise. I said that in my last post - but I have dreamed it since then. I was pretty disgusted with myself this weekend. I did nothing - and I had plenty of opportunity to do lots! I even woke up in time to make water ballet on Sunday - but didn't go. It was beautiful weather, but I didn't take a walk. I need to form new habits. The FIRST habit I need to form is getting dressed in the mornings - even when I think I don't have to go anywhere. My current habit is to wear my jammies until I have to go somewhere, or I can't stand it any longer. I need to resolve NOT to leave my room (OK - the bathroom) until after I have gotten dressed. Maybe if I was actually wearing clothes rather than PJs I would take a walk... Something.

Yoga is starting a new session this week. It runs in 13 week sessions. Level one loops back to the beginning. That basically means that we are starting over focusing on our legs and how they affect our poses. After about four weeks of that we do more on our pelvis and core, then we move up to our back and shoulders for the last six weeks or so. I like the later sessions better than the earlier ones. They are HARDER (i.e. focusing more of our weight on our arms and stuff - hard for me with my no upper body strength and LOTS of bottom body weight!) but I prefer it anyway...

Not enjoying the general trend

My weight was 145.0 this morning.  Yikes.  It's been creeping up over the last several days and landed here yesterday, though it dropped again a bit before I got around to eating breakfast so I didn't count it as "real" yet.  But today it was real.  Sigh.  I've been getting a little more exercise, what with the skiing, but I think my body is settling into the new routine of having to walk a lot and take buses everywhere and it's re-focused on gaining weight.

Yesterday I declared that I wouldn't eat between meals unless it was fruit or veggies, and I did just fine with that, except then we went out to a restaurant for dinner (pretty rare for us here, and after the expense of last night -- more than the cost of a week's groceries, and groceries aren't cheap, either -- it will be even rarer) and I ate a lot.  I had reindeer steak for dinner (bitter at first, but I got used to the flavor and it wasn't bad -- Mary hated it, though) with mashed potatoes and vegetables (mostly brussels sprouts, though, and kind of soggy, so I didn't eat many) and a roll with butter and some garlic shrimp for starters and my share of a bottle of red wine and a dessert of cloudberries and cream cheese, probably way loaded with calories -- I was too full even to finish.  So that undid any good of eating well yesterday.

Today I'm doing better.  I had a reasonable breakfast and lunch, and we got oranges at the grocery store this afternoon so I had one of those, plus I ate the remnants of the two that Cecilia ate (she won't eat all the way to the peel, and there's a lot of yummy stuff left!).  But oranges are practially free.  Calorie-wise, not in price -- though the price was a remarkable 5 kr per kilogram, about 35 cents a pound!  It's rare to find anything that affordable here.  I wish I could go back and get a couple dozen more -- they were sweet and tasted almost like clementines, but they were huge.  Yum.

I'll keep at it the rest of this week and see if I can reverse the upward trend before Easter!  Next week there will probably be chocolate and jelly beans, so I'm in a little trouble, but there won't be half-price leftover Easter candy so it won't go on nearly as long as it usually does, and maybe I won't see such a big penalty on my weight chart this year.  I'm already at my post-Easter-binge weight, so I don't need to go up any further.

Ouch.

And to think I thought I was in pretty good shape these days!

Last night was "Up All Night Sports," which, as the name says, means that I got to stay awake all night locked in at a fitness center. With 200 or so Girl Scouts.

It was a very, very nice fitness center--the sort of place I'd love to be able to afford a membership to. It's the same place Connor does his swim lessons, but I had never wandered beyond the pool area before. Last night we were in the gyms, the racquetball courts, the climbing wall, the spa, the studios and the vast sea of gym equipment. Because I was in charge of keeping track of 11 4th and 5th graders, I didn't have that much time to myself, but over the course of the night I got in a short swim, 30 minutes on the rowing machine (lordy, I love those things. Why isn't that standard equipment in gyms instead of appearing only occasionally, and then only two machines hidden in the corner?), and a circuit cardio class that kicked my butt. For what it's worth, I was the only one who actually kept up and pushed myself through the whole class--I didn't see anyone else who didn't stop and just collapse towards the end of each station--but I'm feeling it (and the rower) today. The class seemed to be based around pylometrics alternating with calisthenics. My average heart rate stayed at a good range for me, but the top heart rate was 195!!! I thought I was supposed to be dead with that heart rate. And on all of the jumping exercises, my heart rate was regularly in the mid-180s--173 is supposed to be my top heart rate for a hard workout. Some of this may be due to the time of day (the cardio class was at 1 a.m.) and my caffeine-laced blood, which meant I started with a higher base heart rate. But even though I'm hurting today, I'm also thinking I need to start recreating this class at home once a week or so, because clearly I need more intensity like this. All the endurance stuff I do is fine, but only challenges me in one direction.

And this probably won't last until Tuesday, but when I got home my weight was 140.2. Not really surprising since I spent the whole night working out, not sleeping and not eating. I'll probably be back up in the 142 range (where I've been all week) by tomorrow morning.