Hi all. I got back on Wednesday from a week in Chelan, and it was just lovely. I went to the gym three times with Sherry and I rode Tara Elsner’s bike around town and out to the Sunshine Farm Market a few times, but I didn’t run or swim at all as I’d planned. And, it shows.

This morning, I had intended to run 10k in the Open Minds run. Last week I dropped it down to 5k, because I realized that 10k would have me either walking much of the way or pushing my body more than it was really ready for. But, I let things come up last night and this morning, including my disaster of a living space and impending travel throughout the rest of August, convince me that the time to go run was more than I had. So, I didn’t go, and stood up two great friends (Kat! Amy! Thanks!) who went to go surprise me and cheer me on. What rock stars.

So, what I’ve accomplished instead today is a real purge of a lot of junk in my room. I have a full garbage bag of clothes to donate, a duffle bag of clothes to freecycle at the VB retreat next weekend near DC, three boxes of schtuff to donate to the Diabetes Association and a garbage bag of papers to recycle. So, that part of my space feels much better. And, I’m committing to going to run 5k by myself tomorrow morning. I’ve been reading “Triathlon Training” by Michael Finch and it has me thinking about the Maffeton formula for a bit. The idea behind this is to get your target heart rate by subtracting your age from 180. Then, you modify this number based on your general level of fitness (I’m a 3/4, so I just go with a target of 156). The idea is to keep your heart rate at this level, which over time will cause you to have faster times as you get fitter.

I’m interested to see how it works. So, tomorrow, I’ll run 5k in whatever time it takes at 156 heart rate. My fancy little toy (the garmin 305, and never fear, MEC had it on sale) has all sorts of cool features that record my route, give me a GPS location and my heart rate over the course of my work out. But, so far, I haven’t downloaded any of the data, because Oscar the computer has a broken CD drive. We’re working on that, so perhaps soon maps and little charts of what I’ve been doing will be up here.

What I did do today, after cleaning, having a lovely coffee with Karen Duerden and cleaning some more was to do 1 hour of Shiva Rea yoga and 20 minutes of strength training. I’m struggling a little to push myself in weights, but on the other hand, this was the first time I’d done any in ages and ages. So, I think I need to find some balance in stepping outside my current level of zero strength training towards something more focused. I’ve also found myself dealing with the monologue in my head that kicks in sometimes (when running and doing weights most notably so far) along the lines of “what are you thinking? you can’t keep this up”. So far, I’ve been able to either ignore or hear without taking in this voice. But it’s a peculiar one. I think at least as far as weights goes, I’m somewhat better suited to doing them with a partner in crime. But I really would like to be able to work myself the same way on my own. We’ll see how that goes.

So, today, what I did was:

3×12 bicep curls at 2.5lbs

3×12 tricep overheads at 5lbs

3×12 forward flys at 2.5lbs

3×12 side flys at 2.5lbs

3×12 supine tricep at 5lbs

3×12 back flys at 2.5lbs

3×10 lunge dips on each leg with 5lbs in each hand

I’m thrilled for the return of my newly thesis defended physical trainer to get me with some kind of structure for these. (Ranjit! come back to my country!) And, the next task is to find myself a swim team to work out with and start finding myself some Calgary based people training for the Ironman as well. Vitality in community!

that’s all for now. I’m off to have an emmer, kidney bean salad for dinner. Yum!