Marathon in a week 2012 challenge #1

The first official Team David “Marathon in a Week” challenge for 2012 ended today. I met the goal of completing 26.2 miles in a week, with a 5-miler on the treadmill this afternoon, bringing the Jan.15-21 mileage total to 26.8.

Marathon in a Week started in May 2011 as an effort to support Dave (the brother of a friend, Stephanie Galuppo) in his effort to regain his health and self-worth. Dave suffers schizophrenia and, while he is in birth years an adult, has not advanced developmentally beyond about age 13. As Team David’s Facebook page describes it, Dave is not stupid or incapable, but he was made to feel so in his earlier years. When he takes his medications, he is brilliant; when he forgets, he struggles.

Dave was grossly overweight when Stephanie (head coach of Team David) initiated monthly Marathon in a Week challenges, inviting Facebook friends to join Dave in walking, running, cycling, swimming, dancing out 26.2 miles (or the equivalent) over the course of a week. This month, more than 100 people participated in the challenge.

My husband Jim began supporting Team David in May by walking 75 miles in one week. I joined the following month with the lofty declaration of trying to log a 26.2 in the three triathlon sports (26.2 miles running, 26.2 miles cycling, and 2620 yards swimming). I failed miserably in that mission after the Saratoga Springs YMCA opted to use that same week to close their swimming pool for repairs, and a switch to trying to do 262 sun salutes in a week led me to realize that while I love yoga, six sun salutes a day is more than enough.

I have joined Team David every month since then, concentrating on miles walked or ran (even though Stephanie — a semi-professional athlete — will credit participants for miles biked, swum, or completed via Zumba, WII, or some other means). The goal of logging at least 26.2 miles in a week at least once a month has given the idea of “Moving Your Body” a new dimension. It transforms exercise from an activity (doctor-prescribed or otherwise) to a cultural way of life.

Team David notes that Dave’s battle with weight loss has become every Team David member’s battle — as we support Dave, we support ourselves by working toward our own long-term goals of regaining and maintaining our health and self-worth.

Today, the 5 miles were done in a way that was perhaps not so smart: I started the workout at 3:40 pm with a dim memory of an egg, cheese, and Canadian bacon sandwich consumed around 11:45 a.m. and little if any hydration. I had planned to do a slow 5 miles, but impatient to get it over it, kept hitting the increase speed button. I finished in a very fast-for-me 62 minutes, and headed for the Y’s wonderful hot tub, where I nearly passed out. Although I joked that one sign of old age was not being able to last in a hot tub like I used to, the message of proper diet, hydration, and adequate rest was reinforced. I had 1-1/2 tangerines on the way home to regain some sugar, and an early protein dinner that featured a lot of New England fish.

I look forward to sleeping well tonight, as the temperatures drop once again into the single digits.

 

Beating back that old cry of work

Hello everyone:

It is close to 2 a.m., and I want to make it to the 8:30 a.m. yoga class tomorrow. It’s 10 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors and perhaps even colder. Our washing machine broke down, which means a scarcity of workout clothes until we can get to a laundromat — tomorrow, mid-morning, after the Farmers Market, hopefully.

For the past two days, workout goals have been foiled. Not by the weather — after all, I do have an indoor alternative — but by work. Grades needed to be completed today, and at my college, grades do not mean a mere letter but outcome (did the student pass, fail, or take an incomplete); a letter grade; and narrative evaluation.

I am the slowest grader on the planet, partly because the task of grading feels like a constant undermining of my self-worth. Who am I to judge the value of student work? And, what happens if they challenge me? Am I out of a job?

I have begun to accept — thanks to Dan Apple and his Pacific Crest learning institute — that grading is an important way for me to support the growth and development of the students who enroll in my classes and request independent studies with me. Because teachers are like coaches: they are people who strive to bring out the best in those with whom they work.

My slowness has gained a new dimension, thanks to Apple and Pacific Crest. I am slow because I try to create feedback that is detailed, specific, and aimed at helping the student become a better student/critical thinker/democratically engaged participant. I try not to be hurtful (unintentionally or otherwise), even as I accept that some students need to hear something harsh from me in order to grow. So I devote much time to reading student work, asking students to complete self-assessments (which I also read and assess), and talking to students about the strengths of their work, areas where their work could improve, and insightful ah-has that emerged from their work. I downplay the grade, because the grade is — well, contrary to the conservative, neo-liberal attack on college professors and the so-called “grade inflation — a subjective, often arbitrary determination by a professor of a student’s overall performance. In my classes, students learn by doing. If you complete all of the assignments I ask you to complete — and I will ask you to do a whole lot of assignments — you will get a good grade. If you write and revise per my feedback oriented toward a goal of getting better, you also will get a good grade.

What does this educational philosophy have to do with Moving the Body?

In a lot of ways, it’s all about Moving the Body.

One cannot preach, if one doesn’t practice the preaching herself.

Many of my colleagues, past and present, tell me they’re overwhelmed, burnt out, and stressed. As I talk with them,  I also gather from them an interesting fact: they have not been to the gym, yoga class, or outdoors for a walk for more than two weeks.

I know that story. I’ve been living it for my entire adult working life — 27 years. When the employer demands, when the work calls, personal care falls by the wayside. In 1995, an editor told me not to tell the night copy desk that I had left my office at 6:45 to go to yoga; he wouldn’t understand, she said, that yoga was more important to one’s health than any questions that the story might flag. The guilt over dropping work for yoga, or weights, or a walk or a run, or a swim, or a dance, or down time with my husband over the “quality story” lives with me today. And, by moving my body, I fight back that guilt, little by little.

Grades were due today. I woke up with an understanding that this would be the first priority. I got the grades — along with the important feedback I wish to deliver to students — all done by 5:41 p.m. And, after that, I was tired, too tired to think about anything other than junk computer games, dinner, and a warm fire in the hearth. But I knew the importance of kinesthetic knowledge, and, after eating, bundled up along with my husband Jim. We were adamant about walking 2.3 miles round-trip to visit the “therapy horse” at the no-kill Estherville Animal Shelter.  The horse always whinnies at me when I walk alone. Even as we sensed that, given the cold, the horse would be safely ensconced indoors.

We walked. We didn’t see the horse, but we did hear the dogs barking on our way back. And I wore two layers on my legs, three layers on my core, a leather jacket, hat, neck scarf, and mittens. Enough to overcome the elements and enjoy life outdoors.

Swimming in January

We had our first real deep freeze this past weekend in Saratoga County, NY.

On Saturday night, friends came over for dinner to celebrate my husband Jim Gupta-Carlson’s birthday. When they left, a little before midnight, the thermometer read 8 degrees, Fahrenheit. Jim loaded up the fireplace and we both huddled near the fire as the temperature dropped to 7, 6, 5 …

I was fretful. I couldn’t get warm. Jim kept trying to heat the fire, but the fire couldn’t keep up with the draft from the window right behind me that kept getting colder and colder. We went to bed as the oil-fed boiler kicked on, triumph of modern convenience over old-fashioned renewable heat resources. But even our super-energy efficient, high-tech insulated windows couldn’t beat the Arctic draft. I still felt cold.

Sunday morning, the thermometer read 0. I woke up stiff and sore, partly from the Saturday morning 90-minute yoga class and day of housecleaning and cooking, and partly from the fact that I was too cold to even think about drinking water. So, yeah, I was dehydrated. Penciled into the Sunday workout plan was weights: pushups, situps on the incline board, lat pulldowns. Plus, Team David’s first Marathon in a Week Challenge was starting, which meant I’d committed to logging 26.2 run/walk miles from Sunday, Jan. 15 through Saturday, Jan. 21. I cupped a mug of coffee in my hands, and buried myself in front of the fire, covered in three blankets. What would it take to get me going?

The image of a sunset over Lanikai, a beach on the Windward side of O’ahu, caught my eye. The picture was on an 88-cent calendar of Hawai’i hanging over the fireplace.

Sometimes, the pictures of sun-kissed sandy beaches look so starkly different from the frigid snow-coated landscape that surrounds me that they make me feel even colder. Often, however, the beaches remind me of swimming in Hawai’i and warm me.

During the 11 years that I lived in Hawai’i, swimming was almost always an outdoor experience: either at the great swimming beaches of Kaimana, Ala Moana, and Lanikai, or in the excellent outdoor pool at the University of Hawai’i as well as the public pools in Manoa and Palolo. Several times a week, I would find myself swimming — bending an elbow to lift an arm out of the water and then rolling slightly to the opposite side so that the arm could extend its stretch as far in front of my head as possible, propelling me forward. All the while, I would be kicking my feet gently, creating a wake behind me. While training for my first triathlon, one tip I received as to swim in the wake produced by another swimming right in front of me. The wake would create a sort of HOV lane in the water, allowing me to cruise past the bottleneck of bodies behind.

I loved the feeling of swimming with a current. When you’re in synch with the current, there’s a warm, luxuriously meditative feeling of being out of real time and real space. When I’m with a current, I’m like the fish Nemo in the jet stream: I can go forever.

The feeling of swimming with a current is harder to create in a swimming pool, especially an indoor multi-use pool that might dedicate two of its eight lanes to lap swimmers, four to the age-group swim team practice, and the remaining two to open swim. Swim team practice often thrashes up the water. Open swim usually involves a lot of shouting, chasing, swimming in all directions, beach ball tossing, dolphin diving for pennies, and so forth. Activities that do not exactly make for a smooth, synchronous current for the adjacent lanes.

Going indoors to swim required some adjustment after 11 years of outdoor aquatics. Even though I had grown up in Indiana swimming in outdoor pools in the summer and indoor pools in the fall, winter, and spring, indoor swimming after Hawai’i seemed depressing. The first pools I visited reeked of chlorine and, despite big picture windows and skylights, seemed dark and cavernous. There was no prospect of warmth, no luxurious meditative state. Just laps and laps in isolation and darkness.

In January 2008, during a rare snowstorm in Seattle (where I lived for four years in between my 11 years in Hawai’i and my current home in New York), a longing to go swimming washed over me. I hunted down my swim suit, goggles, a towel, and warm after-swim sweats, and headed for the Medger Evers Memorial Pool six blocks from my home. I paid a $3.75 user fee and went in.

The locker room — which I’d expected to be as damp as it was outdoors — was surprisingly toasty. The pool area, too, was heated, and the windows and overhead lights did quell the dark cavernous sensation I had felt earlier. I found an available lane, jumped in, and completed several laps. Afterwards, I found that the dry, dark heat of the sauna — while far from Hawai’i’s sunshine — helped me forget the outside cold considerably.

My stroke and my pace were abysmal, after 1-1/2 years of, at best, irregular swimming. But a woman in the sauna offered some perspective:

“I knew you were an athlete as soon as I saw you start swimming,” she said.

I laughed. “I’m really out of shape.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Your body remembers.”

Swimming lets my body remember in a way that seems different from other activities I pursue: running, yoga, bicycling. Perhaps this is because no teacher is talking as in yoga, no team is urging me to stay with the pack as in bicycling, and no scenery or other individual is there to distract me as is often the case with running. In the pool, unlike the ocean, it’s just you and the water, with your core muscles stretched taut to keep your body afloat, your arm muscles flexed to cut cleanly through the water, and your foot muscles engaged in a fluttery kick. It’s easy for the mind to start creating and viewing mental pictures of swimming in the past.

Even in Hawai’i, swimming would get cold in January, especially when the wind picked up, the sky clouded over, and short spates of rainfall would occur. But that cold made me relish swimming in January even more: it meant a hot shower, a chance to wrap up in sweats or a blanket on the beach as the sun would set.

In New York, I plan my January swims with a goal of maximum warmth. I start with a fast walk or run on the treadmill so that my body — often stiff from sitting at my desk all day — has a chance to loosen up. Most swimming pools post signs requiring that swimmers shower before entering the water. I use that rule as an excuse to warm my skin under a hot shower, which blunts the initial shock of entering water 20-25 degrees below one’s body temperature. I also plan time to sit in the hot tub and sauna after.

My swim stroke felt clunky for several years after leaving Hawai’i. I felt as if I were pulling smoothly but not strongly. My body felt heavy in the water, and my feet would drag behind me, flopping in the water, forgetting to flutter. In the water I would chide myself for allowing myself to fall so terribly out of shape, even as I would find reasons — after a few frustrating series of swims — not to return to the pool. But, as January came, so would my longing to swim again. And I would return to the pool.

This January, I came back in a more peaceful, blissful state. I had moved my body consistently through 2011, and had let go of a considerable amount of weight. I still had a ways to go, but I had the confidence for the first time in several years that I would get to the goal weight I desired. It was about 9 p.m. on a weeknight during the holiday interim period when I dove in. The pool was virtually empty. I began to work my way through the water, making first the arm motions, then remembering to kick. And then I remembered the roll and the stretch, and I realized that my body was remembering.

Nothing had changed outside. The temperature was still dropping. But inside, in the water, I was warm and cozy, remembering what it was like to swim in Hawai’i and how much swimming in New York felt no different from that time before.

The hard-good burn

Hello everyone:

Today’s workout was three sets of 12 situps (done with husband Jim pressing on my feet and me having to lift myself high enough to touch his shoulders with my hands); three sets of 12 pushups (again, girl style; I haven’t them the “boy way” with toes curled under and knees elevated since about 1982); and five sets of 12 reps of dead lifts, using dumbbells. (Jim wanted me to try 20 pounds, but I heaved one 20-pounder off the weight rack and realized that I would have to set it down on the ground in order to grab the second one.)

Once I started the dead lift reps, however, I felt that I probably could have done them with 20 pounds.

Why? Jim explained it like this: It takes awhile for your mind to understand what your body is capable of doing. More succinctly, heaving a dumbbell off a rack that’s shoulder height means you’re working your biceps, small muscles that don’t handle heavy weight as well as the big muscles of the glutes and lower back that dead lifts work.

Using less weight than my body could handle wasn’t bad. Fifteen pounds in each hand certainly got my heart rate up, and after each set, I was glistening. And the quality of workout that I got was reinforced when I got on the treadmill after the weights. I used to need about 10 minutes of walking at a brisk walk pace (3.8  mph) to warm up. After doing weights, I need about 10 minutes of jogging at 4.5 mph before I can speed things up.

I will be sore tomorrow. These weights workouts take a lot out of me, and require time for recovery. Part of recovery is the hard-easy-moderate regime I described in an earlier post. An equally important piece of recovery is sleep. A twenty-something Boston Marathon completer who was researching training practices of running groups explained it to me a couple of years ago like this: The average body needs eight hours of sleep. The training/exercise body needs an extra 2 minutes for every 10 minutes of hard exercise.

I worked out tonight for 80 minutes — about 35 minutes of situps, pushups, and dead lifts, and 45 minutes on the treadmill. That would mean 16 more minutes added to 8 hours. This is a busy workweek, with grades due Friday and a research project already overdue. Working to meet the deadlines meant I didn’t get to the gym until 8:15 p.m. It’s midnight now. Tomorrow, there’s a 10 a.m. to Noon meeting followed by a talk by one of my colleagues who is to appear on Jeopardy Friday. And a full day of grading and trying to get the research project done. I don’t see 8 hours and 16 minutes of sleep happening tonight.

But I think all will be okay. Tomorrow also is the designated full rest day, which means a long day at the office will let my body rest. Even if my mind must remain in overdrive.

 

Where I should be right now

Hello everyone,

I’m starting this post at a few minutes shy of midnight, Sunday, January 8; it will be Monday, January 9 by the time that I finish. I was supposed to be in Florida today, running the Disney marathon. Well, it didn’t happen, and I have to say that except for the $140 registration fee I lost, I am not sorry.

I’m a fairly experienced recreational marathoner, having completed nine marathons between 2000 and 2008, and I had mapped out my training plan well. I got to the 14-mile training run on Sunday, September 18, and did it good and strong. But like the 12-, 13-, and 14-milers I had done earlier, it wiped me out. I came home and crashed on the sofa for 2 hours, took some Aleve and started to feel better after its effects kicked in toward early evening. All of that was predictable for me. That’s part of the routine: run, hurt, rest, recover with Advil/Aleve, wine and a great dinner. But there was a 15-miler penciled in for October 2, and an 18-miler for October 16, and a couple of 20-plus for November and December. I found myself asking: Do I really need to do marathon #10?

My training plan was based on a goal of consistency. Marathons #1 and #2 (in 2000 and 2002) had taught me that consistent exercise, a goal, and a steady practice of internal motivation meditations would keep me healthy for life. I scored a personal record (PR) in marathon #3, and ran marathon #4 strong but probably injured. A stress fracture diagnosis in January 2004 sidelined me from running for about 4 months, and mandated a slow but consistent rehabilitation.

I followed the rules, and managed to complete Honolulu’s best known triathlon — the Tinman — in July 2004. But after that, things fell apart. My body didn’t like the hard training runs, and anything I did that exceeded my regular, rather slow but respectable 11-12 minute mile pace would produce unaccountable pains.

Physical therapy, psychological therapy, and internal motivation pushed me through marathon #5 (two hours slower than my PR), marathon #6 (1.5 hours slower than the PR), #7 (10 weeks after #6 and two hours slower than the PR), #8 (only an hour slower); and #9 (Victoria, BC, Canada, 1.5 hours slower with me talking to a lot of first-timers about the importance of pacing, following good plans, and listening to your own body). That marathon ended with me bursting into tears at the finish line and feeling incredibly convinced that I was done with 26.2 while simultaneously believed that I could continue a marathon-a-year into eternity.

I mapped my 2011 Disney marathon training plan in early July. It accounted for travel I would be doing from mid-July through early August, as well as out-of-town trips in late September, mid-October, late October, and mid-November. I worked the plan around those disruptions, and got in the mileage I knew I would need to run complete the marathon in the best way possible. In developing the plan, I also considered the impact of fewer hours of daylight as daylight savings time ended and winter advanced. And I considered my own personal experiences with longer runs: I relish 8-10 milers; I can do 10-12 milers and smile; the mid-distance — 13-18 milers hurt like hell; the 20-22 milers feel great, just because there’s something incredibly heady about the experience of walking, run-walking, jogging, or running that kind of mileage.

What my plan had not accounted for were two things: 1) Balancing the time and recovery for these runs against the time and energy required to complete the scholarly and creative projects I had set for myself and 2) The messages my body was delivering. After September 18 and the completion of the 14-miler, I started to wonder: What would I have to sacrifice to do the 15, 17, 19, and 21 mile workouts? Could I afford to make that sacrifice? Would being physically fit and healthy for life somehow get compromised if I pursued those workouts?

I initially thought I would shift my registration in the Disney marathon from the full marathon to the half. A great big cash flow crunch in November put that shift — register for another race first and then request a refund, minus the $25 processing fee — out of my range. And so I lost $140…

But gained incredible perspective.

Today, one vision for my world had me running marathon #10. Another vision had me running a half-marathon. Both were in Florida, where there’s sun and warmth, some very close family, my first-timer snow-birding parents, and beautiful beaches.

Reality had me weighing in this morning at just 12 pounds over the top end of the “normal” weight range for a person of my size, age, and stature. Reality had me on a pretty frigid evening in Saratoga Springs, NY, at the YMCA with my husband, Jim Gupta-Carlson, doing our currently every three days weights workout followed by a short but strong run: 30 situps on an incline; 30 pushups (girl style, I admit but sweat glistened my face, nevertheless); 4 sets of 12 repetitions of the dumbbell bench press using 12-pound dumbbells (2 pounds up from two weeks ago); and 40 minutes on the treadmill running at a pace that is still 3-minutes-per-mile slower from the great days of my 2003 PR but comfortable and strong for me now.

Would I like to be in Florida? Yes, on a beach with my husband, my parents, and my Orlando-based family? Do I regret not following through on the plan to complete marathon #10? Not in the least.

I encourage anyone who dreams of finishing a marathon to pursue that dream. And if you wrote me, I would be more than delighted to talk to you about how to make that dream a fruition, because training and completing marathons truly were influential in my late 30s through mid 40s in helping me understand why I was here on this planet and what I was capable of achieving. And, hard as it is to accept, there comes a time and space where one understands that the lessons of the marathon have been learned and it is time to move on.

 

In between the iron

Hello everyone.

Today (Wednesday, Jan. 4) has been scribbled into my calendar as a “weights day”, which means that my body will have had two full days of rest from the last weights workout. That’s good because the soreness from the New Year’s Day workout only dissipated fully tonight. But the two days of rest from weights doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. On Monday, I did a brisk walk (about 3.8 mph) for 2.15 miles and followed that with a 500 meter swim. Tuesday (or today or technically yesterday since it’s now past midnight and hence a new day) involved an hour of really good yoga and 4 miles of running at about a 13-minute mile pace (maybe just a little faster).

For years, I followed a hard-easy philosophy of exercise, essentially push yourself one day and take it easy the next. And then you’re ready to go hard again, and easy again. I think that approach works if you’re moving your body in one way: only running, only swimming, only doing yoga, only dancing, only house-cleaning, etc. But if you’re mixing it up, as I am currently, I think a slight variation is worthy of consideration: hard-easy-moderate.

Everything I’ve learned through reading and lived experience is that the body does best with periodic days of full rest. Full rest means sleeping late, lounging on the sofa, working on a , working the mind but not the body. (Though I think I’m also coming to learn that the mind needs periodic days of full rest, as well.) The question of how often those days of full rest should occur is interesting. When I’m only running and walking, I’d say one day out of every six is ideal. When I’m mixing it up, I’d say one day out of every ten works just fine.

Even if you’re sore, you want to move a little. Movement is a little like flossing your teeth or going to the bathroom: it allows your body to eliminate the lactic acid that results from a hard workout and to let your muscles (like your teeth, gums and innards) to clean themselves out.

So what are we doing tomorrow? According to husband Jim Gupta-Carlson, it’s going to be shoulders — with military presses followed by situps and pushups. And, a short run. Get ready to burn.

 

 

Day 1 of 2012

One of my plans for the cold January-March winter months of upstate New York, where I reside, was to mix up my workout routine. Since September, I had been almost exclusively running and walking, with a little bit of yoga thrown in. The workouts invigorated me and definitely kept the weight-loss going in the right direction, but they were getting … well, a bit boring. So on the day after Christmas, I asked my husband, Jim Gupta-Carlson, to acquaint me with weights.

I’ve done weights in the past, but not in Jim’s style — which is one muscle group every 2-3 days for 4-5 sets of 12 reps with as heavy a weights load as one can muster followed by some short but decidedly difficult sit-ups on either an inclined board or with someone holding one’s feet. I always shuddered from Jim’s style, but since December 26, I’ve done three workouts and they have felt fabulous.

Here’s what I did:

Monday: 4 sets of 12 reps of a dumbbell bench press using 10 pound dumbbells (a lot for this tiny lady), followed by 2 sets of 12 situps on an incline, followed by a treadmill run.

Thursday: 5 sets of 12 reps on the lateral pull-down machine (extra set because it took awhile to figure out the right weight) with weights of 35 pounds initially, increased to 45 pounds, and then 50, followed by 2 sets of 12 situps on a mat with Jim holding my feet and me tapping his shoulders each time I arose. This, too, was followed by a good treadmill run.

Sunday (January 1, today) 4 sets of 12 reps of deadlifts, one with 10 pound dumbbells and three with 15 pound dumbbells, 2 sets of 12 situps on an incline that felt painfully hard, 2 sets of 12 pushups, and then a treadmill run.

The logic behind the weights regime is to work one muscle group at a time. Hard. Monday, it was the pectoral chest area; Thursday, it was the upper back; and today, it was the lower back. The weights take up about 15 minutes of a 60-minute exercise time: they shouldn’t hurt when you’re doing them; they should only get your heart beating at a good healthy clip. But your body will feel sore the next day, which is why the weight workouts occur every three days. On the off days, I walked long (9 miles one day, 5 miles another day) and rested twice.

And you? What do you know about weights-type workouts that you’d like to share?

 

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