Building, brick by brick

January 1, 2013: The year kicks off with a visit to the Saratoga Springs YMCA, which almost never closes its doors but maintains a brief 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. schedule on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. My husband and I arrived around 12:30, which gave me time to exercise for about an hour, so I could enjoy 15 minutes in the spa area, as well.

I decided to try a variation on a workout that’s a fixture of many triathlon training programs, the brick.

Bricks, in the strictest triathlon sense, are a combination of either swimming and cycling, swimming and running, or cycling and running. You do short workouts, often repeatedly, with little interruption between intervals. Two training websites for triathletes explain the concept of the brick in more detail:

Beginner Triathlete
http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/Enrico%20Contolini/Introduction_to_bricks.htm

Training Peaks

http://blog.trainingpeaks.com/posts/2011/2/25/brick-workouts-switching-up-the-run-bike-combo.html

I’ve always enjoyed bricks because they give me a chance to mix things up. It’s also fun to try a brick when you’re fairly sure you want to move your body but you’re not exactly sure what you want to do. Today, I made good on a few New Year’s resolutions by starting with 20 minutes on the treadmill (18 miles fast, and 2 minutes cool down, which was 1.67 miles at my current pace of about 11-12 minutes per mile), followed by a 30 minute gym and yoga drill, and 10 minutes on an exercise bike. The latter workout is tied to a resolution to try a spinning (or cycling) class at least once a week this year for at least six weeks. I’ve never been a strong and fast cyclist, but I’m hoping that my body has gained enough power and strength in the past two years to give a class a try. We’ll see!

What’s the gym and yoga routine? I mix it up a lot, but it’s been a workout I started to play with last September and have come to enjoy very much. Today, it was four sets of 25 squats for 100 total. In between the squats, I did 35 lunges on each leg; 40 full abdominal crunches on an exercise ball; and a series of yoga sun salutations and standing poses. So squats, lunge, squats, crunch, squats, yoga, squats. I particularly like this drill because it can be done anywhere; even though I used an exercise ball today, I didn’t have to. I could have done the workout as easily at home as I did in the gym.

I had thought about a swim, but I was pretty winded by the end of the bike ride. Plus, the spa area only had about 7 minutes of open time remaining by the time I changed into a swimsuit and made my way there. So I relaxed in the dry-heat sauna and quietly blessed this new beginning.

More later. Keep moving.

Moving into a new year

2013 opens with snow on the ground and a bitter chill in the air. For the past few weeks, my husband and I have been sleeping in our sitting room on a sofa and chair beside our fire, letting the warming flames keep us fueled.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping for the first time in ages. I attribute the difficulty to a decision I made on Dec. 13 (after a fairly wretched night of what appeared to be acid-reflux induced vomiting) to give up alcohol for at least six months and hopefully two years. Nineteen days and I don’t miss the stuff at all. I do miss the habit, though — it’s hard to come home and not immediately pour myself a glass of wine while fixing dinner; it’s hard to read after eating without sipping on something smooth; it’s hard to understand when my body is ready to unwind and recline when the signal is coming not from a shot of vodka but from Celestial Seasonings’ famed SleepyTime tea.

But, as the days pass, it gets easier.

And I am counting on my tried-and-true rituals of good exercise to see me through.

I was not as good at logging workouts in 2012, as I was in 2011. I know I did work out at least four days a week generally, and usually five or six. My weight is down to 126.1 pounds, from 133.2 on January 2, 2012, and I am wearing jeans happily and comfortably for the first time since 2003. I am happy not to be entering the new year with a desperate desire to try a new diet, juice fast, or a weight-loss program. I am fairly confident that my current system — while seriously slower than molasses in January — is keeping me on track.

I did wonder, however, if I should sunset this blog. It was hard for me to maintain, and it didn’t ignite the honest and frank dialogue that I had hoped it would about diet, health, and fitness. My lack of success in starting up a decent conversation mirrored in my mind failure on other fronts. An eight-week challenge that I kicked off via Facebook drew about 15 eager participants initially; by week eight, that number had dwindled to three. A do-it-yourself Moving Your Body marathon groups drew about a dozen participants initially; by year’s end, I was posting and no one was commenting. I compared my failures to my friend Stephanie Galuppo’s success with Team David and found myself wondering if either I needed to be a recognized authority on health and fitness or I didn’t have the personality to create a following around fitness.

Reflecting on those “failures” led to some interesting perspectives: Two-thirds of American adults are classified obese, according to a 2012 research study. More than fifty percent made losing weight a 2013 goal. I couldn’t easily find any reports on weight-loss success rates, but I suspect that the gap between those who try and those who succeed is fairly wide. Not to mention the gap between those who initially succeed in reaching an ideal weight and those who are able to maintain that weight for more than two to five years. These revelations (coming as I sipped herbal tea instead of a vodka on ice, and tried not to think about the relaxation buzz that the latter would immediately provide) highlight the difficulty of any lifestyle change. Moving your body consistently, in short, is no easier than quitting smoking, giving up alcoholic beverages, or even earning a college degree. It requires sacrificing an older, often pleasurable habit and creating a new one. And sustaining that new habit day-in, day-out. Some say it takes 21 days for a new habit to be established; my bet is that the real figure is more like 21 weeks, or perhaps 21 months.

For those reasons, and some others (such as trying to practice what I preach to the students who take my Digital Storytelling and other Creative Writing courses about consistent blogging), I’ve decided to keep the blog going, and to try and make it a habit (think in the 21-week terms) of posting more consistently. If I get so good as to post every day, I’ll include workouts, menus, and some of the daily habits that I’ve managed to work into my life, such as never taking the stairs up the three flights from my building’s entrance to my office.

I’ll also try and do more research, and post more articles of interest as I encounter them. It’s my hope that the blog will reach a wider audience and encourage others to contribute. At the very least, however, it will offer one chance for me to share my voice with the world, which, at times, seems to be all the support one needs to become fit for life.