Eyeing the Ironman

My trip to Seattle ended with a red-eye flight on Saturday, July 27, so that my husband and I could drive up to Lake Placid, NY, early Sunday to watch and volunteer at its annual Ironman event. He picked me up at the Albany airport at about 9:30 a.m., and we headed straight up to Lake Placid, arriving there a bit before 1 p.m.

You might be asking what merit lies in driving so far on so little sleep to watch some 2,800 athletes complete the event that involves swimming 2.4 miles, bicycling 112 miles, and running a full marathon, especially when my emphasis in this blog has always been about moving your own body, rather than watching others. The questions of the value further mount as one realizes that I’ve got my own triathlon to complete this coming Saturday and really need all the rest and good nutrition that I can get.

To answer these questions, you’ve got to know the method behind the madness. I have had completing an Ironman as one of my goals for nearly a decade. This year, turning 50 prompted me to think about that goal with a certain level of seriousness. I am fairly certain that proper training will allow anyone in reasonably good physical shape to complete an Ironman. I felt, however, that if I really did want to do one, I should plan to do it within the next five to seven years, before old age might make it too much endurance for one small body to take.

And, so, I was on the discussion forum for Beginning Triathletes one night in February when I read that people who volunteer to work at the Lake Placid Ironman are guaranteed a spot in the coming year’s Ironman. I immediately found the web link to volunteer and signed up. I didn’t plan to register for the Ironman next year, but Lake Placid isn’t too far from my home and I had never watched the actual event. In addition, I always appreciate the volunteers who have helped make the various marathons I’ve done a success and felt that the chance to help out at such a signature event would be a way to show my gratitude in a more tangible way.

Later, I realized that the dates would conflict with my plans to go to Seattle. I decided I could do the trip in a way that would not create a conflict.

As we drove into Lake Placid, most of the competitors were in the midst of the bike ride. We began encountering them about twenty miles or so before we hit Lake Placid. The first thing that hit me was that they did not look like super-athletes. They looked, well, a little like me. Seeing them suddenly made completing an Ironman seem more possible.

Following instructions provided by our volunteer team’s captain, we parked near one of the five spots where shuttles were transporting people to the Ironman site in downtown Lake Placid and got to the Olympic oval about 35 minutes before the winner was due in. We found a place on the field to position ourselves and waited for him to come in.

As he crossed the line, a second thing hit me: He didn’t look like the finisher of a marathon — beaten up, totally fried. On the contrary, he seemed jovial and relaxed. He even stopped before he actually crossed the finish line to give a high-five to a few spectators.

As the winner, he had been competing for eight hours and 42 minutes. The back-of-the-pack would come in about nine hours after him, barely making the 17-hour time limit that Ironman officially sanctions. You might think that the winner would stand out from the crowd. He didn’t particularly. Over the next five hours, we watched a few hundred athletes come in for a final half-lap on the Olympic oval and cross the finish line as the announcer pealed out their names and the statement “You are an Ironman.” Most of them looked just as relaxed as the winner. Focused and intent on finishing but not stressed out, not worn out. As if they were out for a long bike ride or run for the day. This, too, made it seem as if an Ironman might be possible to complete.

Lake Placid is not known for being an easy course. The swim involves two laps in a lake called Mirror Lake, the bike ride has a couple of steep climbs, and the run also is up and down a series of hills. Still, with training, it seemed, one could do it.

My husband and I stayed until 8 p.m. We hope to return next year as volunteers and to stay overnight so we can be at the finish line at midnight when the final competitors come in. 

This year, we got home a little before midnight. Worn out from the red eye and the long day’s drive, I was asleep on the sofa within about 15 minutes. But today, spurred on by Ironman, I got on my bike and did a simple, 12-mile ride. I pulled into my driveway, put on my running shoes and did a good 3.4 mile run. A long way from Ironman, but a good workout for an Olympic Distance triathlon that might become the stepping stone for something bigger. I plan to exercise lightly this week, drink a lot of water, eat healthy food and sleep. On Saturday, I will take a cue from Ironman, and try to be as relaxed as possible.

Movements in the city

The countdown to the Fronhofer Tool Triathlon is now exactly one week. If I had been training for this event a few years earlier, I would be feeling some major stress. Instead, I feel an incredible sense of well-being and relaxation. I don’t know what the outcome of the triathlon will be, but I do know that I plan to be at the starting line and will do the best that I can.

I have been in Seattle since the night of Monday, July 22. Sunday, July 21, was supposed to be a three-event brick workout, but turned out to be mainly a day of harvesting garlic, doing laundry, and running errands. Friday, July 20, was an unbelievably hot day, so instead of doing the three-event brick that I’d hoped, I ended up settling for a fairly long swim in the cool indoor pool. The upshot of all of this: the last time I ran was about nine days ago; the last time I bicycled was about ten days ago. I will hope to get some running and biking workouts in early next week, but I also know that at this point the best thing I can do for my body is make sure I stay hydrated, well-nourished, and rested.

So why am I not stressed out?

Well, the week in Seattle turned out to be glorious. Every day that I was here (including the Monday night when I got in close to midnight) was clear, sunny, and hot but not too hot. Mount Rainier graced the skyline every day, and the only reason that I did not see the Space Needle was that I didn’t look in its direction. My gaze was fixed toward the south and east parts of the central city, where my research on hip-hop and community building is based, and where some of the city’s best walking routes and swimming beaches are located.

Having lived in Seattle from 1988-95 and again from 2006-10, I know that the sunshine and summer glory that I experienced this week has been a gift. So I swam in Lake Washington four days this week, and I walked and walked and walked: 6.5 miles on Tuesday, 5 miles on Wednesday, 7 miles on Thursday, and 9.3 miles on Friday. I probably will walk another two miles today, and I probably walked about one-and-a-half miles on Monday. This walking, coupled with the 30 to 45 minute swims that I did each day in the lake, feels like it might have been one of the best tapers for a big sporting event that I, in my current physical condition, could have pulled off.

I received a second gift in Seattle as I encountered old friends and acquaintances. On previous trips back to my old hometown, I have worried quite a bit about the health of the people I know as well as the long-term health of the communities in which they reside. Seattle, for all of its glamor, is a rather divided city, stratified somewhat on the basis of race as well as its perpetual cross-cutting intersections with class. A ship canal that links Lake Washington to the Puget Sound divides the city into north and south segments. Research on the health of the city was beginning to show in the first decade of the twenty-first century that obesity rates south of the ship canal were considerably higher than those north. It is perhaps no coincidence that the southern areas have proportionally higher racial and ethnic minority populations, and house the high number of new immigrants and refugees who sought sanctuary in this generally liberal city in the 1970s through early 2000s. It is perhaps also no coincidence that the southern parts of the city historically have had fewer parks and easily accessible outdoor exercise spots, and that the economic demographics of the neighborhoods south of the ship canal are considerably poorer.

I always lived south of the ship canal, and for sixteen years owned a house in Seattle in its historic Central District. As a young adult who loved being out on the town in her twenties and as a slightly older person who loved building community via backyard barbecues and late-night strolls through the inner city, I always loved the mix of urban vibrancy and nature that I felt I could find in the central city. In my latter years, my passion for the south part of the city has translated into a rather unfair but frank dislike for the northern neighborhoods. I apologize to friends who live in these areas, but I find them too quiet, too plain, and too fearful of difference.

So, to the point of the gift. Absence always makes the heart grow fonder. And working vacations in a city that one knows very well perhaps create a rosier-than-thou lens for viewing change. Those disclaimers in place, my walks and my encounters with people I knew and places I feel affinity with showed me a place that had regained a sense of good health and vitality for life. People were thinner and smiling more. Beaches were filled with swimmers. Walking paths had been better marked, and sidewalks seemed to be in much better shape than I’d remembered.

I was pleased, and also perplexed.

“You look great,” I remarked to Brian McGuigan, of the Richard Hugo House.

“You look great, too,” he responded.

We both really meant what we said, because the truth is, we both looked as if we had been taking care of ourselves.

“Everyone I keep running into looks great,” I added. “What’s up with that?”

He laughed and shrugged. “We don’t want to die yet,” he surmised.

The health of a community runs deep in my understanding of hip-hop. Browsing books in the African American collection of the Douglass Truth Library yesterday, I found a text entitled Foundation, by Joseph Schloss, who described himself as an out-of-shape white professor in his thirties before he began hanging out with b-boys and b-girls. They invited him to practices, and before long, he was learning the basics of break-dancing. I didn’t have enough time to read far enough into the book to see if he stayed with the discipline, but he did note around page 20 or so, that after six months of break-dancing practices he was at a much healthier weight and in the best shape of his life.

My motive in walking the city was about my own health, but it also was about understanding — or trying to detect, at least — an intersection between hip-hop and its impact on city life. What I saw in my excursions up and down hills, through highly urban and densely populated communities was a city: decay, revitalization, despair, and increasingly hope. One can walk and munch on wild blackberries that populated the brush overhanging sidewalks. One can cross a street full of traffic, noise, and urban pollution into a quiet neighborhood where pumpkins are forming on vines in a garden placed in the middle of a sidewalk. And one can cross from a crowded street into a small forest within a few blocks. And throughout these areas one also can see the traces of hip-hop: flyers promoting events, community groups organizing for racial justice, music pulsating from car stereos and area businesses, gardens being maintained for feeding the hungry and educating school-goers. I hope to report on this more in future posts, but I do think that these healthful roots are a part and parcel of how we might articulate an understanding of hip-hop and health for the present and future.

 

Getting down with the heat

Monday’s high was 90 degrees.
Tuesday’s high was 90 degrees.
Wednesday’s high was 94.
The car thermometer when I left my air conditioned office at 5:45 p.m. today read 102.

When I first moved to Saratoga Springs from Seattle three and a half years ago, I devoted a lot of mental energy to preparing myself for more snow than I’d seen in 25 years and bitterly cold winters. I didn’t give the summers much thought; everyone who had had any experience with the Adirondacks and New England assured me that the summers were beautiful.

I moved here in April 2010. The trees were just budding and spring flowers were blooming. The sky seemed blue all the time.

A few months later came July and with it the most continually sweltering heat that I’d experienced since moving away from the Midwestern plains in the mid-1980s. Ninety degrees day after day. Humidity on top of that. And to add insult to injury, mosquitoes that seemed to outnumber humans 10,000 to one.

After that first summer, I began to feel that my new home was a cold weather place, and that the summers were simply too hot.

This summer, I am a little afraid to admit it, but I am enjoying the heat. I don’t think it’s been as hot as in previous summers. However, my neighbor pulls out the stats that he hears nightly on the news to prove me wrong. I don’t know if I’ve acclimated, or if something else has changed.
At any rate, it’s somewhat enjoyable to me to go out and pull weeds in our backyard farm in mid-afternoon. From about 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., the sun is sweltering but starting to move toward the western horizon, which means working outside with sunscreen-proofed mosquito repellant, plenty of water, and a wide-brimmed straw hat is going to make me sweat. It’s a good sweat. Clean and therapeutic.

It’s also been somewhat enjoyable to move my body in the heat. And, with sixteen days before the triathlon, keeping my body moving is almost a necessity. I don’t over-push, but I do want to get in some key workouts, and I am finding that the heat can be an ally as much as it is an obstacle in pursuit of that goal.

For example, yesterday, I rode my bicycle to work. My husband was going to pick me up in the afternoon to go to the farmers market, and we were going to work out at the Y together. I wasn’t sure what kind of a workout the heat would allow me to do so I packed my swimsuit and goggles and running shoes, and biked to work in a trisuit that would let me do all three sports, so I would have a choice.

3:15 p.m. dawned, and it hit me that the car with sun-baked leather seats and a chilling AC blasting in my face might be more uncomfortable than biking to the farmers market. When you’re biking outdoors, your body’s motion generates a gentle breeze that can keep you pleasantly cool. In addition, the helmet not only protects you from head injuries but helps block the sun. I sent my husband a text-message, telling him I would meet him at the farmers market on my bike.

He was incredulous. “How can you even think of exerting yourself outside on a day like this?”

It was a smooth ride and I was delighted to log a couple of extra biking miles.

After the farmers market, we headed to the Y. My upper left arm has been a bit sore so I have been taking it a bit easy with swims, working at getting in about 4,000 yards a week but not trying to push myself too hard. I thought I would run indoors on the Y’s track, which is in an air-conditioned space. But the idea of running indoors didn’t seem appealing, and even the idea of running itself wasn’t feeling too attractive. I had been in Washington DC the previous weekend for a conference, and since biking and swimming were not options there, I ended up doing two runs and one fairly long walk. The runs had left me feeling depleted and sore, partly because I had done them under hot, humid conditions.

Then, I remembered that I could swim first, then run. Since I had on my trisuit, my body would still benefit from being damp from the swim and cool from the pool water. So I jumped into the pool, whipped out a smooth 1,000 yards, did a quick shower and towel-dry in the locker room, laced up my running shoes and headed out the door.

The run was surprisingly smooth and easy. The route was full of shade trees, which helped considerably, but doing the swim first had relaxed me while warming up my muscles. I did four miles and felt as if I could have another two. That felt like a good place to be.

Why is the heat feeling so sweet? I have no real concrete answer as to why. However, I do have a few theories. One is that being at a healthy weight has helped me handle a variety of climatic conditions much better. The winter felt less cold; the spring felt less damp; and the summer less hot. A second theory is that not drinking alcoholic beverages any more has made me more hydrated. I still drink three or four cups of coffee each morning, and I know I don’t drink as much water throughout the day as I should. At the same time, I am not losing hydration to alcohol, which has led to more energy and a calmer frame of mind. A third and final theory is that I’m not pushing myself. I’m doing enough to satisfy my body’s urge to exercise, and worrying less about whether it’s enough to be ready for the triathlon.

Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be in the nineties again. I followed yesterday’s “brick” with a bike ride this evening, and am planning to swim and possibly run tomorrow. I also have a couple of appointments downtown in the early afternoon when the sun might be at its most ferocious. Tomorrow also happens to be the opening day of the Saratoga horse-racing season (track season) as it’s called here so getting downtown might be a frustrating experience if I try to drive. I have thought about biking into town tomorrow, but I’m not keen on doing the ride home on a crowded road paved with heat-emitting concrete if it’s in the nineties. Plus, I’ll need my laptop. So I am thinking about strapping my bike onto the car rack, driving in the morning to my office (which is not in the downtown circuit), and then riding over to my appointments. I’ll get in some miles and avoid the frustration.

We’ll see how it goes.

Corn, beans, and squash

Many of our Facebook friends have been expressing interest in my husband Jim’s photos of our Three Sisters garden. They’ve been asking why we are planting corn, beans, and squash in this manner, and wondering how the technique works.

Our basic answer has been that it’s a Native American method of companion planting in which corn provides stalks for bean vines to climb up, while the bean vines and the squash leaves both restore nutrients to soil that corn depletes. A little bit of an Internet search also reminded me that the squash serves a purpose, too. Because its vines grow low to the ground and produce big leaves and flowers, squash generates shade that keeps the soil nice and most.
I first heard about this planting technique in the late 1980s in Seattle, long before I even had container gardens going in my highly urban but sun-friendly apartment. I was intrigued by the idea of planting three crops so closely together and interested in how the nutritional value of the food stuffs that they plants themselves produced supported one another. I was in my mid-twenties, and always vowed that if I ever got to the opportunity to inter-plant in this way, I would give it a try.

That chance materialized in 2012 when, in the dead of winter, Jim and I were discussing what seeds to order and what vegetables to try and grow. By this point, the concept of Three Sisters had been circulating on the Internet and some seed companies were even selling packages of corn, beans, and squash together. We both liked corn, dried beans particularly, and both winter and summer squash so we decided to give the method a try.

After doing a little “google” research, we decided that rather than order a set of pre-packed seeds (which, perhaps because of the novelty of invoking — or some might say, appropriating — a Native American tradition, were selling for a premium) we would simply order varieties of the three crops that we particularly liked and just see what emerged.

Our seeds arrived, and Jim set to work planting them in egg cartons and starter pots. By early April, starts of corn, beans, and winter squash were beginning to overwhelm us. We were not too worried because we had decided to dedicate a fairly sizeable area of our backyard to the three sisters, so we knew we’d have plenty of space to house the seedlings. Plus, we had tried to grow corn once in Seattle before moving to upstate New York and had learned that in order for the corn plants to thrive, you needed to have a lot of them, all growing in close proximity to each other.

We created circles of about a foot in diameter and planted the corn seedlings in the circle. The squash seedlings went in around the corn in a sort of square formation, with one plant on each corner of the square. And around each corn stalk we planted a ring of beans.

We learned many things in the summer of 2012, one of which was not to sow beans in seed pots in advance. Beans need heat to sprout, and most planting calendars for our area suggest directly sowing them into soil after June 1. We also learned that while squash leaves do indeed create a pleasant shade, that shade isn’t beneficial for every type of squash. For instance, the karela (or bitter melon) plants that I had tried so hard to grow pretty much got lost in the thicket of corn stalks, bean vines, and other squashes and never made it high enough to reach the sun they craved. We also learned that our No. 1 crop is weeds, and that an overrun of weeds in a three sisters garden can be perilous to the health of beans and squash. Both vines will wrap themselves around whatever falls into their path. This meant that weeding often damaged the vines in hindered the crop in the process.

Nevertheless, we started out with a pretty strong and healthy garden. By late July, the corn stalks were a full head taller than me, and the husks of corn forming on them were tender and sweet. For about a month, dinner started with corn plucked from the stalk, placed in the husk directly on the grill, and eaten with a dab of butter after cooking for about ten minutes. We savored our success and vowed to make the corn last as long as we could.

That vow became another lesson of three sisters learning. Corn, especially the varieties grown for fresh consumption, has a pretty short season. Quickly, the ears we were savored began drying out or served as food for a variety of garden worms and beetles. Rather than sharing an ear of corn between us to “conserve”, we should have eaten ourselves merry and flash frozen some ears for winter time consumption.

In the meantime, our beans were beginning to boom. Because we had planted beans as seedlings and because last summer was unusually dry and hot, the beans began ripening very fast. Beans, however, are loaded with protein. This means that fresh or dried a little go a long way, especially when you cook them right off the stalk with a touch of water and/or butter for about two minutes. So we picked our beans sparingly, figuring the pods would dry on the stalk and we could shuck them in the late fall for winter eating. Only, as we learned, not all beans dry equally well. Some varieties don’t produce the hefty seeds that are prized in storage bins and simply shrivel on the stalk. While we had ordered beans that were suitable for drying as well as varieties that were best for fresh eating, our haphazard early plantings meant that many of our drying beans — which require much more time to grow and mature — didn’t make it into the ground until late July and early August.

As a result, we were planting beans pretty late into the season and not harvesting the beans we had, and freezing them for winter eating in a different way. I remember, in fact, eating some of the few green beans that did survive into September, gasping in delight at their delicious flavor, and kicking myself for not harvesting more of them when the time was right. (Beans, like peas, benefit from frequent pickings because the plant will put its energy into growing more.)

The other problem that late bean plantings left us with was that the plants and pods matured just as the deer started to run low on wild berries and other vegetation in the woods. Deers, like rabbits, are herbivores, and, like humans, crave a balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat in their diet. They are especially fond of plant-based proteins found in such plants as legumes as well as calcium-rich greens like collards, kale, brussels sprouts, and chard.

We fared pretty well with squash, with exception of the karela, which we ended up buying from the Otrembiak family twice a week at the local farmers market. Intrigued by our fondness for the bitter-gourd taste, our purchases and their supply did help us form a lively friendship, and this spring, Joe Otrembiak gifted me with a “six-pack” of karela seeds for my garden. The other squash — butternut, spaghetti, delicata, and acorn — lasted through early January.

Lessons learned, we embarked on 2013, with a desire to try the “three sisters” garden method once again. We’re practicing crop rotation, so we moved the garden to a new location, and bit the bullet and invested in a deer-repellent solar-powered electric fence to keep them out of our gardens. We did plant corn and squash in starter pots but waited until early June to put the beans in the ground. And we did so — with a plan. Black beans, red beans, and white beans — all of which are suitable for drying — went into the ground first, in an area that’s sun loving but not attached to the three sisters. We’ve planted fresh beans around the stalks of corn, but before planting, Jim hilled each corn stalk to repel the weeds and give both the beans and squash a bit of a head start. He also left more space between each corn circle so that weeds — which will appear — can be dealt with with less trampling over squash vines and pinching of the bean vines.

As an almost antithesis to last year, this year has been unusually wet and cooler. Still, the corn is growing, and met the local goal of being “knee high by the Fourth of July”. The squash and beans also are beginning to come into their own. I’m not sure when we’ll start to see corn husks and bean pods, but I am looking forward to an August of plates of corn and beans, as well as a lot of time with our freezer-wrap machine.

Freakin awesome!

Thirty-two days to the triathlon. By this point, I had hoped to be swimming about 5,000 yards, bicycling 60 miles, and running 25 miles a week. My averages are closer to 4,000 yards swimming, 30 miles bicycling, and 15 miles running — on good weeks.

“Are you going to be ready?” a woman at the Saratoga Springs YMCA asked me.

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I worry about being ready, too, but I also feel like training for this triathlon has been one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. Almost every workout has felt like a good workout. Almost every workout has felt like it has pushed me but still left me with enough energy that I could have pushed myself a little further.

Does that mean I’m ready? Or does it mean that I’ve under-trained?

I do know that the spring and early summer were filled with unexpected challenges, ranging from personal issues like my wisdom teeth surgery to external matters like snow that lingered into April, unseasonably cold spells in late May and early June, and torrential rains in early July. Tonight I had hoped to join a friend who nears a lovely spring water lake about 15 miles from my home for an evening swim in the lake. I had swum there with her a couple of days ago, and once I got used to the feel of the water and the landmarks around the banks, had swum as much as perhaps 2,000 meters without any problem.

The clouds opened at about 4:30 p.m., and the thunder and lightning soon followed. I wasn’t overly upset because I had done a ten-mile run the day before and had figured that swimming in the Saratoga Y’s pool might be a better “recovery” workout.

Only lightning became a problem for the Y, too. Their staff is required to close the pool for at least thirty minutes, once lightning is spotted. This meant that my swim turned into a leisurely settling down in the sauna.

“It was almost easier in the winter,” I remarked to someone in the sauna. I was limited to running on an indoor track and cycling on a fitness cycle, but I didn’t have to worry about inclement weather quite so much.

“You’ll do it,” a friend told me encouragingly a month ago. “When push comes to shove, you’ll just get out there and do it.”

Her words bolster my confidence now, and help give me reason to believe that I have been training enough — even if I have not been training in the way that I had thought I would be.

Moving your body, of course, is also less about winning races or even racing, and more about the process of getting one’s self to the start line. Last night, after completing a 10-mile run (my first double-digit run in nearly two years) and feeling exuberant that I had run it comfortably at an approximate 12 minute mile pace, I posted my success as a status update on Facebook.

“Awesome!” “Freakin’ awesome!” “Amazing!” “You go girl!” were among the comments the post generated.

Part of wanted to respond, “Oh, it’s only a 12-minute mile.” But then I realized, no, for me, this run at this pace on a humid, sticky evening on roads that had hills, was “freakin awesome.” It’s such a long way from the rather painful 10-miler I did when I last tried to train for a marathon in 2011, when I needed Advil, alcohol, and a nap to recover. It also was a very long way from memories of running with “serious runners” in Honolulu and meeting up with “serious runners” from other parts of the world and having them respond to such runs at such paces as “Wow, you’re really slow!”

What’s even more “freakin awesome” is the turnaround that a slow but determined commitment to keep moving my body has had. When my weight ballooned in the first decade of the 21st century, I didn’t know if I would even be able to run anymore, let alone run at a faster than 15-minute mile pace. By the time I moved to Saratoga Springs in 2010, I was so out of shape that walking hurt, and cycling more than the two miles between my apartment and workplace would cause me to break out in a sweat. Swimming more than 300 yards in one workout felt like a lot.

Today I weigh myself most mornings and log the figure that shows up on the scale. As I do so, I sometimes forget where I’ve been in pursuit of where I am trying to go next. I forget that it took two years of slow, sustained effort to go from obesity to “healthy weight”, and even longer to go from an out-of-breath walk from the parking lot to the front door to pulling up to the front door on my bicycle with a smile on my face and the warmth of the outdoor sun still lingering on my arms. I forget that this time a year ago, it hurt to run two miles, that I didn’t swim a whole lot, and that I cycled almost not at all.

And, I wonder, am I ready for this triathlon, this racing event that will occur in thirty-two days.

I may never know the answer to that question, until the race itself occurs.

In the meantime, I just need to remind myself to keep doing what I’ve been doing.