July 19, 2000 -- 12:03 AM
EST
 Been kind of light effort on the
entries. Here's a huge honkin' one to get it all out of my system...
[...]
What am I pleased with? Legs.
Harder, stronger, and definitely showing the most improvement lately.
In one of these fitness books
laying around here, and I couldn't begin to tell you which one, it says that
walking will show an overall improvement in strength and tone in 6-8 weeks. So
how am I doing midway through my 13th week of this marathon training walk
business?
Fascinated. I love the strong feel
of my legs. I love not having as many jiggly places. I love seeing a hint of
lines starting to show on my inner thighs and quads as I lose fat.
Love it, love it, love it! I wish
I could walk on my hands just to get the same toning effect on my triceps!
What am I reading lately? Claire
Kowalchik's
The Complete Book of Running for Women again. Namely the
racing chapter where it details schedules, nutrition, pre- and post-race
suggestions. There a chunk on cross training I skimmed again last night. Here's
what is says about biking:
"A
common second sport among runners, cycling can be quite a leg burner but
without the impact stresses of running. As you'll see later, it is one of the
better cross-training activities for runners who want to stay in shape when
they are injured, but relaxed cycling makes an excellent form of active rest.
In fact light cycling is sometimes recommended the day after a marathon to help
loosen up your muscles without impact. This is one activity that doesn't do a
whole lot for your upper body, but it can cut a mean pair of
quads."
Wahoo! Quads!
Also reading
Hope in a Jar : The Making of America's Beauty Culture by
Kathy Peiss and
Mountain Bike : A Manual of Beginning to Advanced Technique by
William Nealy. I guess book monogamy is out -- I can't stay true to just one
book until I finish it. I flit around like a butterfly. Haven't delved too deep
into "Hope" so I won't talk about that one.
The Nealy is good, but annoying to
read. I liked
Inline! : A Manual for Beginning to Intermediate Inline
Skating too, but it was the same problem. The cartoons and the advice are
great, but it gives you a pain to be reading all that handwritten text so you
have to put it down often. He should have done the cartoons and had the body
copy set in type. I could live with handwritten sidebars, but good grief! Body
copy?!
This weekend I'll try to learn
some new bike skills. The Nealy books are usually good for explaining things.
[...]
So yeah, I'm looking forward to
biking this weekend with Paul. I doubt we'll be out for four hours, but who
knows. The schedule says 4 hr endurance walk. I say 4 hr endurance BIKE. No way
am I going to hole up at the gym yet again. Better not rain. Otherwise I'll
bike in the mud! I need to break free of this gym cabin fever! We're trying to
pinpoint what park, and I'm trying to get him to agree to get up EARLY. I don't
want rain or heat screwing it up!
Trying to figure out where to
stick in weight training though. Cardio is hogging all my gym time and I really
want to bring that back. I tried but I wasn't ready yet -- I'm still wearing my
elbow brace on the days when my elbow feels crabby. I'm thinking by the end of
the month I ought to go back to very light weights or at least give it another
try to see how I am coming along.
Can I get away with just upper
body weights since legs are getting such a workout as it is?
Anybody
know?
[...]
Conversation via e-mail over the
last few days:
Me: Did you get my
mail?
Karen (my sister): What
mail?
Me: At the post office,
silly.
Karen: Ooooh! Real mail? Wippity
pow!
Karen and I have been saying
wippity POW to each other since we say the "Katie the
Caterpillar" cartoon when we were kids. Katie bounces up and down in the
movie and shouts "Wippity POW!" when she gets all excited about
something.
Today she emails that she got my
snail mail and can't hear the music tape because she doesn't have a tape
player, As for the marathon project and newsletter update "if that's your
cup of tea, go for it, but of course not to the exclusion of other activities
etc."
She's cute. Oh, and her
webpage
is mostly about writing and poetry stuff, but she keeps changing it around. She
wanted me to check it over.
[...]
Added the latest batch of stats to
The Big List. Strange tidbits that popped into my head about
proportions:
- 2-2.5 times around your thumb is
about the circumference of your wrist.
- 2 times around your wrist is
about the circumference of your neck
- 2 times around your neck is is
about the circumference of your waist.
- Holding arms straight out to the
sides, the distance from the tip of one middle finger to the other is about how
tall you are.
- Your feet are about the distance
from wrist to elbow
- Your eyes are about the width of
your mouth
- the corners of your mouth hit
about the middle of your eyes
- The distances from chin to mouth,
mouth to eyes, and eyes up to forehead about the same in most people
I should add those to that page
too. Deja vu feeling. Didn't I do that already? Must see.
[...]
Still experimenting with race day
food. I still like Luna Bar's Chocolate Pecan Pie the best. Called up
Clif Bar (1-800-884-5254) to
see if I could get samples of their Clif Shots but had to leave a message.Then
later the lady called me back and is mailing me some. Yay.
Also called up
PowerBar (1-800-58-POWER)
for the same thing and got a very nice English sounding lady on the phone who
is sending me assorted flavors of power gel samples. She said some are
caffeinated and some are not and she read me the list. Fruity ones and
non-fruity ones.
It sounds disgusting to me to be
sucking down gel goop but I guess I better taste them now and figure out which
ones agree with me. Goop is a faster swallow that chewy bits. Let's hope for
good goop then.
[...]
Paul's done some nice scripting
for us to help us manage parts of ourtraining website. Thank you,
hunny bunny woogums. I won't hold your
modeling detail kit that came in the mail from Czechoslovakia
hostage then, huh? Hee hee.
~Astrophe
  
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