Monthly Archives: February 2010

Running Shoes

I finally figured out why I stopped running 20 years ago.

It was because of the shoes.

It used to be that running shoes were cool.  Then the regular person, the person not into running at all, found out how comfortable running shoes were for just general, all-purpose shlepping around, so you found gramdmas and grandpas walking around the Mall in their fancy Brooks and Addidas “sneakers.”  (Yeah, they still called them “sneakers.”)

So the running shoe companies got wise to this game and started putting out various lines of shoes for different purposes (i.e. “markets”) walking, cross-training, trekking, hiking, you name it.

And they clearly put a lot of money, energy and thought into design, color, and the over-all “look” of the shoe.  But the “running shoe” division of the company didn’t have to be all creative and show-offy, because they had a captive audience.  Runners don’t care much how their shoes “look” they just care if they “work.”

So now, when you go into a shoe store and look at all the “athletic shoes” they are very cool indeed, except for the “running” shoes which still look like your gramma’s mall-walkers.

And I think that’s when I left running. I left running when I bought my first pair of cool shoes and decided, “Hell, I don’t need to run to look cool, I can just wear these awesome shoes!”

But now that I am committed to running this half-marathon, I knew I needed running shoes, shoes that “worked, ” shoes that would bear up to miles of training.  So I went to a specialty running shoe store today and had my gait analyzed and tried on 3 different pairs of shoes, and walked around in them, and ended up buying not one, but 2 pairs because I couldn’t decide which pair “worked” best with my feet.  One pair felt more cushiony, the other one felt lighter and like I was in bare feet.

But they both had one thing in common: a whole lot of ugly.  Gramma’s mall walkers.

I usually feel happy when I buy new shoes, but these shoes are embarrassing.  Look at all the white on them.  Look at their pathetic attempt to look “racy” with the stripes going all swoopy! Omg.  Pathetic.

They’ll work, of course, but they make me feel sad.

Pair #1. The more cushiony ugly.

Asics Gel 1140 Lightning

Pair #2. The lightweight ugly.

Brooks Adrenaline

A Colorado Blue Sky Day in Pennsyltuckey

Today was what Ira would call a “Colorado Blue Sky Day:” snow, brilliant sun, blue sky.  And oh man did it ever work its magic on my mood!  I felt so happy today!

I drove to Corning for an early haircut and highlight, then went to Wegmans for groceries and treated myself to a soy latte.  And can I just pause here to say that I really miss coffee?

I miss coffee. I love coffee.  I love the taste of it and the instant energy boost  it gives me.  And maybe it’s only having this effect on me because I don’t drink it everyday anymore, but for the rest of the afternoon, I felt so much happier and so much SMARTER.

How can that be?? But without question I felt my brainpower amped up. While I did my errands, I structured my writing project in my head, had great car dialogues with myself, told my self funny stories about my life, and even chatted it up with an old guy in Home Depot about ergonomic snow shovels. I was wickedly witty and I made his whole day and he even told me so.  And I attribute all this sparkliness to… coffee.

I dashed home lickety-split, put away the persishables and took Boomer skiing.  She’s a really good cross-country skier: never runs in my tracks, stays with, and has a blast while I kick and glide. Today was my cross-training day for the half-marathon training and it felt SO GOOD to get out of the gym.

And today?  I bought the latest edition of Runner’s World magazine!  I used to subscribe to it all through the 70s and into the 80s but haven’t even been tempted to flip through it in at least 20 years, and now there’s a copy of it on my bed table. How weird is that?

And tomorrow I’m going shoe shopping for running shoes.  And on Saturday we have our first “group run” as a team.  And tonight Tim showed a great film about a marathoning group at Tufts University that made my eyes well up with tears.

But now it is time to hit the hay because boy, it’s been a day.  A very good day.  A Colorado Blue Sky day.

Green Juice

This morning I made a little video of the making my morning juice.  The sound isn’t great because the juicer is really loud, but if you’re into watching veggies get pulverized, you’re gonna love this.

If not, not so much.

Oh, and it’s over 8 minutes long.  Fun.

100 Questions

I was in a kind of slump today, so I went casting around for inspiration among the bloggers I read regularly.  I am way behind on my Philosophers Notes, so I picked one at random.  It was the one on How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci.

Brian Johnson reads books and summarizes the big ideas in them, much like Cliffs Notes, then tells us about them.

Today he was talking about the 100 Questions.  Here’s how it works:

You write down 100 Questions.  They can be anything you want to know: Why is the sky blue? What happens to us when we die? What am I here for? Etc. etc.

Then you look at the questions and see if there are any themes, and group them under those themes.

Then you pick your top ten questions and rank them, and these questions determine how you live your life: you live your life in quest for the answers to those questions.

I’m going to do that tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

The Stupor Bowl

Okay, right off the bat, I don’t watch football.  It’s not that I hate football or anything, I just can’t sit down and watch a whole game of it.  But in this house, Boomer is addicted to football, which is why we got her in the first place.  When we were looking for a breed of dog, we got a book called Choosing a Dog For Life by Andrew de Prisco and James B. Johnson.  And here is the line about Welsh Corgis that decided us: “They love swimming, hiking, and any sport and television too (especially during football season.)”

So every Sunday I’ll wander in while the dog sits glued to the football game, ask her who’s winning, and then go play online, or do a wash, or take a bath.

But everybody watches the Super Bowl, including me.  The Super Bowl is an American Tradition, right up there with fireworks on the Fourth of July and Groundhog Day.  I didn’t have a dog in this particular football fight; I didn’t care who won.  I did watch part of a pre-game show that featured Drew Brees and decided on the basis of that, that I would root for the Saints.  That, and the Saints wear a Fleur de Lis on their helmets, which is so much classier than a horseshoe, or godforbid those stupid Tony the Tiger hats the Bengals wear, blech. Because I totally and completely judge a football team on their uniforms.  I love those Vikings simply because that royal purple makes me swoon.

But like most people who don’t really care about the football, I do care about the ads, and sometimes the halftime show, just because of the possibility of a wardrobe malfunction.

But this year the ads were horrific.  Everybody in them seemed to think they were hilarious, while I just sat there stupified at the innanity.  The Betty White one was good, and I saw somebody I know in real life in the Punxatawny crowd scene (Hi Suzanne!), but even my E-Trade babies disappointed.

And The WHO?  OMG.  No.  That was pathetic. I kept looking for the EMTs off-stage who would come in with the defibrillators and rescue them from the heart attacks that were sure to ensue.  Old guys still trying to do what they did when they were young guys is painful to watch.  All the arm windmilling?  Oh god.  No. I sat there peeking through my fingers.

But my dip rocked!

So onto the food.  Super Bowl food is deliberately awful.  Chicken wings. Pizza. Chile. Chips. Beer. Beer. Beer. And did I mention beer?

But I am only a week off the cleanse and didn’t want to go there, so I made a dip recipe from my UltraMetabolism Cookbook called “Super Bowl Sunday Dip.  It was gluten-free, dairy-free, quick and vegetarian.  And delicious!  It had 7 layers!

I drank one Stella, too, just to be American.  And had a small slice of the Vegan Chocolate Cake that G made the other day.

The Saints won, and the game was crazy and more interesting than I remember Super Bowls usually being.  Most of the time they are one sided massacres and I don’t make it much past half-time.  But I watched the whole thing this year. Yay team me!

But Boomer fell asleep.

Wine

There is a glass of wine sitting here on the coffee table, waiting for me to finish this post.  It’s Jargon Pinot Noir, if you must know. It’s Friday night and I just had a super Happy Hour Yoga class with all my right people.  I just love it when my right people show up.

(And just to clarify: “My right people” are people who have made yoga a ritual practice in their life.  YOU could be “my right people” !!  Maybe you already are and we just haven’t met yet!  And maybe I am one of YOUR “right people” too!  In which case, I would like to know, and officially become a member of your tribe.)

So to get back to tonight, all my right people showed up, including Michelle, who has just been through hell and back dealing with a medical issue and will continue to deal with said issue in the coming months, but at least she is now back with her yoga tribe and we all feel like, “Yeah, the tribe is back again!”and “Let the healing games begin!” (Welcome back, Michelle!)

So I led the Meditative Posture Flow which is a lot of hard, with a little easy inserted in at key moments.  It’s like throwing a big rock into the pond of your body, then allowing some time to watch the ripples flow out to the edges, then disappear, over and over again for an hour.  Rock, ripples, rock, ripples, rock, etc. It’s intense, but in a cool intense way.

And after this was over, and many good convos too, I headed home to Friday night!

This is the first Friday night in a month that I am officially off my cleanse, so I came home and had a bowl of butternut squash soup (so very yummy, not to mention beautiful in color and consistency. It is the color of cantaloupe and the consistency of paint.) And then, afterwards, I had a tiny piece of the Groundhog Day Carrot Cake (vegan), and now there is a fire going and the Jargon Pinot is glowing jewel-like in the firelight.

And I will drink the Pinot now in little sips until it’s all gone.  And I might have a tiny piece of dark chocolate too.  And I will watch the movie “9″ by Tim Burton that Emily recommended, and be so grateful for my life, once again.

Because what could be better than my right people, rock and ripple yoga, good conversations, soup the color of cantaloupe, a fire,  pinot and chocolate?

Nothing.

Americano (with room for cream) or Latte?

In between all the other stuff I have going, I’ve been flipping through this book, Marathoning for Mortals, the book that Tim picked for us as a guide to marathon-prep.  I had no intention of running anything (except maybe a hot bath) when I walked into that meeting last night, but after flipping through this book, and reading that I can:

A: Run a Marathon, or

B: Walk a Marathon, or

C: Run a Half-Marathon or,

D: Walk a Half-Marathon, or

E: Alternate Running and Walking or

F: Alternate Walking and Running either a full or a half-marathon

And that there are training plans for all of those options, I am now going back and forth between alternating running and walking a half marathon, or walking and running a half marathon.

I know it sounds like basically the same thing, but it’s not. Not really.  Mostly run with a little walking thrown in?  Or mostly walk with a little running thrown in?

It’s like the difference between an Americano with room for cream, or a latte.

So what does a girl whose currently on Caffix and green juice do?  (Besides go out and buy running shoes and a pile of sports bras?)

Marathoning For Mortals

I don’t like to run.  I used to run, back in the 70s when it was all the rage.

I started in graduate school. I ran to blow off steam.  I lived on  Codfish Falls Rd in Storrs, CT and ran in between bouts of reading The Life of Johnson.  I think I was in such pain reading The Life of Johnson that the pain of running felt like a soothing balm.

I continued running when I returned to PA after grad school mainly because I was living in Tioga and was depressed about living in Tioga, and running felt easier than living in Tioga, PA.

I continued running when we built a house in Mansfield.  I continued to run and I trained every year for the L’eggs Mini Marathon in Central Park (a 10K) up until…I don’t remember when I stopped, but when I stopped, I stopped cold.  I think I just got bored with it.

Tonight I went to a meeting at my studio, led by Gym Tim, and I committed to run/walking a half-marathon in May.

I think it will be fun.  Either that, or it will be painful.  Either that, or it will give me something to write about here, now that my Cleanse is over.

Yeah, mainly that.

A Groundhog Day Meditation

(this was first published in Mountain Home Magazine)

Every year when I flip the calendar from January to February and see “Groundhog Day” written in that little box under February 2nd, I crack up.  I wonder what a space alien, coming upon our calendar, might think about this Groundhog Day holiday.  What is commemorated on Groundhog Day?  Are groundhogs honored?  Will there be a parade, a ceremony, some observance?  Will there be pictures of groundhogs displayed on public buildings?  What exactly happens on Groundhog Day?

Of course, everyone knows what happens on Groundhog Day.  And everyone knows what doesn’t happen.  And it is what doesn’t happen that thrills me the most about Groundhog Day.

I don’t have to shop for it, for one thing, which is a blessed relief.  I don’t have to find the perfect Groundhog Day gift for everyone on my list because there is no list.

I don’t have to wonder what to make for Groundhog Day dinner and I don’t have to worry about who might be eating alone on Groundhog Day and should I invite them.

I don’t have to get a tree or hang lights all over my house (though the thought of brown icicle lights hanging from roof eaves is kinda funny—but no.)  Don’t start, people.  Really.  Don’t.

I don’t have to send cards or buy my daughter an airline ticket home so she can spend Groundhog Day with the family.

I don’t have to listen to endless Groundhog Day songs piped through the sound systems of every store in town.

I don’t have to get aggravated with retailers who “push” the holiday.  I don’t have to walk through the store grumbling, “They no sooner pack up all the Christmas stuff than the Groundhog Day stuff is all over the place!.”

The liquor store is open on Groundhog Day.  So are the post office and the bank.  All the schools are in session.  There is no parade, no special prayers to say, or candles to light, or cemeteries to visit.

What does happen on Groundhog Day is this:  When I wake up in the morning and realize it is indeed Groundhog Day, I rush to the TV.  If I’ve made it in time, I get to see two men in top hats lifting up a fat, shiny, impeccably groomed groundhog by the scruff of its neck.  They plant a big kiss on its lips and declare (96% of the time) that the groundhog has seen his shadow and therefore there will be six more weeks of winter.

The crowd in Punxatawney goes wild.  I go wild.  It’s a great day.  A great moment.  A deeply atavistic, primal moment when I remember that I too, am a creature of the earth.  That I too, have been hibernating for some time (albeit maybe only in the deep, dark recesses of my own day-to-day drama) and that now, maybe, it’s time to wake up and peek out.  Maybe it’s time to start noticing the day, and how there is a new quality of light slanting through the window.  Maybe now it’s time to look up and actively, consciously, notice the sky.

Groundhog Day signals the halfway point between the first day of winter and the first day of spring, so maybe it’s also time to start looking at the ground again.  Not for groundhogs, but maybe for a snowdrop, or a crocus.  Maybe it’s time, finally, to wake up out of my solipsistic daydream and notice the first robin, or that long rosary of geese making its way north again after the long dream of winter.  Maybe it’s time to sit outside in my parka, my back to the late winter sun, and contemplate my own shadow.

The End Of The Cleanse

It’s officially over.  The Cleanse, that is.  And I made it all the way through.  21 whole days.  Here’s how it ended.

On Saturday night, after a liquid (Serious Green Juice) breakfast, and a liquid (Cream of Cauliflower soup) lunch, G and I decided to eat a (chewy) dinner out, and maybe have (gasp!) a glass of WINE! to celebrate.

Because this eating regimen was a pretty big deal for both of us.  No caffeine, which I completely did without for 3 whole weeks.  No sugar.  No wheat, not a single piece of bread, not even a cracker.  No dairy, not even soy milk, because guess what?  No soy!

No eggs. No bananas. No tomatoes. No pasta.

No alcohol.  This wasn’t a huge deal during the week, but on Friday night it was really sad.  Weekend evenings felt flat.  I hated them. But I sipped my tea, and made the best of it.

But in the end, it was all so very worth it.

We went to the Wren’s Nest.  I had a cream of crab soup, a dinner salad, the stuffed flounder.  No wine. No dessert.

And you know what?  It wasn’t all that great.  It wasn’t all nom, nom, nom this is yummy!  And I went home with a little bellyache from the cream in the soup, I think.  (Good discovery, though.  Dairy doesn’t agree with me.)

So the take-away from all this?

I’m not done. Not by a long shot.

I woke up on Sunday and had my juice, my Caffix, my lemon water. I am going on with it, with some variety from time to time, but I have decided that this is the way I will eat from now on because I feel flipping AMAZING! My energy is strong.  My insides feel light. My skin is pink and clear.  My eyes bright.  I would totally recommend this Clean program to anyone.  I think it’s a great way to raise one’s consciousness about food.  All your addictions show up.  All your cravings rear their ugly heads, then are vanquished by the food you are allowed to eat.

So here’s the plan from here on out:

Juice breakfast, big lunch, light dinner.  Wine on the weekend. No caffeine. Dessert rarely, only as a treat.

And hopefully, no more posts about this or FOOD!

(Thanks for bearing with me.)