Exercise and happiness

Today, the treadmill and I hung out again.  We're still good.  It was a great feeling and what do you know, I can still run 5 miles.  This is great news since on Sunday I am seeking to run 13.1.

I read an interesting article today in Good Housekeeping about exercise.  Before you say anything, I am a MASSIVE fan of Good Housekeeping.  It is one of my favorite magazines.  I'm very cool that way, sort of like your grandmother.  But honestly, I would recommend checking it out if you like....well, girlie stuff for adults.  And great recipes.  And awesome cleaning tips from Heloise.  I'll stop plugging GH now.

Anyway, recently, they hired Gretchen Rubin, who embarked on something that she called the happiness project.  In sum, the happiness project was to find more happiness.  She succeeded.  She now writes a monthly column for the magazine.  This month's was about finding ways to exercise and I wholeheartedly endorse reading the whole thing.  Two of my favorite tips:

4. Remember one of my favorite Secrets of Adulthood, courtesy of Voltaire

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't decide it's worth exercising only if you can run five miles or bike for an hour. A friend of mine falls into this trap. "Just doing the StairMaster for 40 minutes doesn't seem like real exercise to me," she told me. "I like to push myself hard; train for a marathon, or something like that." I felt bad about my easy workouts — until I realized that I exercise regularly, and she never does.

 AWESOME!  Do you want to know why this is awesome?   Because I like to push myself hard and generally I have been very successful with that.  Like training for a marathon.  Bring it.  This made me feel better because it was a good reminder that even though this year has been frustrating, I've accomplished some big goals and stuck with challenges.  Plus I've been good about regular exercise.  These are accomplishments.

The other one that I liked:

5. Consider the context

I used to think that I disliked weight training, but actually, I disliked the guys who hung out in the weight-training area at my gym. Do the grubby showers in your gym distress you? Do you try to run in the mornings, but recoil from going out in the cold? Do you get bored during your swim? Examine the external factors that might be discouraging you from exercising.

No, I'm good with the cold, it's the hot.  I can say that I've never put off exercise over grubby showers or boredom.  Everyone has these barriers.  Even Gretchen, and she's happy!

I will say that many, many years ago, before I started running, I had to have big talks with myself about going to the gym and not caring about what I was wearing.  I was a bit ridiculous, fashion-wise, back then.  And you know what?  Not once did someone at the gym criticize my outfit.  At least not that I overheard.

And now I can go out wearing a 'hydration belt' when I run and feel no shame.  Go me.

Florida wins another battle. Boo.

This morning, I got up, looked at the weather, saw that the dew point matched the temperature, realized that this indicated it was 100% humidity, and thought, 'Meh, I'll go tonight.'

Tonight, I noticed that the conditions were oppressive, even though the temperature was not so hot today because there were storms circling.  And after about a mile, I noticed that I had to walk.  A 5-mile run turned into a 3-mile one when my heart rate got pretty high (I don't usually track this, but I couldn't help but notice that my heart was racing faster than normal).

The answer was clear once I got home and looked at the weather: starting right around the time that I began my run, the dew point was the same as the temperature, meaning that the humidity was 100%.

Today's lesson is that you cannot win.  You just can't.

I also decided to do a quick comparison between today and a year ago today via Weather Underground (seriously, I adore this site) and could not help but observe that the dew point was more in the lower 70s for the majority of the day.  Today, it was in the high 70s.

Tomorrow is 'Get Reacquainted with the Treadmill' day.

Florida wins the battle but I will WIN this FREAKING WAR!

After resting for the earlier part of this week, I finally got to yoga yesterday and felt so good that I did not one, but two classes back-to-back (admittedly, the first one was not too tough).  This was a remarkable improvement over not wanting to leave bed on Thursday.  I felt like I was on track to get running again this weekend.  And I was.  Except for one slight problem: Florida Struck Back.

My plan for today was rest this morning, then do my run at sundown.  Maybe I would run 3 miles, maybe 5 depending on how I felt.  Five was definitely in reach right up until I looked at the weather and learned that the dew point was 81F.  Later, I discovered that the humidity did not drop below 74% all day and the temperature was over 80F last night.  Thanks, Weather Underground.  I think.

If you've seen Kill Bill and you remember that look that The Bride got immediately before she wreaked havoc, you have an idea of the look on my face when I saw this (cue soundtrack).  No really.  I was that mad.  Unfortunately, I couldn't take my revenge on Florida by killing off the Crazy 88 or anything, so instead I ran in the pool.  And you know what?  Since we are under heat advisory (in Florida!) and since the temperature may not go under 80F tonight (dude!) and since the dew point may still be beyond vile tomorrow, I shall do my long run in the pool tomorrow too.

One week from tomorrow, I shall run my half-marathon.  And that will show you to try and keep me from my training plan, Florida!

Incidentally, even in the pool it was hot.  The air feels gauzy.  That is not a good way for the air to feel.

Recapping the past week

Well, a week ago we got drier air, and it has been better since then.  This did not make my 12-mile run on Sunday any more fun, but I am getting ahead of myself.  My 5-mile on Saturday was definitely better; I don't think that I broke any speed records, but I was feeling pretty good during that run.

Then came the 12-mile on Sunday.

For various reasons, I was in Clearwater, which is far from where I usually run (like, far as in it would have added 2 hours to my day to drive back, which was a bit much).  So I decided to run on the Pinellas Trail instead.  The Pinellas Trail was a railroad line that has been converted into a trail.  It runs from St. Petersburg in the south to the northern part of Pinellas Country.  All well and good.  Parts of the trail were very nice, like the parts near Dunedin.  Parts, though, were not so good for running because there was little/no shade, by which I mean the parts near Largo.  Little/no shade is not okay for running in Florida.  I should have known something was up by the ratio of bikers to runners: more bikers usually means not a shady trail (an observation taken from my experience with the Suncoast Trail, which starts with a straight mile devoid of shade).

The Pinellas Trail has two other aspects where it could do better, I feel:

1) I ran a good 5 miles of this trail on Sunday (I had to loop earlier than anticipated because of the complete lack of shade near Largo).  There was not one bathroom to be found.

2) Ditto on drinking fountains.  There was one--ONE!!!!!--functional one in the whole 5 miles I covered on the trail.  If you're curious, there was one non-functioning one.

Now, I wasn't counting on drinking fountains for actually drinking the water, more as a cooling off option by dumping the water on my head.  Instead, I had my fake Gatorade in the car and arranged my run so that I passed it at the half-way mark (so I went 3 miles north, came back, refilled water bottle, then tried to go 3 miles south except that there was no shade.  In theory, it was a great plan).  But I would think that in Florida, of all places, you could have more than one drinking fountain over a 5-mile stretch.  That's not okay.

If you do happen to be on the Pinellas Trail and you need a bathroom, the bus station is not far from the trail in downtown Clearwater.  This is the best option, I think, apart from creating your own bathroom in nature's wilderness (while being sure not to invade someone's yard).

So what's been happening since then?  Well, I haven't been running.  I survived the 12 miles, but haven't been feeling well at all.  It's one of those pre-cold tired things, I think.  Alternatively, Sunday did me in more than I thought (which wouldn't surprise me at all because it was brutal).  When you're not feeling well, it's amazingly difficult to motivate yourself to go running in conditions that are already tough.  My plan is to get back on track Saturday and finish up the training program.  This has been the year where I get sick, so I guess we are not through with that yet.  I think that it should be okay since this is taper time, but trust me that no one is more annoyed at this setback than I am.

In which us Floridians learn that we are not crazy

Two days ago, while I was plugging away at my 5 miles on the treadmill, I heard on the news that 'drier air' was moving into Florida.  I looked at the map and it was not moving into Tampa, but north of the city.  Also, I was very skeptical as to what 'drier air' could do for me, personally, as an individual.  What does this really mean?  How much drier?  It is still Florida in the summer, won't dry air be mobbed and humidified like it is no one's business?

(For those of you who remember that my gym has a 30-minute limit on cardio equipment, here is what I did for the 5 miles: I ran for 30 minutes, stepped off the treadmill, refilled my water bottle, made sure that there wasn't a hoard of people walking in to use the treadmill since all four were free, and stepped right back on the treadmill to finish.  No one really seemed to care).

Then, last night, I finally got out to run a 5-mile-turned-into-a-3-mile-for-various-reasons run.  And let me tell you:

The air was noticeably drier.

So much so, in fact, that I could for real run.  At a respectable for real speed.  And I realized that no, I was not crazy.  The weather has been horrid.

I confirmed this today with a native Floridian who had thought she was not tolerating heat so well any more.  Oh no.  She is tolerating it just fine.  This summer, though, has been intolerable, even for the natives.  How are us northerners supposed to survive, much less run?

Anyway, the drier air stuck around for today, which was fab since I had another 8-mile run.  And let me tell you, it was so unbelievably less awful than last Sunday's 8-mile run, that I was smiling for joy (as opposed to last weekend, when I wanted to lie down on the pavement and cry for a while.  A shady part of the pavement).  I didn't even need to follow the 1.86-mile-loop-around-the-drinking-fountain.  Bliss.

...okay, not bliss.  But definitely more manageable.  We love you, drier air!

Another Long Run of Ick

You're probably getting completely sick of me complaining about the unending, awful running weather here.  It's hard to stop, I have to say.  But during today's run, I got to thinking about a few less depressing things than the Threshold of Ick.  For maybe 2-3 minutes.  The other 2 hours were agonizing.  I did walk/run it, even though I had this hilarious idea around 0.2 miles that maybe it wasn't so bad out.  Ha!  The sweaty hair around 0.7 miles reminded me that it was.

1) This is training: it's not the real run.  It's okay if I'm slow or sweaty or walking or whatever.  It's learning how to cope with a challenge.  So if I wake up on the morning of the 1/2 marathon and it is 77F with 90% humidity, I will have a strategy.  Although really if that happens, I will probably just cry or something.  Since the race is happening in a far more northernly clime, though, let's assume that it won't.

2) I need to read labels more often.  I haven't been using my normal healthy Gatorade (aka Recharge) because my local store apparently no longer stocks it.  Instead, I was using the sticks, which are basically juice mix that you add to water.  Take a look at how many calories that the sticks supplied on my run today.  I had two, so you can double that to 20.  Not nearly enough for a long run, I can promise you that!  I guess a trip to the Whole Foods is needed.

I did have my caffeinated jelly beans this morning though.  That may have been the highlight of my run.

3) The running around the drinking fountain route may be boring, but it is mostly shady and has the added bonus of a water fountain every 1.86 miles or so (that is the approximate length of the loop).  Who needs excitement?

4) I'm running in oppressive conditions.  Even Runner's World says so.  In fact, here is their advice for running in oppressive conditions:

High heat (85+) + high humidity (over 60%)
THE EFFECTS
Raises core temp, reduces blood volume; humidity interferes with evaporation of sweat.
THE SOLUTION

"Stick to easy runs or use the treadmill," says Puleo.

Adorable.  Okay, I am not in 'high heat' most of the time.  Only for half of today's run. Ah heck, it's close enough.

Also, is 60%+ high humidity?  Wow.  This makes me feel much better.

4) There is one saving grace about walk/run: it makes the actual activity very regulated and, for lack of a better word, doable.  It was much easier today to know that I only had to get through a certain interval and then I would get a break.  Also, when I started getting ahead of myself and felt like I couldn't get through the remaining intervals, I told myself that I could only do one at a time and there was no point in getting ahead of things (this was actually really helpful).  Otherwise, it would have been impossible.  So I just need to stick to this for the remaining long runs.  Incidentally, for the purposes of this training plan, I've decided that anything over 5 miles is a 'long run' and will have to be run/walked.  What this means is that 4 out of next week's 5 runs are 'long' and will have to be run/walked.

5) There is nothing wrong with dousing yourself with water at the water fountain.  It won't evaporate for the rest of the run, but there is nothing wrong with it.  In fact, because you will be slippery for the rest of the run, you may avoid chafing.  Unexpected bonus!

Believe it or not, I am in a better mood about this run than I was a few hours ago.  As the Runner's World article says, irritability is a sign of heat exhaustion.  Only three more weeks to go.  It's almost over.  So very close.

A More Reasonable Entry

One problem of me forgetting to blog is that then I create super long entries that take up far too much space.  Anyway, this one will be short and to the point.  I ran 3 miles this morning.  It was horrible, terrible, sweaty agony.  I even counted down the last 10% in increments of 0.03 miles, which at times felt like they were going to take forever.  Afterwards, I was sufficiently zonked that I required a nap.  All this before 9am (okay, maybe slightly after 9am by the time I finished).

Yeah, tomorrow's 8-mile is definitely going to involve some walk/running.  Probably 0.04 miles every 0.4 miles.  Otherwise, I feel supremely confident that I won't make it, barring a tropical storm showing up and removing a bunch of the moisture (there is a tropical storm in the Atlantic, but I'm not sure if it will have enough influence to get rid of our humidity).

Not the most successful week so far

I'm not sure why I've lost some blogging momentum.  It's been a busy week.  I'm back in Florida now and the return trip really knocked me out for some reason.  No idea why.  Here's a tip, though: New Jersey Transit is not fun when there is a downpour.  Try to avoid it.

I did a bit of rearranging for this week too.  I have two long-ish runs: 7 miles and 8 miles.  Both are shorter than last week's 10 mile and this is a taper week.  Yay taper week is all that I have to say.  I was very much ready for one.  Anyway, I decided to run at least one of the long-ish runs before I returned to Florida, which was likely a very wise decision.  Then I had to move some stuff around because I was completely knocked out upon return.  However, I am on schedule (sort of) to finish this week, even if I'm pretty sure that the 8-mile run will have to be more of a run/walk deal.

TUESDAY -- 7 miles and farewell NYC

After doing the 5K Brooklyn Bridge run, I came up with a crazy scheme to do some seriously tourist running for my final NYC outing.  My motto for this run was, 'If it is scenic and in my neighborhood, then I am running past it.'  I started with Fort Greene Park.  There is one really stupid thing that I did not anticipate: probably they built a fort there because it was an elevated location to provide a good outlook in case of marauding...well, whatever was marauding (I thought maybe Southerners but a little research reveals British).  I then decided to run across the Manhattan Bridge, take a left, and head back via the Brooklyn Bridge, finishing things off with the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (remember the motto of this run).

If you are a person who often runs bridges in urban settings, you probably already know why this was a bad idea.  Alternatively, if you are a person who knows New York well, you can probably deduce why this was a bad idea.  If you take a left after the Manhattan Bridge, forget about running, Jake, because it's Chinatown.  And there are approximately one billion people milling around at any time.  That's right.  They all moved from China to New York and hang out only in the Lower East Side (okay, not really.  I exaggerate.  But the streets are quite crowded).  It's really hard to pick up anything even approximating momentum and you wind up walking quite a bit.  The Brooklyn Bridge was also not my best idea since there were approximately one billion tourists seeking to cross it (New York gets very crowded in the summer).  However, I wasn't the only person trying to run it, so I didn't feel like a total newbie.

The Brooklyn Heights Promenade was probably my best plan for this run.  I liked it so much, I ran it up and back.  And again, I cannot laud the New York drinking fountains sufficiently.  There is one approximately every five feet on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade--and this time, I am not exaggerating.

WEDNESDAY -- The best laid plans can still be thwarted by NJ Transit

I was ouchie and tired.  I decided to take a day off.  I don't want to point fingers at the fact that I had to stand from NY Penn Station to EWR on the commuter train because they were only running half of the normal trains because apparently when it rains, half of the trains get scared or something and refuse to come out and work.  Also, my flight was delayed (see 'Rain'), so I got home relatively late.  My hips were crazy tight.  I did make it to yoga class, which helped, but still wasn't ready to run.

THURSDAY -- Florida being Florida

After much, much putting off of running, I finally did don the shoes and get out.  It took me until almost 8pm to reach this stage, but hey, I got there.  The plan was to run 6 laps around my condo complex to approximate 4 miles (I think that it would be closer to 4.2 miles, but okay).  There was only one flaw with this otherwise brilliant plan: apparently I still can't do this at night without needed to walk.  Blah.  Florida, you win.  Honestly.  It's just too much with the heat and humidity!

The good news is that I still finished, even though some walking was required.  But it was still irksome.

Upon further review: yesterday was one degree off of a record high for temperature.  Adding to that, by the time I got out (around 8pm), Weather Underground informs me that it was not only still 84F, but the humidity was 79%.  This is over the threshold of ick. Add in a dew point of 75F.  The Real Feel temperature (according to Weather Underground) was 95F.  Around 8pm.  With the sun down.  Dude.  Come on.

FRIDAY -- The Best Laid Plans Sometimes Don't Work on Fridays

I had a great plan in mind: do some errands and running around in the morning, go to yoga, run 6 x 0.5 miles on the treadmill.  Except that on Fridays, my gym closes at 5pm, which is after yoga is done.  So instead, I did this outside, which was less successful from an 'actually running fast' stage.  However, it was somewhat ingenious from a 'dealing with Florida' phase since I took a break between each interval to recover.  Sure, I had to slow down significantly from the first two half-miles.  But it's the principle of the thing.

Remaining this week are a 3-mile and an 8-mile.  I am kind of already accepting that I will have to walk in parts of the 8-mile.  This may hold true for the 12-mile next week as well.  It is just too oppressive otherwise.

New York. And Brooklyn, which is also part of New York

I missed writing about a whole week's worth of runs.  Oops.  Things have been busy here in NYC.  Things I have done apart from running: been to the Ghostbuster building, stocked up on semi-useless kitchen items at Zabar's (because you know you need a shrimp deveiner), seen 'Master Class' and 'Book of Mormon,' watched one hundred million people run in Central Park (only a slight exaggeration), ate Montreal smoked meat, and started to discover a whole new part of New York that they call 'Brooklyn.'  This trip marks the first one when I have spent any time in Brooklyn, making this exciting.  Admittedly, I did not actually feel like I was in NYC until I spent time in Manhattan; I sort of felt like I had discovered some kind of neat, new city that just happened to be near New York and was connected by subway.  Sad, but true.

Here is a quick summary of the past week's runs, all of which were completed, even if I forgot to blog about them:

Tuesday: 5 miles.  For various reasons, I had to move my runs around this week, the most important of which was the fact that I planned to run (or maybe walk) a 5K on Sunday.  So I opted to do 5-5-10-rest-6-5K instead of the normal schedule, which usually starts with the smallest number of miles.  This was tiring, but I got through everything.  For my very first run in this place they call 'Brooklyn,' I went down to the East River waterfront and ran there.  The city of New York deserves some kind of prize for the quantity and placement of their water fountains.  Although I got off to a late start, it was only a bit hot, and not killer 'I am going to die' hot.  I survived.  Parts of this run were slightly annoying, though, because there was a lot of waiting at lights and such.  These are the hazards of actually running in a city, though, and that's okay.

Wednesday: 5 miles.  Thanks to great advice from a friend, I had already decided to run my long run in Prospect Park.  I decided to give it a test before the actual long run in case there were unexpected surprises--I learned a lot from my challenging long run in San Francisco last fall.  Prospect Park is great for running.  There is a handy loop with some pretty good scenery, numerous water fountains, and only one downside, which is a rather long hill right near the end of the loop.  But this one challenge is conquerable, even if it is kind of annoying.  The loop is, by my estimation, around 3 miles, which means that for long runs you wind up circling around it several times.  However, it is not a boring 3 miles, which is important (as I also discovered while marathon training last year).

Thursday: 10 miles.  10 miles means that we are almost at the end of the long runs.  Only one more to go (plus the actual race).  Cool!  I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan to run slightly less than 3 loops around Prospect Park, engineered by getting off at a different subway stop.  For some reason, I thought that the loop was 3.5 miles.  It's actually 3.  However, backtracking is not so bad there because there is oodles of space for running.  Other than that, I got going too quickly at times, which came back to haunt me during the uphills.  Overall, though, I thought that it went quite well.  I had a designated place where I stopped each loop to get water, which I think is a good idea.  It cooled off and was less humid, which just added to the fantastic-ness of this run.  And most importantly, now it is over!

Friday: I slept in and boy, did I need it.  There is a reason that we usually do long runs on Sundays: so that we can rest afterward!

Saturday: 6 miles.  I ran to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is that place featured in Brooklyn-set movies that has the scenic view of lower Manhattan (you know it from Annie Hall and Moonstruck...and if you don't, you should really see both of those movies).  They aren't kidding about the Heights: I did wind up walking after a futile attempt to run up the hill on the way back.  A bit too much for me.  Other than that, the run went very well.  I even managed to get out before 8am, which is nothing short of a miracle for me.

Sunday: Keith A. Ferguson 5K.  This run takes place across the Brooklyn Bridge.  It isn't the best run to try and PR since it's kind of narrow, but it did provide some great scenery on both sides.  I did this event with someone else and we opted to walk.  Truth be told, my legs were pretty tired, so I was okay with that.  We ran the end, by which I mean I was kind of a bad person and left my companion behind.  Bad.  But we both finished and got t-shirts.  The whole event was very enjoyable and brought a lot of different participants, even if it was Florida-level humid (not Florida-level hot, thankfully).  I got super sweaty just from my run at the end.

If you plan to do this event and can conveniently take the R train, might I suggest that you do so.  The registration was directly outside of the exit (so the west side of city hall).  Super easy.

That was the week!  Tomorrow I am going to do 7 miles and take advantage of this reasonable weather while I still can.  Wednesday, it is back to Florida.