I'm not really here

Please let it snow. Please let it snow. Please let it snow. Thank you.

Digging out the dirt

6+2=8
I counted wrong, or maybe it was wishful thinking but there were 8 holes to dig. They are the footings for our brand new deck which should be finished in time for summer. Hooray for cocktails and barbeque's and summer. Shortly after reaching depth, they were filled with concrete and stirrups and it's funny just how much faster a hole is to fill than to dig.

Now I could wax lyrical about how much I love exercise and strength training - wow was that a back flip!? - but suffice to say that I have found the reason why I train. And it has nothing to do with looking hot. It's all about being able to do stuff - fun stuff like kayaking or slightly less fun stuff being Bob the Builder's apprentice for the weekend.

In any case I love the feeling of raw power and of being useful and having the energy to keep going all day alongside my husband.

Quit with the moaning
The weather gods clearly thought it would be a wicked good idea to give us summer in the middle of winter. Apparently they've been listening to me moan from my frozen like state for long enough. So the weekend was unseasonably hot at over 30 degrees C. That's like a million degrees Fahrenheit. I kid.

Hot days working in the sun just beg for a bad attitude to come out. Did it? Nope. We watched "Sunday Too Far Away" a movie from the golden era of Australian cinema about the life of sheep shearers. In comparison what I was doing by digging a few holes seemed minor as opposed to the back breaking labour of shearing? Nothing at all. So I decided that not a peep would escape from my mouth about heat, sweat or tiredness. The only thing to be heard from me was some off key singing.

And hats off to a good attitude. I so thoroughly accepted the fact that I would be exhausted by the end of Sunday that I ended up feeling no where near that bad. So instead of driving we walked to my mom's for dinner. And then I wouldn't shut up the whole time. Attention seeking? Moi?

Conclusions
Good attitudes are wicked cool.
Whining is draining.
It's been two days since I worked my muscles. Guess what that means!?!

Weekend away

I've been away camping the last 5 days. I always mean to write that in advance, but somehow blogging instead of packing on Friday night would not have been cool. Something about pulling my weight or some such nonsense.

I wanted to be a tourist in my own country. We never do that, instead flying overseas (or Tasmania, either way) to look at historic buildings, gorgeous gardens, drink wine and eat cheese. So I googled and googled and googled and ended up with a list easily to fill in 10 days.


We patted sheep - they are soft and curly! Yeah, city girl, I know.

Watched em' being shorn and herded, while listening to a yarn or two.

We tasted loads of wine, savoured cheese platters and wandered around looking at gardens, vineyards, wetlands and even (alleged) mountains.



Oh and walked avoiding these critters, hugged trees and gazed at the stars.



Saw the light at the end of the tunnel, before eating some heavenly lavender scones and hitting the MTB trail.



Ate a cheese ball...after trying some more wine and looking at another wonderful garden.

The best bit? Forgetting about fat, health and fitting in exercise. Moving all day long. Eating when hungry, mostly often and a lot. Not having cravings. No mirrors - lucky since I forgot to bring a comb; fingers are a wonderful invention. Forget about goals or plans for where I want to be in 6 months time.

In the car on the way we talked about MizFit's 'Unapologetically Myself'. Leaving everything behind a few hundred kilometres of bitumen, I decided to live it. Be in the moment. Feel comfortable in my skin. Accept all my peculiarities.

It felt amazing. Now the challenge is to carry that feeling forward today, tomorrow and next week.

The other extreme

The only time someone has ever told me that I'm not eating enough was my grandmother. She'd served up soup, followed by an enormous plate of pierogi -a yummy Polish potato dumpling dish drizzled with melted butter - and then some pastries which I had to refuse because I couldn't move. Well, my aunt has actually said the same thing after meals of similar epic proportions. But let's say that outside of Poland, no one has ever said I don't eat enough. Except for the trainer.

When he told me I should add in some food to what I eat daily, apart from protein shakes that is, I got anxious. If I eat more I'll put on weight right? So I ignored what he said for the most part until Friday when feeling full of spite I worked my upper body as hard as I could at the outdoor gym. Upon returning home I ate a 'huge' recovery snack and immediately felt sure that I had eaten so much that I wouldn't fit into my pants the next day. So I got busy calculating and found that he was right. I'm generally not eating enough, at least by rule of thumb calculations for women.

What's weird is that it happened in a fairly natural way. Originally I started eating a little less and kept going with that approach which made me feel great. Then I noticed that I wasn't getting as hungry as I used to. In fact these days I'm rarely hungry which seems like a blessing. I also fill up very quickly so it's not hard to eat less. I thought everything was going rather well.

Obviously it's a big deal performance and fat loss wise, but what frightens me most is that I'm scared to eat more. That seems really bad and alarm bells are ringing inside my head. There's some nasty thoughts coming back into my head about my body image as well.

So what to do except eat more, lift more and press the "crazy thoughts" off button.

Having my ass kicked

My husband has a shirt from New Balance that reads:

Enjoy sitting on your butt.
Because I'm gonna
kick it in a few hours.
- RUNNING

Mostly I really love this shirt but these last few days, not so much. It was the first 25 minute run last week and my butt officially considered itself whipped. Now it's a whole new week of all 25 minute runs. I'm terrified.

Last week was awful. The wind was strong and I felt incredibly weak - I barely made it. Now I'm trying to put off the runs for later in the week. Actually I feel like quitting. I feel like it's all too much for me, that maybe I was delusional in thinking that I could ever run.

I was mesmerised by one of the frequently asked questions on the Couch to 5k website - why do people drop out during the C25K? Now I have the answer.

Still, it's better to be challenged and push through it, then give up the minute the going gets tough. That's not the new me....I hope.

My, what a bad attitude we have here

I've never been good at pushing myself physically. My motto has always been "when the going gets tough, start whining and preferably quit alternatively complain more". But somehow I thought I was past that with all the positive things that I had written about previously. I suppose I should have heeded the signs that all was not figured out though. Each time I was on the last interval of the Couch to 5K I would swear that I would never be doing this again because it's just too hard.

The problem is that it is the opposite of what I would love to do more of in life. See adventure magazines make me drool, I can get lost in outdoor shops for hours dreaming up crazy ideas of exploring the wilderness and those huge posters of people 'livin' the dream'? They stop me in my tracks each time. I'm not content to simply be an armchair traveller. I want to be one of the them paddling, hiking or cycling in the great outdoors and loving the challenge. There's just always been one tiny little thing standing in my way, which makes my companions duck for cover (or they resort to bribing me with chocolate - can't whinge when my mouth is full!) - a lousy attitude.

Once I could have argued that I wasn't physically fit, like the time when we cycled in NZ. But last weekend on the overnight hike, I really had no excuses. I felt fitter than ever before and yet at the end of the first day I declared to my husband that I would never, ever accept another invitation to go walking again. Sure I would love to travel the world and hike the best trails on the planet, but walking just for the sake of it was not something I enjoyed doing and everyone had better start accepting that that is just who I am. Needless to say, the following day I didn't have a walking companion as he stayed well ahead of me.

After talking about my attitude with him a few days later, I felt ashamed at how much impact my negativity can have on his experiences. He never gets the self-satisfaction and elation at the end of the day after I've clobbered him over the head with my foul mood. So what of our travel plans for the future? At the moment I sure wouldn't want to walk the Inca Trail or hike to Base Camp at Everest (two of my favourite ideas) seeing as there is a high chance of me getting tired and grumpy.

So for me, I need to learn to push myself physically and be able to deal with that mentally so that I can finally reconcile my love of the outdoors and my aversion to pain. I want to be able to get the most out of my body and push my limits. For my husband, I want to get rid of my lousy attitude so that I can be a good companion so that he can finally enjoy a trip even when the going gets tough. I guess I should start with my very next run.

Any tips for leaning how to deal with the mental aspect of pushing yourself? Is it something that can change or do some people have more resilience than others?

It happened again

On Sunday afternoon I should have been filled with a sense a pride over finishing week two of the 5K training. Unfortunately yet again I wasn't congratulated for my effort and invited to join in week 3. This week, I can't blame my Ipod, because I simply didn't do the last of the 3 weekly runs.

No I haven't given up like I kept promising myself at the end of each day only to be filled with enthusiasm the following day like a belated runners high. We were away for the long weekend and I was even tempted to take my running shoes and do laps of the caravan park. But I didn't thankfully do that. We went away to go on a 30km overnight walk so I got my fair share of aches and pains as well as a healthy dose of self pride.

I'm not sure if it is necessary, but I decided to repeat all of the week 2 runs before progressing. Ironically, carrying up pack while hiking all day actually seemed easier than running. It would seem that all the hard work is paying off then.

Treadmill vs pavement running

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (ok maybe not) I joined a gym....*waiting for applause* :-) At this gym, my favourite cardio machine was the treadmill. One day when walking on said treadmill, I realised that instead of listening to music I didn't like and breathing in recycled smelly air I could be outside with the birds and sunshine (and sunscreen) walking my dog, who gave me sad puppy eyes each time I left her to walk on said treadmill. So I didn't renew my membership.

Shortly thereafter I discovered one of the great disadvantages of not using a treadmill. At the peak of my gym going I could run for at least 25 minutes non-stop. I don't remember the distance or speed, but that effort made me immeasurably proud of myself. Unfortunately, it never translated to the street. There was absolutely no way I could run even half that time on the road. I always wondered why that was the case and now that I have started doing some running I thought I might search out the answer.

1. Wind resistance. Apparently even a slight breeze can make a big difference to the amount of effort required and I was shocked that this was one of the biggest reasons.
2. Uneven ground. It may look flat, but it is unlikely to be. Which is true if you have ever ridden a bike with loaded pannier bags. Plus you may be dodging puddles, dog poop, little kiddies on bicycles, parked cars or any number of things in your path which tends to vary your pace. And of course you might actually have to face a hill.
3. Propulsion. Unless living in an earthquake prone area or Godzilla is about, then the ground doesn't move underneath you. This is even addressed in shoe design as explained by Simon Bartold, International Research Consultant for ASICS. It's all about your centre of gravity which on the pavement which needs to be propelled forward by the leg muscles. On a treadmill however, the centre of gravity is static, being moved up an down on an unstable surface instead of forward.
   

The consequence is that research shows running on the road burns more calories than on a treadmill. But at the end of the day, it depends on what the desired outcome is. For example I'm not interested in the calories, but rather being able to run a 5K race therefore I choose to train outdoors, well that and I don't like gyms even though I no longer have a dog to walk. But if that's also your goal and regular outdoor runs aren't an option, then you can simulate the intensity of the outdoors with a 1 degree incline on the treadmill which will also provide a similar calorie burn.

But there are also plenty of reasons to stay on the treadmill if that's your thing. Often, they are padded so cushion your feet better putting less strain on your body. This translates to fewer injuries. Other advantages include avoid unpleasant weather (although I can testify that jogging in the rain on soggy grass is actually more fun than it would seem), safety, finding having a suitable place to run and convenience. On the forums where this seems a hotly debated topic, some argue that having a set pace on a treadmill means they can push themselves constantly at a steady pace whereas on the road they would be more likely to slow down.

So there you have it, an answer after all these years! What is your preference - hitting the pavement or the treadmill. Why do you choose one or the other for any form of exercise?

Mandarins, possums, passion fruit and strawberries

So much juicy goodness

The mandarins are now ripe, so while siting on the front stairs waiting for my mom to arrive I finally picked one. It was ripe, sweet and juicy and so fresher than fresh that I could feel my cells dancing with joy just like when I drink juice. I love the surge of excitement or happiness or ove for something that I enjoy doing. That's how I feel about my garden and the things that grow in it. It's a fair bit of work and the grasshoppers seem to be getting a disproportionally large share but I just love that I can grow at least some of my own food.

The evidence

I went to the back yard and noticed something unusual just by the compost bin - a passion fruit skin with a whole in it. This was clear evidence that the possums had been dining at their local restaurant last night. No wonder they thrive in suburbs! We have at least 2 living in our ceiling and they often eat fresh scraps from the compost bin which is about 20m from where they exit the house. What do they do the rest of the night then apart from making babies! We've had our fair share of those too.

Going out for the evening?

Anyway, I was confused by the skin as we hadn't thrown away any intact passion fruit recently. To my delight, I looked up and there in the mulberry tree was a passion fruit vine that had crept over from the neighbours with 4 deliciously ripe fruit dangling within reach. Heaven. They too are sweet and tantalising on the taste buds.

I hope there more!

Finally, it's time to plant strawberries. We bought 10 plants in a little bundle from the markets last weekend and hope to have a strawberry patch by our front door. They are 'Camarosa' variety which should produce big, red juicy fruit towards the end of the season. It's not an heirloom variety unfortunately and since it crops late we might have to procure some other types to have strawberries all winter long.

The new strawberry plants getting settled in.

Do you grow any of your own food? Ever had that surge of pride from eating something that you had put work into?

Be your own cheer squad

Previous foolishness at the summit of Crown Range, NZ

There are lots of things that I love about exercising outdoors - hearing birds in the trees, breathing the fresh air, enjoying the warmth of the sun on a cool morning - but most useful on the quest for fitness has got to be a lack of choice. You see on a treadmill, when my leg muscles are aching from the incline, I just decrease the slope. When the resistance on the bike is too high, no worries I can go back to easy and of course if there are too many stairs I get off the stair machine. Actually I have never been on the stair machine because it looks like torture. In any case, in the great outdoors you simply don't get that choice, there is only the art of avoiding. Except the art of avoidance ultimately fails when you foolishly opt for a 'challenge' without properly considering your capabilities. But we all do that right?

Over the weekend, I shunned the group and decided to ride into Tenterfield from the cabins we were staying at. It was an awesome ride, challenging and hilly but without much traffic so I got to enjoy at a human pace the gorgeous countryside and all that little critters that inhabit it. Probably too closely in fact. As I rode up one hill, two dogs came running out of a property and ran around me just in front on my slow moving tyres constantly barking. One even grabbed my sandal and tore the corner off, although I am thankful the viscous beast didn't latch onto my leg instead. Otherwise, delightedly peddling along, I thought to myself how much I would enjoy doing more cycle touring (with more training unlike NZ) because the slower pace allowed me to take note of all the little details. I was basking in smug glory over my cycling prowess upon reaching town, while I drank coffee and nibbled on dried fruit with my sister's in-laws. After turning down lunch with them (and a lift home) I set my sights on a 25km scenic route that promised lookouts and 14km of dirt riding. Heaven.

Enthusiastically I demolished the first few hills, whilst watching big grey kangaroos deftly dodging cars and thinking how wonderful it was to be cycling and not have to worry about a potential collision with our national emblem. Then I started to get hungry and eventually facing yet another hill I figured I would eat my sandwich that I had so wisely packed. But alas, the sandwich wasn't there! It was gone. I thought of the savage dogs, imagining that they must have plucked my precious lunch from my backpack, or maybe it was a hungry passer-by in the cafe. Or maybe I had just forgotten to pack it. Me? Forget to pack my lunch, impossible! About 16km from home, with an empty stomach, I set my sights for home.

The road back into town wasn't too difficult, as most of the scenic route had been uphill. It was the road home that was more uphill than down. Despite my hungry state I decided not to buy lunch in town, thinking of my poor sandwich left behind somewhere or devoured by bloodthirsty dogs. I peddled on and at first it was ll good, but soon I felt my energy stores depleting, rapidly. I don't know why it happens, but I seem to quickly lose energy when I haven't eaten as opposed to other's who can keep going with or without food (so much for those fat stores, damn it, burn them body before complaining of hunger!). So, the hills grew higher, the down hills shorter and the road surface bumpier while my tires became knobbier. I began wondering if I would make it as the journey home to my sandwich was taking an awful lot longer than the same trip in the other direction.

And that is where the wonderful (or not so great at the time) part of exercising outdoors comes in. I got myself into doing the ultimate work out because I didn't have a choice, the road to the sandwich didn't care about my hunger or fatiguing muscles. But even more importantly, the muscle between my ears got a great workout in positive self talk. Apparently my brain had an epiphany that looking at the hill and moaning "I can''t do it, it's too steep" was not particularly helpful. Instead (and this might have been an attempt at reverse psychology) it said "you can do it"! I slowly rode up all the enormous hills and I could almost see the legions of cheering fans that my mind had dreamed up for me standing on the side of the road shouting 'you're almost there'. And it's funny, because adopting this positive attitude actually made me enjoy the ride where I otherwise would have hated it and vowed never to ride somewhere without mobile phone coverage. In the end, it turned out that the sandwich had indeed been left behind on the kitchen bench and was eaten immediately upon return. That was the last time I felt any sort of hunger for 3 days!

So have you turned an uncomfortable situation into an enjoyable one through positive thinking? Do you regularly push yourself along when challenged by being your own cheer squad? Or do you think the positive self talk is a total load of crap?

Surprising myself

Thank you for all the fabulous suggestions from the last post. Here is how they have played out.

Things that make you go Huh?
It’s normally your partner or a close friend that surprises you. Sometimes they say things or do things that you just wouldn’t expect and you think to yourself ‘wow! I thought I knew them’. Rarely do you expect that from yourself, but it turns out that this week has been full of it!

• On Monday, I figured I’d give the jogging thing another chance. So I started and at first it was hard but then I just kept going. For 15 minutes until the destination I had set myself. For someone who hates jogging and doesn’t consider herself very fit, I was shocked. When I got home, I felt this incredible sense of empowerment and calm. It was so bizarre.
• On Tuesday, I went to a Body Balance class at the local gym. Walking away after the class I was disappointed that it wasn’t a whole body workout because everywhere north of my belly button didn’t get worked. So before dinner I grabbed some weights and finished off what the class had started.
• And this morning, I awoke at 5:30am (an hour earlier than usual) bouncing off the walls so excited about going interval training. When I came home, bathed in sweat I proceeded to grab some dumbbells, my yoga mat and started strength training. I thought ‘who is this person?’

On interval training
I was usually totally put off by the idea because the instructions were always so convoluted. They either changed from day to day or week to week and I have no idea how you are supposed to walk effectively with the instructions in one hand, stop watch in the other, whilst monitoring you heart rate. So I never bothered. I was intrigued when I read about using the outdoors to create an interval course and I figured that would suit me perfectly. So I embraced stairs, park benches, the timber rails along the sides of bike paths, dirt patches, surface changes, hills and any other thing that got my attention. And I had a wonderful time! It got me out of my head (apart from the occasional ‘who is this person’ thoughts) and focused on how I could push my body. I made up little ‘rules’ like every time I saw a dirt patch on the oval I would skip really fast or when I left the bike path I had to jog or I would jump over all the timber rails in one section or run along them in another. Each time I caught my breath after these bursts I would find a new activity to amuse myself and get my heart rate up. I presume that that is the idea of the usual instructions, but this was so much more natural and in tune with my environment which dovetails neatly with my cardinal rule of listening to my body and responding.

The other thing that worried me was not working hard enough both during cardio and weights. I am usually the first to go ‘too hard, I’m outta here’ but the class on Tuesday showed me how great it felt to push your limits. So what I found worked for me was:

• set goals based on landmarks like ‘I’ll jog the length of these rails’ or skip fast until I get tangled up 5 times.
• when doing yoga standing poses (or something where there isn’t a particular number of repetitions) play music that has regular changes in it like long rifts of music with no lyrics so the goal might be to hold the pose until the singing starts again.

I had so much fun pushing myself that I can’t wait to do it again. And when I reflect on my sore muscles I keep asking myself ‘who is this person’?

Conclusion
All of this has made me wonder about the person I actually am. If this peculiar being inside of me who is loving pushing herself physically really is me, then where has she been hiding for the last 15 years? Can we really hold ourselves back this much based on our beliefs of ourselves? Before I started walking regularly, I was sure of two things about myself; I don’t like pushing my body hard physically; I need to exercise because it’s healthy and has weight loss benefits but I may never love it. Two ideas that I have held for a long time, shattered in just one week.

I am really interested to see how my love of exercise develops especially over the coming days. We are spending a long weekend at the beach and I’ve always said I would be fit and healthy if I lived by the sea. But when on holidays I usually have to drag a very grumble bum out the door to do anything physical except for soaking in the ocean or pool. Is this the end of lazy me? We shall see. In the meantime on a very philosophical note, I’m curious to know are humans really the empty vessels that can be anything we want to be? Are our dreams are reflection on what is within us even if it seems distant from reality?

The city of no excuses

Imagine a gym, where from all around you can hear bird song instead of the pumping beats of questionable singers in questionable music video clips. Imagine a gym, where the cool breeze carries with it the sweet scent of flowers instead of the sweat of the guy next to you filtered over and over in dirty air conditioning ducts. Imagine a gym, where you can go any time of day and you don’t have to wait for the machines. Imagine a gym where you don’t listen to the grunts of the person next to you, because your cardio is the long walk between the machines. Just imagine a gym where the ceiling is tree branches, the floor is grass and the view is flowering shrubs and dogs playing in the creek. Just imagine a gym in a city where there are no excuses. This is my city.

Presumably in order to combat obesity in this city, the Council is constantly providing fun ways to get people active. We are already blessed with a sub-tropical climate so the outdoors beckon at any time of year. On top of that the Council provides us with bike paths that run for over 500km, free activities in local parks where we can learn anything from rock climbing to tai chi, grass ovals with 400m running tracks and now a gym that is the stuff that infomercials are made of.

Bright, colourful gadgets in the park where every piece of gym equipment is the type you see on tv. Well, used to see on tv anyway, from that disk that you spin on to work your core to that funny bike looking thing that you pull towards you and even the cross trainers where you feel like each body part is flailing in a different direction. All the moving parts are simple, even the strength machines where normally you adjust the weights work by lifting your own body weight. They even have a rowing machine, although it’s a bit clunky.

So does this sound like the city of no excuses? I think so and I am really loving being able to mix it up and do what I feel like wether it’s fulfilling my infomercial dreams (I always had a secret desire to try one of those disk spinning things, although I suspect it doesn’t actually do anything) or decide that even going to a ‘happy place’ doesn’t work when jogging around the oval. And scaring people by whizzing past on the bike ways is also a lot of fun.
I wonder if other cities in the world are working as hard as the Council of the city of no excuses to get residents active? Is it something the residents can ask for themselves? Does it help to get people active if they are provided with facilities?