Stretching Continues

I know one thing about myself and you should know it too.  I am not super great at keeping track of things because I don't write them down when I do them.

It's been a couple of weeks since I started yoga workouts and I've been pretty faithfully stretching.

I swim on Mondays so I stretch in the evening,  Wednesday mornings I do a yoga workout with the club and then Thursday evening I stretch at home.  The last two weeks I was lucky and able to swim three times a week.  Wednesday night swim after being up since 5am was hard.  I was in the middle of a 300m set and thought to myself "Why is my form so sloppy?" Then I realized it's probably because I was tired.

The Monday and Thursday evening stretches weren't necessarily a yoga session, but I stretched until I felt loose in the legs.

Right now I'm on Christmas break from swimming and spinning. I squeezed in a bit of a stretch yesterday and today and honestly I feel like I could go for a run right now.  I plan to hold off till the new year though.

That's a lie......I'm going to be running between Christmas and New Year.

I picked up a couple of DVD's from a club member and will try them out this week.  I believe they are stretchy/yoga workouts but will find out for sure soon.

It's baby steps, but I feel I'm making progress.

Week one - Exercises to improve my hamstring

This past week I was excited about my first session of Yoga.   Had a bit of a stretch on Tuesday in anticipation of the yoga.  

We did a Mike Dennison yoga DVD called "Yoga Made for Runners" on Wednesday morning.  I consider it a success because I didn’t pass wind while stretching with the girls.   I wasn’t expecting to break a sweat, but I completely left a sweat stain on the mat I used.  Afterword I had shaky legs so I’m calling it a workout.  I felt so good during my twenty minute walk to work, that I felt like going for a run.  I’m smart enough to not do that.

I did have to run across the road that evening and I could feel my leg.  No pain, but it was tight.

Thursday night, my wife and I did the same yoga workout and again, I felt great.  I felt so good I tried a P90x ab  workout after yoga.  It was sixteen minutes long, but I only lasted about ten and just lay there for the last bit feeling humbled.  I fully expected to be able to keep up.

Friday and Monday I swam and could feel my hamstring both days.  No pain, but I could feel the tightness of it.  I blame the fin drills.

Saturday was 60 minutes of Sufferfest spinning on the stationary bikes.  That was hard as I was definitely limited by my leg.  It hurt.  We follow that up with about thirty minutes of core exercises. 

10 crunches

10 right side crunches

10 left side crunches 

10 right side crunches (raising legs)

10 left side crunches (raising legs)

10 tummy crunches (with bottoms of the feet touching)

10 push ups

10 supermen/superwomen

10 squats

10 lunges

Now this was repeated 10 times! (10x10x10=1000)

That's me doing the side crunch.  The picture is stolen
from a buddy's blog: http://darrellrun.blogspot.ca/

It was hard, but I got it done. I did a bit of stretching and felt great the rest of the day.

More stretching on Monday evening after swimming in the morning and I could feel the improvement in my legs. 

We’ll see how things keep going.

Injury

I'm hurt.  It isn't super serious, but it is hindering my run.

Here's the story.

Last winter, during the "Tri the Oval" race, I was caught wearing "Maritime Race Weekend" gear and was awarded entries into the Tartan Twosome.

These are the great Tridents that I raced with.  Claude skated, I biked and Beth brought it home on the run.  It was c..c..c..cold!




I was pumped about the Tartan Twosome and had plenty of time to prepare.  I was planning on setting a personal best 5k run on Friday night and a personal best 10k run on Saturday.

During the summer I ran.....a lot.  Lots of speed work lots of 5 and 10k runs with some longer distances thrown in too.  I was feeling pretty confident until about two weeks before the races, I pulled the hamstring in my right leg.  It wasn't a limp inducing pull, but it hurt to run and hindered my stride.

I decided that I was healthy enough to run, but the idea of pushing for a personal best was out of the question.

This isn't my race costume, but I am running in a  kilt.
I wore this kilt plus a pirate hat and an eye patch for the race.

 Friday night I dressed in a costume and enjoyed the 5k run.

Saturday, I was so tight that I couldn't stride out at all.  It was turning into the worst run I've had in a long time. I simply could not extend my right leg to anything close to a normal stride.

 Luckily around the 2k mark my leg loosened up and I could stride out and it turned into a good effort run with consistent leg pain, but nothing walk inducing.  I met up with about five other people running the same speed.  Three of us crossed the finish line seconds of each other.

After the race, I started stretching and took a couple of weeks off running, but any time I ran and pushed some speed, the pain in my right hamstring was walk inducing.  My stride has changed to compensate for the stiff leg and that is causing pain in my left knee.

Luckily I'm able to keep swimming and cycling so I'm not bulking up too much, but I miss running.  Needless to say, the last few months have been frustrating as far as running goes.

Road to recovery.

I hate stretching - it is boring and simply not fun.  To make myself stretch I've organized a morning yoga session once a week.  I'm hoping yoga combined with a couple of days of stretching combined with rest will get me back running.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Subaru EPIC Half Iron Triathlon - I'm helping

I've been racing triathlon for about six years and have been pretty active with my club's triathlon for about four years.  The Navy Tridents' Triathlon & Duathlon is very near and dear to my heart.  We have a great club that donates their time to make the race happen each year.  

One of the smarter things I did as the race director was to wear my kilt on race day.  I knew there'd be a lot of people needing to find me and the easiest way for them to find me was to tell them to look for the guy in the kilt.  It worked like a charm!

Not too long ago, the organizers of the Subaru EPIC Dartmouth Triathlon  asked me if I wanted to be involved in their race.  They are adding a new distance in 2015 and want someone to look after the transition zone and swim portion of the half iron distance.  The Subaru EPIC races have been been running for three years and are going strong with an entire weekend of races.  

It turns out that I know most of the core organizing crew from the race community and am getting to know them better.  Their concerns are exactly the same as the Navy Trident race, except the Navy Tri is a sprint distance (750m pool swim, 20k bike & 5k run).  The EPIC iron distance race (3.8k lake swim, 180k bike & 42.2k run) is so spread out, it creates an entirely different set of organizational challenges.

I'm amazed at the level of detail they have gone to ensure that all of the racers' needs are met.

The organizers are really smart.  They've put the swim  of the new Subaru EPIC Half Iron Triathlon almost rate at the turn around for the full iron bike course.  The competitors do the swim and transition to the bike and then bike along the same route as the iron competitors.  Then everyone uses the same run route.  This eliminates any duplication of efforts.

I'm playing a small part of the race but am really excited about it.  

If you decide to do the race, let me know how it goes.  I'll be the guy in the kilt.

Creative writing on twitter

 A while ago, my daughter came and showed me something she found on the internet.  It was a quote that said something along the lines.  “If I was a mortician, I’d tie the corpse’s shoes together so when the zombie apocalypse happens, it will be hilarious!”

I knew that there was a joke in there and I just had to put it together.  I couldn`t think of a good introduction though.

Later, at work, I thought that I`d use TweetDeck to post snippets of my journey to become a mortician and then finish the story off with the punchline of tying the shoes together.  I used the scheduling feature in TweetDeck to post the tweets at intervals of  about twice a day.  It saved me a bunch of time so that I didn’t have to remember to post each day.  

I started and spent my lunch scheduling posts.  After about fifteen minutes, I said to myself: “This is stupid!  Nobody is going to read theses.” However, I had fifteen minutes into this so I thought I`d finish it up. 

However, I didn`t get to the end of my story during my lunch break.  I had to spend another lunch time finishing it up.  When I finished, I had twenty-seven tweets spread over thirty-four days. 

The story was a firsthand account of my journey to find an on-line mortician school, take the course and then obtain a job as a mortician.  There were hurdles along the way as I discussed the studied topics and took tests. 

I wasn’t sure if anyone was reading the tweets, but then I was followed by a funeral director’s magazine and a funeral parlour in the states favored a couple of tweets.  I figured that it was going well. 

Then I realized that I was causing confusion to people who knew me.  My nephew was talking to my sister and thought that I may be looking for work.  As funny as confusing my sister is, I had to explain to her why I took the time to write this story and also had to explain that I wasn’t an idiot.  (This is a common conversation we have)

I also had a person wish me luck on a test and I genuinely felt bad about misleading her. And another person entered into a serious discussion with me about dealing with raw emotions of people with recently deceased friends and relatives. 

I honestly didn’t believe that anyone would take the tweets seriously and was concerned about proceeding with the story.

If I was to do this again, I would certainly create a new account so as to not confuse anyone who knows me. But I still don’t know how to address people who take the story seriously.  Nobody likes to feel tricked.

Below is a transcript of the tweets from fist to last.  I still think there are some fumy bits in there, but of course if I didn’t think it was funny, I wouldn’t have written it.

Outside exercise gym at Lake Banook

The city of Halifax, in an attempt to get the residents off their arses and start working out created a few gyms outside so folks can work out for free.  Most people don't know what to do with the equipment and don't have a workout plan once they get there.  I have talked a buddy of mine into creating a workout for me with this equipment.  

My plan is to have a quick workout two or three times a week focusing on my upper body and core muscles.

This bad boy works your calfs and quads.
You sit on the chair and push yourself up the ramp using your legs.

This is a pull down on one side and a push up on the
other side using your body weight for resistance 

This Machine is a bit intimidating looking.
I'm guessing it is for push ups at different angles.

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Here's an olyptical trainer

There is a decline situp bench and a back extension bench

The other 2 sides have a dip bar, pull up bar
and a squat/calf raise bar.

With this equipment, we can work out every major muscle group in the body.  I just have to get up early enough to squeeze in a 30 minute workout before work.

Lake Charles water temperatures at Shubie Beach

This year, I tracked the water temperatures In Lake Charles (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia) at the Shubie Park beach.

I didn't have my thermometer every time we went swimming, but I think there's enough information to share.  It's important to know that the temperatures are in Celsius, not Fahrenheit.

The group I swam with swam at 6am a couple of times a week. We'd swim between one and two kilometers.   There are a couple of other locations I swam at and they are noted.

Date	Temperatures	Notes
June 16	?	Freaking Cold and Choppy.  Quote from swimming partner: “It’s so cold I can’t think!”
June 18	Air 14°, Water 16°	The water was calm and a lot warmer than the 16th.
June 20	Air 12°, Water 17°	The lake was like glass
June 23	Air 11° Water 17°	We had eight swimmers and the water was like glass.
June 25	Air 15°, Water 19°	Windy and choppy water
June 30	Air 15°, Water 19.5°	Water was like glass
July 3	Water 16°	This was my first ocean swim of the year at Parlee Beach.  There were Tonnes of Jelly Fish and my face was pretty tingly when I got out.  I also found an umbrella that blew into the ocean off the beach and I swam that back to shore.  Free umbrella!
July 7	Air?, Water 19°	I swam with no earplugs for the first time of the season and got dizzy.  (I think ear plugs are a must when swimming in cold water)
July 11	Air 17°, Water 20°	The water was like glass
July 28	Air 18°, Water 21°	It was a foggy morning, but the fog was higher than the lake so we had good visibility and a cool sky.
August 1	Air 19°, Water 21°	This was taken at Morris Lake in Dartmouth because of a high bacteria count in Shubie.
August 6		I forgot my thermometer
August 8	Air 15°, Water 21°	The fog was rising up off a calm lake.  It was a beautiful swim.
August 22	Air 15°, Water 21°
August 28	Air 12°, Water 19°	It’s getting darker in the mornings.
September 8	Air 10°, Water 19.5°	It was pitch black leaving the shore.  Coming back wasn’t too bad, but I think we’re calling that our last swim.

We usually swim with wetsuits, but when the water was around 17 and lower, I swam with two swim caps and silicon ear plugs.  I like that combination to keep myself warm.  

I have swam in the beginning of June before and the water is around 12°.  That is so cold that our jaws got tight and it was hard talking after we got out.  Also walking into the lake, I had shooting pains up the arches of my feet.  Swimming in water that cold isn't even fun as far as I'm concerned.

Giving up Coffee & Tea

I am 23 days without coffee and tea.

It's still hard sometimes, but making sure I get enough sleep is important.  I still wake up at 5am, twice a week to swim and most days I'm up at 6 to get ready for work.

The hardest day is Sunday.   It's a slower day and we usually have a bigger breakfast before church and having a slow breakfast begs for a cup of coffee.

So far so good though.

Planning for the Zombie Apocalypse

The zombie apocalypse is a real threat and I've been thinking about how to survive.  I could stock up on guns and other weapons, fortify my house and purchase an armoured vehicle, but I think I have a better plan.

From what I can tell from the zombie documentaries I've watched is that zombies travel in groups and eat human brains.  They don't tend to attack each other.  Therefore my family and I are going to assimilate.  We are working on make-up but the first step is to get used to eating brains.

This is a picture of last night's supper.  I'm not going to say where we obtained the brains, but let's just say there is a hockey player in town who's a bit dumber today than he was yesterday.   The brain was a bit more grey than it appears in the picture.

We were surprised about how filling the brain was to eat and it sat well on our stomachs.

Once we get used to the brain diet, I figure we'll be able to move around town freely and enjoy the apocalypse as best we can.

See you on the other side.

Coffee & Tea Challenge

I'm giving up coffee and tea.  I usually give up drinking coffee once a year or so and it's time.  I have two reasons this time.

The first reason is that coffee isn't really good for you. I know, I've heard about the antioxidants and medicinal values of tea, but honestly, I feel I have a pretty healthy diet and that should take care of things.  I drink coffee and tea for the caffeine.  The normal day is about four mugs of coffee and then at supper I have two cups of tea.  I believe it can't be good for me.

You may say: "Steve, cut down.  Just have one or two cups a day."

That doesn't work for me.  Normally, I'll cut down for about two or three days and then bango, I'm back up to four cups and there's no turning back.  It's pretty much all or nothing for me.

The second reason I'm quitting is the staining of my teeth.  I just went to the dentist about a week ago and and the dental hygienist said something to the effect: "Man, you've got to quit the coffee.  These stains are horrible."  To be honest, she was more diplomatic about it, but the meaning of her words rang clear.

About three or four years ago I hit some ice while biking to work and went face down on the road.  I lost about a tooth and a half and gave myself my fifth concussion.  Since then, I got teeth replace, a root canal, braces to straighten my smile and then jaw surgery to re-align my teeth. The smile is important to me.  That being said I still bike in the winter, but am fairly careful about the conditions I ride in.

It's been a week  now and I think I'm over the misery hump.

• Day one - Started ok, but then the headache kicked in an the morning and I was extremely tired.  Almost fell asleep at the supper table.
• Day two - Woke up with a headache and it got worse as the day went on.
• Day three - Up at 5am for swim practice. Headache didn't start until around noon.
• Day four - It was the weekend and there wasn't much of a headache.  I did have a thirty minute nap in the afternoon though.
• Day five - We had a breakfast of bagels and eggs.  Coffee would have been perfect with this meal.
• Day six - Up at 5am for swim practice. Not much of a headache but almost fell asleep at the office at 3pm.
• Day seven - Today is day seven and I'm coping pretty well.  A 3pm snack got me over the hump and my headache is kind of a numb feeling rather than a headache. I'm also drinking a lot more water which is helping.

Friends and family have been making fun of me and my attempts to quit.  I don't mind and their teasing is strengthening my resolve.

Over the last couple of days, I have become aware of the sheer number of coffee advertisements and people walking along the street drinking coffee. I'm not going to preach the evils of coffee.  I'm not going to be "that guy". It just isn't right for me. That being said, I caught myself referring to someone drinking coffee as a caffeine sucker.....I'll have to stay conscious of my attitude

I'll keep updating this blog with my progress.  Hopefully it will continue for a while.