Your Basic Motivation Monday Stuff. And Dancing Frappuccinos.

Last Monday, 6:47 a.m.: It's going to be hot today but I feel ready for my eight miles. I can't leave until 9:00, after Muffin gets on the bus, so plenty of time for breakfast and more water.

During the run I struggled with the heat. For most of it I imagined a huge Midnight Mint Mocha Frappuccino dancing on the path in front of me.

It never occurred to me to search for frappuccino gifs before.

Making healthy decisions when I'm well-rested and well-hydrated it easy. Making them when I'm tired and hot is not so I'm very pleased with myself for not pulling out my phone and ordering a frappuccino to be ready when I passed the Starbucks near my home. Instead I made a mint mocha protein shake at home. It wasn't the same, obviously, but it wasn't bad and I know it was better for me.

I didn't get my eight miles, though. I barely got seven and the last mile was mostly walking along shady, tree-lined streets. The temperature rose twelve degrees while I was running. I think losing some of my fitness means I've lost some of my heat acclimatization. Burundi, India, Mali. Summers in Rhode Island, Florida, Washington, D.C. I'm a lover of heat and humidity. It's a lot harder to face it now, though.

This morning I had six miles on my training plan. I had to do a little shuffling around of workouts. Muffin was home sick last Friday when I'd planned on this six-miler. We had a busy weekend but I did manage a short run/walk while she was in karate on Saturday and she and I walked together on Sunday morning. (A walk at her pace does help me get my steps in and encourages me to drink plenty of water but it's hardly a workout for me.) Looking at the week ahead, today and tomorrow are really the only days I have time for significant workouts so I have no choice but to make it work. Six miles today and the climbing gym tomorrow, then whatever else I can squeeze in all the other days.

Despite temperatures falling a bit it was still hot and sunny out there this morning. I did my six miles. I did pull out my phone a quarter mile from home and order an iced latte with soy milk to pick up when I ran by that Starbucks. I came home and drank it with leftover roasted garlic and broccoli quinoa salad.

This morning I tried on a pair of shorts from last summer and they almost fit. They are the gauge I'm using rather than the scale. Maybe all the quinoa and ab workouts are starting to pay off.

This is the last week of school for Muffin. After that my schedule will be all out of whack and I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Expectations vs. Limitations

"You'll never be more than alive
You'll never do more than survive
Until you expect it"
~10,000 Maniacs - Few And Far Between

Yes, I've gotten to the point where I'm quoting favorite songs from my teen years for inspiration. (On that same playlist, "I think about the time, I kicked a boy 'til he cried," The Sundays.)

I've been loosely following a training schedule to get ready for my two ten-mile races. This is the first week where I'm feeling the craziness of trying to fit it all in. Mike's out of town and I have some volunteer commitments at Muffin's school. I can only run during her school hours anyway, which limits me if I have any other plans during the day. A couple hours of writing/working is nice to accomplish regularly. I also need to eat, and feed Muffin, which means I need to make time for grocery shopping and cooking. I'll let the dishes and laundry pile up for days, though. It's not as urgent as the eating and the running.

My weekday runs this week are supposed to be a five miler and an eight miler. Yesterday I planned to run but when I woke up I wasn't feeling it and went to the climbing gym instead. I'm perfectly happy with that decision because I felt great by the end of the day and I woke up ready to run this morning. With my IT band acting up, though, I was hesitant to commit to eight miles. Generally I tell my body, "Run X miles," and my body does it without questioning me. I think that's how I got injured in the first place, however, so I need to rethink that strategy.

Part of me really wanted to get the eight miles over with because this morning was the only time I have until next Monday to fit in a long run. The me of two or three years ago would have said, "Fuck it! Run the eight miles and care not about the tiredness and injuries. You'll bounce back!" But the me of right now really doesn't want to be in pain if it can be avoided.

I chose a route that put me at Metro stations at mile five and mile eight so I could gauge how I felt along the way and decided when to bag it and head home. I kind of knew I was only going to run five miles but I didn't want to rule out eight until I'd honestly assessed how my IT band felt.

Things felt not great. Despite rolling and stretching, my quad was tight and there was some tenderness in my calf. Between miles three and four I had a running dialogue in my head between younger me and current me about stopping at five miles or not. Older, wiser, lamer, safer current me won. I detoured off the path and around a small park before arriving at a Metro station at 5.1 miles. It was absolutely the right choice. By the time I'd gone through the turnstile and gotten onto the train platform, my left calf had seized up in what I assume is anger at having taken it out running. 

Four days of walking and yoga should prepare me for a longer run on Monday. I've trained for enough races to know that I still have plenty of time to get those eight- and ten-mile runs in before the first race at the end of July. I'm still trying to figure out my new limitations before I can tell my body what I expect from it.

Glutened!

I've been gluten-free due to celiac disease since 2003. For the most part I've been awesome about managing it and the gluten-free market has improved so significantly since then that I sometimes just stop in the grocery store, staring in disbelief at all the choices that didn't exist ten years ago. I've lived in and traveled through several countries without major incidents. I don't get to eat every delicious food that crosses my path. I give up a lot of treats just because I can't be certain. I always remind myself that my health is worth more than that one amazing dessert.

I had gluten once in Bamako, in July 2014, within days of my arrival. I knew what I'd done; I recognized the pattern of my gastrointestinal distress as what happens when I eat gluten. As a precaution I went to the doctor to rule out parasites and food poisoning because I was in a new country with different food safety practices and germs I hadn't been exposed to before. They treated me for dehydration. I lost several pounds. It was a shaky start to my time in a new country but I recovered.

The culprit of the gluten was unexpected but quickly determined. Beef brochettes at a pizza place. There was so much flour being tossed around the kitchen with abandon that it covered every food inadvertently. And thus the psychological aspect of celiac disease set in. In a place where I already felt isolated by being an outsider, I couldn't frequent one of the most popular expat restaurants with my friends. One time I tried drinking a glass of wine while my friends ate but it was hard to smell the pizza and the grilling meat and watch everyone else enjoy it while I couldn't even eat the inherently gluten-free dishes.

For almost three years, all over France, Mali, Austria, Kenya, and the United States, I avoided gluten until a few weeks ago. There are two pizza places in our neighborhood and they both do a decent gluten-free pizza. I still prefer the one I make at home but sometimes I want to have pizza in a restaurant with my friends and family so I've come to rely on these two restaurants. I ordered my usual gluten-free pizza for pickup to take to a friend's house for dinner.

The pizza in question.

 By the time we sat down to eat I was so hungry that I ate two slices before I realized it was too delicious to be a gluten-free pizza. I'm not going to lie. After the initial horror of discovering it I was tempted to eat more since I was going to get sick already. But I didn't. I did finish off Mike's beer, since I hadn't had real beer, other than an occasional tiny sip, in so long.

Then I anxiously awaited the pain in the lower left side of my abdomen that usually signifies gluten poisoning. I barely slept that night, wondering if it was the gluten causing my sleeplessness or the nerves of waiting for the symptoms that caused it. By the next morning my stomach was still fine and I began to question everything that had happened. It wasn't a relief to not be sick. It was more nerve wracking than usual, knowing that I'd eaten gluten but my symptoms weren't manifesting in their usual way.

By about noon I realized what was going on. Inflammation. I'd never had it before but I knew it was a common symptom for many people. Full body ache. Exhaustion. Skin so sensitive I recoiled when Muffin tried to hold my hand. My plan had been to bring my pizza leftovers back to the restaurant to find out what happened with my order. By the time Mike got home from work I could barely get off the couch without great discomfort so he took them back for me, explaining to the manager that I was too sick to go myself.

To the manager's credit, according to Mike he was horrified. My receipt said "gluten-free" on it and my crust was clearly not their gluten-free crust. He looked up the name of the person who prepared my order so he could yell at him. He refunded us for the pizza and gave Mike a gift card for fifty dollars. He told Mike he wanted the chance to make it up to me personally, once my appetite for pizza from their restaurant returned. Two days later the manager called me to see how I was doing.

I was much better, gluten-wise, by the time he called, but the gluten weakened my immune system enough that the horrible cold Muffin had had, that I'd thought I'd successfully fended off, moved on in. I was still on the couch, although from a chest cold and sinus infection rather than inflammation.

And the thing is, unlike when I have the gastrointestinal problems from gluten, I never lost my appetite, even for pizza. Again the psychological games spring up, having to rebuild my trust with that restaurant. But a week later I was at the other restaurant enjoying a pizza while the waiter talked about how they recently changed to a new gluten-free crust that customers said was tastier than the old one. (It was pretty good, as far as gluten-free crusts go.)

Mainly I'm angry because it was one more setback after a winter and spring of injuries and illness. One more week that I couldn't run as much as I wanted to. A few more days that I couldn't do any kind of workout. It was while I was sick on the couch that I signed up for the two ten-mile races for later this year. I'm tired of being sick and injured and I really want to stay on track.

Cutting back on Social Media

Several weeks ago Muffin was home sick from school with a bad cold. As she snuggled on top of me on the couch, warm and sniffly and sleepy, I was pretty much immobilized so, like many parents in my situation these days, I picked up my phone to scroll through Facebook to pass the time. By the second day of that routine, I was done. I realized how bad Facebook was making me feel. I was a member of several groups where it is apparently no longer enough to simply be a nice, polite, person, you have to wear the badge of exactly what kind of feminist, gluten-free, stay/work-at-home mother you are. It's not enough that I support women breastfeeding in public. If I let slip that I didn't enjoy the few times I did it with Muffin, I've become a horrible mother who doesn't support women. In a discussion about childcare options, someone made a comment that having family watch your child "never works out." I called her out on it, saying it's a very good option for many families, even if it doesn't work out for some, and suddenly I'm perceived as a privileged bitch with free childcare. (I don't have free childcare. I have a good public school and the generosity of family members when they happen to be here visiting us or we happen to be other places visiting them. But I've learned that Facebook groups are not the place for details and nuance.) Even friends I agree with on many issues were so vehement about their opinions that it became tiresome. It was no longer enjoyable to be bombarded from all sides.

So I stopped. For several days I stayed off Twitter entirely and I took only very quick peeks once or twice a day to check in on specific friends and family members on Facebook. I asked Mike to stop telling me whatever the latest Facebook news was. I left a bunch of Facebook groups. I turned off my notifications for Facebook and all my news apps. I chatted with friends. I read the news ad-free and comment-free on my Kindle. I listened to podcasts. I was still connected. I just took out all the tiresome social commentary.

And I was fine. I had more free time to read things that I find more enjoyable to read. I didn't miss any major news. After a few days I expanded my time and my group of friends I wanted to check on and stay in touch with. On Twitter, I created a list of about twenty people who I want to interact with regularly. I don't plan on turning my alerts back on. I control when I check on Facebook and Twitter. I won't forget they exist just because my phone isn't chirping at me every few minutes.

I'm choosing to control how I use social media in order to avoid some of the negativity. I'm not ignorant of what's going on in the world.

And I fully realize the irony of sharing this post on Facebook and Twitter. 

Time for Some Changes

I got caught in the rain this morning.

Dang! I completely forgot about the movie challenge. I'll pick it back up soon. I still have a lot of great movies to talk about.

I've been jotting down a lot of notes and random sentences and paragraphs the last few weeks. They are not going to become one very long blog post but I think it's time to start developing them into something I can share.

Last week I signed up for two ten-mile races, one in July and one in October. I haven't raced any distance since the Marine Corps Marathon last October. My longest run since then has been about seven miles and that was back in March when I thought I was going to run a half marathon in April. I knew I wasn't ready for it, though, between the injury and some other health issues that cropped up so I backed off running and started doing some serious thinking about my health and my habits.

I'm recovering from an injury that came up during marathon training, disappeared with ice, stretching, and rest, and then hit me like a sack of bricks during the race. At this point I feel like I will probably be managing it for the rest of my life, but at least I can manage it with stretching and strength training and cross training. It's my IT band across my left hip and sometimes in my left calf. If I sleep wrong, I wake up in the middle of the night with pain in my hip and I have to figure out how to fall back to sleep and rearrange my workout routine for the next day.

Since I turned forty a little over a year ago I feel like I've been in a constant battle with my body. One friend put it this way: At forty plus one day, all your warranties start expiring. I know my body isn't the same as it was in my twenties and my thirties and there's only so much I have control over of my forty-year-old body. I'm not thrilled with my body right now. Summer clothes from last year don't fit and it's not because I got so muscular from marathon training. It's because I've eaten too much macaroni and cheese.

I'm trying to come to terms with the difference between accepting my body and accepting the changes that I have to make in order to maintain a body that I want. I need more quality rest. I need more water and less sugar. I need more stretching. I need to make the time to be cognizant of the little changes I need to make regularly in order to fit back into those favorite shorts and skirts from last summer. I'm pretty sure that eating less junk food and exercising more is going to be cheaper than buying new clothes.

I'm not on a diet, other than the gluten-free one that I have to be on. I am being more aware of the calories I choose to put into my mouth, although I've decided that some of those calories are going to be chocolate and wine. I've got a ten-mile race training plan that involves a lot of cross training in order to take the pressure off my injury-prone areas while still building strength and endurance. I'm making my family eat more vegetables, since I'm the one who does most of the grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking, and I'm not inclined to make different snacks and meals for every family member. If I'm putting this much effort into our food, it's going to be good for all of us.

One of the things that has held me back from wanting to make some changes is struggling with how my child might perceive these changes. She's six. I don't want her to know that I'm unhappy with my body right now. I want her to see exercise as a fun activity that sometimes we do as a family and sometimes Mommy and Daddy do as individuals, and that eating healthy gives us the energy for everything we do, whether it's swimming with friends or going to work or school.

This is hard. 

Book Review: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

After you've read something, please consider leaving a line or two on Goodreads and Amazon. The authors appreciate it!

Here's my review as it appears on Goodreads.

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a little disappointed with this book. I'm not quite sure what I expected. But the main realization that Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford had an affair during the filming of Star Wars had been released with the book and there were no other real surprises within. Some readers have said they're disappointed to learn that Ford was so quiet and aloof, but I already figured that about him. He's always been a fairly private figure. Have you ever seen him on a talk show?

Thirty-three-year-old Harrison Ford took advantage of a nineteen-year-old Carrie Fisher. Maybe there's even more to it than Ms. Fisher revealed but from her telling of it I can't see Mr. Ford in a more flattering light over the affair. I know affairs happen. I'm not naive. Ms. Fisher tells us that Mr. Ford isn't a bad guy and that we should take her word for that despite all the evidence she provides that leads me toward not having any sympathy for Mr. Ford in that situation.

I also found the actual reprinting of her journals written when she was nineteen years old to be as tedious as any other nineteen year old's journals, including my own. I'm not sure what they added other than the thrill of voyeurism. I didn't find any deep insight in them.

I didn't hate the book. I found some of the personal details interesting although I found myself skimming through many paragraphs to find one of those interesting details. I'm still a fan of Carrie Fisher and of Princess Leia. I'm just maybe not a fan of Ms. Fisher's writing.

View all my reviews

Trying to Figure Out Why This Commercial Bugs Me

When I first saw this commercial I appreciated the girl-power-ness of it, being a mom myself who cruises through the neighborhood in a black car with a daughter who's going through a black-and-purple phase (and who never had much of a pink phase to begin with). My daughter would definitely choose the black and purple paint and peel into the driveway if given the opportunity.

But then I realized, these girls appear to be my daughter's age or older, and they are riding Big Wheels with helmets. They are riding Big Wheels, a toddler toy. And they are wearing helmets while they ride huge plastic three-wheelers close to the ground with very little risk of falling. Are we so overcautious that helmets on Big Wheels is a thing now? And why aren't they riding bicycles? Or skateboards? Something a little less babyish?

Maybe I'm so involved in our own style of parenting that we've missed Big Wheels for 6, 7, 8 year olds being a thing now. Our six year old is excited to go mountain biking this weekend (with her helmet on, of course). A friend's six year old just had a skateboarding birthday party on the halfpipe the dad built in their backyard (with their helmets on, of course). Are we the odd parents out? Or are commercials reflecting some nonexistent overly protective society that they think parents want to see?

***

I wrote the above a few days ago. Since then I've Googled "helmets on Big Wheels" and I've found that, yes, many parents insist on their toddlers wearing helmets on Big Wheels, when riding in wagons being pulled by an adult, and some parents have rules about helmets when kids are on anything with wheels. While I can understand this for some circumstances, at some point doesn't it seem overprotective for the general population of toddlers? The risk of a fall from a Big Wheel bike is slim. Most toddlers aren't going to be allowed to leave their yards or driveways without adult supervision so there's no risk of being hit by a car on the street. Many parents monitor their children outside even in their own yards so the risk of any danger is very, very low. Parents argue that helmet wearing is a good habit for children to start as young as possible and I agree with that for certain activities. Riding a bike, even a balance bike. Skateboards and scooters. Anything that requires a certain amount of balance and coordination. At some point though aren't we going a bit too far in wrapping our kids up and protecting them from every single bit of pain and discomfort? By making them think the world is always dangerous but if you always take these precautions everything will always be okay?

I also learned that some states require helmets any time a child is on public property on a foot-powered vehicle. So a parent cannot decide that it's safe for their three or four year old to ride a Big Wheel on a dirt path in a park without a helmet.

Let me point out again that the children in this commercial are not toddlers. They are old enough to have the balance and coordination to be on bicycles or scooters. I can sort of understand the visual because the Big Wheel moves more slowly so is more of a cruising vehicle than a bicycle. Every child I know who's around my daughter's age, if given a Big Wheel to ride, they'd be in the backyard crashing them into each other for fun because it's a babyish safety toy. I'd rather see this girl cruising by on a skateboard. Or rolling into the parking lot at the park on a mountain bike, pulling up to her mom's car, speeding past the girls with pink streamers on their bikes, if that's the message they're trying to get across. Why put them on toddler toys?