Or should that be doing?
“Do. Or do not. There is no try.“ Yoda from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980). (Love that universe!)
Well, I am doing. Again. Finally. Sort of. <shrug>
Last week, week 6, was amazing! I completed the number of training days scheduled, if not on the actual days scheduled (it’s called flexibility), and weekly mileage–with bonus mileage of 3.8M. I did it with a mix of outdoor, treadmill, and indoor (e.g. Leslie Sansone’s Walk at Home)1 walking. In my DonJoy UltraSling III. (I also got quite a bit of certification study done. Study isn’t training so doesn’t belong here. Still, I’m very proud of myself for prioritizing that too.)
My Monday walk happened on Tuesday. Gorgeous day and I spent the whole walk, drive home, and at home, catching up with my friend (and ultra-marathoner inspiration), Gigi. When I got back to the house, still talking, I opened up the spreadsheets of races and training plans, as well as calendar, for us to do some syncing of schedules and travel.
Wednesday’s walk happened as scheduled, albeit late evening, at Lott Fitness Center in Fairfield. I’m very proud of myself for how I “stuck to the plan” that evening.
I accompanied my sister, brother-in-law and father to Palestine to eat Mexican cuisine. Instead of enchiladas, chimichanga , or some other entree drenched in cheese and sauce (my usual selections :-), I opted for El Toro’s Santa Fe Caesar Salad with blackened shrimp. OMG!
That was just the best! I thought Red Lobster’s Caesar Salad with salmon was delish. Even at that, it was only a “good” salad when I needed to eat salad. El Toro’s Caesar salad, on the other hand, is now among my preferred dishes. I actually want to go back, just to get the salad again. That’s saying something for a woman who doesn’t like vegetables. 😉
I moved Thursday’s walk to Friday to coincide with my friend Susy’s day off. We met in Waco at the Redwood Shelter in Cameron Park. Waco is a little over an 1.5 hr drive for her and right at 1 hr for me. Good day trip. We walked along the Riverwalk down to Washington Ave. and crossed the Brazos River there and walked through the Doris Miller Memorial2. Then back along the Brazos following the East Riverwalk (yes, they’re different) to Slow Rise Slice House for lunch. Okay, maybe not the healthiest choice for lunch, but the atmosphere (and Waco Works pizza) was perfect. We sat out on the patio overlooking the river and continued the conversation we’d been having for the past hour while we walked. LOL (I just realized, I didn’t snap a pic of our spot on the patio. Dangit.)
For our 3 slices of pizza, we walked 3.28M to Slow Rise. … Take it easy, b-dadunt, b-dadunt, b-dadunt. Oh yeah, Susy went there. Earworm! We ended up hunting up the lyrics–Slow Ride, Foghat (1975). Then we couldn’t put the lyrics to the music beyond the opening chorus. Naturally, we had to find the audio with the lyrics and the music. Nice little jam session on the patio. Wait, isn’t that a ZZ Top song? ;-p My jam! (I type as I listen to Party on the Patio. Dang! Need to find that Classic Hard Rock playlist. I wonder if Dad will let me listen to it on the drive down to Willis tomorrow? Yeah…no.)
A little more mileage up Herring Ave. and back across the Brazos. At our cars, we’d clocked another .66M. I combined them for 3.94M for the day. Whoop!
Saturday called for 1.5M and Sunday, 30-min of cross-training. I opted for Walk at Home for both sessions, using step count to calculate mileage. I believe Leslie is a bit “generous” in her distance to time allocation. My step count was 1.6 and 1.8, respectively to her 2M–and I was already “walking” while I waited for her to get through her introduction. I should also mention, I’m so familiar with her many step variations–kick, kickback, side step, step out, knee up, etc.–I now mute the video and simply watch for her cues while listening to my rock. I have to focus a little more on tempo since she speeds up after the warm-up and slows down toward the cool-down. Sometimes my music set the tempo. Sometimes her feet. LOL
Ah, then this week rolled around. I finally, got out today for a 3M walk. Until now, I’ve spent most of the week in bed.
I injected my Mounjaro dose Friday morning before driving to Waco. However, it wasn’t until Monday that I began suffering the expected gastrointestinal distress. I was taking my anti-nausea medicine and hopping in and out of the bathroom every 45 min. The bathroom frequency was new, so maybe that was caused by something else and it doubled down on the nausea. I usually don’t have to take the anti-nausea pill.
I began feeling better on Wednesday and was able to eat some, namely a mix of carbs and protein–unsweetened peaches and cottage cheese, fresh blackberries and greek yogurt. Yesterday was busy with a massage appointment in Mexia and a dentist appointment in Waco. I hadn’t stopped to eat anything, so when I came out of the dentistry office at 2:45ish, I decided I was hitting the Chinese buffet. I’m happy to say I did well in not stuffing myself. Normally I’d say the $14 tab was too much for two small plates and a bowl of soup. However, when it’s almost $10 for a biscuit, hasbrown, and coffee at McDonald’s, it doesn’t seem so much for the variety I have to choose from at the buffet.
Driving back from Waco, I kept trying to talk myself into going straight to my county road parking spot and getting in the scheduled 1.5M for the day. I didn’t have my water bottle with me, but it was only 1.5 miles. I didn’t have my headphones, but I could just play my music over the phone’s speaker. I did have my Garmin watch. I wasn’t wearing my running shoes. I was wearing a pair of sneakers and it was only 1.5 miles. However, the longer I was in the car, the more my body worked on digesting the Chinese food intake, the sleepier I got. I told myself I’d go home, take a nap, then get up and Walk at Home to get the 1.5 miles (3000 steps). Yeah…no.
This morning, I didn’t get up at 8:30 originally planned, but I did make it up by 10:00. The first thing I did, after medicine and water, was put on my running shoes and going for a 3M walk. Had a good pace, too. I don’t understand why I can’t average that pace on the treadmill. Setting that faster pace on the treadmill is hard for me to keep up with. Maybe it’s the belt pulling under my feet and I get anxious about being forced to keep up with that continually. Whatever the reason, I can hit an average pace of 18:30 min/mi walking outdoors on asphalt or concrete. However, I can’t walk a treadmill with anything less than a 20:00 min/mi pace. Hal, of the Run w/Hal+ app feels like I’m not putting enough intensity into the effort. Of course, I’m already juggling and shifting his training schedule around, skipping days, adding days, combining mileage… I guess I have to say Hal’s training schedule is more of a suggestion for me, not my exact training plan. ;-p
In case you’re wondering, Hal Higdon3 is a real person, runner, and running coach. He’s not coaching me personally, no matter how I reference him as a person. I’m using the Run with Hal app, which is all done programatically. If I miss a scheduled workout, it will adjust the plan to accommodate that missed run. Ironically, it does not recognize what it labels as “Extra training.” When I run on Tuesday rather than Monday, it’s a missed workout. Not a workout done the next day. Overall, I like the app enough to pay for the premium service rather than the free one. It’s just a little annoying to see all the red circles around dates with missed workouts and no green circles around the re-scheduled workouts. No, the app doesn’t have the flexibility to shift workouts around. It’s Hal’s training plan. If I could tweak it like that, it wouldn’t be Hal’s anymore, would it?
Here’s the photo proof of my 3 miles this morning. It was a comfortable 66F, cloudy with a nice 14mph north-easterly breeze blowing. In my selfie, I tried to catch the sun showing through a thinner layer of clouds. Then I just had to get a picture of the herd of cows that got on the move as I walked by. I would have preferred to video them because it was such fun to watch.
They began moving toward the fence, like they were coming to see if I was bringing them something to eat. They kept going along the same angle as the fence. However, the road–and fenceline–curve and it was then, as they moved increasingly farther away from me, I realized they were off to their own destination on the other side of the pasture and creek. (I assumed, as they continued on into the trees growing along the creek bank.) The fun part about it was all the youngsters running out front, competing to stay in the lead. Probably a dozen of them–one of which was a relatively new guy/girl. Smaller than the rest, it ran flat out at back of the pack, trying to keep up. As they jockeyed for the lead, they would surge forward. Trailing along behind them were their moms, first walking and eventually being forced to jog themselves to keep their younguns in sight. A few more cows trailed the herd at a sedate pace, the distance lengthening between them and the main portion of the herd as the kids bolted onward. Way back in the far rear was the bull. “Yeah, you crazy cows can do what you want. I ain’t gettin’ in any hurry.”
Tomorrow, I’m driving Dad down to my brother’s house in Willis so he can help him make deer sausage. I need to fit in another 3 miles to catch up my mileage for the week. Sunday I’m hoping to go to Lott Fitness Center and get on a recumbent bike to do some real cross-training. Worst case, I can fit in 1.5 miles, Leslie Sansone style, both tomorrow and Sunday to make the mileage. Flexibility.
Happy Friday!
- I have many of her DVD’s from the mid and late 2000s. I use these as well as her YouTube videos when I need to. If you’re just getting started with fitness, this is an inexpensive means of getting a nice low-impact workout. There is now a subscription streaming service of her Walk at Home program that includes the convenience of a mobile app. ↩︎
- I hadn’t been through the memorial until that day and we didn’t spend a lot of time exploring it. When I searched for a link for this post, I learned what a dumb ass I can be. (Of course, you don’t know what you don’t know.) Doris “Dorie” Miller wasn’t the financial donor for the memorial, but rather the honored hero and first black recipient of the Navy Cross. (The Medal of Honor he deserved and was nominated for was denied him by the then Secretary of the Navy who objected to Africa-Americans in the armed forces.) And the African-American sailor standing in the memorial, which I thought was a progressive designer’s recognition of the diversity within our armed forces? (I can be so dense sometimes.) The hero himself, of course. Educate yourself. Google him and check out the many articles and videos about him. His naval service is briefly covered in this Wikipedia article. ↩︎
- I go to this website first for my training plans. He has free plans–novice 1, novice 2, intermediate, advanced–for popular distances of 50K or less. I find they are very realistic for the given experience levels. (For my first 100K, I’ll have to try another coach’s training plan. Currently, that training will start at the end of September right after I finish my first 50K. <fingers crossed>) ↩︎
