Tag Archives: running

Body data

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My first tracked 3 mile run with this watch was mid December and it took 49:09 for an average of 16:24/mile.

Today I ran 8 miles in 1:50:10 for an average of 13:46/mile. That’s a pretty awesome improvement.

In January I did a bunch of measurements of my body so that I’d be able to see the changes as they happen. I measured myself this morning.

Since then I have lost .5″ off my upper arm, 1″ off my upper chest, 1″ off my bust, 5″ off my waist, 5″ off my hips, 2.5″ off my thigh, and 1″ off my calf for a grand total of 16″ inches taken away. That seems like a lot.

I have dropped 20.5 lbs in 7 months. Even though I do not follow Weight Watchers anymore I keep in mind that they would not encourage losing weight much faster than that.

I have just under 7 weeks to go. I plan to be the laziest git ever in October. I can do as little as humanly possible. Ugh I’m tired.

Another Day In I Am Too Tired For This Shit

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My bed is 7’x7′. How in the hell does a child turn sideways then fall off the bottom?

Yesterday MC had their first visit for assessment to see what sort of neurological testing will help find the correct diagnostic labels so that I can narrow down my research on how to support them better.

It was a good visit but, I think, not what the lady had planned. She had a sheet of questions to ask. Instead of going through those questions MC went through a prepared list of the things they have a hard time with. She flipped her paper over and scribbled like her life depended on it. She scheduled an appointment for me to come back alone and fill out those questions about developmental history. 😂

I had talked MC through how I handle appointments as an adult who does not have anyone to report on childhood milestones/attainment. I forgot that MC is not having my life. Whoops. It’ll be fine.

MC is automatically getting 3 separate assessments based on clinical presentation in this appointment and the intake lady hinted about others that might be relevant after we can actually go through developmental history with a fine toothed comb.

This is how seriously Stanford took EC. I was deeply worried I would not find a way to access similar granularity of help for MC/YC. Stanford did *not* take MC seriously. Stanford asked MC 20 yes/no questions and told me I had a perfect little boy I didn’t need to fix. That was really frustrating. This time the lady watched MC almost vibrate off the chair and noticed “Do you find that you are ever able to sit still?” Only if the kid is in a severe dissociated state because they are imploding under the weight of their own anxiety and it is combined with mutism. No. They can’t just hold their body still like a “normal person”. It is not possible for them.

I am feeling a lot less nervous about this process now. The lady also took it very seriously when I said I have two other children who are also clearly neurodivergent. I don’t know what will come of her making notes about my other kids as well. YC isn’t even on a waiting list at this point.

YC’s flavour of neurodiversity is pretty easy to accommodate within our already heavily modified for neurodiversity lifestyle. EC is doing really well with the structure we maintain. MC needs… something I’m not doing and I don’t know what. I am grateful that the NHS is trying so hard to help me figure out what I should do.

The lady looked really pained when I talked about my own history of being beaten up in school after school and how I was not even a tiny bit surprised when people beat up my children in school. Autistic people are magnets for bullying behaviour.

Human beings often want to hurt people who are different. It’s a thing. A really sucky and terrible thing. I was glad that she showed absolutely no sign of believing that it would be best for my children to be in school. *phew*

Stanford Child and Adolescent Development was quite adamant that there is not a better learning environment for EC than what I provide. They had tiny tweaks to suggest, but nothing major. I hope that the NHS can help me find the tweaks that will give MC also the best learning environment for them. Right now there are a couple of areas that concern me and I don’t know how to fix them. I do need outside guidance.

It’s kind of funny that EC doesn’t mostly overlap with my learning difficulties. His troubles are out in front of me and I can study them without feeling emotionally connected. I just need to support. MC and I share some of the same struggles. The ways in which I have never managed to overcome some of my own challenges inhibit my ability to figure out how to help them make progress. I need a more objective view.

But first I need to go run 4 miles. I’d rather eat glue.

I hit the wall this week. I think I was lowkey sick over the weekend when the kids were all very sick. I kept exercising and working the whole time. I don’t feel like I’m still dealing with a fever but my body wants to tell me to go take a long walk off a short pier. I can’t even tell how much this overreach is about physical load and how much is emotional load.

I feel like my soul is hurting. I miss the physicality of all of my California friendships.

It is already getting much colder and I am not feeling great about the change. My body is hurting a lot. I felt like the tiny increase of warmth of spring was a huge massive welcome change and I was going around outside in skimpy clothing because I was overheating. Now the same temperature range is making my bones ache.

I am not sleeping enough. I am rarely laughing and that can’t be good for me. I feel somber and like I have a flat affect. I feel numb. How can you feel numb and pain at the same time?

I really need to go run. I feel like that is an absolutely outrageous ask just now. Oh well. What I want is not important. What matters is what I do.

Lay out the plan then follow it.

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Today I ran 2 miles to start the day. Noah came with me even though he has been having a gout attack over the past week. So far it seems like he is doing better and he’s not in extra pain from the run and that’s fabulous. I tore open an adhesion between my butt and my thigh and it’s absolutely marvelous. It only hurt for a short time and now I can lift my leg higher and I’m thrilled. This will make it easier to get on and off my bike; it’s been a struggle to raise my leg high enough for quite a while.

I took a shower and washed my hair and did all the greasing for my body head to toe. I fixed my pocket/belt doohickey because it wasn’t done perfectly on the first go-round. That’s going to be ok.

I need to tidy up my room some, do some processing of food that is in deep storage out into the glass jars for usage. It’s important. I might even unload and reload the dishwasher because MC didn’t do it before taking off on their walk and I don’t want them staying up super late to finish dishes later.

I need to catch up on budget stuff. I’ve been not getting that done. I have a whole stack of books I want to get through. I have a lot of seeds that need to be started in the next day or two because it is *time*. This is hilarious because I am running out of floor in my bedroom and bathroom.

I have a meeting at 2 with a construction dude who is going to help with the rotting deck outside the apartment. That’s a good thing. Shorty has badminton at 4 and I have to ride her over there. If I have time I probably should go get some slate tiles before we do badminton so I can bring them home with me. I are tired. Then I eat dinner quickly and head right back out to a yoga class in town. All told I am going to be riding at least 11 miles today but it might be more. I get a little fuzzy on some of the exact distances.

It’s a good day.

I did a lot of seed planting yesterday, my bathroom floor is almost entirely covered in plants and the heat is high. I have about three more weeks of needing that room to be super warm and I am deeply ready for the temperature to go down. I think that next year I am going to try harder to figure out how to have a small enclosed space that I heat without heating that whole room. This is oppressive. Also I could really use a place to start plants where the cats don’t try to sleep on them. The cats are unhappy about their current ban from my room.

I continue to have struggles in many ways as a parent. Figuring out how to teach things, how to model healthy behavior, and how to get a kid to give a shit about something that I find important is… hard. Very hard. I am not feeling good at this. I will keep trying though.

Shorty is spending a lot of time on learn-to-read apps and she’s made a fairly shocking amount of progress. I told her she couldn’t have Roblox till she was 10 because that’s about when my older kids were able to read/write well enough to be safe on the platform. She is absolutely determined to get there sooner. We’ll see!

I am by no measure a perfect person. I will keep reaching for the light even though I am stunted.

Every day is a school day

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Today I learned that while 3C feels brisk and chilly but nice for a run 2C feels like my lips are going to fall off and I was in pain at first. I am also noticing the inherent challenge in the location of my house. In Fremont I had to be going well over 5 miles in the day before I went up a big hill. I always had over a mile and a half to warm up before I started the uphill slog. That big hill had ~305′ of elevation in a bit over a mile. BUT AFTER CLOSE TO 2 MILES OF WARM UP.

Now I walk out of my front door and start climbing because even my damn driveway is sunk compared to the road. Just to get to the top of my road before doing anything else it’s a mile and the elevation climb is ~375′. That’s my fucking warm up.

Oh my goodness. My road is harder than running up Washington Blvd to get to Mission. I’m going to cry and feel sorry for myself for a minute here.

Ok, now I’m over it. I am actually feeling absolutely elated about how quickly my legs are picking up muscle. I tried to start running when we moved here, not long after the surgery on my back that healed very poorly. I did not do well. I felt empty. I fell and got hurt a couple of times and I just went limp and quit trying. Then I got busy with my million other projects and I just went about my life using my bike and having to walk places.

I feel strong again. I feel like I am clearly increasing muscle mass. My calves are already pretty rock hard and I have missed that so much. I love that if I grab at my thighs there is some padding on them, but mostly they are getting solid too. I suspect next month is when I will start seeing change in fat location on my body. Not that I expect things to shift massively. I suspect that this round of marathon training will not have my body shift as drastically as the previous round. I’d be surprised if I ever see 150lbs again. I’m currently hovering around 200. I need to lose about 6″ around my waist if I want to get my corsets on. Rats. I feel like I am racing the clock before menopause kicks my ass.

This is kinda my last chance to get to a different baseline before the next time my body heads into a whole new stage of loving belly fat. Sigh.

Part of wanting to train for a marathon again is that I won’t maintain an exercise regime for shorter distances. I just won’t. They aren’t hard enough. I could walk a half marathon tomorrow and be ok. I wouldn’t force myself to run for that distance and the running is where I can feel my body shift.

I keep feeling surprised that every time I hit a flat space I drop into a steady 12 minute mile pace. I feel like a metronome sometimes. My body likes the passage of time very much. I expected to have my overall average time for the runs be closer to 17 minutes because of the hill and instead it is under 16 minutes. I’m gaining good speed on the flat bits to make up for how challenging the incline is. I am looking forward very much to when my entire 3 mile run can be done in under 40 minutes. That’s a fantastic feeling when I get there. The last two days were 47/48 minutes. I feel absolutely no worry about my ability to gain back those 8-9ish minutes. Even the hill is going to get easier.

I can do this.

Commit, then follow through.

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I have my eye on the Loch Ness Marathon; it’s the first weekend of October. I’ve been starting to improve fitness on the treadmill during the icy spells but today was a balmy 3C so I went outside for my 3 miles. Only 15 min/mile which isn’t fast yet but I have 35 weeks to go. I can work on fast over the next few months. It’s the uphill start that is really killing me.

This time I downloaded the Hal Higdon app since I have used his training plans for years but I did it with pen/paper and this time I don’t want to spend the time organising. Also the app gives feedback on your training and recommends workouts that will help with trying to meet intermediate goals. This is a good thing. I am going to work towards actually having a race pace this time: I want 13 minute miles. I am aware that barely qualifies as “running” and I don’t give a shit. I am going for faster than “I barely made it before they closed the finish line” this time.

I like that the app asks me to rate my effort and how tired I feel afterwards. I was really pleased that I wasn’t exhausted at the end today. I have that lovely rush of adrenaline and endorphins. I feel great.

I love my body.

Finding a new normal is hard

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Ok my morning hour and a half before breakfast now includes blogging, medicating, and walking on the treadmill. Hoo it takes some balance to do this. That’s only for days when it is too icy for us to go walk on the road, not every day. Mostly I want MC training outside. We are both noticing how it is much much much easier going really fast on a treadmill compared to outside. It’s not just about incline, we increase that on the treadmill.

I think it is kind of funny how hard it is to convince my kids that maintaining enough fitness to be able to suddenly go off on an adventure is easy compared to “Oh shit we have to start training really hard RIGHT NOW and then we will still be less fit and have less fun than we would if we didn’t slack off in between.” But then again… I haven’t been forcing time to do it on my own either. I have allowed the kids refusing to go with me to stop me. I shouldn’t have. I am sorry.

Yesterday I was super keen to get off the treadmill quickly so I did more than a mile at 6mph. That’s really fast for me. It felt so good. It’s funny in that part of what feels good about it is the way my back and side fat waddle really hard. My experience as a fat runner turned slightly less fat by running and starting up again as a fat runner is that wherever it is the most jiggly is going to reduce first. It’s not that I stop having pudge there it’s that the edge of it is what is eaten first by increased need for eating fat in exercise and then the bottom layers plump into muscle. I still look fat, but it’s less jiggly and wiggly and bouncy.

That feeling means that soon I will be able to put on my fucking shoes again without panting. I really hate panting while I’m tying my shoes because I have gotten that fat. I need more exercise than I have been getting. Riding my bike isn’t enough. I need to run. I also need the fucking yoga and I should probably be doing more strength training because I am old enough I have to worry about bone loss soon. My bones aren’t starting out fantastically strong as it is.

I have done this for the past few decades. Early in my 20’s I decided to get fit because I was on the hunt for new social groups and people to fuck and someone to marry. I started dancing a lot and I ran to get in/keep in shape for that. Early 30’s I wanted to run a marathon with my brother and then that went sideways and beautiful, wonderful Blacksheep saved my ass and proved she is better than my brother in every way. (I mean, duh?) Now I am early in my 40’s and realising that I want more than I am right now.

I want to run a marathon in less than 6 hours. I want 30 mile bike rides to not feel punishing. I want to be able to run faster and longer than my fucking kids because ha ha just because you are taller than me that doesn’t mean you are stronger or fitter. 😛

I want the strength to be basically running a small-holding through my 50’s, 60’s, and maybe even my 70’s.

The neighbor in the giant fancy house decided to stay. I reopened the negotiation for me buying the acre next to mine. I told him “Wouldn’t it be nicer if instead of yet another house being constructed that close to us between us and the 150 home housing estate that is coming up in the field on the other side we had a food forest? I would plant walnut trees cause I can’t have them on my property. I would put so so so much food and you would be welcome to come share any and all of it. I would increase the plant and animal ecosystem around here and give them a place to hide as the city is moving outward. But I can’t pay what you want me to pay for a house-plot. My spouse says my limit is £50k and I can’t pay that much just for the part with the septic system.”

It is really useful being able to blame your spouse for things.

This winter I am doing a self-study course on permaculture design. I ordered all of the course books recommended by the top permaculture education organisations. I am going to increase bio-diversity, damnit.

And let me tell you: if I had an extra acre of land I could definitely feed my family in hard times. Probably a lot more people than that.

I would build a root cellar for storing food outside in the winter for preservation. The ground will keep it stable.

Paused for breakfast. Discovered major flaw in combining treadmill and blogging. I get no count for steps. This suuuuuuucks. Now I am flapping my arm like I’m trying to take flight; I feel stupid. Fixed that. Never came back. Oh well. Time to read those books.

Big goals

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I feel bad sometimes when I read other people with EDS/chronic pain talk about their experiences. There are places on my body where if you came up and poked me fairly gently I would drop to my knees from how overwhelmingly it hurt. If I take even the most casual inventory of how my body feels I am always in pain. I just keep doing shit anyway. I show up feeling half dead from exhaustion and I move through sheer force of will. I feel bad because I do not believe that it is healthy that I can do this, exactly, it just hasn’t been very optional for me. I have been in pain since I was a small child and I had shit to do and I had to just get on with it. I don’t know why I feel like I am fueled by rocket fuel.

I am clearly a bad example for my little zebra. Some days he is clearly in intense pain and he gingerly forces himself to keep doing his chores. I ask him why he doesn’t rest when he is in pain. “Well you don’t.”

They do as you do, not as you say.

There are some big goals this year. My big kids asked if we could go on one-on-one fun trips this year. If I am very very very lucky these will be the only big trips of the year. I’m crossing my fingers. One is soon and one is at the end of the year. Both involve me needing to ramp up my fitness in order to manage them while having any kind of a good experience. I am happy that the trip with middle kid is first because they are not starting off with lots more fitness than I have. Phew. I get to pull them along through training work rather than running and feeling half dead and like I can’t keep up. Eldest walks like his dad–they both walk like they are a half breath away from falling into a full sprint. That’s it: they walk like they are doing a run/walk paced run. I don’t walk like that.

MC and I are heading down to London in late February. They want to shop and see some historical sites and pretty parks and maybe a museum. My expectation is that we have to be Disneyland fit in order to have a good time (expect to walk 10 miles a day). I am trying to pull them in the direction of 4mph but frankly 3mph will be plenty fine for actually doing the time in London. When I walk as slow as they prefer my hips get really stiff and I feel like crud so we do have to pick up the pace a little. Luckily they are super motivated and excited. We have drawn up a slowly progressive plan for increasing our mileage and our speed. I am gratefully referencing the book Blacksheep gave me for running training.

I am thrilled about this experience with them, specifically the training, because we are getting to talk a lot about how what we eat and how we sleep dramatically impacts our ability to manage the long walks. I am introducing tracking and talking about evaluating how we feel on different days after different kinds of choices. I’m not controlling all the choices–just requiring reflection on them. They are starting from a place where 5 miles a day is not a lot or extreme so it’s not as much of a moon shot as it seems. Realistically if I asked MC to walk 10 miles today they could; it would just take almost 5 hours. 5 miles is a 2-ish hour walk right now.

Oh hey, it’s snowing again. This year has been so intense for snow–by far the most snow of any of our years here so far. That’s funny because this is our fourth winter and the snow is getting more common and hanging out longer with every passing year. Jenny said it barely ever snowed here! (In her defense the 10 years before we arrived had fairly low historical snow falls.)

As we are training for these… of course we had a big bike wipe out yesterday and MC got a bruise on their backside they are going to be feeling for a very long time. I rubbed them down 3 different kinds of topical analgesics and said we will be doing a lot more on the treadmill until it heals because they will walk awkwardly on the ice and that’s dangerous. Also: no more bike rides unless it is over 5. That sucked.

I love this whole winter hibernation thing. I feel constitutionally suited to having things just shut down for months out of the year so I can work on stuff internally and in my house.

Have I mentioned that I stopped taking the ADHD medication and I feel like my brain is hopping around like a grasshopper on speed?

So MC and I are going to London for a long weekend in February and EC and I are going to Paris, with probable stops in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and probably some city in Germany but I’m not sure which yet. We will be gone around two weeks. Yes I know that these trips seem unfair in terms of size and balance, but EC and I are going to be spending the entire day every single day going from museum to museum (although I suspect the Louvre will be a whole day on its own). He wants to take pictures and notes on as many kinds of art as possible in that time period. To be fair: he knows a fantastic amount about art history and already knows all the periods and most of the masters and who they worked with. He is going because he can already rattle off the names of hundreds of paintings and he wants to see them in person. This is school.

You can see why the kids do not enjoy traveling together very much. After the trip to Texas last year EC vehemently announced, “Remind me never to take a family vacation with any of you people again.” That hurt my feelings. Dude! IT WASN’T A VACATION!!! It was a trip to see a dying relative in a place that our entire family finds overwhelmingly stressful and difficult. There was no way for that trip to go better than it did and realistically it went about 300% better than I expected even with luggage that didn’t arrive for five days. My mother in law was nice for the whole trip. That was outstanding and I can just express gratitude.

Nevertheless there was no part of that journey that was a vacation. Just no.

Between the trip to London and the trip to Paris I am going to be ramping up speed. I will already be in better shape for distance. I’m going to whisper it here first. I want to run the 2023 Loch Ness Marathon. It’s the 1st of October, over 6 weeks before the trip to Paris so I will be nicely recovered after the race. I’ve been working on the treadmill for a few weeks so far in addition to the outside time with MC. I am doing shorter speed work in a controlled environment because I like my knees very much and walking on ice and snow is one thing, running is another.

It’s January now! I am allowed to pull my garden planning information out and plan out my work for the year. I told myself I had to wait out December and just focus on getting through the days. Woo!

I’ve been saying since I got here give me five years before you judge my garden. This is winter number four. I suspect that this coming year’s work is the last of the bones. Of course the deck around the apartment and the balcony off the lounge are both rotting and getting close to dangerous. This house is nonstop. Now I need to leave enough travel space around the house for whoever eventually replaces our windows (many are broken and in bad shape) in the next few years and I can fill in from the edges. In my head I see Noah’s aunt’s property up in Oregon. She has a gorgeous homestead that could probably feed her year round if she didn’t think preserving food was boring and a waste of time. Ha. Instead she feeds the local wildlife. Ok.

My goal in the long run is to be able to walk out of my house and find something to eat every day of the year. Sure a lot of that will be in the polytunnel during the winter but I’m ok with that!

I’ve already added one hazel this year (two other sub-types of hazel are coming but they haven’t arrived yet), two grapes, and a Cherry Silverberry that I am ridiculously excited about. That on top of scores of canes in previous years, a bunch of rhubarb, strawberries, cherries (5 different kinds!)… It’s going to be absolutely amazing. In 4-ish more years I will be able to tell people what kind of produce from my yard will be in season when so they can pick their visit around what they want to eat. That makes my heart soar. I’m doing this.

I may be creaky, in pain, grouchy, and difficult but I am also lucky, hard working, ambitious, determined, and incredibly successful at reaching my goals. I am the luckiest bitch.

Movement is good for you; I hear.

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I posted most of this on the book of faces. But I should start using this space more.

Neurotic tracking is neurotic.

I wasn’t great about tracking my bike miles for the first few months of 2021 so I am pretty sure my year total is lower than it actually was. Then in 2022 we went to Texas and did way more walking than usual… but I didn’t bring my watch charging cable so I didn’t track any of it and then the watch strap completely broke and took a bit to replace in late July/early August. So numbers are fudged a bit.

That said: in 2021 by Sep 1st I had taken 1,653,242 steps and ridden 883 miles. (By the end of the year 2,300,012 steps and 1,165 bike miles.) In 2022 by Sep 1st I have taken 1,438,755 steps and ridden 908 miles.

If I don’t want to be behind last year’s final totals I’d better get my butt moving. Last year I was under my goals for myself in terms of movement by a fair bit. I don’t shoot for 10,000 steps a day. Personally I try for 7,000 and I have not been hitting it. In a year that adds up to 2,555,000 steps. I missed it by 254,988 last year. That’s over a month of missing steps. Ugh.

This year I am so far waaaaay lower. This is not good. I am already 262,245 down this year. That’s super sucky not good. Ugh. My bike odometer says I have ridden 920 since I got it the week of Christmas, so there wasn’t a lot at the end of December on this bike due to all of the ice on the roads.

I feel like I am very much not close to where I want to be in terms of being able to run (I have not regained fast-twitch muscle activity *at all* since the youngest was born. Ugh.) I know I need to sit down with the training book Blacksheep gave me and make a plan.

I think that the work I get done in the garden this September is going to mean that next year I will not have any big structural jobs and I may even have time to go work in the volunteer gardens in town. I haven’t managed much this year because I’ve been drowning in house/garden work.

My birthday is coming up so of course I am going deep into that funk of “What the hell am I actually doing with my life?” Well this year my hide-from-life birthday retreat will involve a 90 mile round-trip bike ride before camping in the rain. No weekend long binge of The Witcher this year.

In order to catch up on steps I need 9,150 each day between now and the end of the year. *sigh* I don’t have any specific goals about bike miles between now and the end of the year… but I feel better when I ride more and my kids have never regained their full fitness after covid. So. Ugh. Fudge.

I watch this shit like a hawk because if I get too sedentary then I lose strength and then I injure myself then I am stuck in a chair for months and the recovery period is slow and nightmarish. I haven’t had a big injury… in a long time. I can’t remember the last one. I am dancing on the edge of overwork issues with my arms and back right now with all the gardening/painting. Oofta.

Ok. Now that I have reflected it’s time to get off my butt. Daylight is no longer endless and apparently I have a lot of miles to cover. It doesn’t help my sense of impending doom that my birthday is coming. Stupid birthday. I hate you. It’s not that I mind getting older. It’s just that it is usually such a very terrible day. I feel bad that I can’t be present with my kids on my birthdays. But I can’t. That’s just the reality. No sense in denying a thing that is just true. Thanks, mom, for this gift that just keeps on giving. I mean… I know it isn’t her fault at this point. She hasn’t ruined a birthday in over 20 years. But there is a broken piece there. I have tried to fix it and failed. I am putting all of my try into other places; I have none left for something as stupid as my birthday.

Alright. Time to work.