Almost Appropriate February 28, 2008

I’m back from the Body Fat Analysis and Blood Pressure Screening.

My BP is good – 109/70 – and my pulse was 58 bpm. My heart rate’s never been so low, that is awesome! 🙂 It’s almost like I’m a runner or something!  😉

The Body Fat Analysis is something the company offers pretty regularly – at least once a year, I think. They have a nurse hook you up to a little machine and it tells you how much of your weight is fat. Apparently, they had offered it in October, but I missed it. The last time I’d been measured, my body fat percentage was 30.9%. The scale goes like this:

Women            Men

Essential Fat                                        10-12%            2-4%

Appropriate for Athletes                    14-20%           6-13%

Appropriate for Fitness                      21-24%           14-17%

Acceptable                                            25-31%           18-25%

Disproportionate Fat/Lean Ratio     over 32%         over 25%

First of all, I was a little horrified that I was approaching the point at which a full third of my weight was fat. Ugh. And Yikes. Sure, women are supposed to have a higher body fat percentage than men, and I’m definitely build with a little extra padding but really… a THIRD?

So, I was very pleased with this year’s results – my body fat percentage is 24.9%! I am ALMOST Appropriate (for fitness)! Woo hoo! I was going to be a little bit depressed if my percentage hadn’t gone down. I’ve been running kinda a lot, but my weight has not gone down. I was hoping that I’d just done some strategic redistribution. If I keep it up, maybe next time I’ll be totally appropriate! 🙂

The Verdict & The Plan

The Verdict: I woke up this morning with sore shoulders and a sore neck – kinda like I had slept on it funny. That’s not so bad.

The Plan: I didn’t sleep well last night, so when Matt dutifully got up and went to the gym, I stayed in bed like a lump. Good for you, Matt – you’re awesome! 🙂  I’m supposed to do a 3 mile run and strength training today. Gravity class is at 7:00 or 7:30 pm. So I can either try to jam in a 3 miler at lunch or get that run in before class.

(I will most likely run after work. Today is company Wellness Day, so I’m having my blood pressure checked and body fat percentage measured [voluntarily, and confidentially]. Between those appointments and a jam-packed afternoon of meetings, I’m not confident that I’ll have time to run.)

I’m hoping to use today’s 3 miler to listen to music on the treadmill and figure out what pace each one sets for me. I’ve mentioned before that when I listen to music, I always wind up trying to run to the beat of the music. That means that each song has me running at a slightly different mph.

I haven’t decided what to listen to yet, but I’ll post the list of what songs I checked out and what mph they set for me here later on. That’s key…the pace they set for ME. Someone taller or shorter will have a different stride. I’m 5′ 2″ – so if you’re 6′ 2,” your legs are longer than mine, so one step for you is going to be a lot longer than one step for mine. That means that a song that’s a 5.0 mph for me, might be 5.5 mph for you.

So, that’s the plan!

Video Game Review: Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)

There is a particular class of video game called the “god game.” These are games open-ended, and let you control the characters and/or the environment for your own purposes, be they good or evil. (Both options are fun, as far as I’m concerned.) The quintessential god game, I believe, is The Sims. I love the Sims series, and have since the first time I tried it.
Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS has gotten great reviews. It’s cute, it’s pretty open-ended, and generally sounded like like the type of god game that would be right up my alley.

I traded in a couple games I had finished (they had very little replay value, so I saw little point in storing them when someone else could be having fun with them) and picked up a used copy of the game. This might have been where I went wrong. You see, the used copy didn’t have the instructions. I never read video game instructions, and the store has an excellent return policy, so I didn’t give it a second thought. Maybe if I had the instructions handy, the game would have been more fun.

The AC: Wild World doesn’t allow you the flexibility to create your character that I expected, and while the game is open-ended, there doesn’t seem to be anything to do that I’m particularly interested in. Paying down my lazy-ass roommates’ mortgage isn’t fun. (Seriously, do those two *ever* wake up?) I have no desire to design fabrics. I’m a rotten interior designer, and lack the interest in developing that skill using the tools provided by the game. (I assume they provide some tools, but I haven’t found them yet.) The gardening could be fun if there a variety of plants and if you didn’t have to plant in squares. The neighbors are boring. Despite my characters attempt to gossip, I’ve found little of interest about anyone or anything. Apparently, I can dig random holes hoping to find fossils or something, but I missed Tom Nook’s directions on how to do this. I was frustrated by yet another long monologue on nothing in particular and was tapping away hoping he’d get to the point…he did, and I tapped right by it before I could soak in all the directions. I couldn’t figure out how to get him to explain it again, and I haven’t figured out how to do it on my own. This means that I can’t even attempt some mischief in the form of digging for treasure in my neighbors’ gardens.

I strongly suspect that I should have done more homework on the game before I bought it. Apparently, I lack the patience to get much enjoyment out of AC: Wild World. Bummer. I’ll be taking it back to the store to trade in for something else as soon as it’s convenient. This time, I’ll do my research first!!

This Wednesday’s Excuse Is…

…fender bender!

At first, I thought I’d go to the gym in the basement at the office. I was just supposed to do a 45 minute tempo run and those aren’t too bad (tempo runs, according to http://www.halhigdon.com, start off nice and easy then slowly build up in speed to the halfway point, then slow back down). The thing is, the office gym is very tiny – more than two people in there starts to feel pretty crowded. Plus, if someone has put a CD in the stereo, I have to crank up the volume on the ol’ iPod so loud that I can’t help but think that it’s dangerous to my hearing. Anyhow, there were already two people in the gym, and they had the stereo blasting “Whip It Good.”  Nothing against “Whip It Good” but A) it makes me think of Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons and B) it’s just not my kind of workout or running music. So, I opted to load up the car and head for the rec center gym where I can run without anybody invading my personal space and listen to my own tunes.

There’s an unpleasant intersection just a short way from work. The highway I need to make a right turn on is very busy, especially around rush hour. There is a right turn lane with yield sign there, which is where I ran into trouble. When I checked to make sure it was safe to go, I saw that there were cars coming that I hadn’t immediately noticed when starting to turn. I slowed down to a stop at the yield sign. The guy behind me did not.

We got off onto the shoulder pretty quickly. Judging by the (I thought) not inconsiderable jolt I had gotten when he hit me, I figured my back bumper at least would be totaled. As it turns out, a Toyota Matrix can take a hit like a champ. At least, that’s the way it appears so far. The sun was going down when the accident happened, so the light wasn’t great, but as far as either of us could tell, there are just a few scratches. I’ll check again in the morning when the light is good. We exchanged information (turns out we work for the same company – he was leaving work, too) and we both left.

I drove straight home, told Matt all about it, and started laying out this post about Wednesday’s excuse for not training. I knew I was probably still in at least a little bit of shock still when I got home, and I know that shock can mask injury sometimes, so I figured it probably wasn’t a great idea to engage in 45 minutes of high impact aerobic exercise right away. My head snapped back when the car got hit, which was why I figured the damage to the car would have been more serious. Now, seriously, the back of my neck is getting a bit sore and stiff. Not a lot, just enough to make me worry that I might actually have a touch of whiplash, if that’s even actually possible. (Can you have a “touch” of whiplash? Or is like being pregnant…you ARE or you ARE NOT?) The smart bet is that I’m fine. In the morning, I’ll probably be able to chalk up the stiffness to mild hypochondria. Guess I’ll have to let you know then, huh? 🙂

Power of PodRunner February 26, 2008

Running is partially mental. (Not mental as in crazy, though I wonder about that sometimes.) It takes a lot to keep going when you’re tired, you’ve got a stitch in your side, or you’re discouraged. If you’re going to keep going, you’ve got to come up with motivators. You tell yourself that you can slow down as soon as you get to that tree up there. Or you tell yourself, just one more quarter mile to the finish line and you’re NOT walking across the finish line! Maybe you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you decide to keep pushing for another 60 seconds.

One of my favorite motivators is music. When I listen to music while running, I automatically run to the beat. And when I get tired, I tap into the beat and use it help drive myself on. The trick for me seems to be finding music with the right beat – it’s been pretty hard. I’ve tried going through my modest collection of music and creating a playlist with the music I think has the right beat. Few of those songs have actually been right. Even when they are right, it’s nearly impossible to find more than one song with the same beats per minute (bpm) which means that once one track ends and the next begins, my pace changes. That’s not really a horrible thing, but it’d be nice to be able to stay consistent. It’s really not an impossible task, but frankly, I’m too busy (or too lazy, if you’re less generous) to undertake the job.

Enter PodRunner.

PodRunner is a free weekly podcast. Each podcast episode is about an hour long set of music at a constant bpm (beats per minute) intended for workouts. The music is all electronica/techno/dance kinda stuff. I’m probably going to insult fans of those genres when I call the music rather mindless, but it’s been perfect for running. The beat’s nice and consistent and the music isn’t interesting enough (to me) to distract me, so the music is there when I need it and I can still use my time running to think about things. The title of each episode includes the bpm, so once you identify what pace works for you, you can hone in on the episodes with the right bpm and load those up on your mp3 player.

The last time I trained for a half marathon, I did not use music to help me run. The race rules strictly forbid headphones, so I figured that if I can’t use it during the race, I’d better not use it to train. (Headphones and music ARE a distraction, which means that runners are slightly more likely to get hurt. Races have to be insured, and headphones void the race coverage in some way, I think. I’m not sure how this works… if one runner’s headphones mean that nobody’s covered or if just that runner is SOL if she gets hurt.) Every single race I’ve taken part in has had a high percentage of runners with headphones, though. I’ve never seen anybody pulled off the course because of headphones… so I thought I’d give it a shot for the upcoming half marathon. After all, it really helps me a lot.

If you’re interested in giving PodRunner a try, you can find it here, or in the iTunes podcast directory. You’ll also find that they’ve just started a new podcast called PodRunner Intervals – the music is set up to help you do interval training. I haven’t tried it yet, but it should be good, too.