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6月30日 13.1 miles, Longer Than My Drive to WorkI'd never watched any kind of footrace until Peter's cousin Angela flew out to participate in a half-marathon in San Francisco back when I was still in college and living in the Bay Area. While watching the race in Golden Gate Park with Peter and his aunt, I said to them, "I can't imagine ever wanting to do this. These people are crazy." Why would anyone ever subject themselves to that kind of torture, much less PAY to participate?? I'm still not sure of the answer to this, but yesterday, I became one of those crazies.
About once a month, for the last couple months, Gina and I would talk about doing the SeaFair Half-Marathon, but neither of one of us actually committed to doing it until we signed up a few days ago, just barely making the online registration cutoff. In fact, when Beth said, on Saturday afternoon, "You know, we won't judge you if you decide not to do it" I briefly considered backing out. So that just shows you my level of commitment to the race. Thankfully, my level of commitment to Gina was stronger, so I was ready when she came to pick me up at 6am on Sunday.
Keep in mind that neither one of us has been out for any kind of run since January (Gina, a jog with the baby and dog) or April (me, a 5K fun run). Gina has at least been going to kung fu. I haven't even been to kung fu since I sliced open my finger and then subsequently sprained my toe (two months ago!). Beth was right to worry about me on Saturday. I was worried about me too. Knucklehead...
Gina set some ground rules on Friday. Our goals were: 1) to finish, 2) to not injure ourselves, and 3) to run at least some of it (ie., not walk the whole way). She also stressed that we shouldn't push ourselves or each other. (See my earlier comment about neither one of us having trained.) I was really grateful to her for that last thing because Gina was once a really bad-ass competitive runner. That was back in high school, but she is still a bad-ass. I didn't want to let her down or slow her down, but I also had my knees to think about.
I didn't want to break any of the ground rules for the sake of some time goal. In my mind, I did secretly want to finish in under 3 hours and really thought we could, but it didn't quite happen because of my knees. My left knee started bugging me at mile 4. I wrapped it and then carried on. Around mile 7, with the big hill, we stopped following our interval pacing. After that, we were totally sporadic about which intervals we would run and which we'd just walk. If we'd kept up with the intervals, I think I would have had to finish the race in a wheelchair if at all. At mile 10, I started to wonder if I would be able to jog at all anymore because both my knees felt sore. My right hamstring was also acting funny. I think my right leg got worked trying to compensate for the left. By mile 10, though, the heat was getting unbearable and there was less shade, so I couldn't bear the thought of us just walking the rest of the way. So, we jogged short stints. Jogging actually loosened up my muscles a bit, which made up for any pain it brought my knees.
My only regret is that I wasn't able to jog more of the last mile. If I'd taken the time to do the math, I would have seen that we were close to the 3 hour mark and would only make it under 3 if I picked up the pace. In the end, I'm not even too sad about that because I feel surprisingly good today and I wouldn't have if I'd hurt my knees. The only soreness is in my joints where my thighs meet my hips. Lord knows I've felt much worse after a 3 mile run at the gym. Taking the time to draw a hot bath, ice my knees, and pop some naproxen sodium pills really helped.
Memorable moments from the race:
Unless I feel completely horrible tomorrow, I would happily do this again! P.S. I think we ran about 8 miles total and walked 5. Some of those 5 miles were long, horrible uphill stretches. 5月22日 Rough and TumbleI used to be a very girly girl. I did not like being sweaty. I did not enjoy anything that had the potential to mess up my hair or required me to wear unflattering clothing. I avoided cuts, bruises, and scrapes at all costs. And yet, yesterday, I played my first games of touch football and soccer! In the pouring rain! And I loved it!
When I signed up to play games at my team's "Day of Games" morale event, I must have thought we were going to play board games, video games, or even the trust exercise-type games they sometimes make you play with your co-workers. It never crossed my mind that there'd be a bunch of computer geeks out on a sports field playing sports! I was randomly assigned to play football, soccer, and badminton. Of these, I'd only ever played badminton, and poorly at that. I had to confess to my poor teammates that I haven't ever even watched a game of soccer or football (unless you count hanging out by the buffet at a Super Bowl party as "watching football").
There was minimal instruction on how to play each of these games before we started, so I definitely spent a fair amount of time looking lost and being on the wrong side of the field. Luckily, we wore color-coded vests so at least I avoided passing the ball to the wrong team (which I've been known to do)! For the most part, though, I had SO MUCH FUN. Too much fun to care about feeling too dumb. In the end, that's what makes a game fun instead of frustrating.
I found out that I'm better at football than I am at soccer, but I prefer the constant running required by soccer. There was a little too much standing around with football. (It was cold and wet out on the field. I might feel differently if it had been hot yesterday.) I did manage to intercept a couple passes and "tackle" once. I even got to run five yards with the ball after one of my interceptions!
Sadly, I still can't kick a ball worth crap, which made me a bad soccer player. (I was always one of the last ones to be picked for kickball and now I remember why.) I solicited advice from my teammates between halves. One guy said I should put my foot in the right position and then kick. Another guy was a bit more helpful and said I was kicking too low, that my foot shouldn't be close enough to the ground to scrape the grass. I practiced a little and got better, but it's hard to apply what you've learned when you're running around fast, people are coming at you, and you are simply very uncoordinated with your legs and feet. After the soccer game, one of the guys said my positioning on the field was good. I don't know if that's like saying, "You totally showed up!" or what, but I liked the way it sounded. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I followed other people's lead. Once I discovered I can't kick, I kept out of the way of the ball in crucial moments. Instead, I concentrated on blocking the other team from getting the ball and helped steal the ball from them a couple times. I even tried to hit the ball with my head once, but I misjudged and completely missed. Thank God.
Somehow, I've gotten way better at badminton since the 8th grade. I was even good enough to play while holding a beer in one hand!
I didn't reinjure my finger, but now I have a bit of a limp. At one point during the game, somebody stepped on my foot with their soccer cleat, so one of my toes is a little purple and swollen. I didn't notice the pain until after the game. I hope it's not broken. I also nearly split my lip and most definitely bumped my forehead in a couple collisions during football. I guess I play rough, but only because I don't want to be accused of not trying. Also, I like to win. I also like trash-talking, taunting, hooting and hollering, and cheering. There's lot of that in team sports and that's probably why I'll find my way back onto the field before too long! 5月16日 Guilt-Free FridayToday is Seattle's "Ride Your Bike to Work Day". The weather is perfect today. I couldn't have asked for a better day to make my inaugural bike ride to work. I was a little queasy at the thought when we got ready this morning and dragged my feet a lot more than I should have. I even suggested we make breakfast instead of eating cold cereal.
By the time we got out the door, it was already 8:35, well after the 7am departure I'd floated the night before. We didn't even get out of bed until 7:30 this morning. It was an uneasy night of sleep. I went to bed at 2am after I'd finished some chores, but I woke up in a panic at 5:50. (Though I welcome it, the adjustment from entire days of what feels like near-total darkness in the winter to light blue skies at 4am in the summer is not something I think I'll ever get used to.) I would have slept more restfully if Peter had reminded me of how manageable today's ride would be. About a mile into it, he said, "I'm not worried about this because we've done the ride to my office and back. That's more distance than we'll cover today." Duh. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that, but I immediately settled in and started feeling really good about our decision to ride in.
I felt just as gassed slogging up the hills immediately east of the I-90 bridge as I have every other time we've tackled them and had to wonder if I'm actually any fitter now than I was last summer. (Thinner's one thing, but fitter's something else altogether. I'm fully aware of that.) I got the answer to my question when we made the climb from Factoria Mall past Honda of Bellevue and past the Eastgate Park and Ride. That .95 mile stretch was one of the longest of my life. At one point, about halfway up, I really really wanted to get off the bike, saw my legs off at the hip, and throw those bloody stumps over the fence onto the freeway below. The wolves could chow down on the rest of me and I'd be better off for it. Or so it seemed at the time. Luckily for me, the only gas-powered tools in sight were leafblowers belonging to office park gardeners. Though I was tempted, I didn't get off the bike. The last time we took this route, I was going so slow that I ultimately had to stop and walk the second half. Today, my speed was a miserable 4 miles per hour on that stretch, but I rode it! That's all that matters. And better still, at the top of that hill, after we finally stopped at a light to take a swig of water, I actually felt re-energized. Even though the next stretch was still a bit of an incline, it actually felt easy. I never say that about hills, not even when I'm a pedestrian going up the little ones.
When we got to Peter's office, I quietly cursed him while kissing him goodbye. He was done. I had another five miles to go and they were an unknown. Luckily, the only part of that ride that was uphill was a short stretch on Lake Hills Boulevard, from 156th over to 164th. 164th was easy street all the way to the back side of campus and I got there in much less time than I'd budgeted.
And now, the numbers, thanks to the handy-dandy whiz-bang bike computer Chirag got me for my birthday (oh man, you really shouldn't have, Chirag!!)... The 16.44 mile trip took 1 hour 39 minutes and 57 seconds. My average speed was about what I'd suspected: 10.19 miles per hour, but my maximum speed was a mindboggling 37.40 miles per hour!!! I must have had my eyes closed for those downhill runs because the fastest speed I actually witnessed on the display was 28.5 mph.
Two hours after I got in, I was completely RAVENOUS. I went to the cafeteria, looked at everything, even pretended to consider the salad bar, and then got exactly what I knew I would. And I felt 100% guilt-free about eating that jeera rice (basmati rice with toasted cumin, black mustardseed, and green peas), chapati (wheat flour flatbread), spinach curry, vegetable korma (vegetables in a curry and coconut sauce), and carrot payasam (like warm Indian rice pudding except instead of rice, you have carrots with that wonderful cardamom)! 5月5日 Push-UpsA few months ago, I read this article in the New York Times that made me feel unusually wussy. I'm not someone who often feels wussy, but according to this article, "Based on national averages, a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27." I was aghast. Shame kept me from writing about this here. I kept saying to myself, "You'd think that training in kung fu would get me more than four push-ups ahead of your average forty-year-old woman!!"
I don't know who these people talked to, but I know a fair number of women under forty who can't even do ten push-ups, so I've always thought I was ahead of the curve. I've been able to do at least ten since the first day my fifth grade class began training for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. It's a shame I haven't done more than double that number in the years since, but many of the intervening nineteen years were spent tweezing my eyebrows, shopping at the mall, drinking beer, and eating Cheetos.
Since March, I've quoted the 16 push-up average to lots of other people who think the number is bunk. And maybe that number is bunk, but what if it's not? Maybe Curves is putting middle-aged moms head-to-head in push-up contests and they're messing with the average!
But the reason I wrote this entry in the first place is because of another push-up related event that led me to this article again. Thursday night, at book club, Peter challenged us all to stability ball push-ups. I thought he meant the kind of push-up where you put your feet on the ball and lower yourself even further than you would just using your toes. But, no. Someone in his office introduced him to an exercise where you form a triangle with your hands, place them on the stability ball, and then do push-ups at an incline. After all the guys flunked out, I didn't expect to fare any better. I might have even suggested they were an impossible, made-up exercise before I made my attempt. (I did some research and found out that they are real. While researching, I ran across that New York Times article again.) Anyway, I took it slow, but I can do them! So can Gina! Apparently, kung fu helps with something, even if that something doesn't make you capable of twice as many push-ups as the "average" forty-year-old woman! 11月12日 I want to ride my bicycle!!Two Mondays ago, I bought a bike off Craigslist. (Thankfully, news of this broke the morning after I picked up the bike.) I am now a bike person. I think about my bike all the time.
Isn't she pretty?
I ride my bike every chance I get. Peter and I rode our bikes around the neighborhood the first full night I had mine. (We took it to 2020 Cycle where it checked out; no tuneup necessary!) Riding the hills seemed extremely hard. We've got some killer hills in our neighborhood and I hadn't yet learned how to cycle through my 10 speeds. I'd previously rode my beach cruiser from home down to Seward Park and back without gears so I figured gears were for wimps, but I've learned since they can save your life. Last weekend, we rode to The Attic for breakfast and then to Mercer Island later that day. (Crossing I-90 was not something I thought I'd ever be crazy enough to do on foot, let alone on two wheels just barely in my control!) Then, this weekend, we rode both days!! We rooked Mark and Beth into going out to a "waffle house" for "breakfast". Once we had them in our clutches, still vulnerable from sleep, we convinced them to go on a bike ride with us. Somehow, we ended up on the Burke-Gilman trail in the U-District and rode into Sandpoint or beyond. It was a wonderfully flat ride and something I could definitely do for hours and hours. Yesterday, we rode to Peter's office in the Eastgate neighborhood of Bellevue. It was a much less flat ride. You could say it was up-and-down, up-and-down all the way there and back. Today, my butt cheeks are sore, but I couldn't be happier about it. Next weekend, we plan to ride all the way to my office! We were only about five miles shy of my office yesterday, but it seemed safer to turn around in Bellevue. I was so jazzed that I could hardly sleep. I went to bed late and then stayed awake in bed for about a half hour still pumped from the ride earlier in the day.
When I'm not riding my bike, which is most of the time, I guess, I am thinking about my bike. I am researching the brand, shopping for bike accoutrements, reading bike maps, and checking out other people's bike fashion. I started shopping for bike accessories (e.g., lights, a bell, a basket, and a lock) right away because I couldn't imagine riding all over and not being prepared to pull over if necessary. I was already envisioning myself riding miles and miles away even before I ever rode the bike around the neighborhood. (Peter and I aren't known to enter into things lightly. Everyone likes to cite our aquarium phase as an example. I'd be more embarrassed by that if I didn't accept that it's a completely accurate and representative example.) As someone whose closet grows almost daily, I also checked to see if there was anything in particular I should plan to wear that's not completely dorky. I refuse to clothe myself in the bike gear that competitive riders wear. There's not much out there that isn't "high-tech" and ghastly yellow, so I've been trying various combinations of my normal clothing. To my surprise, skirts and dresses have worked out best. The best thing about this is, the more I ride, the better my legs will look and the more I will like wearing skirts and dresses! In anticipation of this and of riding ever more, I drove back to Target at Factoria yesterday to outfit myself with more tights. I only had a few pairs and riding in bare legs in a Seattle winter means risking frostbite and subsequent amputation. I'm not so keen on riding one-legged. I've tried it and it's not easy... 2月13日 Love on the Streets of SeattleThis past weekend, I "ran" my first organized "race". Typical of most things I do, the Love 'Em or Leave 'Em 5K was more nerve-wracking than it should have been. I've gone on much longer runs by myself, but it's important to place emphasis on the fact that I've gone on those runs by myself. Going into this race, I knew that the friends I'd be running with had experience with even longer races and even triathlons. I was pretty doubtful of my ability to keep up with them. I didn't want to be the one to cause everyone to slow down or, God forbid, even stop to walk. I didn't know if the plan was even to stick together in the first place, but I was too embarrassed to ask and figured I'd find out mid-race when and if the need should arise. Rather than focus all my energies on worst-case scenarios, I also tried to think positive and pumped Tina for information. I asked her roundabout questions about how much adrenaline and the crowd factors into things. I asked how much harder she pushed herself during a race as compared to practice runs. I thought her experience could answer inane questions like, "So, if I can keep up a 12:30 pace at the gym, do you think I could do 10:00 the day of the race??" She was smart and withheld the easy answers. Naturally, I convinced myself into thinking it would be totally doable for me to run a 10:30 mile even though I'd only recently tried out a 12:30 mile as a stretch goal at the gym. <LONG TANGENT> Ever since I started going to the gym again, I've been in denial about how out of shape I am. I never got into very good shape (heartwise) even when I was jogging and going to kung fu regularly. So, when I went back to the gym, leaving the heart rate monitor out of the workout equation allowed me to (sort of) pick up where I left off months ago instead of beginning at an embarrassing ground zero. By starting at a very casual 4.2 miles per hour (a pace that would be labeled "molasses slow" if treadmill computers were that colorfully descriptive), I was able to dive right into my first workout by running for 45 minutes straight without having my legs feel like Jell-o afterward. Every week since then, I've increased my speed by .2 miles per hour regardless of whether I went to the gym once or three times the week before. This has worked out fine and I usually try to pretend that I don't care that most women on the treadmills around me are power-walking at the same speed that I'm "running". I remind myself that I've got short legs. The last time I went, though, Peter was on the treadmill next to me and I didn't want to look like a total wuss. On top of that, there was a very petite (petite in this instance referring both to skinny and of short stature) woman in the row in front of me who was doing 9 minute miles! I typically try not to look at other people's results. Reason #1 - I don't like psyching myself out. Reason #2 - I want to give everyone the same privacy I'd like to have myself. That day, though, it was impossible not to notice. Note to self: you like the cardio theater! It's dark down there and there is only one row of treadmills! Turns out that being able to run for 45 minutes at a steady 12:30 pace does not prepare you adequately for the very different demands of 3.1 miles at a 10:30 pace. Luckily, I don't think I ever even came close to that 10:30 pace yesterday because the organizer of our group, ever the voice of reason, suggested we all start with the 11:00 mile group and see what happened with that. We all stuck together for the first mile and a half or so, but we were talking a fair amount and doing so made me feel tired really early on. Then, my knee started aching from the lingering moisture from the previous night's rain. I finally gave in and slowed down just a little bit so I could concentrate on not tweaking my knee further. I managed to keep them only a few steps ahead and clearly within sight. Before long, though, they'd turned the bend and I was left behind somewhere in the middle of our group. By the time I got to the second mile marker, I had managed to catch up with someone from our group who'd taken a walk break. We ran together for a little bit, and then she decided to walk some more. Worried about momentum, I kept up jogging and I'm glad I did. Had I stuck with the leader of our group, I would have completed the race just under the 11:00 mile pace we started with. (Suffice it to say that I'm completely in awe of her ability to maintain such a steady pace. I'm terrible at pacing myself. Instead, I sped up and slowed down a lot. It's something I can't seem to help doing, even on a treadmill when doing so means I often find myself nearly falling off the end of the platform or bumping into the apparatus at the front.) Even though I couldn't keep up with her, I still managed to complete the race in 35:37 (more like 35:17 because we were towards the back and the chips weren't starting line-activated), putting me at a yay-me 11:30 pace! Our next group race is the St. Paddy's Day Dash. It's actually a longer race (3.5 miles) and a more difficult course, but is apparently a really big deal in Washington. Everyone keeps talking about the beer garden at the end, but I'm not so sure I'll be in any shape to drink beer, especially if my goal is to run faster next time. Then again, I'm not known for my ability to turn down a drink!
I almost forgot! Another first for this weekend: Greenlake. I feel blasphemous just saying that. I'd never been. I've only lived in Seattle for going on seven years. What can I say? There are lots of parks to discover in Seattle, I'm rarely in that part of town, and I hear it's big with yuppies on rollerblades. I've always been more of a roller skate girl. 1月19日 Run ForeverAlthough I continue to pay my dues at the Y, for kung fu, and for t'ai ch'i, I haven't done a lick of exercise (except for t'ai ch'i) since August. Although t'ai ch'i improves your balance and helps with muscle tone, it does far more for your mind than your butt or abs.
Six and a half years after I first became eligible for a membership sponsored by work, I finally joined the Pro Club. Peter took me there on a tour mid-day a few weeks ago. I left feeling extremely overwhelmed, creeped out, and downright slimy. My friend Denise's reference to the Stepford wives summed it up perfectly. All the women wore coordinated outfits that showed off their flat stomachs, uber-tans, and painted faces and shellacked blonde hair. (This is a place where Botox is provided onsite to fix anything that exercise can't.) I felt more and more like a chubby, scared baby mouse as we toured the grounds and less and less like I could ever possibly set foot back inside. The poor signage only served to confuse and make clear who the newbies are. I couldn't find my way out of the women's locker room, much less how to get to the Aquatic Center where I was supposed to meet Peter. There was an undercurrent of hostility and superiority even in the way people walked. I suspected the overly high ratio of locker room attendants and concierge desks is there so that no member ever has to interact with any other member. Weird indeed. As we left the facility that day, the guy who got into the Porsche parked next to our car shot us a dirty look full of something I can only describe as utter disdain. I have no idea how much a membership costs because we only pay the taxes on it. It's about $100 a month in taxes, so whatever that works out to... I had picked up a membership card at the urging of friends who promised I would never have to go if I didn't want to. I figured I could either begrudgingly pay the taxes and not go or just quit and never admit it. I never expected I'd be back to work out.
Sometime in the past year, I decided that my favorite kind of exercise is something I call "Run Forever". When I was "in training" for that half-marathon, this kind of thinking was infinitely more productive than my previous tack, "When Am I Going To Get Home Already??" Problem was, I preferred running on the treadmill, where I could see my exact mileage, pace, and speed, to running on the street, but the YMCA had restrictions on how long you could use any one piece of equipment. Running for thirty(-five) minutes isn't exactly the same as running forever and doing so always left me feeling a little dissatisfied. The Pro Club doesn't have time limits on any of their equipment, mainly because there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of each to choose from. The one thing I was remotely excited about was the opportunity to get on a treadmill and Run Forever.
Last night, I agreed to go to the gym with Peter and Beth when they promised that we'd eat in the Club Room of the Bistro immediately after. I was also excited about using my Zune. I've never had a portable music device and have therefore never worked out to music before.
Although the Cardio Theater struck me as the oddest room at the gym, it was also the most intriguing. The Cardio Theater is kept very cool, supposedly because you burn more calories when it's colder. The room is also so dark that you can hardly get a good look at the person on the machine next to you. All the machines face a long wall of mirrors with five (?) huge TVs hung up on the wall. To watch any one of those TVs, you just tune your radio into the prescribed frequency. My Zune came with a radio. I've never listened to a TV broadcast over the radio before. All these things combined were very novel and I actually got pretty excited about the gym right up until I got there.
Once there, I was overwhelmed again. The place was packed with people working on their new year's resolutions. Had Beth not been there, I might have given up before ever making it out of the locker room. The lockers have a weird key pad that you have to program with your own personal code. There are so many rooms and levels inside the locker room that I had a hard time navigating. Later, when I had finished my run, I wandered around for a good while trying to find my way back to the women's locker room. I kept going up and down stairs and heading the wrong way into dead ends and specialized workout rooms that I didn't recognize. It's a good thing that the one thing that's easy to find from the women's locker room is the Bistro.
I did, however, find that I enjoyed my first visit just fine. I listened to some music on my Zune for awhile and then tuned in to the evening news when some interesting stuff came on. I used to just space out on the treadmill, clearing my mind and thinking of nothing except my breathing, but the time passes much faster when I've got distractions other than my own reflection. Before I knew it, I'd run a 5K and gotten my dose of King5. Are your children safe? Don't have kids? Well, you might be having some soon if you got your birth control shots from the Seattle-King County Health Department!
My hips are a little sore, but otherwise, I feel really good today. I even brought my workout gear to work in case I feel inclined to head over there again. 10月18日 Black and Blue Badges of CourageI got my first black eye this past Saturday. I showed it off to everyone I thought would care and got mixed responses.
My response (in case you hadn't already guessed): "Cool!!" Sadly, the black eye never got very dark or big. When I first saw my black eye in the mirror, I was kind of concerned about the veins that were popping out on my upper eyelid, so I pressed on them to make them go away. In the process, I ended up applying enough pressure to keep a lot of blood from coagulating there in the first place and that's why it faded so quickly. By yesterday, it was only faintly yellow with a few dark spots. You'd never know I spent eight hours kicking ass and getting my ass kicked this past weekend! Saturday morning, I took the Kajukenbo class with Professor Barbara Bones. At first, we drilled some basics and then we learned a number of different take-downs. I'm a short person and haven't really figured out the physics of take-downs just yet, but I had a lot of good, advanced partners who were able to help me with positioning my body so I didn't have to put so much effort into taking my attackers down to the ground. Positioning and joint locks, which are key to gaining enough control over someone to take them down, are two things I still really need to work on. Saturday afternoon, I took the "Use of Initial and Continuous Speed in Sparring" class with Sifu Sonya Richardson. One of the most enjoyable things about this class was watching her demonstrate techniques. She is lightning fast in her moves. It was unreal to watch. I wonder if that's something you learn or is something you're born with. There were three highlights from the sparring workshop. First, the sifu used me and Heather, a green belt from Seven Star as examples for the class. I'm not sure what she wanted us to demonstrate, exactly, because she just told us, "Keep doing what you were just doing," but I think what it was was that we'd both done a good job of holding our ground even while standing toe-to-toe. I like getting positive feedback! Second, when we broke off into groups of four, I was eventually paired with a brown belt from Hand to Hand. I had done well when I was paired with the green belt and the orange belt in our group, so I went into the match feeling pretty confident. Right off the bat, she popped me in the left eye. I'd say it was medium to hard contact. It happened so fast that I never had a chance to block it. I tried to keep going, but I soon realized my contact had fallen out so I couldn't see so well. That was the end of the match, but the beginning of my first black eye! My last takeaway was an educational one. I learned to think about "heavy elbows". I'd heard about conservation of motion before, but I'd never figured out how to apply it to my blocking techniques until I learned about "heavy elbows". You can block a lot more efficiently when your elbows are always pointed downward and right down your center line. I'm probably looking forward to using this piece of information most of all the things I learned this weekend. Sunday morning, I borrowed Gina's sword and went to the Chinese Saber (broadsword) class with Sifu Michelle Miller. We spent the first hour working on sword basics and the second hour trying to rush through as much of the form as we could. I think we got about halfway. I don't remember the name of the sword form now, but it was pretty cool. It even included some flying jumps with the sword like you see in movies. I've gotta buy my own sword so I can practice this at home! By Sunday afternoon, I was starting to feel a little achy, but I had been looking forward to the Boxing/Muay Thai class with Sigung Frank Mateo all weekend long. We spent more time on the boxing fundamentals than I would have liked. Only the last half hour or so was pure Muay Thai. We learned the elbow strikes and then quickly moved on to applying the kicks and elbow and knee strike combinations with pads. My initial thought was, "Isn't this kind of dangerous?" because Sigung had spent all of two minutes demonstrating everything. It was a lot like watching those videos with Al Dacascos. "People ask me how I got to be so fast? I did it by being fast..." We did a number of moves from the Tony Jaa movies, including all the jumping. It was a lot harder to time the strikes with the jumps than I thought it would be. I could have spent eight hours on the Muay Thai stuff alone. Sunday night, we capped off the weekend by going to see "Jet Li's Fearless." By this time, I was hurting so badly that I had to use both hands to crank my car window up and down. Monday, I tallied up the damage:
Normally, I'd probably already be at Olympus Spa or New Life Fitness tending to these aches and pains, but for now, it still looks a little too much like I just don't know when to shut up... 8月4日 Do You Wushu?Alert! Cool looking older lady doing kung fu in a parking lot!
I just took Cinnamon for a walk on the nature trail behind my building and came across an older lady doing forms in the parking lot of her apartment complex. I passed by quickly on the way out, but stopped and watched for a few seconds on the way back. This time, she was carrying a curved tree branch and doing what appeared to be a sword form. If I had to guess, she was doing wushu kung fu. She stopped and smiled at me. She didn't say anything, so I asked, "Are you practicing kung fu?" She smiled and said something in Chinese. I asked again, "Kung fu?" She shook her head and then said, "No English." Too too bad. I smiled and said, "Oh. Sorry. Well, you like nice. Thank you." Then, I went on my way. It was all I could do not to go back to my car, change into my kung fu gear and come running back with a kali stick. I want to learn that sword form! How do you say, "Is it okay if I watch? Can you teach me?" in Mandarin?? 6月15日 Violent FemmeSometimes, I feel like a puppet whose strings are tugged this way and that by a puppeteer new to the field and utterly lacking in skill. Let's call him the Herky Jerky Puppetmaster, he who has no actual mastery of his art. To the untrained eye, I look like someone whose limbs frequently and inexplicably flail and fly out from her body in every possible direction. Standing in line at the grocery store, I might look over my shoulder and see my leg position itself for a back kick. Or, I'll be at the stove stirring a pot and all of a sudden, my body turns for a roundhouse kick to someone's ribs. I could be anywhere at all and my hand will make a fist, then surely and suddenly transform into a reverse punch landing squarely in someone's gut. Even if I'm in my four-inch heels, I can still side thrust kick. I do it involuntarily all the time.
My father apparently thinks I tend toward violence. I may have seemed especially volatile as a child, but I was going through some very serious shit that would have made most anyone else a bonafide psychopath! I'm not a violent person. My body just has a mind of its own.
I think the real reason my dad never let me learn martial arts as a kid was because it was too expensive. My temper was just an excuse, but one that I accepted because even as a kid I recognized the burden it would be for my parents to shell out $50 a month just for me to learn aikido. In the back of my mind, though, I knew I still wanted to learn martial arts someday.
When I watch other people do martial arts (in the movies or at belt tests), my muscles tense and I feel blood go to my head, making my eyes start to pop out of my head. Part of me is just trying to get a better look so I can learn, but I'm mostly just bewitched. I get fidgety just watching. Ol' Herky Jerky starts pulling at those strings and it's all I can do to resist and not just jump up and start throwing punches. I can only imagine that Peter is in a perpetual state of flexed abs because it's almost always him I turn to with my spastic strikes. He's much taller than me so his stomach just screams, "Punch me!"
And that's just it. I'm not out to get anyone. I just see all the potential targets on their bodies. If it ever looks like I'm sizing you up, it's because I'm thinking about how I could reach your kidney with my foot or about whether or not my crescent kick or jumping front snap kick could somehow reach your head.
In class, I sometimes spar with higher ranked students who just aren't as small or fast as me and I get to take advantage of all those open targets. It's very satisfying to bop someone on the side of the head or land a solid blow to their ribs while also trying to defend yourself. I use my legs a lot when I spar, too, because their longer and much stronger than my arms. Come to think of it, in all those dreams I used to have about being in dangerous situations, why didn't I ever think to use my legs??
Sometimes, I think about those bad dreams I used to have and I wonder if my body is just making sure that I practice defending myself. Yes, I used to be very on edge all the time and genuinely scared of being snatched, so much so that my anxiety infected even my dreams. I used to dream all the time about having to run away from dark, faceless men that and not being able to run. It's kind of funny, but I used to think of these guys as the mob, not that many small children find themselves in trouble with organized crime. I used to also dream a lot about push coming to shove in all those playground threats. I would find myself circling someone, getting hit in the face and winding up my punches only to discover that I was a weakling and totally ineffectual. It was like having wet noodles for arms. I never could figure it out because I've never felt like a weakling in real life. And I knew that a simple stomp had saved my life once. So, why all the bad dreams? And now that I don't have them anymore, why do I still obviously feel a persistent subconscious pressure to build up an arsenal of assertive kicks?
I've never been in a fistfight and I hope never to be. I don't like confrontation, but I've probably been confronted by more bullies and crazies than most. When I get threatened, I feel scared like anyone else, but I feel less nervous when I hear the blood start pounding in my brain, when I feel my muscles tense, and my eyes get big like there's something wrong!!! If anyone ever steps up to me in a dark alley, I'm ready to defend myself and my loved ones. You might even say I've been practicing! 5月16日 Explain yourself, sucka!Peter and I haven't been to kung fu in, oh, about a month. Right before life conspired against our best intentions (with foot and knee injuries, trips to Jamaica and Orange County, and demands at work), we learned new material for the first time in five months. We learned nothing new for three months before we were asked to test. Then, after we were asked to test, we spent two months drilling the material we had already learned. I really love forms and insisted that we learn all of Pinyon 3 the first time we were introduced to it! We're returning to class tonight and I'm as nervous about it as I was when heading back to sections after prolonged absences during college. I'm scared it's going to be like that one time I walked into my Plant Bio 40 class after skipping for three weeks and discovered I was twenty minutes late for the mid-term! Surely, not remembering one whit of Pinyon 3 won't be as big a deal, but people will still comment on the fact that we haven't been around for a long time. And even if they don't, I'll feel obligated to try and explain myself because that's what I do. 3月27日 I like saying, "I'm in training."Tina and I started our training for the half-marathon this morning. A relaxing two mile run to the arboretum and back. When I got into work, I printed out the program to see what awaits us in the days ahead. To my surprise, it looks a little too easy. We're only expected to run three days a week. We don't even move to a three mile run until next Saturday. And the first run to test my mettle, a five mile run, longer than I've ever done before, won't even happen until the end of April, on that first Saturday when I'll actually be in Jamaica. I have to say that it's encouraging to start out easy, but I'm alarmed that the longest run we'll ever do before race day is only eight miles. Where, exactly, am I supposed to come up with the energy to do the last five miles? Am I expected to pull it out of my ass?? 3月22日 I must be running a fever.I don't know what's gotten into me (probably the residual buzz of last weekend's orange belt test and subsequent promotion), but I'm going to do a half-marathon! I'm feeling strong, I guess. I'm also feeling like I'd better announce this to the world or else run the risk of dropping out of the race even before I begin. Shame is a powerful motivator.
When we went to Chinoise for dinner last night, Tina asked Peter if he wanted to sign up for the OC Marathon with her. Because I was sitting between them, it felt natural to interject. "Why aren't you asking me if I want to do the marathon??" Mind you, I have never before expressed real interest in doing a marathon, while Peter has. The best I've ever mustered are musings about running a 5K, musings that have yet to materialize.
Of course, Tina extended the offer to me. I said yes, but she suggested I think it over for the next few days. Today, I've thought a whole lot about what it would be like to run 26 miles. I can't even begin to imagine... But, I did peruse the Northwest Runner's calendar for halfs in the near future that would test my mettle. I figure if I can run 13 miles by this summer, I should be able to double that distance with at least five more months to train after that.
The Seafair half-marathon seemed a good candidate. Bellevue is mostly flat, right? But, once I found out that July 9th is 15 weeks out, it seemed too far away. I don't know if I can keep my interest in this crazy scheme without an imminent deadline to work towards. The hypothetical training program that Runner's World proposed for a 15 week schedule, however, hooked me. For the first few weeks, it's mostly 2 mile runs. They tease you with the promise of goals you've already achieved. If you think, "Hey, this is easy! I can already run 2 miles no problem!" you'll be that much more likely to see it through, right?
Anyway, because I complained about Seafair being so far from now, Tina suggested the San Juan Island half, scheduled for June 4th. I'm much hipper to the idea of something that is happening so soon that it makes me feel adequately fluttery and excited inside but is far away enough that I have time to adjust to the idea and not get scared enough to give up.
I haven't looked at the training program, but when Tina said she'd do the race with me, there was no doubt left in my mind that I'd do it. It'll be fun to train with someone is at more or less the same level of physical ability right now. Plus, she's done a marathon before and will not only be able to offer good tips, but also anticipate training pitfalls and help me (us) avoid them.
Is it weird to make a half-marathon your first race? Probably, but I'm feeling like Wonder Woman ever since I got my orange belt in Kajukenbo! 3月5日 Pizza! French fries! Pizza! French fries!I am going to do like Matt Hart did and quit my job in order to devote myself to my sports. In a life-changing weekend, I have discovered my destiny as a skier/pro bowler.
On Friday, I joined my product team in our annual morale event at Stevens Pass. Every year (when there's snow), we board a fleet of Starline busses and drive to the mountains for a day of fun in the snow. The company rents equipment, buys lift tickets, and pays for group lessons for however many of us decide to go. This year, 260 RSVP'd, but I hear only 180 or so showed up. Those who didn't go missed out on snowboarding, skiing, showshoeing, and tubing.
I skipped our last trip because I had grim premonitions of me breaking a hip. The trip before that, I went with snowboarding because people told me it was harder to learn to ski in one day than it was to learn to snowboard. Now that I have done each once, I would have to say skiing is a million times easier.
The one time I went snowboarding, I fell more times than I can count. When I went skiing, I fell about five times. Even then, it was only when I was skiing down the Skyline blue trail.
It wasn't until after I had mostly tumbled down the first part of the Skyline trail that I learned about parallel turns. A helpful, more experienced skier intercepted me and the other first timer I was skiing with and pointed out that the wedge turns we had learned to use on the Daisy trail wouldn't work on steeper slopes. Once I started picking up my uphill ski on the turns, I made it down a full third of the mountain without falling. There were moments during that ride that I started to lose my balance but managed to recover. I wouldn't say I was perfectly graceful, but I felt really good about my performance overall.
I only went down the blue trail once before making my way back to the green trail to practice parallel turns and to get used to going downhill fast. I ended up skipping most of the team happy hour to get in more time on the mountain!
I always thought skiing was an activity of dubious value, but now I can't stop thinking about it. I even inquired about the cost of a season pass at Stevens. God help me if I start shopping for my own gear. "This is what happens when you marry a man from Reno."My bowling average is typically just under 100. I'm pretty inconsistent, except when it comes to one thing: really blowing it in the last few frames. Whenever I am so close to 100 that it's damn near impossible not to break it, I end up with a frustrating 98 or 99.
Last night, in my first game, I got one of my highest scores ever, somewhere in the 120s. The bowlers of lane 15--Gabe, Diane, Peter, and I--were definitely feeling the magic of Magic Lanes. I was feeling great and thinking I couldn't possibly do better that night. That was before the second frame of the second game, when Peter would give me the advice that would change the course of my (bowling) life forever: "Use a heavier ball."
With a pretty blue 12-pound ball, I scored only strikes and spares until frame 9, when I missed my first pin. I would later find out that if I hadn't missed this one pin, I would have scored 200 points. When I finished the game, I was slightly sweaty and in a bit of a daze. Although, I did hear my husband loudly proclaim, "This is what happens when you marry a man from Reno!" Yes, his wife scored a 172, ladies and gentlemen. I don't think he went so far as to lift one of my arms in victory, but I sure felt like a prizefighter after a winning bout.
If I were ever to buy my own bowling ball, the time would be now. It would at least be cheaper than buying myself a pair of skis! 11月17日 Do you Wushu?** Clicking the link starts up the video, so save this for this for the right time and place. Or, wear headphones!
Even if you're not a martial artist (but chances are, you are), I think you'll be transfixed by this promotional video for the Beijing Wushu Tour. I found the techno music oddly appropriate.
Oh, yeah. If you want a professional example (with slight variation) of the "part wild horse's mane" Tai Chi move that Peter used to "throw" Gina on Halloween night, pay close attention 2 minutes 38 seconds into the video.
P.S. Did you know that Ernie Reyes is 59?? 9月12日 Welcome to my World of HurtAfter weekend's worth of wallops, everything hurts. On my head: my temples, my forehead, my jaws, the skin covering my trachea. On my limbs: my forearms, my deltoids, every thigh muscle, every calf muscle, my shins, my ankles, the bottoms of my feet. On my torso: my brachial plexus, my sternum, my solar plexus, every single rib (front and back), my shoulders, my back, my abs, my butt, and, most embarrassingly, my groin.
Here's a fun game: which of these body parts are targets and which are weapons?
I managed to escape with relatively few bruises, but lots of aches and pains.
I have Sigung Barbara Bones and the lethal members of Seattle Kajukenbo and Seven Star Women's Kung Fu to thank. Also, thank you to Banya 5, without which I would be in a much worse world of hurt. 4月23日 Basketball diariesUntil last night, I hadn't played basketball since I was eleven and taking seventh grade P.E. I actually used to be a decent player. I was consistent at making baskets and was more or less the same size as everyone else in the game. Not so anymore. As I told my coworker as we both exited the building, the warm weather outside had made me a little crazy and had put me in the mood to play basketball. I think that the sheen of sweat I'd been sporting all through the workday made me want to go ahead and roll with it instead of fighting it. So, I figured, why not engage in a sweaty activity with friends? I have great friends who are always game to do something fun, so it was really easy to get a couple of us together. I had proposed either tennis or basketball and we decided on basketball. Seeing as to how none of us owned a basketball, I had to stop at Fred Meyer before picking up Roger and Peter for our carpool. In the process, I also picked up a beatiful green "playground ball" for four-square, dodgeball, and kickball. I see a lot of hanging out on grassy lawns this summer! Anyway, we made it across the bridge in record time despite the horrendous traffic and met up with Gina. The four of us sped over to a court on 23rd, south of their place, in order to try and take advantage of some of the waning sunlight. We got a half court to ourselves and played embarrassing, but thoroughly enjoyable games of HORSE and two-on-two. While fantasizing about basketball, I pictured myself losing a tooth or twisting my ankle, but the only even vaguely bad things that happened were: 1) the bashing of my head into Gina's cheek; 2) the annoying kid who harassed us to no end; and 3) my unexpected outburst at said kid. Also, there was some racial profiling at the taco bus and it took FOREVER to get out dinner. But other than that, Basketball Friday was awesome. We even capped it off with a night of karaoke. 4月19日 Desperately seeking Shin-ShoryukenSo, last week, I was going to blog about how I was so dedicated to Kajukenbo that I had only missed one class since we started back at the beginning of March. Well, I should have written the blog because I missed class this past Saturday. Beth and I went to the book fair, and by the time I got home, class had already started. Changing, putting my contacts in, and driving to class would have made me at least fifteen minutes late. I hate being late to class. So, I didn't go. Anyway, I tried to make up for the missed class by leaving work early yesterday in order to make it to the Monday class. 6pm is just way too early for a class to convene. Case in point: There were six people total, including two instructors. And I was told that this was a big group for a Monday. The class formats on Monday and Saturday are distinctly different from Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday's class was good for me because we spent time doing monkey lines. This is something I hadn't done before. While waiting in line for my turn to be the attacker, I was able to watch everyone else to see what attacks and blocks they employed. I'm horrible at sparring, doing "street", and at being at the head of the monkey line because I just don't think well on my feet. I spend too much time thinking about what I'm going to do and I kind of freeze up when I'm on the spot. I realized yesterday that I am the same fighter in person as when I'm trying to fight in a video game. I press the same buttons over and over again. Basic punches and kicks. Any combos I strike are pure luck. Sitting at my desk, I have no problem recalling what street fighting techniques and combinations we learned in class. But, when I'm face-to-face with another student, I feel like I have to be clever and make up my own combinations like everyone else does. In trying to be creative, I end up standing there, gazing off into the distance over their shoulders, thinking, "What now? What punches do I know? Does it make sense to kick first? Should I elbow him in the ribs or go for the back of the head?" Then, I panic because I think I've been standing there too long, doing nothing, so I throw the same few, lame, blows. I think Laurie noticed I was hesitating a lot yesterday because she eventually said it was okay to do the same combination over and over again. For the rest of the class, we partnered up and did light sparring. We switched around until we had all worked with everyone else. Laurie asked that the guys go at half-speed with me, but I had trouble going that slow! Whenever I attacked, I was fast so I could get past them. Doing so meant I actually ended up landing a fair number of blows. For the most part, though, I'm a defensive fighter and spend a lot of time blocking instead of attacking. I guess that's okay, but I want to change that. To do so, I think I'm going to spend some time outside of class studying. I want to review my notes from the orange belt test, which pretty much covered everything I'm supposed to learn in the next year or so as a white belt, as well as write down combinations that I think make sense. Then, I'll try to memorize everything so I don't draw a blank in class. When that's said and done, I hope to unleash the FEROCITY within! 1月27日 Does this mean I qualify for 10% off at Ross Dress for Less on Tuesdays?BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP! The alarm on my heart rate monitor is out of control. There's no denying it now. I am out of shape. Really out of shape. So out of shape, in fact, that my heart rate skyrockets into the "danger zone" after I've been running on the treadmill for only three and half minutes at 4.5 miles per hour. While I wait for the alarm to stop going off, I feel like everyone in the gym can hear it even over all the exercise equipment. My heart rate doesn't go back into my target zone until I'm back at the 3.8 mile an hour pace I was doing for the "walk test". I'm so lame that I can't stop rolling my eyes at myself! And all the while, I'm watching a woman who looks to be in her forties or fifties do pull-ups like nobody's business. She's got her arms out wide like I have them when I'm doing lat pull-downs and she has no problem doing ten or more in a row. By the time I've spent thirty-five minutes on the treadmill, she's gone through her routine several times over and must have done a hundred pull-ups. When I picked up my Polar A5 heart rate monitor last night, I got such a kick out of the display that said the A series was appropriate for "cardiac patients" and "seniors". I was laughing then, but now my fears have been confirmed; I have the fitness level of a cardiac patient. Peter will be happy to hear that, after all these years, I am finally convinced that the number on the scale does not necessarily equate to a level of fitness. It doesn't matter that I've recently dropped a few pounds. Nor does it really make a difference that I'm now eating mostly grapes throughout the day instead of chocolate. The heart rate monitor can't see and doesn't care that my pants are fitting just a bit more loosely.There's no fooling the Polar A5. Don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean I don't still want to look like this:
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