I am a 57 year old female and have been running, on the treadmill for about 9 months. The last time I ran seriously was in high school, many moons ago. I began running because of health related issues: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, over-weight not wanting to be medicated the rest of my life. Plus I wanted to live to dance at my grandson’s weddings.
I run on the average of 2-3 miles at least 5 days a week, and guess what? I am beginning to find myself addicted to running. One of my solstice goals this year is to run a half marathon. I’m on the verge of believing I can do it. Recently I have begun running on the treadmill barefoot and found my endurance improve and I do not need to hold onto the sides of the treadmill, not once. Within the next few weeks I will be taking a step outdoors and try trail running with my son. (I am blessed to have 40 acres behind my property that is wild) I am looking forward to more adventure, and better scenery than stored boxes in the garage.
I have also found that doing a little yoga, sun salutations, help in the ache department. One thing I have noticed since I started running is my hips do not hurt half as much, in fact I have stopped taking the ibuprofen. Part of the running barefoot is to see if I can eliminate the pain by ibuprofen on the balls of my feet instead of the heels. It’s working. I’m glad to hear others in my age category are learning to enjoy the movement of our bodies in the form of running. Thanks for a great blog.
You go, girl! I thought of you yesterday during my run and your goal of a half-M actually inspired a little spurt of energy in me, thanks! I tend to think of Jan/Feb as the “slack tide” time of year–that in-between period, not the bluster and blow of Autumn, not the urgent push of Spring, just a
quiet time; drawing some energy from Reva’s goal was a good thing.
There were three things about this comment that I found of real interest:
Take back your power: sometimes this notion gets a little overblown and we think it needs to mean something huge. Not so. In this case, the 57 yo woman looked at the trends in her life–high blood pressure, high cholesterol, a little more weight than she wanted–and she decided to make some changes. That’s it right there: take an inventory and adjust as needed. That’s how you take your power back, and it’s enlivening, and it’s difficult, and it’s one of the few things worth doing on a continual basis. Whether it’s running, or acting on that impulse to dance or learn to cook or take up photography, or even just change how you get to work, really, these things light up your brain.
Start small and build from there: seems to me the best way to guarantee you won’t go as far as you can is to go too fast too soon. You’ll likely hurt yourself, set the bar too high and disappoint yourself, judge yourself too harshly…the list goes on. A better path would be one where you set out to explore, just investigate what this running is all about. Keep it short and simple, be aware, enjoy yourself and let your body do the rest. After all, this is a new thing for the old bod to adjust to–give it time, and it will not disappoint.
Partner with your body: Reva has done several things of real interest in her exploration of running. She’s kicked off her shoes and run barefoot! She’s incorporating yoga, she’s moving from the treadmill to trails (huge difference!), she’s paying close attention to how her body responds. Personally, I’d love to know how she came to the barefoot idea as I worked with that this summer and have found significant benefits to running barefoot, as well as letting my tennis shoes break down and the muscles in my feet build up. But the point is: work with your body. Those articles in Runner’s World mag, everything they tell you at the local running store, the stuff you find in blogs and whatever—all good and well, but bottom line, experiment and investigate with your own body–you’ll know soon enough what works, what doesn’t, what’s worth short-term discomfort for long-term gain, etc.
This past year marks my second year of running consistently outside; I didn’t realize that until I read my journal summary of 2008–when I quit the gym treadmill for streets, parks, trails, sidewalks. This past year also marks some significant changes in how I run and think about running:
it’s now an embedded part of my life. Some days I resist it, most days it’s a high point of the day.
I believe as the title of the book suggests that we really are Born to Run.
Hills are where it’s at. That surprises and pleases me since I live in a very hilly part of town, and I previously shunned them for an easier flat run.
Since hills are where it’s at, I also tend to take walk breaks–very short, but still…I used to judge myself about that, but now I just enjoy the hills and take a breather as needed.
I run a little slower, but I run a lot longer. My body seems to like this a lot.
I’ve received a number of comments from women who are taking up running later in life and want to say: Thanks! I love hearing about your adventures, tips and tricks. Happy New Year and see you out on the trails!
Some updates on two themes for the year, Living Green and Running. I’ll save Running for another day before 2010 descends.
Living Green
One big change I’ve really enjoyed is switching to home-made toothpaste. ”Enjoyed” is an overstatement, in fact it was a pretty big adjustment. What most of us are used to wrt to toothpaste is pretty sweet gel stuff, easy to use and tasty like good chewing gum. Home-made toothpaste isn’t like that so it was an adjustment.
What led to making my own:
Estimating the annual landfill caused by non-recyclable tubes emanating from our house, our neighborhood, our city (literally millions of tubes)
Investigating toothpaste recipes and history and realizing there were real health benefits to a simple recipe of baking soda, mint mouthwash, glycerin and flavoring
Trying it out and learning it takes about 5 minutes to make a jar of it that will last a month. 5 minutes = 1 month.
Some downsides:
My partner didn’t like the taste and refused to use it, thus my goal of reducing our personal landfill quotient was cut in half for a while.
It doesn’t leave your mouth “zingingly” clean-feeling, so I continue to rinse with mouthwash, but that container IS recyclable and it added nothing new to my existing habits.
You have to stir it up sometimes, but that was good enough for Bob Marley so it’s good enough for me.
An update to the first bullet/”downsides”: I had my first dental check-up about 6 months after I started using homemade toothpaste and was given the most glowing report I’ve ever had from a dentist. In fact the technician said, in that geeky dental technician way: “I have total gingi-envy of your teeth.” Homemade toothpaste cuts bacteria way better than traditional toothpastes on the market, it turns out. My partner started using the homemade version about a month after that report.
Another change we’ve put in place regards plastic bags. Even though we’re fortunate in Seattle to have a plastic bag recycling program, still, once you become aware of how many plastic bags you’re putting into the system, just picking up more and more becomes slightly irritating and disturbing. When you factor in the issue of plastic bags making their way into the oceans and waterways of the world, well, my head sort of explodes, ok?
We began tracking the amount of bags we have in a week: bags from produce, packaging bags for everything from rice to frozen berries, bags from the grocery store. We made a decision to simply clean and dry all we could and reuse them at the store. This was a clumsy new process and took time before the magic started to happen: after a while, we simply weren’t bringing IN as many bags. AND! we now had fridge storage plastic and stopped needing to use so much plastic wrap. All in all, after about a month, it was a no-brainer.
Upsides:
Once we figured out a path to get clean, dry bags into our shopping bags for weekend market/grocery shopping, the system worked.
Fridge storage is a lot easier–this was unexpected. There’s always an easy to use bag in the drawer waiting for you.
We’ve reduced our recycling load, again–not by a ton, but by some measure for sure.
A bag is a bag is a bag–at first I was self-conscious about using bags with marketing on them, but now I don’t care. A bag is a bag, it’s a container, that’s all. Relief.
Downsides:
Making a process, and building a habit around the process takes about 3 months
When reusing the packaging bags, like from frozen berries, the store has problems with the existing bar code on the bag; we just turn then inside out now so the bar code doesn’t trigger.
Sometimes we have a few too many bags in the clean/dry process and it gets a wee bit unwieldy. Just sometimes.
Those are the two GREEN initiatives that have taken root in our home. Change is slow. We’ve done lots of other things over the last few years but I wanted to highlight these two because they indicate a different level of commitment to change than other things we’ve done (drying our clothes on lines when possible, driving less, composting more). Happy New Year! Let’s make it a good one!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….
Yesterday I went for a quick run that ended up lasting an hour. It’s not like I haven’t run for an hour before, but I’ve only run for an hour or more when I was trying to reach a goal. Yesterday….ahh, yesterday I just kept running because it felt so damn good, because the day was brilliant bright and chilly, because within running distance of my house I have two parks with excellent running trails ready and waiting, because the music on my shuffle was superb….it just all came together for an awsome run that just kept on dishing up great views, good trails, and winter endorphins.
Towards the end of the run, as I headed down to the path along the waterfront, the view revealed itself: sun blazing, glinting on the water, the snow on the Olympics bright and beautiful, it all took my breath away to a degree I nearly started to cry–it was all so perfectly unexpected.
Now today I look out the window and see the sun starting to burn the fog off the Salish Sea and think: wow, it would be so cool to have that run again!
But it doesn’t work that way, and I know it. Every time I’ve tried to recreate a particularly fabulous run, or surf experience, or dinner date, or just about anything that peaks in a surprisingly wonderful way, it backfires. It just doesn’t work. Who knows all the ways and reasons something comes together in every way now and then?
So, I’ll probably head out today, and will probably start on the same route, and will probably have a secret wish in the back of my head that today’s run will be as good as yesterday’s, but bottom line: just run. That’s all. And be grateful every step for good health and a lucky life.
Oh and one last thing: after several months working on my stride, following the tips in Born to Run, the last week I’ve really started to notice a change: I have long stretches of running like a kid, back straight with weight forward on the mid to upper part of my feet, arms loose and pumping. And guess what, even after a long run, the next day my heels are not bothering me so much at all.
Also, I’ve let my tennis shoes break down and taken the little wedge out of the heel…this summer I practiced running barefoot, doing laps around the soccer field in the park. I have to believe it’s working: the coordinating muscles in my feet are super strong, taking some of the stress off my heels!
Born to Run is on my top 10 list of books this year, for sure.
I had a good veggie dinner out by the pond this dusky evening, the nearby park so quiet, a chill in the air after a blaze of warm sun most of the day. The nearby grape arbor was decked out in scarlet reds and golds and greens and I thought about our first harvest of grapes this summer. Everything was so still, so quiet, the raucousness of summer almost seemed a dream.
Most years I dread autumn. I’ve viewed it in terms of endings rather than what it is: a settling, a time of pulling inward. This year for some reason, it’s beautiful to me. The trees, our gardens, the birds, all sense the change and move with it. Even as evening fell, and the chill in the air became more pronounced, I felt happy. This has been a season of absolute abundance.
Then the moon rose, silent and steady and slipped behind the clouds. Peace.
My pal Jodene came over the other day and visited our extremely, record breaking, bumper crop veggie garden; she suggested I share some snaps…..For my photo-phile friends, apologies in advance, I took these in bright sunshine. It’s really the first year in a couple of decades that I’ve even put in a serious vegetable garden, so this has been encouraging to say the very least.
We put in a new bed and used stumps from old trees we had to take out of the yard, using them as the container wall for the new bed. Seems to be working really well:
you can see how the stumps have been lined up vertically to form a barrier wall
Here are some other shots. We have grapes! Very exciting, and certainly unexpected. Tomato crop will be record breaking, and in response to the question on any given night, “what’s for dinner,” the answer would be: beans. Good thing we love our french and roma beans, with onion and peppers (three kinds). Not pictured: cucumbers (2 kinds), broccoli, artichokes, basil (4 kinds), arugula. Abundance!
Roma beans and French: what's for dinner? You guessed it.
This grape stand, which will require a stronger support next spring, is only three years old
Early crop this year: black plums, russian, french caramello-yum!
Here’s a short article worth reading, and another one here, about what’s missing in the health care debate: Health. Drs. Andrew Weil and Ornish are both trying to raise the issue of preventive care and health…er…CARE as part of the medical industry’s core responsibilities.
As it stands, Ornish reasons, is we’re funding an industry that seeks out, treats, and only sees Disease. No prevention, no common sense about balanced diet, good food and exercise, the two easiest ways to maintain good health. Disease and its myriad high priced and questionable treatments.
Several years ago I decided to pretty much swear off doctors and the medical industry because it had so completely duped me about my own health. I wasn’t exercising nearly enough, I had put on weight and didn’t feel so good, and I had anxiety about a lot of things. The doctors I saw over the course of a couple of years increased the number and kinds of pills I would “have to be on” for the rest of my life. No one, not one doctor or nurse, suggested I ramp up my exercise, seek out forms of mind therapy like yoga or meditation, and that I cut out the pretty hefty amount of sugar I was ingesting.
Not one.
I decided for myself that I didn’t want to be taking pills so I started down a path of my own discovery. It required a lot of me. A lot of changes, a lot of refusal to give up. And an enormous amount of going against the grain. I’m not at all smugly suggesting that everyone should do what I do, but I am suggesting that people should view the medical industry as AN INDUSTRY. Much like car companies, cereal makers, record labels, and shoe manufacturers, the Medical Industry wants you to take pills and get treatment. It’s their business, after all.
Hence my deep appreciation for Ornish’s article this morning:
If we just cover bypass surgery, angioplasty, stents, and other interventions that are dangerous, invasive, expensive, and largely ineffective on 48 million more people, then costs are likely to increase significantly at a time when resources are limited. As a result, painful choices are being discussed — rationing, raising taxes, and/or increasing the deficit — and these are threatening the public acceptance and thus the viability of health reform.
what’s missing, tragically, is a diagnosis of the real, far more fundamental problem, which is that what’s even worse than its stratospheric cost is the fact that American health care doesn’t fulfill its prime directive — it does not help people become or stay healthy. It’s not a health care system at all; it’s a disease management system, and making the current system cheaper and more accessible will just spread the dysfunction more broadly…
I say an overhaul should be just that: an overhaul. A huge, eye-opening discussion of just what the heck “health care” has become in our corporate culture. In the meantime, eat right, exercise and find a little joy today. It works wonders.
I’ve been getting heavy traffic on my article from a while ago entitled “Plastic Disturbia.” One of the commenters, kevinkrejci pointed me to a special edition of Scientific American called Earth 3.0. It’s a good read and discusses the earth and our relationship to it in a new light: product. We upgraded to Industrial Revolution in 2.0, and now are ready for a big upgrade, doncha think?
Second Thursday is a hood-wide art walk with lots of participants all along California. Northwest Encaustic Studio, part of the art scene in The Building which will also have many studios open for visiting, is hosting a show of encaustic art by Mark Rudis. The show and the art walk generally, goes from 6-9, there will be a reception and etc. See you there
After a zillion years of wanting to learn encaustic, I’ve finally jumped in with both feet. Just finished a really productive and engaging 3 day studio intensive on encaustic miniatures with Larry Calkins and Sean Doll (Sean, get your website going!). The class was small enough to allow for lots of conversation, observation of Larry and Sean in action, and hands-on work–really an awesome 3 days.
Northwest Encaustic Studio is one of our many gems here in West Seattle, housed in a 60s style apartment building converted to artist studios. It’s a great place to drop in on Second Thursdays to get access to lots of accomplished artists and their work. Highly recommended.
Here are a few of the pieces I made this weekend. The boxes are the sculptural part of the encaustic painting, made with Larry’s own finish recipe that adds a complex layer of depth to the piece. The colors in the small paintings really shine when set in against the rough finish of the box.
This small painting is deep inside the box; I sort of like the depth of it--the secret life of birds
Many bird books refer to a certain type of nest as a "cup" with a tea cup used as the symbol. I've always loved the idea of a bird in a cup.
Encaustic on a 1" piece of glass, sort of a joke. Larry fashioned this large frame for the piece which really makes the color of the mini jump out
Over at the HuffPpost, Laurie David is chronicling Charles Moore’s exploration of the path from the California Coast to the northern waters of the Hawaiian Islands. The goal? Plastics. He’s aboard the Algalita, a research vessel dedicated to studying the impact of plastics on the environment of the world’s oceans.
He will be sending regular emails describing their findings, and Laurie David will post them on the HuffPost. I look forward to following the adventure, and hope you’ll help spread the news about this research that affects us all.
Although recycling bags is on the rise in the United States, an estimated 90 billion thin bags a year, most used to handle produce and groceries, go unrecycled. They were the second most common form of litter after cigarette butts at the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a marine environmental group.
“Plastic, the most prevalent component of marine debris, poses hazards because it persists so long in the ocean, degrading into tinier and tinier bits that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web.”
Plastic is Forever. Lately I’ve been thinking about things like cassette tapes, video tapes, walkman devices, pens, sunglasses, drinking cups, those little wrist things used for ID in hospitals–all of these things made out of so much plastic and that are doomed to be discarded because they are no longer useful, outdated, unpopular, temporary, whatever. The funny thing: we think of Plastic as temporary, but it is in fact the most permanent thing in the world. That’s not an exaggeration.
Look around yourself right now, how much plastic can you see? Now ask yourself: where will that end up?
Anyway, thanks msjean for pointing me to this news. Much appreciated!
What would you give to have a more positive outlook in your day? Or feel stronger, more confident in your body? How about sleeping better, getting sick less often, having better self-esteem?
Most of us, living in this the-answer-is-out-there-and-probably-comes-in-pill-form society of ours, will think, yeah–what are you selling?
Nada. Nothing you can’t do yourself. We’ve collectively come to this place where fresh veggies and fruit taste “funny” and processed food tastes normal. Our energy isn’t great, our brains are functioning on less real nutrients, and then we wonder why we don’t feel so good.
Obama is gathering his forces to help make America healthier, and this effort, perhaps more than his other unbelievable number of efforts, has me swooning. This article on CNN discusses his ideas, and of course finds a way to make the effort controversial (that’s what sells, after all), but the point of Obama’s agenda is this:
A healthy population is a happier, less expensive, stronger, more motivated population. Period.
Happier: endorphins from exercise help modulate mood, we’re made this way. It’s the way our mechanisms work. Further, even if you don’t go out an run 3 miles, just stretching and walking helps your mood by connecting you with your body. It’s natural, it’s how our bodies work. Connection lost: balance lost.
Less expensive: as the article points out, chronic diseases such as adult onset diabetes account for 2 trillion bucks in health care. That’s Two. Trillion. Bucks. Medical studies have long ago proven that better nutrition based of fresh veggies, fruit, fish, etc combined with moderate exercise can help manage a ton of chronic complaints. Imagine tossing those pills you’re stuck on–it could happen.
Stronger, more motivated: you know the old saying, if you want something done, ask a busy person. Once your body is accustomed to moving, whether that means taking the stairs instead of the elevator, doing yoga stretches in your cubicle, going for a walk at lunch instead of sitting around, or even getting up off the sofa to change the channel rather than using the remote, your old bod gets used to it and craves it. Pretty soon you’re finding ways to keep moving no matter what, and guess what: your body works better that way. It doesn’t work so very well if you’re always stationary.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now, but I just had to say, Mr. Obama, you are a dreamboat.
We heard poet Mary Oliver read from her works at Benaroya Hall here in Seattle last night. The collection of poems she read spanned her entire oeuvre–an excellent selection. She read for an hour; it was such a delight to hear her work read in her own voice. Also a delight was her sense of humor, her humble good grace, her great heart.
Her relationship with the natural world, with the beauty and gift of nature itself, made me feel utterly sane. I’m not sure what I mean by that, just that I felt at ease and sane by the end of the reading. Perhaps her call to presence when breathing the sweet air of the morning, or hearing an owl at night, made me feel that there is great sanity in loving the loveliness of this planet we share. That all the flat screen tvs and ipods in the world can’t compete with the feel of the sun on your skin on a summer day.
Originally, this blog was about a year long project to track my personal driving and transportation habits (My Life w/ Car series). That project impacted lots of things in my life, not just transportation. I still try to minimize driving, which in turn minimizes "hunting-and-gathering" (aka shopping) which in turn leaves more time for lots and lots and lots of other things.
It’s really the first year in a couple of decades that I’ve even put in a serious vegetable garden, so this has been encouraging to say the very least.
by Paul Hawkin
