The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

Well you haven’t been hearing much from me this week. I large part of that is because I pulled back on my exercise. This past Saturday, I tried to do a little bit of speed work. Nothing crazy, just moving my feet faster on the treadmill. And about 10 minutes into the run, my knee started hurting. And was located where most runners blanch - in the IT Band, or otherwise known as Runner’s Knee.

Since the run was 14 days away, I cut back. Way back. In fact didn’t run on Monday specifically, so was able to have a 3 day break. Around comes Wednesday, strapped on my shoes and sweated out another 3.5 miles no problems. Mentally wiping my brow, I worked through the different machines for weight lifting. When I hit something called Thigh Adductor, there was enlightenment. And boy howdy was it sharp, right in my knee. Or more specifically, where I was hurting before. Apparently I’m just to tall for that machine to use properly. Keeping my feet on its rest it induces me to use my knees instead of my legs.

While this story shows my foolishness, its perfect for demonstrating what happens as you get into shape. Part of the whole process is breaking down your muscles to rebuild them stronger. So as you do things : run, walk, lift, bike, whatever, except to be sore. Heck even be ready to be hurt! But it’s important to listen where you hurt. There are two criteria I use. First if you have any pain in your joints, you’re doing something wrong. Using a machine wrong or putting tension where you shouldn’t it doesn’t matter. Stop. Ask a doctor or trainer. Look for more information on the internet. So being sore in your muscles are to be expected. But at the same time it should be a general sore, about the size of the heel of your hand. If its a sharp pain and the size of a finger tip, again get to the doctor. Most likely you’ve over exerted and torn something.

Becoming healthy is an important thing, but a gradual thing. Any attempts to instantly be there can cause lots of pain. And your body will know when you are pushing to hard, so listen. It will prevent you from getting hurt and keep you on the healthy path.

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So to get ready for my race on the 21th, I decided to put in a long distance run last night. Got home from work, laced up my shoes, grabbed the ipod, and out the door I went.

And about killed myself.

I ended up sweating out 2 pounds and decided to walk the quarter of the mile back to the house. All because I had forgotten a cardinal rule for running : Only increase your distance about 10% each week. While my record on here shows a progression of 2.5 miles and 3.4 miles, but I’ve been running the 5k distance, or 3.11 miles, before my karate classes. That gives me about 9 and half I’ve been running weekly for the past few weeks. By running 4.25, I need to keep right at 3 miles for my other 2 days this week.

The reason for this rule is to prevent a hard shock on the body. By increasing your distance by more 10%, a runner doesn’t usually get enough to time to properly recover. Heck by increasing your distance or exercising to hard you can actually end up losing whatever benefit you were attempting to gain. If your exercise drains you so much you can’t do your normal activities later, you’ve reduced the overall amount of calories you could have burnt for that day.

So for myself, I’ve got to re-learn old skills and not be an idiot. For our readers, push yourself to sensible limits. By flirting with those boundaries you are able to expand to do and accomplish. Waddle on.

My run today was great. I wandered off the Greenway’s a ways, and followed a dirt trail for about 10 minutes. There is something to be said for running trails. Besides the feeling being alone with your thoughts, the uncertainty of the ground can strengthen your ankles. Flowing over the ground lost in the music on your player. I love running to ska or punk. For those would like to try trail running, I would suggest taking a partner for safety. It’s something that takes abit to get used to, and in my case I would only have to push through 50 yards of woods tops to get help. If you do decide to run some trails there are some tools that can help you track where you go.

In fact this run wasn’t for getting ready for my race. I specifically kept it slow in order to get loose, and warm up my body for sparing that I knew was coming in karate. After 15 minutes of bull in the ring, I am officially a brown belt. Boy am I tired… Time to soak the feet and relax for awhile. Not that I mind, it’s a beautiful Spring day here.

And spring is here in full force. New green as far as the eye can see. And Yellow. As if a huge bag of cornmeal had burst open, dusting everything. On the cars, windows, roads. This past Tuesday oak pollen created clouds so dense they looked like smog hanging over the highway. While my white running shoes are bit yellow after today, my sinuses amazingly don’t seem to mind.

One of the most noticeable benefits brought on by my weight loss is the change in allergies. Before I used to be congested from March to May then September through October. Weather changes meant breaking out the sudafed or other drugs, buying so much bet their stock went up a tick. And even then the drugs didn’t do what was expected. What should have wired me, knocked me out. Nyquil seemed like sugar water.

So allergies was one of the primary reasons I started my running in winter. Contrary to what my wife may think, winters here aren’t that bad. Hat, gloves, and decent sweatshirt take care of most days when running. Only a few required me to break out a ski mask. And I had been able to get about 3 months under my belt before the seasons changed and the yellow dust started to replace the snow. I can remember running up a hill, realizing I was following a 2 inch wide bare spot in the trail and surrounded by pine pollen. 20 minutes later I was home, and still no reaction. It was great motivation to keep it up.

I still get hit a little now and then. Rapid weather changes for instance and one tree that I haven’t tracked down yet. But it’s no where as bad as it has been. Walking to the car, I don’t flinch seeing it yellow tinted. I just smile and think about when I should wash it. Waddle on friends.

A while back I mentioned listening to podcasts as one way I make exercising more fun and more consistent. I personally find podcasts much more interesting than music for exercising for three main reasons:

• Listening to people talk is much more engaging than listening to music
• Podcasts are topical, so I can listen to people talk about something I’m interested in (or you can listen to music centered around a particular theme, if that’s your bag)
• Podcasts are serial, so I look forward to the next installment as a part of my exercise routine

Since mentioning podcasts as part of my exercise routine, I’ve been asked what podcasts I listen to while exercising, what mp3 player I use and what podcatching software I use. I chose the SanDisk Sansa e280 media player because it’s flash-based (I’m not interested in a harddrive-based player), has a nice interface and an expandable memory slot. After using a couple of other podcatchers (including Juice, HappyFish and a few others), I settled on Ziepod due to the interface and slew of advanced features, like dynamically renaming files and tags as it downloads episodes. Here’s a Ziepod screenshot:

Here’s an incomplete list of some of my favorites podcasts to listen to while exercising:

• This American Life
  My absolute favorite podcast - Ira Glass has a way of picking the absolute most fascinating topics and stories that seem boring at first, but end up engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. Make sure you set your podcatching software to download this one - only the current week’s episode is available for free.


Tech-related

• This Week in Tech (TWiT)
  Leo Laporte’s a strong personality behind the podcasting movement, and TWiT is the foremost show in his podcast netcast network. I have to admit I haven’t liked Leo much in the past - I liked Patrick Norton better on The Screen Savers (Patrick, by the way, is currently serving up shows at dl.tv), and liked Chris Pirillo’s version of Call for Help more than Leo’s. All that aside, I really enjoy listening to Leo’s netcasts - I think he really shines in this medium. TWiT in particular gathers together several personalities that enjoy talking about tech and BS about tech news, making for some great moments (my favorite so far is Steve Gibson and John Dvorak going rounds about spam). If you like tech, this is an entertaining fluff podcast.

• Security Now (Another member of Leo’s netcast network)
  Steve Gibson is pretty entertaining to listen to and does a good job breaking down complex security issues into understandable concepts. I like the interplay between Leo and Steve, and the topics they cover are interesting and advanced enough to keep my attention.
• This Week in Media
  This is a great podcast for someone who appreciates four people who love to talk about their passion - all things media. Fortunately, when these guys geek out, it’s still entertaining (particularly since they stopped talking about the Red camera).
• Other tech-related podcasts I enjoy include Chris Pirillo Show, Engadget, TalkCrunch, FLOSS, Windows Weekly.


Disney-related

• WDWToday
  My wife and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon, and I have been hooked since - I love going to WDW, I love reading news about Disney (check out Jim Hill’s articles for some fascinating reads), and I love listening to podcasts about Disney. WDWToday runs about 20 minutes per show, has great hosts and fun topics. This is one worth downloading and listening to previous shows - if nothing else, the antics of Len Testa (co-author of the my Disney bible, Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and owner of the world’s biggest coffee drip) never fail to make me laugh.
• WDW Radio Show
  Lou Mongello has written a couple of Disney trivia books and hosts a fun, informative podcast. While Lou doesn’t make me laugh as much as Len Testa, I do enjoy WDW Radio Show for all the fascinating tips, trivia, Disney backstory and ride-throughs. Lou’s previous podcast, MouseTunes, is also worth listening to - although some of the information is dated, there are some fun, timeless segments to be found.
• Some other Disney-related podcasts I enjoy listening to include Magical Definition and Imagineering My Way.


Other topics

• The Wordpress Podcast
  Who’d have thought listening to people talk about blogging engines could be interesting? I just started listening to this show - as this blog runs on Wordpress, I enjoy listening to the latest news, plugins etc. For Drupal users, Lullabot hosts an interesting podcast.

For audio books, I’ve used two interesting resources: PodioBooks and LibriVox.

There’s a slew of other podcasts I’ve subscribed to or tagged, but just haven’t had the time to listen to. Have I missed your favorites? Share them in the comments!

So as I say elsewhere here, I lost most of my weight by running. And I was steadily increasing my distance. My longest distance was a little over 9 miles, I think, and averaging around 20 miles a week. Then I met my wife.

Heh, you know what? I didn’t notice, or care, that I was running less. My preferred time to run is in the morning, but now that time is put to better use holding my wife. Yes, I’m a bit of a romantic; what can I say? But the fact that she is such an amazing and health-conscious cook is why my weight was able to stay steady. So at the time I didn’t miss running.

Currently the only running I do is about 30 minutes before my karate class. And while that’s nice for general cardio, it lacks the ability to get me to that “cleansing place” where all of life falls away: just you and the road. After runs like that I get this sense of clarity that’s amazing. It’s very similar to a Nike commercial I saw just the other day(but I was unable to find it on youtube yet).

Now I’m looking to try and get refocused. And I’ve decided to do that by signing up for a race. It’s not a long race, only 5k(or 3.11 miles for us Imperialists) . I’m not usually competitive, and trying to run with about 500 more people is going to be interesting to say the least. At the same time, the money goes Habitat for Humanity, so that’s motivation right there as well.

In fact, tell you what. For each person who tags The Life Ledger as a Technorati favorite blog, I’ll add 5 dollars as an additional donation. Race day, I’ll write the names on my number or carry them some other way, and then post a picture of it afterward.