Ah, Florida.  It’s almost perplexing, how much we love the hot, steamy weather down there at this time of the year, both while enjoying the outdoors and when navigating the various Disney parks.

However, I couldn’t help but notice how many people clearly seemed to struggle to get around comfortably, particularly at Disney.  It’s not exactly surprising; while visiting the attractions at Disney is part of the recreation many seek when taking a Florida vacation, there’s no getting around that doing so probably entails more walking and standing around than most people experience in their daily life.  Add in the high heat, crowds and shoes/sandles that may or may not be the most supportive in the world, and it’s no wonder many people are hobbling, limping, or shuffling and wincing by the end of the evening.  The body language on any bus or boat tells a revealing story:  exhaustion, aches, and annoyance.  A stark contrast to the happy-go-lucky jubilance we see on any theme park TV commercial!

But it doesn’t have to be that way!  The next time you book such a trip, make it your goal to spend the preceding 6-8 weeks beefing up your fitness program to include plenty of walking.  Practice good posture whenever possible, and add movements and drills that will help strengthen your balance and core muscles.  Finally, find at least 6-7 stretches that you find comfortable and enjoyable, including ones that can easily be performed in a hotel or even while waiting in a long line.  You’ll appreciate having them and so will your weary muscles!

To quote a recent presenter at my fitness conference, we are all, technically, athletes, even if our “sport” doesn’t seem to fall into the common definition of athletics.  Whether you’re chasing your kids around, lifting heavy groceries, or yes, steering yourself through the swarms of visitors at Disney World, your fitness routine should reflect the needs of your body based on those activities, just like any athlete in training!

I’m back from my annual fitness conference, and Holy Gym Shoes, Batman, have I got news and information for you!  Everything from female pelvic training (I guess we women tend to have a tendency towards instability in and around our hips) to using hula dance for cardio to self myofascial massage using tennis balls (you have no idea!)….the list goes on and on.  I think I’m going to have to dole it out slowly, as there’s so much and I’m only now beginning to plow through my notes.

So let’s start out with something fun:  surfing.  One of the options with the conference was to sign up for various “outside the walls” outings, including surfing at Huntington Beach (which I’m told is the OFFICIAL “Surf City USA” spot; yes, referring to the Jan and Dean song from the 60’s!).  The surf outing was preceded by a “Dry Land Conditioning for Surfing” seminar the day before, which was extremely helpful and useful for the task.  And it was a great workout!  I can see how you don’t need to have any aspirations to ride the waves in order to benefit from the core, leg and shoulder work provided by the routine.

So here are some pics, courtesy of the blog up at the IDEA World Convention website.  By the way, I’m the one next to a yellow surfboard, with the long ponytail.  Where I am in the water pics, even I don’t know!

PS:  For the record, I did manage to stand up — three times, in fact.  Yay!  But the rest of the time?  “Flailing in the spin cycle” would be the better description of me.  Better luck next time!

Enjoy:

Surfers on the beach

Same Surfers on the Beach

 

Surf drill: Practicing "pop ups"

Surf drill: Practicing the fine art of paddling

Waves and (sort of) surfers

Surfers trying (hard!) to negotiate the waves

Ah, the sweet feeling of surf success!

 

 

Having long ago discovered that the shape of my ears does not allow me to wear earbuds (that is, unless I want to run with my hands on my ears, holding the buds in place), I remain a fan of the over-the-head headset.  Regardless of how I wear my hair, what activity I’m engaged in, or whether I’m wearing a hat or ear coverings, the good ol’ reliable over-the-head unit ensures my listening pleasures will remain uninterrupted no matter the circumstance.  And after years of trial and error experimentation, I arrived at the brand and style I continue to use now:  a simple, inexpensive earphone that’s both small and discrete, with a sound quality is just fine by me.  Not terrific I’m sure (I’ve never been sophisticated in matters of acoustics), but good enough to keep me motivated through a hilly 5-miler or another round of stability ball crunches.

Except for one thing:  apparently, I am the grim reaper of headsets.  Run, headsets, run!

It always happens the same way:  I’m out for a run or stretching after a hard workout, everything is fine, I’m deeply engrossed in some catchy tune or riveting podcast, when out of the clear blue, BZZZT, I no longer hear anything out of my right earpiece.  Depending on my mood, I will either suffer and make do listening out of my left ear for the remainder of the workout, or (and more often), I will express my annoyance by abruptly shutting off my mp3 player, no doubt with a “That’ll show you!” retort in my head.  I’m sure my iPod feels very bad.

The first few times it happened, I chalked it up to the headset being a cheapie unit (it is), and promptly bounced into Target to purchase a replacement.  The way I see it, even now the grand total of headsets I’ve gone through do not add up to the sum total cost of one expensive headset, so no harm done.

But “easy” solution aside, I’m beginning to wonder what the heck is going on that this happens so predictably?  It’s been happening with increased frequency, to the point in which we recently scoured ebay to snag a stash at an even lower cost than I’d been paying at the store.  I’m sad to say I’m already on headset #3 or 4 of that latest cache!  What the heck?  Granted, I sweat a great deal, and I use that headset in a variety of activities.  But I’d love to find out what might be the cause, and whether there could be something I can do to prevent it from happening, or even make some minor repair to prolong the life of the headset past that of a fruitfly.

I suppose “Use headset less often” is the only real wisdom in answer to the above dilemma, and it’s probably one I should heed.  Perhaps the greater issue here is that I’ve….gulp….become addicted to my iPod?

As much as I truly enjoy delving into one of my favorite cookbooks, and testing my skills in following “sophisticated” recipes…..the truth is, most of my life is lived in the world of 20-minute dinners and 5-minute desserts — the fewer ingredients, the better.  Oh yes, and keep it healthy, please.  And tasty (duh).

So I’d like to pass along two recipes that have become a mainstay in our summer dinners, especially weeknights when the desire to turn the kitchen into a hurricane zone just isn’t there.  They’re blissfully simple, easy, healthy and most of all, friendly to the taste buds!

Dinner:  World’s Easiest Grilled Chicken (from frozen breasts) and Saucy Steamed Vegetables

• 2 packaged frozen chicken breasts
• 1 bag frozen “steam in bag” vegetables (lately we’ve taken a liking to sugar snap peas)
• 2-4 Tablespoons any sauce of your choosing (Asian, peanut, salsa….the possibilities are endless!)

Lightly coat the surface of a large frypan with cooking spray.  Preheat on medium heat.  Place the still-frozen chicken breasts on the pan.  Meanwhile, place the bag of frozen vegetables in the microwave and cook according to package directions, except STOP the cooking one minute sooner than the directions call for.  While the vegetables are cooking, attend to the chicken.  Cook on the first side for about 2-3 minutes, then flip and cook the other side.  This will begin browning the outside, but the inside will still be raw and slightly frozen.  Cook the other side for about 2-3 minutes, then flip to the original side.  Keep cooking the chicken until it’s just about fully cooked (i.e. juices run clear and there is no pink left inside.  When you think there’s about a minute or so of cooking left, open up the bag of vegetables and pour the vegetables, including the water that’s steamed out of the vegetables and into the bag, over the chicken.  Use a rubber spatula to help to deglaze the “brown bits” from the surface of the frypan, so as to stir them into the mixture.  If there is a large quantity of water, turn the heat up slightly to help it evaporate.  When the water has just about fully evaporated, add the sauce to the frypan and stir until the chicken and vegetables are evenly coated.  Turn off the heat and transfer the chicken and vegetables to plates.  Serves 2.

Dessert:  1-minute Banana Fruit Smoothie

• 2 frozen bananas
• 2 6-oz. cups of yogurt (plain or flavored, whatever you prefer)
• Optional:  1 tsp. honey

Cut up the frozen bananas into chunks and place inside a blender.  Spoon the yogurt and (if using) the honey on top of the bananas.  Blend at high (or “smoothie,” depending on your blender’s settings) for about a minute, until the smoothie is the texture of soft-serve ice cream.  If need be, add a small amount of water to thin out (be careful, a little goes a long way).  Pour into 2 wide glasses and serve at once.  Serves 2.

Enjoy!

EDITED on 7/30/09 TO ADD:  This post has quickly become the most visited entry for my entire blog, so clearly I struck a cord here.  For this reason, if after you read the below, you decide you need more instruction on specific stretches, please see my article at The Flexibility Coach website:  Article: 10 Ways to Stretch Tight Calf Muscles.

This is one of the more common questions I receive both in person (from flexibility training clients and yoga students alike) and via email from visitors of my website, www.theflexibilitycoach.com.

The truth is, there’s no one definitive answer to this question, as there are so many factors that contribute to tight calves.  Without question, genetics plays a role here:  some people are simply prone to tighter calves, either due to their inherited shape/length of the muscle or the manner in which their muscle (and the nerves that feed into it) behaves.

However, many causes of tight calves are ones over which we have some control.  If you wear high-heeled shoes, your calves are kept in a state of perpetually shortened length.  If you do a great deal of walking — either as part of your job or part of your exercise routine (or both), you’ll probably be inclined towards tight calves, as the calves, hamstrings and glutes are the primary leg muscles used for walking, especially on any uphill slope.  Runners and other athletes are also prone to calf tightness, as the calf muscles are constantly firing to stabilize the ankle and both absorb each landing and push the heel back off the ground.

Interestingly, calf tightness can also be symptomatic of weakness elsewhere in the leg.  If your glutes and/or hamstrings are weak, your calves will often try to make up for that weakness, which means the muscle gets overused, which in turn exacerbates calf tightness.  In that same vein, calf tension is rarely experienced in isolation; rather, if there is tightness in the calf muscles, there is also a good chance you are tight in your hamstrings as well, due to the synergistic nature of the hamstrings and calves for much of our daily movements.

No matter what it is that’s causing your calves to shorten in the first place, you are almost certainly guaranteeing chronic tightness if you’re not stretching properly or regularly.  Technically, we should all engage in some form of daily stretches for the various calf muscles, since they are used on a daily basis and for so many activities.

Truth be told, while some stretches are far more effective than others, if you’re not doing any form of stretching at the moment, as long as you pick one or two SAFE stretches for yourself and start doing them 1-2 times a day for at least 2 weeks, you should notice some positive changes in your calf muscle (and possibly hamstring) flexibility.

Although stretching is what I consider to be the central strategy in relieving tight calves, it’s also not a bad idea to add some exercises to strengthen the hamstrings and glutes and stabilize the pelvis and ankles, and for this I recommend less machine-based movements, more simple floor exercises – ones you can control easily and therefore perform with great form.

Finally, massages or “body rolling” techniques to the calf muscle can be used, to help break up excessively knarled/clumped connective tissue, which can often be part of the underlying problem as well.

So, while the answer to the question might not be so straightforward, the first step to relief very well can be:  unless your doctor has told you to avoid such stretching, if you find the nearest stairs, stand on them, and let your heels drop off the edge (so that your heels are below the balls of your feet), you should begin to feel the very first stretch that can help you reverse your tight calves for good!

I had an “Uh-oh, I think I’m in trouble” realization recently, when I was out on a run on a 78 degree day, thinking it felt mighty hot.  If I think that’s hot….how am I going to feel when it’s in the 90’s or more?

Well I got my answer this past Tuesday, and if all goes as planned I will have a follow-up answer today.  Total. Body. Meltdown.  My strategy was to orient my run according to the location of a) my house, b) the neighborhood water fountains, and c) the neighborhood pool/community center, which is both air-conditioned and has a water fountain inside.  My thought was, if I keep myself within a reasonable proximity of these three things, I should be okay.  I also carried a small bottle of water.

Suffice it to say, I needed that fountain and that community center — early and often.  I did manage to get a decent-ish run (though I think I redefined the word “slow”), but holy smoke, that wasn’t easy!  More than the fatigue near the end, it was the low-level nausea of being so hot and sweating so profusely.

But I must say, I will still take the heat any day to the extreme cold.  At least I don’t have to worry about my digits losing their circulation before I can dash to the nearest heated building!

See, this is what happens when a scheduled outdoor run gets RAINED IN.  The mind runs amok in lieu of the body running outside.  But the energy has to go somewhere, so I hereby present the following:

Your current exercise program MAY have “jumped the shark” (or need a makeover) IF…..

• When people ask about your exercise program, your response is, “Oh yeah. That.”
• You don’t remember the last time it was modified or updated.
• You DO remember the last time it was modified, and it was when the show Magnum P.I. was still in first run.
• Your exercise manual was written by a guy asking you if you’re sick and tired of having sand kicked in your face when you’re at the beach.
• Your “self pep talk” during the workout has become, “It’s ok…That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger!”
• You’re relieved when you see your colonoscopy appointment will occur in place of your regularly scheduled exercise session.
• The exercise leader in the video is doing high-impact aerobics barefoot or stocking footed.
• The program’s tagline is “No pain, no gain!”
• The night before a workout day starts to feel like Sunday night when you were in school.
• “It must be 15 minutes before workout” now replaces “It must be that time of the month” as the likely explanation for your mood swings.
• You pull out your exercise mat, only to come up with oddball chores that you suddenly MUST attend to NOW (“Oh shoot! I keep meaning to alphabetize my book collection!”).
• You begin to fantasize about Role Reversal Day, when it will be YOUR turn to make your trainer do 50,000 crunches while chanting “I love abs!”
• You start doing Google searches for studies entitled, “Study shows you burn more calories on the couch than running a 5K”
• You find it much more enjoyable to sit down and WATCH the workout video, maybe even with a bowl of popcorn, and can’t believe you never thought of this before.
• The person who created the workout is now a contestant on The Biggest Loser.
• Your home equipment might possibly have been in an ad from a 1982 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.  Or worse, you BOUGHT that equipment through that 1982 ad in Better Homes and Gardens.
• You begin watching late-night fitness infomercials. And wonder….”Maybe it’s not such a far-fetched idea?  After all, it’s STILL 6-minutes of exercise….”
• You’re seriously considering renouncing all worldly goods and joining a monastery, as 15 hours of meditation sounds more appealing than yet another round of your 30-minute gym circuit.
• More than once you have fallen asleep during a workout (and it’s not while in Savasana in yoga!).
• You’re entertaining the thought of working out for 3 hours on a Sunday, in an attempt to bank up on your “quota” and skip out on exercising the rest of the week.
• You’re using an exercise program in a magazine that includes recipes made with a “NEW” artificial sweetener called aspartame/Equal.
• You know the workout so well, right down to the instructor’s exact cues, that you now routinely incorporate the entire workout into your dreams, dialogue and all.  (If only doing so would burn more calories as you sleep!)

And last but NOT least….

• Your idea of “hitting the gym” has been reduced to pulling up into a parking space, walking up to the building, giving one of the bricks a light “whack” with your palm….then getting back into the car and driving home.

Now aren’t you hoping for a clearing of the weather just as much as I am?  The “running mind” is clearly far more troublesome than the “running body”!

Just goes to show, don’t panic at a bad forecast.  I had my gym bag packed as they were calling for thunderstorms today, but lo and behold the cloud cover parted and sun/blue skies prevailed.  Hurray!  Why are runs that were not supposed to happen so much sweeter than even the regular ones?

Let’s hope this continues, as many of us have commented that here in the Midwest it doesn’t seem like summer has arrived in full swing yet.  Could this be our omen?

Over the weekend, Mr. TheHungryRunner and I attended the women’s triathlon, held in Naperville, Illinois.  A friend of mine was doing that race for the third time, and we wanted to cheer her on.  It was a unique experience right off the bat as it was the first time I’ve been to a race in which I was the spectator, not the athlete!  I quickly gained an appreciation for how the “other half” goes through; truth be told, I’ll be glad to be back to having the “easy job” of just showing up and running, and not to have to deal with all the standing around, shlepping all the stuff, finding various spots for viewing and photo-taking, etc.!

Now, I could consume an entire blog entry just talking about what a phenomenal inspiration the event was for me.  It really is true, you had all walks/phases of life, shapes and sizes, all ages and ranges of ability, all goals and levels of experience represented there.  These women amazed me, talk about a testimonial to the adage, “You’re capable of more than you think.”  And what a wonderful race organization, right down to the offer of having a “swimming buddy” accompany any athlete who suddenly felt scared at doing the swim.  That’s the kind of team spirit that makes my heart melt.

But there was one prevailing takeaway from the day that trumps even the above:  I am NOT good triathlete material.

You see, I tend to be one of these people that make things WAY more complicated than they need to be.  I love making packing lists, printing out maps and schedules, planning my strategy, checking things over numerous times, taking a dry run of the course if possible….it’s part of why I love racing, it’s part of the experience for me.  Especially when I do well and can somehow attribute the success to those activities!  But part of why running is so good for me is just the opposite:  it’s about as simple as simple gets.  Put on a pair of shoes and go outside and run.  That’s it.  At the end of the day, that’s all it is.  And while I still love to meticulously arrange my race day “kit” the night before and empty out my entire wardrobe on race day (“I don’t have anything to WEAR!!!!!”)…..I am also learning the art of turning off the alarm, grabbing a cup of coffee, picking out the first outfit in the drawer, lacing up my shoes and grabbing a bottle of water…..and just showing up for the race.  Get the packet, put on the bib, and away I go.

And given even the most SIMPLE of triathloning entails all that STUFF…the equipment and nutrition and transitions and carrying thingies and pre-race set up and post-race pack down and dedicated clothing for each purpose, etc…..um, no.  I fear I would be the first triathlete who had a SHERPA (pace sherpa?) accompanying her throughout the race!

So I’ll admire from afar, but I think I’ll stick to running for now.  And the world remains just a little less complicated.

I can’t believe I’ve managed to stretch this experiment out to at least three separate posts.  At least it allows everyone else to have a life.

Exciting life or not, I’m quite pleased to report that YESSS my adjusted experiment — using a large container of PLAIN yogurt (i.e. no fruit or other flavor, not “creamy” outside of what yogurt is naturally like), correcting my mistake of accidentally using 4 (folded) layers of cheesecloth, instead using just one…..WORKED!  After about 12 hours of sitting and straining in the fridge, I ended up with a solid “ball” of yogurt “cheese.”  Slightly thicker than Greek strained yogurt and slighly less solid than cream cheese….I might describe the texture as that of whipped cream cheese.  I eagerly turned the bundle upside down, and the ball released itself in one, easy piece from the cheesecloth and into the waiting container, no mess whatsoever.  Triple yay!

And unable to resist, I cut a portion (yes, that’s “cut” as opposed to ”spoon”!) to be eaten with dinner, experimented with topping it with first a drizzle of honey, then some sugar-free fruit jam (raspberry).  The jam was good, but the winner is still the honey.  It provides a nice sweet balance to the tang of the yogurt.

I bought 2 more large containers of plain yogurt, so you know what a success it must have been that I’m so eager to do some more!