First Swim

I went for my first swim in my new gym's swimming pool tonight. I was going to do it this morning, but a really long boring list of delays and distractions got in my way.

I haven't swam laps in a pool, I think, since middle school. The triathlon will start with a half mile = 805 meter swim, which is 16 laps in this pool. I actually didn't know those numbers until just now, so my goal for this first swim was just to get a feel for moving and breathing in the pool again. Wow, breathing. I need to really improve my lung capacity or decrease my need for oxygen during exercise. By the third lap I found myself not putting my head underwater at all because I needed to breath so much. And I kept inhaling water.

Anyway, in the end I did 9 laps, which is just a little over half of what I'll need to do. I didn't remember my heart rate monitor, and didn't see the pool clock until the very end, so I'm not sure how long it took me. I was only going to do 8 laps, but when I saw the clock I swam one more and timed it: 1 min 15 sec. Hm. I'd rather like to decrease that time. :)

New meters on the right to track my progress. Looks like I need to get some bike rides in, eh? Also looking at this site to come up with a more regimented training plan.

No Car

What a difference having no car makes! A four day weekend in my new neighborhood, without a car, running errands, plus 11 miles of biking today to get to and (eventually) from work, and I'm just a hair's breath from hitting 50k seconds of exercise in November. Yay!

Of course, a lot of that "exercise" was walking all over town, or biking but at a non-race pace. As previously discussed, does that all count as exercise? Again, I wouldn't want it to be my only exercise, but I think it's "a healthy part of this balanced (lifestyle)." :) Starting on Dec 1st I'll be having my ass kicked for 3 hours a week at a "boot camp" offered at my company gym. So I'm in no danger of giving up the "real" exercise habit anytime soon.

I'm loving my bicycle, and can't wait to log all kinds of hours on it, to and from work and around town and eventually training for the triathlon.

Oh, and one last thing. My weight has been hovering around 150 lately, a few pounds up from last month. This is no big surprise given my habits these past 3 weeks. Yesterday I weighed myself and it read 147. I didn't believe it, so I weighed myself again, and the scale then told me I needed a new battery. Okay, that made sense. But I weighed myself this morning with the fresh battery and it read 146. Um, huh? I tried on my skinny jeans, and they fit, and the mirror seems to at least not completely deny the possibility of 146, but, um, still. Seems kinda low. Tomorrow I'll come in early to work and weigh myself on the real scale at the gym. Because I know everyone is dying to know my weight. No, because it would kinda suck if I couldn't trust all the weight data I've collected from my bathroom scale. :(

Witty Excuses

This morning I took my first run around the neighborhood. I appears as if, completely randomly, I ran 3.1 miles. That's 5k for you non-runners out there. Wacky. I ran it really really slow, though, because my knees are killing me from all of the packing and unpacking of boxes.

I'm still shooting for 50k seconds of exercise in November, but it's going to take some doing. I really totally let my eating and exercise fall all to, um, excrement, my last week in Los Angeles. I can feel the softness of my belly and it upsets me. Boo.

However, I've now been living in San Francisco for 3.5 days. In those days I've gone to my company gym twice and ran outside once. I meant to do yoga last night, but around 10pm I started to fall asleep standing up, so decided against it. Sometimes your body asks for something really specific, and you have no choice but to hand it over.

Simple != Easy

We all know what we SHOULD be doing. It's simple:

I get to sleep and wake up on a reasonably regular schedule, getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night.

I exercise every morning before going to work.

With a baseline of rest and activity under my belt, I my appetite is under control and I can indulge in tiny portions of dessert at the work-provided lunch without shame.

I'm ultra productive at work and at home.

But it's not easy. You know what's easy? This is:

I find myself staying up until after 1am most nights, waking up tired.

I sleep in and don't exercise.

I'm ravenous all day, trying to make healthy food choices but taking normal to large sized dessert portions.

I'm tired, so drink far too much caffeine through the day.

Sometimes I go back to the cafeteria after lunch hours but before they take away the dessert trays, and I get another portion.

All this refined sugar makes me sleepy in the afternoon, leading me to drink more coffee.

I'm not productive at work OR at home, which causes me to stress out more.

I stay up late trying to get things done (and probably hopped up on caffeine), but am too distractable and disorganized in this walking-sleep-stress state to get things done effectively.

Guess which senario is true right now? :( I think this all stems from caffeine: I never used to drink it on a regular basis, but the coffee setup at my new job is very appealing and tasty and stuff. I need to stop drinking the caffeine so I'll feel sleepy at bedtime. Once I start getting enough sleep on a regular basis EVERYTHING else will fall into place: time for exercise, feeling more alert at work and home, and thus being more productive in my life overall. Right now I feel like I can't concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time.

Corrective Action #1: I have ingested no caffeine today. I drank some decaf coffee becuase I have gotten used to the hot-coffee-as-comfort-food ritual, but I should really stop doing that too.

Corrective Action #2: Two days ago I set a "go to sleep" alarm for myself. Tuesday night was out at dinner when it went off, last night I just kept snoozing it until I finally turned it off and didn't go to bed until 2am. TONIGHT I'll set that alarm (which is on a wristwatch) and put the watch somewhere OTHER than next to my computer (crack, that thing is), somewhere I have to get out of my chair to get to. A full night's sleep will be mine.

Corrective Action #3: Make micro-task to-do lists so I can get things accomplished even if I'm feeling very scatterbrained.

Exercise?

ex·er·cise (ĕk'sər-sīz')
n.

    3. Activity that requires physical or mental exertion, especially when performed to develop or maintain fitness: took an hour of vigorous daily exercise at a gym.

I walked for hours and hours and hours this weekend, criss crossing (jump jump!) San Francisco looking at apartments and seeing friends. I didn't pay attention to how many miles or minutes I walked for so I made a very conservative estimate in my fitday journal. But for the purposes of the 50,000 second challenge, does walking count as exercise for me? There were certainly hills that made me breath harder, and walking the 2.5 miles to the Caltrain this morning with two bags was more laborious than a leisurely stroll. But I'm in reasonably good shape, so can I really call walking exercise?

I think that I can, to an extent. Regular non-stressful physical movement is great for your body, joints, connecting tissues, digestion, etc. I count yoga as exercise because it provides a nice stretch, warms up my muscles, puts me in great touch with how my body is feeling, and improves my balance and core strength. I count the brisk walk I do to and from the gym in Los Angeles as exercise as it's the warmup and cooldown for my "real workout." Walking alone isn't going to make me a fast runner or cyclist, or a powerful lifter or rock climber. But I think variation in physical activity, just like variation in the food you eat, is fantastic for your body.

So I counted 60 minutes of the 4+ hours of walking I did this weekend as exercise in the 50,000 second challenge. Add in the 30 minutes of elliptical on Friday and 45 minutes of weightlifting this morning, and I've broken the 10k mark. Yay! I'm right on schedule.