Walking is Underrated!
I am getting a sneaking suspicion that my speed walking for 30 min. every weekday morning keeps up my endurance as much as running 2 times on weekdays used to. A fitness goal I’m about 60% committed to right now is to run a local half marathon at the beginning of December. For the other halfs I trained for, I used the ChiRunning Pain Free Half Marathon Training Program and it was great. But, I had to run a lot after work, and I was always so unmotivated and tired or hungry or whatever when I started running that day that it was difficult. (Over the course of the run I usually would feel better and then be glad I did commit to it.)
I started the school year a month ago intending to train again, but to do my runs before school because I don’t teach first period this semester. With my husband’s encouragement to not jump into a drastic schedule change too quickly, I started speed walking with him in the mornings instead of running right away. And now I like the walking routine so much I don’t want to run instead! Here’s what my morning currently consists of:
We get up at 6:00, are out the door by 6:10. Walk around the neighborhood till 6:40, then I do my 10 min. morning workout that I talked about in my last post. Meanwhile, husband is juicing veggies so when I’m done with the workout I can gulp down a GAPSdiet smoothie of carrot juice, a raw egg (pastured), and homemade sour cream (you’ve gotta try it to believe it, but YUM). Then I shower and and am out the door again by 7:10 and off to school. This routine does take advance planning the night before to have my lunch packed and school clothes ready to jump into after the shower, but after 3 weeks of doing it, I’m finding it energizing and worth the thinking ahead!
The wake-up call about walking being underrated came this past Sunday when I went for a run and I was able to run a full mile and a half further than the last run I did two weeks ago. I felt strong in my muscles, lungs, and heart and was really surprised. I went into the run feeling like “Oh, I’ve been bad not running during the weeks, but I’ll just go as far as I can”. I guess I needn’t have worried. That experience psyched me up big time because the speed walking is already built into my get-ready-for-school routine, so I know I won’t slack off or forget to do it. I’m curious to see if I can keep increasing mileage every weekend while only walking during the week.
Maybe I should buy the ChiWalking book. Maybe it will be my new thing…anyone else try it?
FiveFinger Sightings in Budapest!
Well, seeing that my last post was back in June, I obviously didn’t spend my summer blogging like I thought I would. I spent the weeks touring around Hungary and my husband’s hometown, reading 10 novels and various nonfiction on my Kindle, running / walking, and eating so much home-cooked food I didn’t want to leave! I’ll share some thoughts here about these last two items.
Running / Walking
Once we got settled into my husband’s childhood home where his parents still live, I set out exploring the area to find running paths. Turns out there were a lot of options! I developed a 4 mile hilly loop that wove around the local University
as well as a 1.5 mile loop into downtown Gödöllő. 
Combining and/or doubling these loops gave me some great choices of distances based on how I felt that day. I enjoyed running in the mornings, with a half banana as fuel, and for a few weeks I maintained running every other day.
Never did I see anyone in Gödöllő or the surrounding areas wearing Vibram FiveFingers like I was, and I got a lot of pointing and stares. I swear one kid called me a “frog monster” in Hungarian. The neighbors were fascinated too, and I did a lot of modeling. Only in my last week in the country did two different men run by me wearing FiveFinger Sprints! If it hadn’t been raining and if they hadn’t been running briskly by, I would have struck up a conversation. Wonder if they were tourists too. I would imagine so, as most Hungarians seemed to prefer the other shoe fad, those shape-up style shoes with the huge built up soles. Tragic :(
One day as I was running fast on a downhill stretch by the University, my left knee started giving me the same pain that led me to ChiRunning (see chapter 4) almost two years ago. I should have stopped and walked, but instead I kept running, a little slower, and tried to use perfect ChiRunning steep downhill form, landing softly on the heel and rolling to the toe. It did help, but the knee hurt the next day upon waking and so I rested for a day or two. The next run caused more knee pain, so I gave up running and started doing fast-paced 4 mile walks in the mornings instead. That lasted for a few days and then we started getting really busy packing to come home. I think I’ll be ok to run again now so I’ll try it slowly soon. I know that I was stomping too much on the downhill, not keeping my feet landing behind my hips, and not absorbing the impact with my form as I got over-confident and ran too fast downhill.
The school year started on August 31, and I have first period prep, which means I won’t start teaching until second period. I’m toying with the idea of starting a morning run schedule, perhaps 2-3 days a week. Even though I’d have to be at school by the first bell at 7:50am, I wouldn’t have to get there by 7 like I used to, which would give me some extra time. What I liked about running in the morning in Hungary was that I felt the same each morning, having slept and digested all the food from the day before. Running in the afternoons last year, I would either be super tired from the day’s work, or get a stomachache from a late snack, or it would be too hot, etc. I think running in the morning will eliminate a lot of those variables, so I’m looking forward to trying it out. Maybe I’ll even get in a track workout at the school once a week, too.
Food, Food, and more Food
The subject of food this summer was ever-present. Some highlights:
1. Watching my mother-in-law grind fish heads (freshly caught and given to us by a neighbor) to make the stock for Hungarian fish soup.
2. Walking to the daily farmers’ market to get lacto-fermented pickles and sauerkraut for about 1/5 the price of what I buy here at the health food store. I came home and learned to make my own. So proud :)
3. Consuming large quantities of grass-fed organic raw milk, cheese, sour cream, butter, and cottage cheese from these cows 
4. Visiting the family friend beekeeper down the street and coming home with honeycomb
5. Finding snails tucked into the freezer section of a Costco-type grocery store (we did not buy them…)
6. Marveling at how orange the local lady’s eggs’ yolks were, compared to the ones we buy at our farmer’s market here in CA. I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture, but the bright orange yolk below 
(thanks FoodRenegade) is exactly what we were gobbling up at a fraction of the price of what we pay at our market in SoCal. And, the eggs we buy at the market look pale yellow, which shows the hens aren’t totally free to roam and eat worms and grass. I felt very disillusioned upon returning home, and am on a quest to find orange egg yolks.
7. Learning how to make raw milk kefir (notice the cream layer!)
and sourdough bread. Experimenting with properly activating the sourdough starter and making a loaf of bread in the gas oven took ALL summer, but I finally got a loaf I was semi-proud of. It was, as my father-in-law said, “nehéz”, or still dense in the middle.
Even though most of our daily meals were homemade, we still ate at restaurants a fair amount, and my stomach and digestive system started to get out of whack and needed a break from strange food upon returning home. I’m back on strict full GAPS diet now, and am not supposed to eat any grains. I was bending the rules with eating the sourdough bread, which when made properly can break down much of the enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid in the flour, but it still has a lot of carbohydrates. So, for now I’m back to nut flours. Maybe will try it again in 6 months or so.
Hope you all had a great summer. Happy Labor Day weekend!
Week 4: Great News!
I was able to donate blood today! This marks a major step forward in my health. I have tried to donate blood at least 3 times before, and have been turned away each time because I failed the hemoglobin/anemia fingerprick test that they give at the beginning. They send me away with a brochure on how to get more iron into my system, and I feel like a total loser reject. I do everything I can, from eating tons of spinach to taking prenatal vitamins. Nothing worked.
Then, I found the GAPS diet and realized that because my other symptoms indicated gut dysbyosis (allergies, candida overgrowth, etc.), the extra iron I was taking in wasn’t getting properly absorbed! My whole digestive system was off, and I needed to heal my intestines. Now seven months into the diet, I decided to try donating again today at our high school’s blood drive. The lowest hemoglobin count allowed is 12.5, and I scored a 12.6! Squeaked by, which tells me I still have a lot of work to do to get my iron count up, but it was good enough, and I felt “strong as an ox” throughout the whole donation process. No dizziness or extreme lethargy. Thank you GAPS diet and Nourashing Traditions! It is so satisfying to get such a concrete indication that my health is improving. I am proud that I can join the ranks of healthy and strong individuals who can afford to lose a pint of blood and save someone else’s life.
That said, here’s a brief update on my half marathon training: lately I manage 5-6 miles two times during the week after school, but my weekends have been very busy or I’ve been out of town, so I missed my 9 mile and 10 mile long slow distance runs that were scheduled. Instead of 9 I did 6 two weeks ago, and instead of 10 I did do a 6.5 mile hike on our camping trip last weekend in my KSO Treks (which worked well with the injinji socks; I decided not to return them). This weekend is another 10 miles scheduled for Memorial Day, which I’ll attempt. I’ve never jumped from 8-10 before, but I’ve been feeling pretty strong on my runs lately, so if I keep it slow it should work fine.
The end of the school year is approaching fast, and so is my trip to 9-week trip to Hungary this summer. My senior students are restless and so am I :) Lots of work to be done before graduation, so I’ll blog as often as I can manage. Once in Hungary I plan to do much more writing!
One Week Down, 8 To Go…
…’till my first trail half marathon!
What a busy weekend. Seems far away by now. I worked seven hours at two different jobs, went to dinner and a New West Symphony concert, made all my lunches for this coming week, and somehow managed to fit in a 7 mile run Sunday as well. Between all that, I read a lot from my new favorite book/cookbook: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.
As a side note before I talk about running, anyone who would like to know more about real nutrition, not mainstream nutrition which warns that saturated fats are bad for us and cause heart disease (not true on either count!), needs to at least go to the bookstore and peruse the book above. I am learning so much, and feel very domestic now getting excited about making all the recipes. Basically, the emphasis is on real foods and techniques for preparing them that traditional cultures used for centuries to maximize nutrition and digestibility. Not being able to digest well a lot of the food we eat now (cereal grains and legumes for example) causes major health issues in our American culture, mostly because we have forgotten how to prepare it correctly! It’s why we all feel so yucky all the time and take drugs for everything from yeast infections to depression. Anyway, read the book. Even if you don’t like cooking, you’ll make better food choices after reading the wealth of information; it’s not just a cookbook.
Ok, now that I got that off my chest… :) The only reason I mention it here is because I’m realizing that this cannot just be a running blog. I know most of my followers are runners and might not be that interested in nutrition per se, but I am finding that the two cannot be divorced from each other. Those who eat well run well, and I feel like I’m experiencing that already.
Week 1 Recap:
I ran twice last week at 4 miles each and then ended the week with a 7 miler on Sunday.
I was feeling really sluggish on my 4 mile runs and was worried that the 7 would be difficult, but luckily it went well. By mile 4.5 I was tired, but kept concentrating on keeping my running form accurate and increasing the pace slowly. I finished with an average pace of 10:03.
I had brought along my race water belt to run with, which I usually do for anything longer than 6 miles. This time I filled one water bottle up with water and the other with C2O brand coconut water which I get at my local health food store, Lassen’s. I love coconut water! It has close to the optimal potassium/sodium composition that ChiRunning advocates for electrolyte replacement, and it is all natural! No more sugary gu gels for me. I had been drinking coconut water a lot after runs, but this was the first time I drank it while running. I was pleasantly surprised by the energy boost it gave, and it didn’t sit heavy on my stomach or give me a cramp. This will definitely be a new component to my half marathon running routine. It’s always somewhat of a logistical feat to successfully manage hydration, electrolytes, and calories during a long run.
This week’s first run is tomorrow, 5 miles.
