Allison's Big Toe

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!