Morning Routine

Mornings are the only time that we have an actual routine, which still only stands for as long as Stella allows it. Babies, man, they are little tyrants. Adorable little tyrants. We wake up when Stella wants to wake up, some time between five a.m. (boooo) and 7 a.m. (yay!). I can usually tell by her grunting and wriggling and throat clearing that she’ll be up soon so I have time to brush my teeth and put my contacts in and pee before she starts screaming to be let out of the swaddle and fed. After that she we hang out in bed, staring at the ceiling fan until Stella decides that she’s over just laying around staring at shit and would I please pick her up and walk her around.

We head downstairs where I can put her down for about 15 minutes to switch diaper laundry or grab a bowl of cereal or start coffee. She’s ready for a morning nap within an hour or two and, oh, the crankiness of a 7-week old, there is nothing like it. Nothing I do or say can console her because she goes from awake and happy to tired and pissed off in minutes. There is barely a warning, maybe a minute where she’ll snuggle up under my chin, but most days I don’t even get that warning. So I’ll change her diaper and get dressed in workout clothes that will some day flatter my body again but for right now just hug all the places where I put on baby weight (my belly, basically) and I want to put a sign on her stroller to let people know I just had a baby but I suppose that if I’m working out with a baby stroller it’s fairly obvious.

We’ve been walking/running at the resort neighborhood of Ko ‘Olina near our house. It’s a great path along the ocean, paved and shaded and the parking this time of year is plentiful. We’re usually there by 9 o’clock and Stella falls asleep on the way there and if I’m lucky stays asleep until we get home and she’s ready for her second breakfast. I started out just walking and am working my way up to running. I was pretty sick for the first part of my pregnancy and too huge for the last part of it to do any walking or running outside and in the last weeks before Stella was born I was fantasizing about being able to run again.

This morning I managed 3 1/2 miles in 47 minutes with an average pace of 13:26. I’m slowly working my way up to running an entire 3 miles, but right now this is a start. I’m just 4 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and hopefully fitting into my jeans before we leave for Portland and cold weather.

This part of our day is the only constant. I’m able to get my exercise and Stella’s able to get her nap. Sometimes we have the company of other new moms and we end up walking for over an hour, venting about all the tough parts of being a new mom but always coming back to But they are still so amazing and the good parts make all the shitty parts worth it.

The good stuff

Sweet Tooth

Back in June I took my glucose test to see if I had gestational diabetes. Knowing that I have a family history of Type 2 Diabetes made me a little nervous, but I’m also in pretty good shape and eat fairly healthy (less so since I got pregnant). Obviously, I know nothing about how the body works because I failed my test. And not just barely failed; I was nearly 50 points over the mark. I went back the following week for the 3-hour test, which includes 4 blood draws over three hours on an empty stomach (including no water). I failed one of the blood draws and was borderline on one but in the normal range for the other two. So no gestational diabetes for me, but the results showed that I could have a lowered glucose tolerance level and my doctor advised me to cut back on white carbs (bread, pasta, rice, basically all things delicious) and to get more exercise. So I started back up with swimming during the week and was able to cut down on white carbs, which I thought would be hard but has been pretty easy.

Now, I’ve never really had a sweet tooth, give me french fries over ice cream any day, but since getting pregnant I’ve not only wanted sugar but I’ve convinced myself that it was okay to indulge in my cravings because when the heck else would I be given a free pass to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. While Wes’ mom was in town our freezer was always stocked with ice cream and there were always peanut m&m’s in the cupboard. Of course I ate them – pregnancy apparently = free pass on food. They tasted delicious as I was shoveling them in my mouth but afterwards I would feel ill. Still, I kept going back to them. Even after she left and I told myself that was that, I had a hard time not eating sweets. In line at the grocery store I would grab a chocolate bar, something I rarely did before but was now happening on a pretty regular basis. “I’m giving up sugar,” I would think to myself. But then I would get a sweet craving and I’d indulge. Afterwards, without fail and regardless of what type of sweet thing I’d just eaten, I would feel queasy.

I keep a list in my head of the things I want for my daughter, and at night as we’re falling asleep Wes and I will list what we want for her and for us as a family. At the top of that list is to be good examples of how to lead a healthy lifestyle. I’ve always felt that it would be pretty easy for us but after this little sugar fiasco I’m not so sure. How can I show her how to be healthy when I’m having such a hard time cutting out something that makes me physically sick?

This morning I was catching up on a blog and read this post and the thing that jumped out at me: “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” So right now, something’s got to change: I’m giving up sugar. Small steps, obviously. Right now all I can focus on is cutting out the obviously sugary items (ie, candy bars, ice cream, sodas, cookies) because that’s what I think is making me feel the worst. If I feel better then I’ll know it was the sugar that was making me sick, though all accounts of people who have given up sugar say that they feel better even if there were no serious issues to begin with. I know this won’t be easy, but I gave up alcohol cold turkey so how hard can cutting out sugar be?

10k A Day

In the past several years Wes’ company has tried to create a healthy atmosphere. They come up with a point system, which, on the mainland, can help lower health insurance costs. Hawaii doesn’t participate, but we still get money for participating in certain activities. Monday, the 10k A Day started, where you’re supposed to walk 10,000 steps every day. Sure the pedometer is a little annoying, but being able to gauge how active I am is pretty nice, especially since I’ve been so inactive for the last two months.

This past weekend I finally felt my energy returning. I still go to bed early, but I don’t find myself nearly as exhausted at the end of my 5-hour work day as I was just two weeks ago. So this is the perfect time for the 10k A Day to start. To get back to exercising and stop being a permanent fixture on our couch. This weekend we’re going to check out a new recreation center that just opened up near our house.

10,000 steps a day doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a little bit hard to rack up the steps sitting at a computer and then sleeping on the couch. I don’t even want to know what my exercise level was at while I was deep in morning all day sickness.

The Second Time Around: Ko ‘Olina Triathlon

Compared to last year, the race yesterday was a fiasco. Last year I felt prepared and rested and ready to kick major ass. This year I felt like sleeping in. I didn’t get enough sleep on Friday night, which is usually more important than the amount of sleep you get the night before the race. The night before the race we didn’t get home until nearly 10 o’clock. I threw my things in a pile and figured I’d sort it out the next day.

The first thing that went wrong was the temporary tattoos we were given to mark our arms. I’ve put on temporary tattoos I don’t even know how many times. I know how they work. And, yet, that morning I read the directions carefully just in case they were some fancy new tattoos. I put the first number on – a zero – and noticed something wasn’t right but soldiered on with the four and the five. They weren’t sticking and they had this weird clear sheet that I’d never seen before and I just knew they were going to fall off. I read the directions again and that’s when I saw – in the first step, no less – the direction to remove the protective covering before putting it on. I had forgotten about the protective covering and had ruined all the numbers. I wanted to cry because this is so typical of me and I’d been trying to change it but even when I tried I still screwed things up.

Driving to the race all I could think about was the tattoos and how stupid I felt for messing them up. We cut it close for the arrival and I was scrambling to get everything set up (and my numbers marked on me) before they closed the transition area. The start is about a 10 minute walk from the transition area so we walked over with 30 minutes to spare. There were people milling about a few announcements were made before the first wave went. A woman asked me about the run course and we were talking when a man interrupted us to ask if we were the third wave because it was up next. I panicked because I was the second wave and I hadn’t even heard the first wave start. I ran up to the start where a few other women were also wondering what just happened. The second wave was already half way across the first lagoon when we started.

I’m somewhere in the back discussing the run course and not realizing the race is actually starting.

So far: ruined tattoos and a late start. The late start, though, turned out to be a good thing because I wasn’t fighting for space in the group. My goggles fogged up and instead of letting them be I wiped them off on my way to the second lagoon and I swam the entire second lagoon with my goggles half full of water.

The bike part wasn’t as awful as I had been anticipating but I could definitely have used, oh, any  amount of time training on my bike before the race. The wind caught up with my on the way back but for the most part I held my own.

Ending the ride, pretty nervous about the run.

The run, though, was pretty rough. My legs were heavy from the ride and my left leg hurt for most of the run. But I didn’t stop running.

The last half mile or so I started feeling better and managed to pick up my pace a bit to finish.

I crossed a 1:57, which hopefully means my time is closer to 1:46 (which is what I did last year), though I’m thinking it was probably closer to 1:50.  Still, as we were leaving the race I was talking about signing up for one in March. Even when a race is rough, it’s still a great feeling when you cross that finish line.

I should have had Neal do my tattoos.

Safety First

I found this beauty waiting for me in the mailbox today when I got home from work. It’s another early birthday gift since we’ll be in New York for my actual birthday. Wes says that I won’t need it on vacation, but I feel like it’s the perfect thing for walking around a strange city. It has my name and birth year, and two emergency contact numbers in case something bad does happen while I’m running or swimming or biking or, you know, just walking around town.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

For me, the beginning of any exercise is a constant struggle: between sleeping in; between eating right; between having that second glass of wine. When I’m exercising I tend to not look too closely at my eating habits because I’m positive that all the work I’m doing will not only allow me to lose weight but also to allow me to eat whatever I want. Which I think we all know is not true. So the first few days of P90X was an internal struggle of me debating whether I needed sleep or exercise more. And then when we settled in it wasn’t too difficult to start waking up early every morning to get it over with.

Just when it started to become routine, though, something would happen to detour us and we’d have to start all over again. The biggest detour yet has been having visitors because who wants to wake up early when you’ve been busy enjoying family and friends with a cocktail or two the night before? Certainly not me. So we push it off one more day or two more days or tell ourselves that we need a clean start and we’ll start fresh next Monday morning. But Monday morning comes and we’d rather sleep because Sunday was such a full day.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Until something happens that knocks you over with the realization that you have to do something now. Like a pair of pants not fitting and all of those pounds (ok, only two for me and if I’m being honest, that was probably due to me getting sick and barely eating than any exercise, but whatever) come right back on, which is what happened to both me and Wes yesterday. So we set our alarm for 4:15 this morning and by 4:20 we were coming up with excuses and reasons why sleeping an extra hour or two would be more beneficial than just getting up and exercising. But I remembered that this is how people lose control of their weight and add 30 pounds without even realizing it: because we make excuses. So I insisted that we get up and do it, which is odd because my job is usually to talk us out of waking up early (I love to sleep) and Wes’ job is to make sure that we do get out of bed.

While we were exercising we came up with some dietary restrictions to help us and though I hate to cut bread and pasta (carbs may be second to sleep in things that I love), I know that it’s something that needs to be done. Not completely because I’m not prepared for that, but cut down on them.

Yesterday I mapped out some races for the fall, starting in September. I much more likely to get out running and swimming and being active when I know I have a race coming up. When there’s nothing out there to work for I tend to laze around until the next training session. I need to realize that working towards a healthy body should always be a reason to work out. That having a healthy life is the ultimate race. I should always be training for that.

P90 Sizzle*

A couple of weeks ago Wes and I went in for a physical, something for his company’s health and wellness program. We expected to come out with a clean bill of health, but we both had higher than normal levels of cholesterol. We talk a lot about trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle: he rides his bike to work and I have swimming, biking and running. But this opened our eyes to making sure that our diet agrees with the healthy lifestyle we’re trying to achieve. Dairy, which I didn’t have much of growing up because I just didn’t care for it, has taken a larger portion of my snacks and meals and so we’ve cut a lot of that out.

We also invested in P90X because we’ve heard such good things and we really need something to kick us (and our bodies) into gear. My brother tried it a couple of years ago and he noticed results (and so did I, through pictures) in just two or three weeks. Yes the workouts are intense, but they are worth it.

We started on Monday and today just finished the first of twelve weeks. The first three days left us both pretty sore. Evey time I would stand up at work I felt like I had just dismounted from a very long horse ride. After about 20 steps or so I would start walking normally, but that first minute or so was rough. When punching holes in papers I could feel it in my chest and buttoning my pants after using the bathroom was a challenge. We’re pushing ourselves as far as we can, and it still doesn’t feel like we’re close to completing ever rep of every set for the workouts. Monday morning was rough because we both felt that we were in better shape than that workout showed us we were. By the end of the first work out we didn’t feel out of breath, but muscles that we never use were screaming at us.

It’s already gotten better, though. I can feel my energy levels rising, which is nice since we’re waking up at 4 am to do this. Yesterday when I put on my jeans (it was raining and chilly enough that jeans, for once, were a good idea during the day!) I noticed a small difference. Okay, okay, it could be from all the shit food we ate in preparation for P90X, but I’m choosing to believe that I’m already shedding fat. We took before photos, but I’m not releasing them until I have an after picture to show.

*I’m not sure why I started to doing this, but I’m adding “izzle” to a lot of words. Tsunami became Tsunmizzle, which then became The Tsnizz. I keep adding it to tv shows and pretty much anything we do. Wes tries to tease me about it, but it’s slipped into his vocabulary too.

She’s Going the (Olympic) Distance

3! 2! 1! Go!

I competed in my longest triathlon to date, the Olympic distance. It’s double the Sprint, which was my previous longest distance, and quadruple the Super Sprint, which was the first triathlon I ever did back in September.

I signed up in December when the price was pretty reasonable and I felt like I had ages in front of me to train. And I did train, sort of. Two weeks before the race my friend and I decided we needed to buckle down and set a serious schedule and really focus on the biking part of it. We had done a lot of swimming and running, but not so much biking and running (or biking at all, to be honest). But just three days into our rigorous schedule, I got a cold that took me out of exercise for a couple of days. I wasn’t at my best going into the race, is what I’m trying to say.

But I did it! And I didn’t die. So all is well.

Before the race I had hoped to finish in under 3:30:00 because that seemed pretty reasonable for a 1500m, 40k bike, and 10k run.

The Swim:

I had practiced this swim a lot and though the water is really flat at this beach, I was still having difficulty staying straight. I would go out there with a friend and would consistently veer off, both right and left. Coming back, we were swimming into the sun and my goggles were fogged up and my black goggles had broken a couple of days before so I was wearing clear goggles, which are great for seeing what’s in the ocean, but not so great for seeing the buoys and figuring out where the heck I was going. Several times I was so off course that the lifeguards had to wave me back into the mix (and out of oncoming swimmers).

Total Time: 34:24. Not awful, but I was shooting for 30 minutes, so not great either. I guess this means I need to figure out how to swim in a straight line.

Done with the swim

The Bike:

After the last triathlon I did I knew I had to spend some time on my bike. Last race my legs were shot by the time I finished with the bike and the run was pretty uncomfortable. I had done some bike rides and coupled them with a run afterward, but I was still pretty nervous about how I would finish the run after the bike. So I took it easy. I got passed a lot and I was spitting up remnants of my cold for most of the ride. I tried to catch up with my friend who was doing it with me, but she had a 2-minute lead at the turn around and I just couldn’t do it.

Total time: 1:28:19. I thought this was going to take me close to 2 hours, which means that I clearly don’t know how to estimate the time it will take me to finish a race. Not too surprising since I’m the same way in real life.

The Run:

Oh, god was it an awful start. For the first two miles my shins were killing me and I had to stop and walk more than I’d prefer to have done. I’m not sure how I’m pedaling on my bike, but I think it’s time to figure out if I’m doing it right so that the run isn’t awful. By mile 2, though, I finally got into a rhythm and the pain was more of an annoyance than anything. And then I started to realize that I could finish this thing in under 3:15:00. So that’s what I did.

Total time: 1:02:15. Not bad considering I walked. The last 10k I ran (which was just a 10k and didn’t involve any other sports), I finished in 1:06:17 so at least I’m getting better.

Home Stretch

Total Race Time: 3:09:54

All the photos are from my iPhone because I’m trying to get Wes to care about taking photos so that we don’t end up with albums full of Tsunami and Wes with me nowhere to be seen.

There’s a race coming up in July and I’m trying to convince Wes to team up with me. He’ll take the bike and I’ll handle the run and swim. I know he hates being on the sidelines, but that’s what happens when you lose most of your cartilage playing college rugby. I had him on board until he realized the price, but I think I may be able to talk him into it.

Waterfront at Pu’uloa Sprint Triathlon

Yesterday was the Waterfront at Pu’uloa Sprint Triathlon, my third triathlon ever and the first one since the Ko’Olina Triathlon in October. Five months ago was the last time I did this and though I wasn’t nervous in the weeks and days leading up to the race, I definitely was the night before. I had a hard time getting to sleep and was worried about what what I would have for breakfast and transitions and the swim in the actual ocean instead of the protected coves in Ko’Olina.

The Swim:

It turns out, though, that running was the least of my worries. I felt comfortable in the ocean swim for the first time ever. I was, admittedly, slow. I stayed at the back of the pack and didn’t try to push myself out in the front or middle of the group for fear that I would tire myself out early and be the only one in the race to have to raise a hand for help. Being pulled out of the water by life guards wasn’t exactly how I wanted to start the race. So slow and steady wins the race was my motto for the morning. I pushed harder on the way back to the shore and when I came out of the water I felt good.

Swim Time: 15:09.

Transition 1:

Coming out of the water I was feeling good, but when I got to my bike I was totally disoriented. I had set out my gear to be available as I needed it, and yet I was fumbling for the things I needed. I nearly dropped my bike as I struggled to get my race number and helmet and completely forgot to grab my glasses. With all the fumbling around I didn’t have time to put my gloves one and decided instead to shove them in my jersey pockets and see how the ride would go without them.

Transition 1 time: 1:49

The Bike:

The roads were on this route were awful. One small stretch had been repaved recently, but the rest of it was riddled with pot holes and generally just broken down pavement. And the wind. Oh, god was it windy. I struggled, I admit. I’ve focused so much on my swimming and running that I’ve mostly neglected my biking, and I could definitely tell.

Bike Time: 42:46

Transition 2:

Wind was at its worst the last stretch of the bike route and by the time I got into the transition area my legs were feeling rubbery. Wes (who had done the bike portion on a relay team) and the swimmer on his relay team were waiting for me at T2 and cheered me through my last change.

T2 Time:  :50

The Run:

My legs were stiff from the bike ride and I was thinking about all those times I could have gone on a bike ride but focused on the swimming instead and cursed that choice! I was slow going and by mile 2.5 I had been passed by three women but I couldn’t find the push to pass them with another 1.2 miles left in the race. So, again, slow and steady. I focused on my breathing and my form and tried to just keep running. Wes found me with a half a mile left to go and got me to speed up. I kept one woman from passing me and at the last corner to the finish line and I sprinted and passed another woman – the same woman who passed me 2 miles earlier, and yes, it felt good.

Run Time: 36.56 (3.7 miles)

Total time: 1:37:29, which was over ten minutes faster than my last triathlon. I was faster in the swim and only slightly slower in the run (the distances were slightly different so I haven’t had a chance to compare them equally). I was even slower on the bike, but I felt worse, which I think caused my run to suffer.

My next race is the Honolulu Triathlon (Olympic distance) in May and I’m going to make an effort to work on my biking as much as I have swimming.

Most Important Meal of the Day

I received an e-mail on Wednesday afternoon for a 10k race on the following Sunday and thought, What the hell. I am, after all, in preparation (not quite training as it’s been so sporadic) for a couple of triathlons. The first of which is this coming Sunday and the swim part is in the actual ocean, and not just small coves that protect me from the waves. This morning I swam with a co-worker of Wes’ who was an all-American swimmer in college and he said I had a nice stroke and kicked well, so I’m only a little nervous. It will be my first triathlon since Ko’Olina in October but will hopefully be a nice way to get me back in the saddle because in May I’ve signed up for the Honolulu Triathlon in the Olympic distance. For that one I’m more than a little nervous.

But back to the 10k. Since the running portion of the Honolulu Triathlon is a 10k I thought this would be a good way to show my body and mind how long a 10k actually is. (I’m horrible with distances and weight. In high school my brother loved to ask me whether a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers and though I know that I a pound is a pound is a pound, I always said the bricks weighed more). So a 10k. What’s that, 6.3 miles or something close to that. Not an unthinkable distance, but definitely more than what I’ve ran since December. I needed a jump start to my running routine and this was to be it.

My goal was to finish in 56 minutes, which was definitely pushing it but sometimes you need lofty goals to push yourself. Starting the race I felt pretty good. Let me rephrase that, standing at the starting line before the race actually started, I felt pretty good. I was confident that I would at least finished in under an hour. But then the actual race began and I just wasn’t feeling it. I was slow the first mile and coming up on the first water station at mile 3, I was dragging. I had to stop and walk and catch my breath before running again. And then, a mile down the road I had to stop again. At one point a woman pushing a stroller past me and for a moment I was re-energized – no way was I going to be passed by a woman with a stroller (nothing against women with strollers, obviously, more like, if that woman with a fucking stroller can run this then I sure as fuck can), but that didn’t last too long before I had to walk again. Etc., Etc., Etc. until the end of the race.

I finished in 1:05 and couldn’t figure out why the race was so bad. It was a nice wake up call to get out and run more often (which I have been doing) but I still couldn’t figure out why I was dragging so early on in the race. Three miles is my minimum run and I was dragging even before that. I thought about the elevation, but the change from our place to the highest point isn’t high enough to even be an issue. I left the race baffled and with a new determination to to run more often.

On Monday I took Tsunami with me on a run in our neighborhood and the same thing happened. A mile into the run and I was ready to sit down on the side of road. Again, I was baffled. But then it hit me: I haven’t eaten enough. After taking two months of from running, the only running I had been doing was at lunch. Running at noon in Hawaii is hot and I always made sure to to get enough to eat before starting my run. I don’t usually have a large breakfast so when I was starting a run I would usually only have a piece of toast and a glass of water. Not enough to sustain me through a 3-mile run, let alone a 10k race.

Now that I’ve figured it out I have to come up with a menu that won’t leave me too full to want to run.