Sleep: up at about 7:30am, to sleep for night before at about 9pm (was sleepy) to sleep for night tonight at about 8pm (will get up at 3am tomorrow)
Food: breakfast: bananas lunch: bananas dinner: tahini-lemon-tomato juice dip for tomatoes, celery, cuke rounds
Exercise: before breakfast: ~ 18 minutes of barefoot running on treadmill, including warm-up/cool-down walking - ran about 1.1 miles this time (still training my skin for barefoot running) and it's going well! :) Only slight hint of possible blister forming, but didn't. I stopped before it got questionable 'cause I'd already gone farther than I had planned. Nice.
I also did 20 minutes of the almost bounce sort of thing on the rebounder after that. I watched the guinea pigs and rabbit the whole time walking, running, walking and bouncing. So cute! :)
before lunch: a little over an hour of beginner Ashtanga yoga with a Richard Freedman video I have: Introduction to Ashtanga, Complete Practice Session. It worked out well 'cause we didn't do any of the headstands and stuff that we're not supposed to do when menstrating. I figured that I could skip stretching out after the running and such since I was gonna' do the yoga later. That worked out well. :)
before dinner: I did the daily calestenics I've been trying to keep up with (but haven't done every day quite yet, just some days so far). I did all of 'em except the handstands 'cause that's inverted and since you're not supposed to do them in yoga I figure I could skip 'em a few days otherwise too, just in case. So I did 60 reps on the Leg Magic, 20 pushups (full), 5 chin-ups (assisting myself - getting closer on the first one to not needing assistance though - yay!), 20 jump lunges, 20 knee-ups, and 20 jump squats.
Detox: I had some chives the other night, think it was Friday - and had a little gas with chive smell... yep, that's part of what happens with 'em... also makes my underarms a little smelly at times too.
Female: didn't take my temperature today, day 2 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons
The Rest: We were going to take a break from the farm today 'cause it was raining & my hubby needed a break, so it was a good time since the rain would water things for us. But we couldn't stay away. LOL We ended up going to water things later in the day ('cause it had stopped raining in the late morning) and I transplanted about 50 or so tomato seedlings into larger pots. We'll be able to plant 'em out not too long from now. Gotta' get that bed ready...
It was a good thing we went out 'cause we also discovered that there was a pinhole leak in one of the radiator hoses and were able to get another hose for it while out. Sooo many things going on with our car for the last several months or so. It's not all that old either... oh well, this one's not too bad, except now that we're back home it's raining again & my poor hubby has to mess with it in the rain and dark 'cause I have to use it in the morning to go to my shift at the gym...
ANYway... yesterday I had such a surprise when I was watching the guinea pigs and rabbits all of a sudden a baby pops out of the tube they like to hang out in! No wonder it's mom has been so hungry lately. LOL We knew it might happen sometime but I've been away and didn't notice she was pregnant somehow. I've never let a companion animal have babies before - always had them spayed/neutered or only same sex or only one, etc. Was doing population control and all. I had trouble finding any guinea pigs for a few years though, and they're still hard to come by here, so I figure it's okay to let them have babies a bit... they are heard animals after all...
I love to look at them while I'm running on the treadmill when I run on the treadmill at the house. So it was extra special to do my barefoot run on the treadmill this morning while watching them AND the new baby just born yesterday! :) Soooo cute! :)
Guinea pigs and rabbits make great companions for 80-10-10 people IMO. They like to eat the same sorts of things, but often different parts (especially the guinea pigs). They are small and furry and cute. Bunnies are quiet and litter trainable, but need more room than guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are sometimes litter trainable, not quiet though. LOL Cute bizarre sounds though. Both guinea pigs and bunnies like to have cages and places to hide in their cages, so it's not like keeping a bird in a cage or anything. They feel more secure in there and are happier with a cage, as long as they have enough room to move around and get out for exploring every once in a while (with access to their cage if they get frightened while out that is).
When we are able to stay at the farm we're gonna' move the guinea pigs and rabbit there with us. We're gonna' have a big fenced in compound for them with the hutches (cages) all around the outside and then we can open up the doors to their hutches most of the day and let them come and go as they please. We'll only have about 1/4 of the compound accessible at a time though, so that we can let the grass, carrots and whatnot that I grow for them in there grow up and recover from their trompling and grazing. :)
I posted some pics of them on my "30 Bananas A Day" and "Give It To Me Raw" pages. I'll have two video's up in "Facebook" once the last one finishes uploading. It's about 3 minutes long and is taking quite some time uploading... hope it makes it before I need to go to sleep!
Here's the video with a picture at the end, so you don't have to look for 'em over there:
Here's the other picture I put up:
And here's the last one...
Has music 'cause all you could hear were the neighbors anyway on this one. Watch out - bunny comin' through! LOL I can leap 2 guinea pigs in one bound! :) Pesky fly! Leave 'em alone! It left after I finished the video...
I'll tell y'all about the farm in "The Rest" section later. First, gotta' do the stats for those that are tracking things. :)These stats are from yesterday, unless otherwise noted:
Sleep: woke at 6am to get back to running before we had to leave for the day
Food: pineapple, possibly the last of the season bananas jakfruit* salad: tahini-lemon dressing with heirloom tomatoes on baby spinach, yum! :)
*I had planned to have jakfruit for dinner, and maybe a little bit of baby spinach after, but there were only a couple of pods ripe :(, so I ended up having salad later.
Exercise: I got back to running again after a month's away I believe it's been. I didn't have much time for the runs I'd been doing before I left, but figured it'd be good to ease back into it since I was practically a beginner when I left. It went well. I wanted to run at least a mile and had run out of enough time to do so at the pace I'd been doing for the longer runs, so ran faster for the mile. It felt good. :) I probably could have done 2 miles at that pace, possibly longer... not sure about the full 5K I'd been doing before at that pace though. Eventually I'll be running the 5K and farther at that pace and faster, but not for now. Will build up to it to make sure I don't overdo...
The rest of my exercise for the day involved farmwork. Oh, I also did some calestenics and the Leg Magic a tad...
The night before I'd done 20 pushups, 5 chin-ups (assisted), 10 handstands (against a wall, only counting the kick-ups that worked), 20 lunges each leg, 20 jump lunges, 20 jump squats, and 20 knee ups... I'd do as many as I could to failure, take a rest like in weights and then do more... 'till I got all of 'em done, sometimes switching to another exercise in-between. I chose to do this many of things 'cause I found some old business card sized cards I'd made for myself and my son back when I was in charge of his P.E. when homeschooling him. They have a column for exercise goals, a column for the amounts accomplished that day (it was the wider column so you can put tally marks during the day) and a place at the top to put what day it was. It was something to help make sure we got at least that much done every day, in addition to any other exercise we did. It worked pretty well for me if I remember correctly, so I think I'll do it again, but am gonna' add a few more things and more reps too, once I'm back to my full work schedule again and have adjusted back into my workouts and all.. For now I'll do 'em at least every other day. :)
Detox: I was having a bit of acne recently, since I've come home, not sure why. Perhaps it's from being off my exercise schedule, or perhaps it's 'cause it's warmer and more humid here (had been in places that get hotter, but everyone had air conditioning there), or perhaps it's from molds or mildew or something... was having a bit of trouble with it before I left, but it cleared when I was gone... strange. I was thinking that perhaps it's from the towel I like to use... it always smells bad to me when it's just been washed and after a bit it smells better. I've decided to give up on that towel and use another one as my favorite. I like ones that are small enough to fit on my towel bar without having to bunch up, and are not the plush thick kind - both criteria are so that the towel dries out well and doesn't get mold or mildew. I'd been looking for some like that at the stores, as I'd love to find a brown one like that, but haven't been able to find anything but the thick ones for some time now. My hubby found a blue one in our things last night, not sure where it came from, but it was washed recently and didn't smell, so yay! I've also got a backup white one, just in case. LOL I was using the hand towel in the meantime. Last night I noticed that my acne is clearing up noticably already and it still looks better this morning, so yay! Could 'a been the towel, the cardio, or... ? Guess I'll see over time.
Female: 3am temp today: 97.41 degrees fahrenheit, day 20 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons
The Rest: K, so onto the farm stuff! :) It was an exciting day for my hubby and I at the farm today simply 'cause we finally started planting lots of fruit in ways that sunk in that we've finally got a long-term farming situation and are working on our dreams, right now! :)
I "potted on" papayas into 101 pots, which is the point that we count as plants. When they're seedlings we don't really count them since there's more that can go wrong with 'em at that age. There were 3-5 plants in each pot I made, most of 'em had 3. We'll be thinning them to just one at some point, probably after they're in the ground, so it's like 101 trees.
We planted out 6 large coconut trees and 12 papaya trees-worth (3 plants per trees-worth, that will eventually be one per trees-worth) into the ground, where they'll be for a long, long time. Well, the papayas won't be there all that long for trees, but they'll be there for a while... We're gonna' plant more papayas near there as well, along with other longer-term trees so that the papayas will provide a nursery effect for the other trees and as the papayas are losing their productivity the longer-term ones will be starting up theirs. :)
We also planted 13 jakfruit pods, but we don't know how well they'll do since not all the pods were ripe. They're from a tree with the best jakfruit we've had. It makes consistently smaller fruits than most jakfruit (which makes it easier for one person to finish in one meal), and the pods are very evident inside, more than other jakfruit we've had. It has a better flavor to us as well. We're not completely sure if it is just a certain kind of jakfruit or a different fruit that's related to jakfruit... but we're gonna' grow it if we can. If these seeds don't take, we'll get some more and can possibly get seedlings that have sprouted from fallen ones if there are any.
My friends who have the sprout business that we get the sprout discards from also gave us a mango seedling, a dragon-fruit transplant and a green fig seedling that we'll plant out soon. :)
Let's see, what else? I know there was more... oh yeah! The banana patch! It has grown so much in the month I was gone! Most of them have doubled their height. Wow! And the first one I planted has a keiki (new shoot) of it's own! That's a good sign that it's doing well. Yay! :)
We also put some of the barely sprouted coconuts into pots to plant out later when they're older and/or we have the places for them prepped and ready. We had figured at one point that a good minimum amount of coconuts to plant would be 10/person. We now have 7 in the ground there and 6 in pots, several more still working on sprouting, so we're gettin' there! :)
The red lilikoi, jaboticaba and other seedlings are doing well too. Yay! :)
K, gotta' go now... time to go and water all those seedlings! :) I'm gonna' drop my hubby off at the farm and then go help get someone's networking set up with their new computer and router (and other computers they already had that I'd set up before). Then I'm back to the farm. Yay! :)
I'll try to take pics and/or video so you can see things too! :)
Sleep: woke at 3am for temp., but didn't take it, up at ~7:45am to sleep for night at 10:30pm again... good thing I can sleep in again on Sunday - gotta' get to sleep earlier Sunday though 'cause there's no sleeping in on Monday...
Food: breakfast: 1 medium-large pineapple (no burn today, nice) lunch: small bag lychee (~20?), 4 smallish-medium dragon fruit before dinner/after run: 15 small-ish medium apple bananas dinner (1 1/2 hrs after bananas): shredded cabbage & carrots with tahini-lemon/lime dressing & 1/2 avocado
Yeah, a bit too much overt fats for 10% today, but I've been doing the overt fats light to none lately so it's okay I think - will find out Sunday I suppose...
Here's a video of lunch remnants and about dragonfruit I took at the farm. It might take a bit to load 'cause it's the limit of what size Blogger will take. I'll look into other video uploading options another time:
Exercise: Pedometer wasn't working quite right for part of the day - probably about 1/4-1/3 of the walking time I'd say... so I'm not quite sure how much regular walking I did. It says 5,548 steps, which is 2.189 miles, but I'd estimate it was more like 6,935-7,398 steps or 2.736-2.919 miles. Still, it's nowhere near as much as I walk when I work at the gym. I don't wear the pedometer when formally working out, so the other stuff is extra.
I was able to get back to my running schedule today, yay! :) My foot didn't hurt this time at all. Yay! Not exactly sure why it hurt the other day, but I'm not taking chances on getting hurt, listening to my body, and that day my foot didn't want me running. Good thing it was okay with me walking fast though. I held myself back to the scheduled increase, again, in order to take it easy. I've felt cardiovascularly like I could do 30 minutes or more straight through at the slower speed I'm running/jogging, but don't want to increase things too fast so my muscles, tendons, ligaments and such have time to adjust. But I couldn't help myself go a tad longer... I was supposed to do 25 minutes, but did 27 1/2 minutes instead. That way I can get to the 30 minute goal the next run, rather than taking two runs to get there.
I did a shorter warm-up walk too, but it felt right. Instead of the 3 miles I usually do in the process of warm-up, run & cool-down, I did a bit more: 3.36 miles instead, as I was almost to 3 miles when I was done with the run even though I'm still running slow in order to get to the 30-40 minutes solid running going solid. I walk at 3.5 - 4 mph for warm-up and cool-down, and run at 5.5 - 6.2 mph, mostly 5.5 right now. To run at an 8 minute mile pace I need to run at 7.4 mph-ish, so there's a bit to go in that department. All in due time, all in due time. ;) Oh, and I also do an extra cool-down of about 1/2 minute at 3mph, followed by ~ 1 min. @ 2mph & ~1 min. @ 1 mph, then off to ~ 1 min. easy bounch on the rebounder, just so that I don't get that trippy room rushing past me sensation when getting off the treadmill and walking. LOL I start rehydrating during the 3.5-4 mph walking cool-down and stick with it 'till after my shower or when I've taken in enough to weigh what I started. I follow the running sessions with some stretching, which lasts about 20-30 minutes. Then I'm off to the shower. Ahh... nice.
Hmm... I'm finishing this post on Sunday evening & I can't remember if I did other exercise or not... thought I'd remember for sure. Oh well. Gotta' write that stuff down.
Detox: The sty thing's going away, so I suppose things are evening out. Still sweating buckets when running, however it's also been super humid and muggy here lately so it makes sense.
Female: 3am temp: ?? degrees Fahrenheit - didn't take it again but I know it was 96.something degrees 'cause of the time of month it is, day 4 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons
The Rest: I'm starting to add videos in here and there as I can. Let me know what ya' think. :)
Went to a guy's place to check out some fencing that we were going to remove and take for free - on both sides. It was on Craig's list. We thought it'd be no problem with the heavy duty jack we usually use as a post puller, but our jack had been jacked (pun intended - yeah, stolen in other words) from our farm a while back. We went to the place we got it from only to discover that not only did they not have 'em anymore, but the employees there didn't remember ever having them. LOL It was a year at most that we got it. How soon they forget... guess we're not gonna' get that free fencing. Don't wanna' use the tractor for it & don't have anywhere else to get a heavy duty jack like that here either. Oh well.
I wanted to go there anyway 'cause we're running low on the timothy hay I give to the guinea pig(s & rabbit now too!) as food and they use it for bedding too. Yes, we live with 4 guinea pigs and a bunny now. :) They're all so cute! The feed store apparently stopped carrying timothy hay recently as well, saying they didn't have enough sales to keep carrying it. Darn. Part of living on a small island and all I suppose. I don't know of anywhere else on island to get bales of timothy hay & the guinea pigs shouldn't have alfalfa. Guess that's another thing we'll hafta' grow ourselves - sooner than later it seems. I wanted to grow it eventually, but looks like we may have to push that up a bit. They eat all fresh food otherwise, but it seems they need a bit of dry stuff too, thus the timothy. I think we'll change the approach to the hutches and not use it for bedding so much anymore. We'll make hay dispenser dealies to go on the wall and let them use the fresh stuff for bedding if they want. We plan to move 'em out to the farm sometime in the nearish future too anyway and when we do we're going to have a compound for them to go out and eat the stuff growing directly.
We're thinking of setting up a worm composting system below their hutches so that the droppings and such go directly in there, and not having things in there for bedding. The bunny will have a shelf to hang out on to get away from the guinea pigs and mesh flooring if she wants and the guinea pigs have tubes they can go in for those purposes as well (but would be getting away from the bunny if they want instead of the guinea pigs). We can have the hay feeder on the side of the hutches and put their veggies and fruit in trays that clip there too. The compound would be fenced in and have 4 sections. There'd be a sort of entry hall of sorts at the base of their hutches where there'd be 4 doors, one to each section of the compound. We'd let them out into one section at a time, letting the other 3 grow back from all the grazing. I could plant carrots and other root crops in there too for the bunny to dig up and eat. She loves to dig. :) There'd be enough space for them to go in and run and munch around and visit with us if they like. I could go in there and knit, crochet and/or spin cotton while they explore and eat. :)
We'd open up the hutches and the door to the current section of the compound and let them decide when or if to come out. We'd shepherd them back in before the day's over. We were thinking that the compound wouldn't need a roof 'cause they'd only be out in the daytime when we're there too, but I might end up having a shade cloth or some other sort of moveable roof in order to let them hang out there when I'm not in there too (but still in the area). I'm fairly certain a bird wouldn't swoop down to get them when I'm sitting there with them, but it might if I leave the compound to do other farmwork... I planned to have some things for them to play in and on in the compound too, so they'll also have them to hide in if necessary. I'll be able to clean out the cages without having to grab 'em and take 'em out of there this way too. Less cleaning needed if we do it all this way too, so it'll be nicer for all of us. There are so many things to do for the farm though, I'm not sure when we'll get all of this done.
While we were at the feed store we got a hay fork, so nice to have an actual hay fork that works. Yay! We've been using our digging fork like one 'cause all we could find elsewhere were forks with way too many tines for hay. Nothing like having the right tool for the right job. Moving hay is sooo much easier now. Ahh... a pleasure actually.
We also found some clips they use for horse stuff which look like solid brass and are the right size for the homemade custom exercise resistance bands we want to make. So we got 'em. Now we have everything we need we think, except for the guava wood. We'll go hiking to an overgrown guava forest and get some sometime soon, possibly Wednesday. We would have gone this weekend, but my hubby's trying to finish a grant proposal so we'll do it another time. I think I'm really, really gonna' like these resistance bands when we finish 'em. So nifty and pretty too! :)
We're still setting up things at the farm in order to plant things. We've planted some bananas already and a mammey sapote in the rich soil in the rotted out center of an albezia tree stump, but that's all that's in the ground right now. Well, we do have some pineapples in the mud by the stream, but that's not their final place, it's just like a nursery for them 'till we can plant them along the fence. Here's a short video of our pineapple nursery area. My hubby made a nifty stepping stone path down to the stream with rocks that came out of the gardening area:
And here's the mammey sapote and bananas we have planted so far:
There were really tall albezia trees along the stream that the owners had cut down after they got the land. They're beautiful trees, but they're also quite dangerous since they grow so fast and are sort of leggy in that way, tending to break off in the wind and/or just fall down at times. One fell over on a neighbor's property when we were there a while back. It sounded like a bunch of firecrackers going off. Huge tree trunk and tree, just broke off in the middle and fell down - just beyond the property beyond the tilled area you see in the video. Didn't look dead or rotting on the outside and it wasn't even windy that day. We used the leaves in the compost and are using the logs for various things here and there - like how my hubby made the edges and steps down to the banana patch you can see in the video. The stumps will sprout back, but that's good 'cause we can coppice them and use the nitrogen rich leaves as mulch and/or compost Permaculture-style. :)
We've been planting some seeds from fruit we eat in flats and pots in the meantime too. We're expecting the rock dust and shell and other organic amendments we ordered to arrive sometime in the next week or two, so we'll work them into the soil and then will be ready to start planting. Yay! We did soil testing and analysis in order to find out the condition of the soil, what it needs to get back to what it should be from where it's been. That's why we're waiting for the amendments, so we can make sure the soil has everything it should in order to give the plants every chance to have everything they should, so that we have every chance to get everything we need from them. :) We'll probably maintain the fertility primarily with compost after this initial amending, lots and lots of compost. :)
We've been getting sprout discards from some friends of mine who run a commercial sprouting operation not far from our farm. It makes terrific compost along with the grass clippings from the land - and our own compost from eating of course. We'll probably get compost from other people as well once we start doing markets again. Compost is definitely the health food for soil and we plan to give it plenty. :) We get the sprouts in trash cans and sometimes they make castles like sand castles at the beach when we dump 'em. Nifty! :) Here's what I mean:
It's so nice to be planting fruit seeds, knowing that we'll be able to grow and take care of them through their fruiting years. :) I'm also gonna' be able to finally plant cotton there too, once we get things going on the edibles. I've got seeds not only from locally grown organic white cotton, but also heirloom cotton varieties from the Mainland that yeild naturally colored cotton: brown, rust & green are the colors I have right now. So I'm soooo looking forward to planting, harvesting, and spinning them in order to make clothes and things truly from scratch, naturally and organically. :)
We've been quite entertained by our pool-pond which is an above ground pool that we're using for ag water storage. It's got fish and plants and is basically a pond in a pool. The water gravity feeds into it from the stream, we have a filter on the intake so we don't suck up any fish from the stream. We have another filter on the intake for the pump so we don't suck up any fish from the pool-pond to water the farm as well. There are two filters in-between there to filter water before it goes through the pump as well. We don't have to use the pump for lots of things down lower as they work gravity fed. We'll be using the pump to run the sprinklers for the veggies and such at certain times of the day though. We gathered fish, clams, prawn and plants from the stream, nearby pond and local rivers to put in our pool-pond to help keep it healthy.
We also got some fish and plants from the pet store and put 'em in there for biodiversity. We weren't sure at first if we were doing the pet store fish a disservice by putting them in a pond after they've probably lived their lives (possibly generations of them have lived their lives) in sheltered aquariums. We weren't sure if they'd be able to adjust to a more natural and wild-ish sort of life. Now we're sure we made the right choice as they've all taken to it very well. We don't see them all of the time as the pool-pond is deeper than we can see and there are all the plants and things in there as well, but when we do see them they look very happy, natural and well-fed. It's fun to watch all the fish we can see and other things in the pond at the end of the day with my hubby. :)
Dragonflies like the pool pond too. I've been trying to film them for a while now. Finally I caught one just sitting on the end of a water hyacinth stem, a pretty red one. I took a few videos of it, but don't have time to upload them now, maybe I'll upload it another time. It's getting late. Here's a picture of it for now. It's wings are down: There's so many other things to tell y'all about to catch up, but I don't have time right now to tell you it all, so we'll have to catch up more later.
Sleep: woke at 7am? for temp., up at 9-ish, but stayed in bed dozing here and there to get more sleep 'till 11-ish to sleep for night at 9pm
Food: water from 3 young coconuts
smoothie of 7 or 8 'cooking' bananas, 2 dates, 1 med. chocolate sapote (& filtered water) while stretching after run another smoothie of 7 'cooking' bananas, 3 dates, 1 med. chocolate sapote after showering (which was after finishing stretching and the other smoothie)
2 cups grapefruit juice after bike ride, followed by 6 surinam cherries off our tree 1 large head of lettuce followed by 5 largish cherry tomatoes sorry, didn't note the times, separated them when separated by time
Exercise: Running! Ran 30 minutes straight for the first time today, and a little over 2.6 miles straight for the first time today as well! :) That makes the average pace a 11 minute, 32 second mile-ish. We hit the 1st mile mark at 10 minutes, 32 seconds though. It was quite challenging today, but I did it! Yay! I think I might continue with the 30 minute running for a while, then move up to the 50 minutes of running.
We were scheduled to run this yesterday, but it was too stormy - thunder and lightning all the night before, through the day and into the night, flash flood warnings and watches, etc. It was still stormy and rainy on the South part of the island today, but was okay up here, just a bit cloudy and windy. Odd. We usually get the rain, but then it is the Winter and the storms usually come from the South then. I almost went out yesterday anyway 'cause it wasn't raining the whole time, but then decided not to risk my life to keep to the schedule. I don't know if that's why it was harder today or not.
Push ups before the second smoothie, forgot to do the pull ups, will do them tomorrow.
Bike Riding! I rode about 3 miles today in order to tell how far we ran with my new odometer/trip meter dealy I got for my bike. It worked great! I still haven't found any of our air pumps, but decided that I'd go to the next town's gas station with my bike in the truck to pump it up. I'd saved up a few other errands I could do there at the same time so it worked out well.
Riding the same course we walk for warm/up and cool downs and run was quite challenging to me on my bike. LOL I guess it's 'cause I haven't been on the thing in a long time - either that or my smoothies were still digesting or I was tired from the run earlier. Any inclines or hills were certainly more noticeable then when on foot. I didn't feel tired from the run - I think it's just that those bike riding muscles weren't used to it anymore. So it was sort of nifty to get a work-out from that too. It was unexpected, but welcome. I think I'll go out on it again tomorrow and see if I can figure out a route that will give us a 3 mile mark to work towards in the 30 minutes' run we'll be doing. The one we've been doing isn't long enough, we actually overshot it today and ended up walking less afterwards for the cool down as a result. It worked out fine though, but I prefer more of a walking cool down than that - at least 5 minutes.
Detox: my sweat was salty again & I actually had a bit of salty back of the throat mucus in the morning before getting up, didn't notice anything else
Wait! I did, almost forgot! This morning when making my bed (a rare occurrence BTW) I suddenly found myself thinking about some food I couldn't quite place at first. I knew it was something I'd eaten back in 1979 or '80 and it was a potato dish, but couldn't quite place the taste memory that was coming up. I could almost place the region it was that I got the food from (it was a restaurant or something someone else made) and that I probably had it with my best friend at the time and that I had it fairly regularly, but still couldn't quite figure out what it was. I still don't know. Later on in the day I had another food memory of some cubed hash browns my mom used to make and I made later on when my son was an infant. When I was going to sleep I had a food memory of the cubed hash browns and cactus I had while in Baja Mexico back in the summer of 1996.
Updating this from Tuesday: Overnight I had a sort of french fry nightmare. LOL. I was given a tray of junk food that I thought I'd bring to my hubby or son to see if they wanted: McDonald's french fries, a cheese burger, a strawberry and vanilla shake and something else I can't remember. As I was going down the stairs I absent mindedly ate a french fry (remember this is a dream) and immediately regretted it, felt that rancid cooked/fried oil taste in the back of my throat down low and that sort of acidic feel there. I'd felt that in real life at times back when I was eating them sometimes or later on - got pretty bad right before I started on 80-10-10. Anyway, back to the dream, as soon as I realized that I'd eaten the french fry 'cause of the effects I'd felt I woke up - like a nightmare. LOL. I didn't feel the anxiety like a nightmare though, but it was similar otherwise.
I'm supposing that my body's working on clearing my arteries or other areas that saturated and/or trans-fat has been stored and/or stuck in my body, which is why I'm reminded of it now. Whatever the case it's an interesting phenomena that I haven't had in quite a while. I figure it's coming back now 'cause I'm doing the running, which I'm sure is doing my body good in ways I can't even imagine.
Female: 6am? temp: 96.74 degrees Fahrenheit, day 14 of my cycle, red day, girl kid icon
You know, I think I'm going to contact the Baby-comp company about the boy and girl icons. I think they're switched on mine 'cause the boy ones come up before the girl ones and I think it should be the other way around. Not that it matters for me in a practical sense, it's more of an intellectual mini-almost-peeve at this point. I don't plan on planning the baby's gender if I do decide to plan to birth another baby, but I'm thinking they should know it's switched or I should know why it shows that way. I thought that the boy swimmers were faster but didn't last as long and the girl ones were slower and had better endurance, that would mean that the boy icon should show before the girl one 'cause they are in relation to ovulation. I'll let you know what they tell me once I get an answer.
The Rest: I've been trying to sleep more to help my running progress and I was doing a great job of it at first, which was reflected in my progress I think. This last week I've had a bit of trouble sleeping, have been a bit distracted with other things going on and have had interruptions to my sleep from things happening to wake me, so I've been in bed a lot longer than I've been getting sleep. At least I've been getting rest. I know I could sleep more 'cause I do actually go to sleep when I get the chance, it's just been interrupted a bunch. I wonder if that's part of the reason I was feeling like I might be overtraining myself with the running and all today and the last time. Overtraining, underrecovering, pretty much the same thing as it's relative.
I thought I might be overtraining 'cause it was a lot harder and I was having trouble finding a pace that felt comfortable like before. I also was not looking forward to it or enjoying it while doing it as much. But then, I haven't felt as comfortable running at the slower pace that I started out with either, so who knows? I do know that it seems like a good idea to maintain at 30 minute runs for now, before continuing on to 50 minutes (via 32, 34, 37, 41, 43, 45 minute runs). I want it to stay fun so I keep doing it. I'll get to 50 minutes eventually, so it's no biggie to have a delay from my plan. When I find that I'm doing well at 30 minutes and feel like more, then I'll add on 2 minutes and see how that goes. I figure my pace will get better in the meantime as a result of sticking to the same length of time running. We'll see...
I'm so excited about the progress we're making at home with all the rearranging of things! We're actually getting close to a noticeable difference and making it more functionally different too! Yay!
Spinning One of the errands I did today when I went to fill up my bike tires was to get a couple of other springs for my spinning wheel. It turned out that the spring I got to replace the original now rusty one just was too tight. I was having trouble getting the correct tension for spin and uptake. There was too small a margin of adjustment so I ended up going back and forth between no tension to spin, and then put tension on to get it to uptake and wind on the spool. It worked okay enough to get some done, but not as well as it could be. I'm going to mess with the two springs tomorrow to see if either of them work out. I have yet to find the same kind of spring as it came with, so have to work with what I find or can adjust.
Sleep: no temp today up at 7am to sleep for night at 10 or 11pm
Food: smoothie with lots of bananas (sorry, didn't count), 3 dates, water and 1 med. chocolate sapote - drank while stretching after run water from 3 young cocos 5 large tangerines 8 chocolate sapotes jicama, 3 tomatoes, part of a small avocado, celery (6 sticks?), & lettuce
Sorry, didn't note the times
I went with a friend to see if we could harvest chocolate sapotes from some trees she knew about today. They weren't quite ready, but there were lots of citrus dropping off the trees. This was great 'cause I still have some chocolate sapotes and was about to run out of citrus since my son and hubby both decided they wanted to drink lots of OJ the day before (when they haven't been having much or any lately). It's a good thing they weren't quite ready 'cause I forgot to bring my picker poles 'cause I needed to leave earlier than I had planned so was in a rush. Oops! Turned out perfect with the citrus though.
I didn't have a chance to post about Thursday, but went overt fat-free then with banana and date smoothies, chocolate sapotes, orange juice and papayas - perhaps some rambutan too, can't remember. (I'm writing this on Saturday evening before going to bed). So good to have bananas again! :)
Exercise: Running! 25 minutes solid with approximate 5 minute warm up and cool down walks before and after respectively, probably over 2 miles. Had to cancel running on Thursday as planned 'cause my hubby and I woke too late to fit it in before going to the farm & back too late to do it afterwards. I was determined to run Friday and not skip yet another day, so we went out even though it was cold (for us), very windy and rainy off and on. Luckily it only sprinkled on us a bit during the run, unfortunately it was during our warm-up walk, which was quite brisk due to being cold. We also started the running at a faster pace than I planned simply 'cause we were so cold and wanted to get warm faster, heh. Yeah, we're underdressed, acclimatized wimps. It was probably only in the 60's (Fahrenheit), but that's cold to us, especially when combined with the 30+ MPH winds and moist air and rain. It was a challenging run for me indeedy, but I did it!
We went 12 minutes and then turned around, didn't pass the place where we started so our pace on the way back was quite a bit slower than on the way there, but then I knew that. There's a slight hill that's downhill there and uphill back. It usually doesn't make much of a difference 'cause I'm warmed up on the way back, but the strong wind was blowing against us on the way back which made it even more challenging. We didn't measure out how far we went, but did note that it was 10 minutes, 35 seconds when we passed the mile mark on the way there. We went pretty far past it before turning around at 12 minutes in and kept the same pace that whole time. The pace dropped off fairly soon after turning around and going against the wind though. Once we made it up the hill (towards the end) and turned the corner, the wind was from the side instead and our pace picked up a tad so that we weren't all that far from the point where we started. Whatever. I'm just glad that I went out when the weather made me feel like staying home - and that I still ran for a longer period of time straight than I ever have before, even though it was quite challenging at times.
My hubby was so sweet in motivating me during the run when it got hard. He was coming up with military marching songs and such to sing to my running cadence to keep me going. I don't know if it helped or not, but I appreciated the gesture and effort. He was running with 5 pound weights in his hands instead of the 8 pound ones he usually has been using lately so I guess that's how he could muster the breath for it - or perhaps it's the fact that he has waay more running experience than I do. I joked about him being a show off, but I know it was to help me. I help him run consistently 'cause he goes when I do and he helps me keep going when it's rough. Nice. :)
Harvesting! Hiking around, picking the fruit & carrying it back, making a couple more trips of the same, carrying the boxes of what I gathered into the house, etc.
Moving! We're rearranging the stuff in our house and moved some heavy items around today. Yay! So exciting to see the progress.
Push ups and pull ups I think it was only one set of each.
Detox: Not as much as I would have thought due to the massive saltiness of those olives I had the other day. My sweat seemed salty, but didn't get the salty mucus down the back of my throat in the morning, in the shower or any time - so far, at least.
I did have some of the lung 'soreness' sensation when taking really deep breaths, but know what that's from - the running. Guess it's the VO2 Max developing.
Female: 6am temp: 96.58 degrees Fahrenheit, day 11 of my cycle, red day, little boy kid icon (FYI had boy & girl icons on the day after this, Sat., day 12 of my cycle)
The Rest: Bike: We got an odometer for my bike today! :) I'm going to use it to figure out mile markers and routes for future runs and/or after runs that haven't followed predefined routes. I still need to get the air in my tires, so it might be a while since I still don't know where the air pump is (think it's in my son's room somewhere).
Yoga: I took my old yoga mat out and hung it on the clothes line, scrubbed it a bit and sprayed it off with the hose, left it to dry. Unfortunately, it's been stormy since then and not enough sun to dry it as of the writing of this (Saturday evening). If it's not dry by Monday I think I'll start doing the surya namaskara asanas without it. That should be fine 'cause I plan to run 30 minutes on Sunday and I shouldn't need a yoga mat for just them.
Blogging: I've been using Blogger to do my more recent journals, which had been working fairly well for a while. I just noticed that it's sort of tweaking with the previous posts areas especially in the archived ones so I'll have to fix that at some point. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Spinning Yarn: I'm having fun with the cotton spinning although I've also been really grateful for the heirloom wool sweater I inherited from my mom when it's raining and windy. It's easy to spin and a natural wicking material. It's not vegan, but if they were treated really well I think it'd be fine. I've thought about raising a sheep or two and treating them like pets, brushing them out and using that to spin, but don't know if they'll do well here or not. I know people have goats here quite often, but haven't seen many sheep. I started to try to figure it out online. I wasn't able to figure out how they'd do here, but did get reminded that people often raise them to eat rather than just for wool. Doi! I had forgotten all about that. So then I started to find out about different breeds good for wool, meat or both and decided to try to get a breed only for wool so I don't support raising them for meat indirectly. I might get one from the humane society though, whatever breed it is just to give it a home, if there is one there. It looks like Merino, Leicester, Lincoln and Rambouillet are potentials as this point. Of course this is all premature 'cause I don't have a place to keep one just yet, but I can work on figuring out if that's an okay idea or not. Still workin' on it, thought I'd share...
Sleep: woke at 2:15am to pee & took temp., up at 8:30am laid down from ~2-3pm, slept about 1/2 that to sleep for night at 11pm-ish?
Food: ~10am - fresh squeezed orange juice (OJ) from I don't know how many oranges, after run ~1 gallon ~11am - ~dozen Surinam cherries as I picked 'em from our tree/bush after OJ settled ~3pm - young coconut water ~1 gallon after getting up from laying down ~4pm - ~7 medium chocolate sapotes after the coco water settled ~5:30pm - dozen or so langsat - the ones that were good to eat, not all were ~6 or 7pm - small avocado, 3 yellow tomatoes, ~1 large head romaine, ~8-12 sticks celery, 1-2 Tbs tahini, ~4 Tbs lemon juice from lemons from our tree
I was a little concerned in the morning about the continuing lack of ripe bananas and fruit in general, but was able to get by with some oranges and the chocolate sapote that ripened. Yay! Well, that is, until dinner... planned to have jicama with the yellow tomatoes and celery, but the jicama I'd been given for free turned out to be moldy (guess that's why it was free). So I decided to have a salad, but the lettuce I'd gotten was really super bitter and tough so that I just couldn't deal with it without some fat on it. I gave the outer leaves to my guinea pig 'cause I couldn't even deal with them with dressing and then made the dressing with tahini and lemon, saved some thicker to dip celery in too. I discovered that one of the avocados was ripe and ate it 'cause I just haven't been getting enough calories lately from this little fruit shortage I've been going through. Yeah, definitely having some difficulty with the fat percentages here, as well as undereating the carbs. I'm gonna' make sure I get lots of fruit tomorrow to straighten this all out.
Exercise: ~9:30am - running! Ran 2 miles today without walking in between - for the first time ever. It took 22 minutes and 5 or 6 seconds, so I guess the average pace was a 11 minute and 3 second mile. I was supposed to just run for 22 minutes today, but was so close to the 2 mile mark I kept going. Of course, I am still doing the walking warm-up and cool down, but haven't been timing that part in particular. We've been walking to a spot that we measured a mile from, which takes about 5 minutes brisk walking to get to/from so figure it's about a 5 minute warm up and the same for cool down. I got to the 1 mile mark at 10 minutes and 25 or 26 seconds, turned around and guess the second mile was at a 11 minute and 40 second pace. Not bad for the first time I've ever run 22 minutes solid without stopping to walk as well as the first time I've ever run two miles without stopping. I'm happy with it, for now that is. ;) As I said before I'm working towards various goals and am happy with my progress. Yay! I think I just might be getting through the non-runnerness of my life after all.
~11am - push ups - sorry, forgot to count again ~3pm - more push ups, didn't count them either - also did some partial ones on knees with the clapping thing & just training the clapping part a bit followed by pull ups - assisted by my feet a bit on the way up for now - am doing them off my hammock chair's bar and using the hammock chair to put my feet on for the assisting ~6pm - more push ups before dinner ~10pm - stretching
Detox: A bit of a feeling in my lungs after my running, but nothing specifically detoxing - think it was more recovery.
Female: 2:15am temp: 96.58 degrees Fahrenheit, day 8 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons
The Rest: I was going to go into the farm with my hubby today, but didn't have time to get ready so skipped it. We had clothes in the washer that needed to be hung up to dry too. At the last minute we found out that our son wanted to go in to class earlier than my hubby and I thought. That's fine. I'm going there tomorrow anyway. It's a good thing I stayed with the clothes 'cause they needed to be dried and they had to be monitored 'cause it was an off and on rainy day. It would have been a hassle to take 'em with us and try to dry them at a laudramat 'cause we needed to leave the truck at the college and take the bus back so our son could get home in the evening. He has a class today that lets out after the buses stop running. Staying at home also gave me enough time to cut lots of fresh grass for my guinea pig, deal with the compost and various other things so it turned out great.
I'm posting this on 1/28/08, so anything I didn't write down at the time is from memory. I'm sort of out of the swing of keeping track of it all.
Sleep: don't remember when I got up, think it was about 8:30am, had gone to sleep pretty late the night before laid down from about 5:45-6:45pm 'cause my neck was a little stiff and I had a tad of a headache - figured out that it was from working it the day before. I had walked to the farmer's market (about 3-5 blocks-ish) and gotten two bags of stuff. When I was leaving a farmer told me that they had a bunch of chocolate sapotes for me, so I took the box of them. I carried the box of them home, with the bags over my right shoulder. I carried it with my right shoulder up a bit attempting to keep the bags from falling off my shoulder, which eventually they did and I carried it with them fallen to my elbow. I'm pretty sure it's 'cause I carried it so strangely that my neck was a bit sore on the right side. Amazing to remember how I wouldn't have been able to even lift that box to put it in my car before I started 80/10/10 over 5 years ago, and now I'm carrying it home. If it happens again, I'll figure out a way to secure the bags in a different way so I don't have to do that thing with my shoulder the whole way again.
Food: small cup of thin banana smoothie after run when stretching (not many bananas ripe) lots of rambutan - probably about 5 or 6 pounds lots of water 6 or so medium chocolate sapotes ~8 medium jicama, 3 medium tomatoes, 7 sticks celery, 5 large leaves romaine, 1 small "Hawaiian oregano" leaf, 1/2 avocado - actually only ate about 3/4 of this jicama mix
There's a bit of a shortage of bananas on-island right now due to high winds knocking over the fruiting ones a little while back, so I had a little shortage of ripe bananas. It takes a bit longer for them to ripen in the winter so there's a bit of a gap right now. Luckily I've got the chocolate sapotes instead. I'd love to have 'em both though. I probably overate the fat percentage-wise for today, but I think it'll even out with other days when I eat less or no overt fat in relation to my calories. It didn't feel too heavy last night (the 27th) or today (when I'm writing this). Perhaps it's 'cause I didn't eat the whole evening thing so didn't overeat the fat after all...
Exercise: Running! Followed by stretching some pushups or some sort of calestenic sort of thing, can't remember which at this point 2 or 3 sets of bench press & fly equivalents on an exercise machine little bit of quick squats followed by stretching before bed 'cause leg muscles wanted something...
I've continued to run every other day with my hubby since I posted last. It's been working out really well. He used to be a really good runner before he broke his leg and had a metal plate in it. It took a long time to get them to take the metal back out and he couldn't run with it, so he got out of the swing of it. He hasn't really run the whole time we've been together so he's excited about getting back to it (after 20 years away from it) too. I knew that he'd still be better at it than me 'cause of his muscle memory vs. my muscle inexperience running-wise. It's worked out well though 'cause he's been able to just carry dumbbells and/or do fancier stepping to even it up so we can still run together. It's fun! He's up to carrying a 8 pound dumbbell in each hand by now when all I can do is just run. LOL. I'm still running for longer times than ever before in my life each time, and my pace is gradually getting better as well, so I'm running farther than ever too.
We ran 20 minutes solid this time, with 5 minute walking for warm-up and cool-down. We travelled 1.85 miles in the 20 minutes of running, making it an average pace of a 10 minute, 48 second mile. I wanted to push the pace a little for the first mile, but not too much 'cause I had to keep going. I ran the first mile at the fastest pace I've done yet: 10 minutes, 7 seconds! Yay! I then decided to slow a little for the rest 'cause I didn't wanna' miss out on running for longer than ever (20 minutes solid) either. So the rest of the run (.85 miles) was at a pace of a 11 minute, 37 second pace, still not bad for me. Yay!
I'll probably not push it as much the next few times. Part of the reason I decided to push it this time was to see how close I could get to 2 miles in the 20 minutes and also 'cause I knew that I was increasing my time by 2 minutes from the last time and will increase it 2 minutes the next time as well. This is less of an increase than I'll have for a few workouts 'cause the time after that will be 3 minutes more and then 5 minutes more before it goes back to 2 minutes more again. The 5 minute more workout will take me to 30 minutes of running solid! Yay! I'll probably push the pace again the workout after that, when it's a 32 minute run - assuming I'm able to keep up the increases each time as planned.
One thing that's cool is that I've realized that I now can sort of maintain a jog at about a 12 minute mile pace as a rest if needed, almost like walking used to be. That's huge for me 'cause I started out at a 13 minute mile pace or slower for my running/pushing it just a little over a month ago. Nice.
My Ashtanga video series arrived too! Now if I could only find my mat... I thought I knew where it was, but can't find it now. Ug. Well, I did watch the 1st two of them already and confirmed that they are exactly what I wanted, which is great! If I can't find my mat soon I'll figure out something else or get another one. I kind of wanted to wait to start on it full on until after I'm not increasing my running time anymore (which would be once I'm doing 50 minutes straight, in about 2 or three weeks - Feb 16th-ish according to my plan). That was when I thought I'd be doing the primary series though, which is about 2 hours long. There is another one that has a lot of the same stuff in it that's only an hour and 15 minutes though, so I might start on that earlier. I'll probably start on the surya namaskaras sometime this week. I'll start on them as an every other day thing too, then do them 6 days a week, then adding the rest of the shorter (1 1/4 hour) one every other day, eventually becoming 6 days a week later on. After seeing that 75 minute thing I might put off doing the full primary series 'till later, once I'm doing well with that first. I figure it might prepare my muscles better for some of the more advanced things towards the middle of the primary series better that way. It'll be sooo cool to be able to do that stuff. I just love it!
Detox: Hmm.. can't remember anything in particular in this area..
Female: 5am temp: 96.67 degrees Fahrenheit, day 6 of my cycle, amber (yellow) day, no kid icons
The Rest: About the cotton spinning: I did make it to that meeting with my friends. It turns out that there's nothing special or different. We sort of determined that part of my problems with it had to be with the nature of cotton - it doesn't hold its spin as readily as wool, and also my spinning wheel. I wasn't able to bring my spinning wheel 'cause when I went to get it I discovered that it needed some restoration and repair before using it again. Apparently the metal pieces had rusted, which maybe was part of the reason I was having difficulty with it before - it was probably affecting it before it was visibly rusty.
My hubby and I got new solid brass hooks for guiding the yarn on the spindle to replace the rusty ones. They should not rust so readily. I also got a new spring. We sanded and oiled the rust in the aperture and turning parts and got a new string to replace for the 'drive belt' of it. Now it's working peachy-keen! ;) I've been able to start spinning again. Yay! Once I get a bunch of yarn done I'll figure out whether I'm gonna' weave, knit or crochet it. I think I might start with weaving it because of the spin thing, unless I ply it first. That means I've gotta' make a loom again (gave away the ones I had that my mom made before, but remember how to do it). I'm having fun spinning the cotton when I have time. I just love treadle operated things, so cool!
1/21/08 - I ran over a mile straight for the first time, ever! :)
Sleep: woke at 6am for temp., up at about 9am? nap from 4:30-5:30ish to sleep for night at 10pm
Food: ~10am: young coco water after run from about 3 cocos (shared 5 with hubby) followed by smoothie of 7 ripe raw "cooking bananas" and filtered water
~1pm: 5 medium papayas from our yard followed by 5 small chocolate sapote
~6pm: orange juice squeezed from 5 large oranges followed by about 1 bunch celery stalks (outer ones from several, actually) dipped in lemon-tahini dip (2Tbsp tahini & lemon juice to desired texture), a little nutritional yeast sprinkled on top of a few bites (~1Tbsp total)
I don't usually eat nutritional yeast, but felt like having some tonight, so did. It was nice.
I think I might have had more bananas in there somewhere, but can't remember at this point, sorry.
Exercise: ~9:30am: Running! :) ~10:15am: stretching after running ~12:30pm: something before lunch that I can't recall now - busy day, didn't think I'd need to remember at the time ~5:30pm: some pushups and stuff before the OJ
I'm actually working on my running and making loads of progress now! Yay! Today I ran for 12min. solid, followed by 3 min. walking and 5 more minutes running (plus 5 min. warmup walking and more than 5 min. cool down walking to get back home) When I got to the mile mark from where I started running, it was 10min. and 20 seconds later. Cool! Back in December when I started back at working on my running I couldn't even run 2 minutes solid like I had been able to before. Wow!
This is my 10th running session since I started this new plan and it's working fantastically! I'm running every other day (except a time where I skipped two days instead of just one and another where I skipped three days - both towards the beginning). I've been breaking records for myself left a right with this, very exciting. My body keeps pulling through and amazing me. The plan started out with a series of one minute running with one minute walking and that was challenging back then. I'd never timed myself running in the past, but know that when I did and was running better than I could remember being able to do in the past, two minutes was the limit of what I could do before having to walk again. And even after walking for a while I wasn't able to run the two minutes again that same day. So needless to say, I was breaking my own records fairly quickly with every workout, heh. Helps to start with such a low bar for that. LOL.
But now I'm not only running for longer periods of time than I ever recorded before, but I am also running farther than I know I've ever done without stopping before - AND increasing my pace from workout to workout at the same time as increasing my and length of time running, which both increase my distance as well. The day before yesterday I ran the fastest and longest ever as well: 10 minutes solid which got me to about .9 of a mile, which was a pace of about a 11.11min. mile. That was an increase of both pace and length of time from two days before that where I ran 8 minutes solid which got me to about .7 of a mile, which was a pace of about 13.33min. mile.
Today I can now say that "I'm a runner." I'm still not a good runner IMO, 'cause I'm still not going as fast as I want or as long as I want, but I am running regularly and can run over a mile solid at a decent enough pace (close to a 10 min. mile). I'm certainly not ready to win any races (except I could blow my 2-month ago self away now LOL), but I do now consider myself a runner.
Growing up with asthma I never developed running 'cause they always said it wasn't good for me and I'd get weezing and such when I tried. Apparently it can be good for people with asthma, if kept in the comfortably moderate range. I don't have asthma anymore, so can't say. I can say though that I have felt mucus come up from my lungs during my recovery in the day and a half between workouts, sometimes coughing as a result. I had a tiny hint of a weeze one night if I took really deep breaths. All of that was early on though and now I don't get it as much if at all.
It's interesting how I've done lots of aerobic exercise of other kinds through the years and was able to get my heart rate up without feeling it in my lungs like that. I've noticed that the thing that allowed me to work out so that I felt it mostly in my heart was rebounding and the thing that did the same for my lungs was and always has been running. Well, actually swimming might be more than running but it's hard to tell 'cause I've never mastered the breathing with the stroke dealy - so far, at least. Perhaps in a year or so after I've got the running down I'll work on the swimming...
My initial goal for running was to be able to run over 8 minutes straight without having to stop to walk. I've done that already. Next it was to increase it up to 30 minutes and then 50 minutes at a time. I also wanted to have a pace of at least a 10 minute mile (which I'm close to doing already), then 8 minute mile. I thought I wouldn't be doing the 10 minute mile 'till I was up to 30 minutes running at once, so it's cool I'm ahead of schedule in that way.
I'll be happy with maintaining at 50 minute runs every other day at a pace of at least 8 minute miles and will build up to that, which also lets me meet my goal of around 20 or so miles a week 'cause I'd be basically doing a 10K every run at that point. If I get to a pace that allows me to run about 7 miles at a time in the 50 minutes or decide to do a longer run once a week, then I might run on a regular schedule 3 days a week rather than the every other day thing. It's a bit easier to arrange other things around it if it's happening on the same days of the week every week. I like having the day off in between to do other stuff or simply recover (although I haven't felt like I'm actually recovering so far). It is tempting to run every day though 'cause I like how I feel from it... we'll just have to see what I end up doing.
I want to start doing Ashtanga again. I've missed it terribly. That would be for about 2 hours a day, six days a week. I've broken down and ordered a video of the primary series the teacher I used to have (that moved away) recommended. It should arrive around when I'm up to 50 minutes of running at a time which will be good timing. I've been trying to do some on my own, but can't quite remember it all well enough and will appreciate the guiding of the video.
I also want to do stuff with weights 3 times a week (about an hour each time) instead of just when I think of it or have a chance like I'm doing now. I want to continue doing bodyweight things, going to the beach and such too. I'm going to be helping my hubby with the farm again fairly soon, so I need to schedule that in as well.
I want to pump up my bike's tires again now that I can actually get to it again (it was sort of buried in stuff our garage for a while) and use that to get around with in town and for fun. And, of course there are the occasional classes, videos and dancing that I love to do... so you can see why I want to keep the running down to every other day so that I can do all the other stuff too, heh. It's all so fun and nifty it's hard to limit it to one or two things. I guess I'm sort of making up for all the time in the rest of my life that I wasn't into exercise or something. It's just too much fun now! :)
Detox: Nothing much to speak of.. a tad of mucus in the shower in the morning, a little feel in my lungs that they're clearing out from the running in the evening after the run...
Female: 6am temp: 97.14 degrees fahrenheit, day 27 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons I thought that I might be starting my period today 'cause my temperature was down a bit, but it wasn't down as far as it usually is during the first couple of weeks of my cycle. I thought it might happen over night between today and tomorrow, but wasn't sure what would happen when running as I don't have any experience with running that far and long at a time. It's 10pm and it hasn't started yet, so guess it'll happen later tonight or tomorrow...
The Rest: Not a whole lot else to report in this area for today. I was going to help a friend with their computer tutoring them, but they decided to do it another time once we got started.
I thought I had to go in to jury duty tomorrow but it looks like it's been postponed a month. I'm really happy about that for two reasons. I can help out my friend sooner and another who wanted help in a couple of days too. Mostly I'm excited 'cause I will be able to make it to see if I can learn how to spin cotton tomorrow after all. We had it scheduled for last week, but had to cancel 'cause the woman that was going to show us had a cold or something like that and rescheduled it. I was afraid I was going to miss it due to the jury duty, but won't miss it now. Yay!
I have a spinning wheel that I used to spin wool on about 15 years ago, and a hand spindle that I did the same. I haven't been able to get the cotton to spin so am not sure what's different about it. My friend and I that are going to learn how to spin cotton have both personally hand harvested our own cotton from organically grown plants here on-island and hand picked the seeds out of them as well. She has not spun yarn before and I have not been successful with cotton so we're both really excited about this meeting. We both want to be able to grow our own clothing and such. I'm thinking that perhaps I need to card the cotton in order to spin it properly. The wool I had was already carded and such. Or perhaps there's another requirement or difference in doing it.
My hubby has been working on making me some circular bamboo knitting needles with bamboo and some heavy fishing line I got. It's so nifty to make stuff with the crochet hooks he's carved for me and I know I'll love the knitting needles when they're done too! I'll try to post some pictures of some of the things I've been making with the unbleached bulk cotton string I got from the hardware store sometime soon. I think the first thing I'll make with the hand spun cotton is a yoga rug/mat for Ashtanga. I need to make another loom for that though 'cause about 7 or so years ago I gave away all the looms I had that my mom made, but it's fairly easy to do and it'll be fun to show my friend how to make her own at the same time. :)
Well, this is a very long post. I'm going to end it and post it before it becomes yet another unfinished draft of a post not ever posted...
