Everything In Moderation

So I've been procrastinating on posting an update for two reasons:

1.  Our pictures from Greece are still on Paul's camera - I'll try to update with pictures this evening
2.  I've been slacking off pretty seriously.

While I enjoy eating healthy things and still get more excited about spinach and feta than I do about yogurt lamb, I thought it would be important to not worry so much about my diet while I was on vacation, and I have no regrets.  They have rich, delicious food that is very different from any Greek food I've had in Belgium or back in the states.  So I ate some Moussaka (which is just ridiculously heavy) and also ordered some more vegetarian meals.  The best was when I ordered a vegetarian gyro and was served pita bread with fries inside of it.  Excellent nutrition win, right there. 

Paul and I were able to spend four days in Athens and four in Santorini.  In Athens we saw the Acropolis, the Agora and all the other must-see Greek archaelogical monuments.  We even got to see a play in the theatre built within the Acropolis in 160 AD by the Romans.  The play was in Greek and was a musical.  Paul was not pleased.  BUT, it was fun anyway and there was a lot of very low humor we were able to catch.  According to what I got from it, Aristophanes was a big fan of crossdressing and penis jokes.  I'm not sure how true they were to the original script....

We went to the ruins at Delphi and got to see the Temple of Apollo (what's left of it) and all the ruins that went with it.  So apparently the oracle would prophecy nine months out of the year during which time the people at the temple worshipped Apollo.  Three months of the year for whatever reason there was no prophesying, so they switched over worship to Dionysus.  During that three months they would drink, sing and skip their way to a cave about 11 miles away called the Korykian Cave where they would have orgies and other debauchery.  Paul and I hiked to the cave with the aid of a Greek caterer who threw us in the back of his pitch black van to give us a ride the last couple of miles down the road.  Never been thrown in the back of a black van before, it was a slightly nerve-wracking experience, especially on a dirt road.  But we made it, and the cave was beautiful. 

In Santorini we stayed in Perissa, our hotel was just a five minute walk from this gorgeous black sand beach.  Also, it was 25 USD a night with breakfast included.  I loved that Greece was so cheap.  You can eat and drink like a king in most places for 20 Euro/person.  We rented a car one day and visited the Doric ruins from about 400 BC, and then checked out the Akrotiri ruins from 1500 BC.  There's speculation that Santorini and Crete were part of an empire centered around the Atlantis myth in about 1700 BC.  Unfortunately, the island got constantly rocked by earthquakes and erupting volcanos.  Which was bad for them, but nice for the preservation of their ruins.  They built two story houses (seriously, one of them has an entire wall in tact) and had indoor plumbing with hot and cold running water.  These are things that the rest of Greece didn't get their hands on about 2000 years later, if I'm not mistaken. 

Speaking of the volcano, it is conveniently located in the middle of the sort of archipelagic circle that comprises Santorini and some smaller isles.  We took a boat trip out to it and hiked up it (it's active, but dormant), you can see pockets of steam and sulfur coming out of the ground or hillside at various locations.  We also swam in the nearby hot springs and caked ourselves with sulfur mud.  I then proceeded to hide behind a rock, fully caked in mud and tried to scare people.  According to our tour guide the eruption of Santorini is one of the largest in human history and may have been what caused the 10 plagues in the bible.  The first born sons would have died because they slept on the lowest levels of the houses and were the only ones close enough to the CO2 or something along those lines.  The red sea parted because of an impending tsunami and I can't remember the rest, but it's pretty cool to think about. 

We also spent some time hardcore relaxing on the beach.  Especially the last day there which was super windy which led to Paul's smoothie completely covering most of my body.  I then had to run into the Mediterranean (which is notoriously freezy for most of the year) and unstickify myself as best I could.  I smelled like chocolate for the whole eight hour ferry ride back where we couldn't find a place to sit.  I was super-gross. 

I had visions of getting up and doing a fifteen miler through Athens around 6AM on our first Saturday there.  I didn't get to bed until 3AM with our traveling to the hotel.  I realized that that was probably a terrible way to start a vacation.  I figured I would run in Santorini as well, but we did a lot of hiking and I enjoyed sleeping in with Paul and eating lazy breakfasts.  And despite all of that not running and taking it easy I still got sick after I got back.  I  had a cold all last week and didn't work out as well as I didn't want to prolong it. 

This weekend we had a nice, relaxing weekend.  I set aside some clothes to donate after reading most of Tammy Strobel's book: You Can Buy Happiness (And it's cheap).  She lives in a Tiny House in Portland, and the book has made me re-evaluate how I look at objects.  It's also at least temporarily killed my desire for things I don't need.  We were lazy all day Saturday. 

On Sunday, I woke up at 9 and did an hour or so of Yoga, followed by a few minutes of meditation.  I made myself a soy chai with cinnamon and laid out on my Yoga mat in the sun inside.  Paul made us a delicious veggie omelette and I cooked us up some chocolate chip pancakes.  I spent the next few hours reading my new book on the back balcony sunning myself.  It was so warm I was able to strip down to swimsuit level.  We went on a run in the woods nearby after a while, and I didn't even bring my Garmin. 

There's really no way I will be able to make mileage goals for the Koln marathon, for which if I was on a real plan I would be currently tapering down for, so I've decided to just do free running for the next few weeks.  I felt a bit guilty taking two weeks off, but my shins did enjoy the recovery time.  I want to realign my priorities and shift into a healthier mindset about food and exercise, one with more wiggle room and maybe one that will be more sustainable for the long-term. 

Now to figure out how to run 100 miles with a hippie attitude... Challenge Accepted.

Motivation

Is motivation something that we are born with a certain amount of?  Does will power run out after you've used all of yours up, or does it recharge?  What enables some people to charge on at full speed for months on end while some of us can't seem to even get started?

I like to think that inertia has something to do with this.  Once we make that heroic effort to get up off the couch and put on our running shoes every subsequent effort becomes a little easier until it becomes a habit and something to look forward to rather than a chore. 



theBerry.com



I have a habit of seeing things in black and white, it is all or nothing.  I don't think I'm alone in tending towards this absolutist view.  If I've missed one workout it's easy for me to get discouraged and start thinking negative thoughts.  Despite having worked out at least five times a week since February and successfully running a marathon I still feel like a sedentary lifestyle is just one missed workout away.  I feel that motivation also works in reverse.  If I miss that one workout it gets a little harder to push myself towards the next one. 

I called my dad and told him I was feeling bad for not having run since Sunday.  He quoted one of my favorite motivational books, Scott Jurek's Eat & Run and said, "Do you want to be somebody?"  Well, yeah.  I just don't want to have to go running today.  Let future me deal with this.  Also, I should divulge that I harbor aspirations of becoming an elite ultrarunner.  A weird, niche, offbeat dream, I know, but it's mine. 

Luckily, I have backup.  Bemoaning my several attempts at getting in a workout yesterday I was curled up on the futon and my body felt like lead.  I had a bunch of food (mostly healthy, but still) right when I got home and couldn't convince myself to get up.  I had tried all day and it just wasn't happening, sometimes life gets in the way of working out. 

Enter my loving boyfriend.  "Get up, or I'll sit on you."  Me, "No, I don't want to.  Be nice to me."  This went on for several minutes until he literally pushed me off of the futon, made me stand up and told me to go run.  I felt awful.  After those walking lunges the day before I couldn't sit down without my butt hurting.  The thought of running just sounded exceptionally painful.  But I put my running shoes on and shuffled out the door, too full of food with my butt hurting on every stride.  I was crawling along at a 12:30 pace for half a mile, feeling like a first time, severly obese jogger.  I picked up a little bit and stretched out.  Then I did 6 miles is 49:25, just over an 8 minute mile.  It didn't feel good, it didn't feel easy, but I did it.  The good news is, now I know that even if I feel awful I can still run, and fast.  This is the bad news as well.  

theBerry.com



  So I guess my motivation comes from a lot of places:

• Inertia
• Paul pushing me up off the futon and encouraging me to workout more in the first place.
• My dad (an LTC Orthopedic Trauma Army Surgeon and an ultramarathoner)
• Thinking about how whenever I'm thinking about running, Scott Jurek and Dean Karnazes have probably been running for hours and still have hours to go.
• Oh, and www.theBerry.com and their "Daily Motivation" posts. 







Eating Healthy Isn't All That Complicated

We make eating well out to be much more complicated than it is.  Here's the big secret: 


Src: www.diseaseproof.com



This is the new food pyramid.  I eat as much as I want up to the third row of the pyramid.  If you eat a lot of veggies, legumes and fruits your stomach will be full of fiber and nutrients.  This signals to your body that you are full.  Unlike eating food weighed down with lots of sugar, fat etc. when you eat healthy food your body loses the desire to stuff itself.  Think about it this way: Your stomach is a container.  When the food that we eat is very concentrated in fat, calories and sugar your stomach does not become full, this is why we stuff ourselves.  We have a ton of calories in our stomach but the stretch receptors are not activated, so we do not feel full.    On the other hand, when you fill your stomach with very low calorie, fibrous food like all of the things listed above your stomach gets full and you stop eating naturally.  

It can be difficult to start this pattern of eating, but once you get started it becomes much easier.  Eat way larger portions of any of the things above than you are used to.  Eat as much of that as you want, just avoid cooking with oils and butter.  For example, yesterday I had:

Breakfast: 1 mango, 1 tin of blackberries, 1 banana, 2 tblsp. chia seeds, walnuts

Lunch: Leftover Quinoa with mushrooms, butternut squash & walnuts

Snacks: A handful of wheat thins, a fruit and nut bar and a couple handfuls of fruit/nut trail mix.

Dinner: 8 ball zucchini stuffed with veggies cooked in a bit of olive oil, tomato sauce & pesto, a bit of goat cheese and an egg on top.  On the side 3 slices whole grain bread, a large helping of the stewed veggies (zucchini, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, onion).

Dessert: Peanut butter, honey & banana sandwich on whole grain bread.

This was a pretty heavy eating day for me, I was really hungry, but I kept it pretty healthy.  Everything I ate gave me nutrients that help my body function better, there were no gratuitous calories.  You just have to learn to build your meals in a new way.  Fruits are the center of lunch, veggies/legumes are the center of lunch & dinner.  Throw some lean meat in there if you want.  The key isn't necessarily eating vegan or vegetarian, it's eating things with a high nutrient contect and a low caloric content.  A vegan that eats a lot of non grain carbs as the basis of their diet will be a lot more unhealthy than someone who some meat every day but also eats a lot of fruits and veggies.  And that's my spiel on healthy eating.  It's common sense. 

And here's the key: The more you eat healthy, the more you lose your taste for unhealthy things.  When you start eating healthy, unhealthy foods lose their appeal and don't make you feel good.  It's all about inertia.  Start working out, start eating healthy and it all snowballs until it becomes a force of habit.  It gets easier, a lot easier.  It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle choice.  For more information about it, read Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman or go to his website at www.diseaseproof.com.

My favorite quote of the week: Real strength is breaking a chocolate bar apart with your bare hands and then eating only one small piece. 

I've just been staying off the sweets altogether because one does not simply consume only one oreo. 

I've been slacking off on my running since Sunday.  It's difficult trying to balance crossfit and running, especially trying to do crossfit on my own since I haven't been able to go after work.  It's a lot harder to stay motivated and push yourself during the workout without other people doing it as well.  I've been making up my workouts or basing them on exisiting workouts since I don't know the form for a lot of the crossfit exercises.

Monday: 10 rounds total with 2 min rest in between each round:

4 rounds 1 km bicycle

3 rounds 500m row

3 rounds 400m run

It might sound easy, but I pushed each of those intervals to max effort.

Tuesday:  30-30-20-20-10-10 with five pushups in each set

Walking Lunges

Abmat butterfly situps

Kettleball swings (15 lbs)

I was exhausted after work yesterday, so I neglected running.  I'm trying to learn to listen to my body and give it rest when it needs it.  No way I'm getting sick before Greece.  We leave on Friday for our Santorini/Athens trip!

Belgian Float Trips

Thursday's Crossfit Workout:

4 rounds:

1 min. burpees

30s rest

1 min. toes to bar (I did knees to elbows)

30s rest

1 min. doubleunders (I did regular jump roping, which was surprisingly harder than I remember it being)
30s rest

1 min. pullups (Well I tried my best, anyhow)

2 min rest

It was kind of a bummer not being able to do most of the exercises to their full potential.  My hands were all torn up from all the bar work and I didn't feel like I got as good of a workout as I could have.  Luckily that left me pretty rested up for Friday.  I brought my Garmin in to the gym so I could explore some new areas around work during my run.  I ran a pretty epic 7 mile run (in 58 minutes)!  I was flying.  I don't know if it's all those box jumps, or just feeling like I'm stronger but I was able to push it really hard.  I'm pretty sure that was my fastest 7 miler ever. 

Saturday was planned for a nice kayak workout and then some crossfit with Paul, Tim & Elisa.  That was before we realized that there were pubs along the way during the float.  It turned into an all out drinking float.  We turned a 3 hour float into an 8 hour float.  I got knocked on my butt a couple times and one of the British guys with us tipped our canoe over, on purpose!  It was flipping cold.  

http://www.mossbikes-dinant.be/curiosites.php?lg=en

 If it weren't for the castles along the way I could have completely believed I was in the Ozarks.  It was an unexpected, super fun time.  Needless to say I was feeling pretty crappy on Sunday from all of the debauchery.   So I made egg & chorizo burritos and a batch of super sweet blueberry muffins and continued my health rebellion. 

http://allrecipes.com/Cook/1802
5653/Photo.aspx?photoID=1078

 Somehow, I managed to get myself off the couch and go for a run.  No matter how fit you get there are still days when the idea of running just freaking sucks.  I flew my first mile because I was pretty pissed off at myself for slacking off so hard.  I wanted to get my body as far away from home before I gave up, so that at least I would have to drag myself back and would get some exercise that way.  So I ran a half marathon (and maybe burned 2/3 of the muffins I devoured), in a minute slower than my record time in Oberstdorf at 1:51.  So there's that.  You never know how hard you can push yourself if you don't put on your running shoes. 

Oh My God, Zoos.

So whenever its a sunny day in Belgium (which is rare, but it's been great lately) I like to run to the zoo at lunch.  It's a five mile roundtrip and a great way to break up the work day.   I was feeling pretty good on the way out, thinking about how I could probably become an awesome elite athelete pretty easily.  On the way back, not so good.  I was sore from crossfit the past few days, and I didn't eat a snack before I went.  I was cranky, miserable and pretty sure that I could never run so much as a half marathon ever again.  It's amazing how perspective can color things. 

The highlight of the trip was getting to pet a giraffe.  My zoo adventures so far include:

• Feeding an elephant some apples and petting his trunk.
• Having a bat fly into my hair and watching a ton of them during feeding time in the creepy old watchtower underground of the abbey ruins. 
• Having a lemur sit on my shoulder.

The Europeans are a much more interactive zoo kind of place.  The place is built on old abbey ruins and is rustic and beautiful.  I like being able to be somewhere so entirely different from work in the middle of the day.  I get to see tons of kiddos playing with baby goats and seeing these animals for the first time.  It's nice, it's zen.

B: mango, strawberry, dried apricots, walnuts, chia seeds
L: vegan chili, carrots & hummus, a piece of salmon jerky
Snack: Nutrigrain bar, because I accidentally ate some hand sanitizer and I had to get the taste out of my mouth.  True story.
D: apple, gouda, walnut & spinach salad with homemade dressing by Elisa.
multigrain garlic bread with mozzarella
veggie, mozzarella and baked egg stuffed red pepper with brown rice
watermelon for dessert
a couple glasses of wine

Oh and in the interest of full disclosure I drink a lot of coffee, probably somewhere along the lines of 32 oz/day.  I just drink it black, I'm on some Jamaica Blue Mountain that Paul & I brought back from Jamaica.  So tasty in the french press.

My Story

Since the beginning of 2012 I have become pretty health obsessed. In February I decided I would work out every day at lunch.  A couple months later I started watching what I ate.  On May 20th I ran the Oberstdorf half-marathon with a time of 1:49:55 (350m elevation; avg. 8:23/mile) and got second in my age class as well as 21st woman overall.  I was addicted.  I had never won anything athletic (or much otherwise) as an adult.  Almost immediately I signed up for a marathon (Koln, October 14, 2012).  I trained regularly and then got restless.  I was in great shape, why should I wait until October?  So I signed up for the Monschau Marathon. 

I trained throughout the summer and started exploring a vegetarian diet, a nutritarian diet and a paleo diet.  I'm in the process of working out what will work best for me, but I feel a lot healthier having cut most meat, dairy, refined grains and added sugar out of my diet. 

On August 5th, I went on a hike with a couple of crossfit trainers and a bunch of friends.  Tim & Elisa had told me about crossfit, but running was my thing, so I didn't pay too much attention.  The hike was so much fun!  We did all sorts of crossfit workouts along the way.  I've gone to local crossfit sessions a few times and absolutely love it.  I'm starting to feel tough like I never have before.  It is already a big challenge trying to balance the two training methods, but I'm excited to try it. 

I ran the Monschau Marathon (my first) on August 12th and finished at 4:06:10 (750m elevation; avg. 9:27/mile).  I didn't walk, I was third in my age class and 22nd woman overall.  I was feeling pretty great up until mile 19, when the hurt set in.  I put on my headphones and somehow powered through the last 7 miles.  I'm pretty sure I was nearly crying as I crossed the finish line.  But I had made it.  I always felt like a  runner, but now I was a marathoner. 

Me immediately post-marathon, Paul & me at the awards ceremony

I'm hoping to drop my time for Koln in October with a blend of crossfit and running, and I will be joining my dad for Maratona di Roma on March 17, 2013.  I'm looking for a half marathon or a fun Christmas-y race in December, but haven't nailed anything down yet. 

I've never been overweight or had any real health problems, but I was no where near as active as I need to be from ages 16-23.  I'm in the best shape of my life and I don't want to backslide.  I really feel changes in my body and I feel like I could become competitive or at least reach a lot of my fitness goals over the next couple of decades. 

My biggest longterm goal right now is the Leadville 100 mile race in August of 2014.  26.2 miles hurt a lot, I can't even imagine running 100 miles at this point.  But, I'll take it one step at a time.  If I can train for and successfully run a marathon I believe I can do much more.  This blog is basically a way to make me accountable, at least to myself.  My goal is to post regularly about my training, diet, progress and my travels.  Since moving to Europe it's getting hard to keep track of all I've seen!

Crossfit Isn't a Joke

Today was my third crossfit session at the Chievres gym.  There were a few people there that I handn't worked out with before, and none of us are too advanced.  We chose our own workout which happened to be:

50-40-30-20-10-10

Wall Balls (10 lbs)

Box Jumps (20 in.)

Kettlebell Swings (15 lbs)

Considering what I had done the day before, this was quite a challenge. 

40 Box Jumps

30 Burpees

20 Back Squats (35 lbs)

30 Burpees

40 Box Jumps

30 Bear Complexes (24 lbs)

But I love being challenged.  It's great to be around other people that want to get in better shape and don't mind sweating a whole lot to do it.  I never would have gotten through the workout without having other people to keep me going.  I didn't eat anything unhealthy today... for maybe the first time ever?

B: mangos, banana, strawberry, walnuts, chia seed
L: vegan chili
D: sesame encrusted salmon, quinoa, sauteed spinach & mushrooms
Dessert: A giant smoothie made with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, pineapple juice & coconut milk.