Gymtastic!

Sorry I’ve been so absent for so long. I’d like to be able to say that it’s because I’ve been spending every spare minute at California Family Fitness (or, as I now know the cool kids call it, “CalFit”) working my body back into a semblance of strength, flexibility and endurance. Well, not quite. There have been late days at work and board meetings and hair appointments and whatnot. But I’ve been getting over to CalFit pretty regularly and I have a few things to say about being a member of a gym again.
As a gym person, you feel different. Especially if you’re a gym person who actually goes go the gym from time to time. My perception of myself as a Person Who Works Out inflated to include the capital letters you see before you, and this was just after the first visit. I also became a Person Who Has to Worry About Having Enough Clean Workout Clothes, for the first time in about two and a half years. Sports bras, tops, shorts, socks, swimsuits, towels --- there suddenly seemed to be no end to the things I had to keep clean and dry. I walked a little differently with my gym bag on my shoulder, a little springier, even with the extra weight of all that Stuff.
I had missed the water. Man, how I had missed regular immersion, even in a too-shallow, over-chlorinated lap pool. I even welcomed the once-familiar sensations of leaking goggles and nasal passages stinging from chlorine in places where chlorine was not meant to be. My first lap swim session was slow, with a little rest between every lap, and lots of easy backstroke to catch my breath and try to balance out the load on my shoulders. I could only manage about 600 yards, which used to be less than my warmup, but I was ok with it. With only a couple of sessions a week I’ve already made it up to 1200 yards, and once I can do 1500 again without feeling like my arms will drop off I’ll start working a bit on going faster. Right now I’m just trying to feel symmetrical in the water, working on breathing to either side with equal ease, keeping my elbows high and my head low, rotating with each stroke. All the old stuff.
One chilly, windy evening I decided to take an indoor cycling class, “X-bike (i),” as the flavor of the month is called. The “X” is for the work that you do with your arms on these funny stationary bikes with a movable handlebar unit. It’s not much “X” if you ask me, but it’s a new gimmick. I got to class a bit late, and the lights were down low, with club-style black lights were flashing everywhere. Fitness through disorientation? My cycling socks glowed in the dark whenever the black lights passed over them. The music was pounding and an impossibly fit woman was on one of these funny bikes up on the platform. I hastily arranged my bike and jumped on. Not surprisingly, it was hard for me to keep up with some of the “climbing” bits, since I’ve always kind of sucked at climbing, especially standing up. And now I’ve lived in a pancake flat river valley for a year and a half.

But I pedaled along the best I could, cranking up the resistance when it felt ok, backing off when I got too puffed. I didn’t die in there. I want to do it again tomorrow, even. And afterward (it was a short class), I got out and did some crunches, some planks, some “swimmers” with resistance bands, and some curls and presses, so it was a real “X” workout that left me pleasantly sore the next day.
I still need to get to the point where getting over to the gym feels like a need instead of a pleasant option, but at least it feels pleasant.

Shopping for Gyms

In my ongoing quest to spend ever more money in pursuit of fitness and well-being, I joined a gym last week. The undertaking to unite oneself with a gym in holy fitrimony is a serious commitment, and not one to be approached lightly. In the end, though, it's often about the gut over the head.

I did my research with my usual diligence, that is to say, I sat in the Big Poofy Chair and used the internet. At least at first. I read reviews of about five health clubs on Yelp, CitySearch, and a other places where people spout off. Unfortunately, people tend to spout off a lot more frequently about restaurants and hair salons than they do about gyms. Still, I was able to rule out three options. The YMCA, which would have been my first choice because of its non-profitness and inclusivity, was out. Indoor pool, nasty old building, semi-funky part of town. Alhambra - not close enough, not interesting enough. Capitol - sounded spendy and a bit meat-market-y.

The two front-runners that emerged were the Natomas Racquet Club, which is about two miles from my house, and California Family Fitness, about four miles away. Natomas had several advantages: proximity to the house and no need for freeways; a nice big lap pool; and a Masters swimming program that could help me boost my aquatic prowess to previously unheard-of levels. CFF reviewers cited its brand-spankin' newness, uncrowded pool, uncrowded every kind of equipment imaginable, and schweet locker rooms.

I set out on a Saturday afternoon at about 4:30 to do field research. Natomas Racquet Club didn’t have anyone available to talk to me about membership or take me on a tour of the facilities, nor would the guy at the desk let me work out on a trial basis. Strike one. He did let me wander around on my own, and I saw the usual collection of equipment, fitness studio, racquetball court and so on. The pool was indeed nice and big, and the grounds of the club sported lawns and trees and picnic tables. But the locker room was kind of small, the showers no nicer than my old YMCA in Mountain View, and my overall impression was that the place was in need of renovation and, as the name implied, heavily focused on the tennis set.

A couple of exits up the freeway I found CFF looming over the strip malls, trimmed with neon and looking unappealing, frankly. But there was easy parking and the friendly desk folks told me that Larry would be right with me to show me around and talk about membership. I lounged on the leather couch by the snack bar and watched the flat screen TV as I waited. Not bad, I thought.

The whole place was sparkling clean, and despite its name, completely devoid of children (a plus). Acres of cardio and weight machines, free weights, exercise balls, and mats covered most of two floors. The indoor cycling studio held 50 bikes, and the aerobics room was massive. The outdoor lap pool was smaller than NRC’s (6 lanes vs. 8), but it was totally empty. There was also an indoor aqua aerobics and general use pool, which meant that the lap pool was all laps, all the time. A huge plus. The Jacuzzi looked big and hot, with reasonably powerful jets. Larry sent me in to tour the locker room, and there my decision was essentially made.

The real estate crowd says that bathrooms sell houses, and CFF had clearly transferred this adage to the gym. Glass tile accents in the showers, faux burlwood finished lockers with electronic keypad locks, flat panel TVs in the locker bays, modern looking sinks, and new paint and fixtures everywhere. It looked like HGTV had swept through and done a makeover.

I sat down with Larry and pretended to negotiate, and took a few days to “think about it,” but I was hooked. Even though CFF might be a little tough to get to at rush hour and I have to provide my own towels, I smile every time I look at those glass tile accents in the shower.

I’ve been to the pool a few times since that initial tour, and I’m still in the honeymoon stage. Happy to be in the water, happy to be a person who belongs to the gym, happy with the electronic locker technology.

Digging out of a Hole

[I wrote the stuff below a couple of weeks ago. Even though things are sort of getting moving again in the BFFC, I still think there are some good things in there so decided to post anyway. More current update soon.]

After my previous anxious musings about Chronic Fatigue Immunodeficiency Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, I was hoping I’d have something cheerful to post. However, other than dragging myself off the Big Poofy Chair yesterday afternoon for a 20 minute amble around the neighborhood, there hasn’t been much going on to inspire anyone. I’ve been tired, fuzzy-headed, stiff and a little achy, unable to muster any enthusiasm for movement. Last week featured a number of meetings and a visit to my folks that led to me driving to the office, so I didn’t even have my commute exercise to keep me going.

I need a plan. I feel my Big Fat Fitness Comeback is going into reverse, and I need to put the brakes on that momentum and then turn it around. I need to find a way to energize myself without injuring myself, and do something physical where I can see quick results and feel better.

I think I need yoga.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with yoga. Over the years I have taken some classes and, thanks to some outstanding instructors, really enjoyed almost all my experiences. Christa Rypins, in particular, was patient, humorous, challenging, and very Zen without being all Zennier-than-thou about it. (One of the things that irks me about yoga is the hippy-dippy over-earnestness of some practitioners.) I especially enjoy the way I feel after the yoga is done: all long and loose, balanced and relaxed. And exhausted, generally. I think the breathing and meditative aspects of yoga are incredibly good for you, and the stretching and strengthening is fantastic for injury prevention in other sports, including the cubicle-computer ultrathons in which so many of us overindulge.

So why don’t I do yoga all the time? Excellent question. It’s always been one of the things I planned for myself when I got to be a certain age. I believe that regular yoga practice is probably the best possible way to help your body fend off the aging process. I think there are three main reasons why I’m not a yogini:

1. It feels static. Even though much yoga is a fantastic workout, you do the whole thing in two square meters worth of space and your only views are of other people’s butts or your own knees or feet. One of the things that I love about exercise is the sensation of movement through space. Even swimming laps feels more interesting to me than holding yoga poses.
2. It requires emptying the mind. My mind likes being busy. Probably too much so. Even though I recognize that I really benefit from the focus on nothing but the breath and the sensations of the poses, it doesn’t attract me.
3. I kind of suck at it. I know this hasn’t kept me from being a triathlete in the past, but when there are already other factors at work, the sucking just kind of piles on. I’m not naturally flexible, and my body shape makes a lot of poses difficult or impossible. There are ways around all that, modifications and so on, but yoga brings you up close and personal with your own fat in ways that can be physically and mentally uncomfortable.

However, it’s time for me to suck it up and do some downward dogs. The downward dogs and I need to get reacquainted. Watch this space.

Faint Fatigueiness?

When I came down with Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome on August 16, 2007, I had no vocabulary to describe it. The headache wasn’t technically a migraine, since it was my companion every waking minute, but sometimes it felt migraine-y, aggravated by overhead lights, headlights or neon that also made my vision swim. I’d have sharp pain in the lymph node areas of my neck, but the nodes weren’t swollen. My throat would be sore, but not red. I had a constant sensation, somewhere between tingling and burning, in various parts of my body. Sometimes I had constipation, sometimes diarrhea, cramping, gas, and bloating; sometimes a delightful mélange of abdominal woes.. My body ached like I had the flu, yet it was a little different from the flu. I felt feverish without a measurable fever. My muscles twitched and cramped for no reason, in no discernable pattern. My brain was fuzzy, and my project management skills felt impaired. I was lightheaded but not dizzy like vertigo dizzy, though I suffered from serious head rushes after standing up. And of course there was the

I could and did fall asleep pretty much anywhere, any time. I was lucky to be able to keep my job, though there was a period where my boss wondered if I needed to go on leave or work part time. I couldn’t afford to lose my health insurance or much income, so I dedicated myself to sticking it out at the office for a full day, four days a week (I already worked at home one day) even though sometimes I fell asleep in my chair or had to crawl under my desk for half an hour because sitting up made me so tired I hurt all over. When I got home, I’d flop into the Big Poofy Chair and, more often than not, fall asleep for two hours. I’d recover enough to watch TV until it was time to go to sleep for another nine and a half or ten hours. Sometimes on my way to work I’d have to pull over in Fremont or Hayward and nap for 20 minutes. Exercise, even easy walking, made things worse, so eventually I stopped altogether. Even walking 100 feet sometimes made my legs burn like they used to during the last 500 meters of a race. Now that I feel pretty much better pretty much all the time, I can’t believe I got through that ordeal without cracking up completely or losing my job. I’m not exaggerating my symptoms. In fact, I realize as I write this that just listing the symptoms doesn’t do justice to the miserable synergy of having them all at once.

Not having a diagnosis made it all much worse. I saw four doctors at Kaiser and one outside doc; but as I became more and more convinced that it was one of the many flavors of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Chronic Fatigue-Immune Deficiency Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, it became clear to me that having a diagnosis wasn’t going to help me in any way except to help me validate my horrid experience.

Now there’s a new study that claims to have found a particular retrovirus in the blood of 85% of CFIDS/ME patients tested. While there are still some methodological questions about the study, and it’s still not clear whether the X-somethingy retrovirus is a cause or effect, it’s encouraging to know that researchers are working on the issue. Even though the CDC recently published its own study claiming that CFIDS/ME sufferers tend to have a history of childhood sexual abuse (um, no) and an “inability to deal with stress” (hard to say), at least some medical folks are looking for a non-psychiatric explanation for the all-around awfulness.

In the midst of all this news, I have noticed a few disturbing trends. I’m sleeping longer lately, the last few weeks or so. Wednesday night I slept for ten hours and could probably have slept some more, though I hadn’t been particularly sleep deprived. I’ve had a few sporadic days of brain fuzz and dizziness - I have a bit of it right now. On weekends I’ve really had to push myself to get out and move around; I haven’t had the urge to exercise that I had even a month ago. In homage to Stephen Colbert, I coined the term “fatigueiness” to describe how I feel when the old symptoms flare up. It’s not the good, honest fatigue of three hours on a bike, or even a session mowing the lawn and sweeping the patio, or even working a couple of 12-hour days on a project. It’s fatigueiness, and I’m not happy to feel any trace of it. I don’t know why it’s cropping up now. My CPAP machine is controlling my sleep apnea just fine, my medications are unchanged, and I haven’t been under undue stress lately.

Michelle, who is my mentor in all things CFIDS/ME, reminds me that there isn’t necessarily a reason, or not one that we can easily discern. Her relapses don’t follow a logical pattern. I don’t think my couple of months of regular, not super strenuous exercise can be causing my faint fatigueiness, but I’m not sure. I’m not going to back off yet, anyway.

Dodging Raindrops

I now have my illumination set up nicely for my winter bike commute, but I still haven’t figured out what to do in case of rain. We don’t get much precipitation by the standards of the eastern US or Pacific Northwest, but it is pretty much concentrated into six months of the year, from November to April. This year things seem to be off to an early start, with the second largest October storm ever recorded, and then a pretty good soaking on Monday.
I woke up to lowering skies, at least when it was light enough to see them, and a forecast offering “chance of a.m. showers.” I decided to take my chances without raingear, for the simple reason that I have no effective raingear. We’ve had three years of drought, so I haven't had to upgrade my old Patagonia jacket that lost its waterproof powers years ago.

Before I became a bike/train commuter, my approach to rain on the commute was to wear stout footwear and carry an umbrella for the half a block or full block that I’d walk from the car to the office. Working out in the rain was no problem, since I would happily get soaked in anticipation of a hot shower and dry sweats. I never was much for riding in the rain, though. It was an area in which I was, and remain, certifiably wimpy. I didn’t want to mess up my bike, I didn’t want to skid on wet pavement, and I definitely didn’t want to get hit by a car that couldn’t see me. Or even by one that could. So on rainy days I would abandon my plans to ride and head for the pool or the gym or even get a nice wet run in.

My co-worker Simon, however, rides to the office in all kinds of weather, clad in slicker and rain pants, and never seems to fall down or get hit by cars. His commute distance is now about the same as the Sacto end of mine, so it’s clearly possible. And I want to be hard core. At least, I think I want to try to be hard core. But here are the challenges that I perceive:

1. I will get wet. Even if I spend hundreds of dollars on GoreTex or other such “breathable,” waterproof garments, I will still sweat more than the GoreTex will handle. It’s just the way it is. So I’ll either get wet from the inside or the outside. It might be better just to take my soaking and change once I get to the office, but then there’s that train ride in soggy clothes to think of.
   
   
2. This is one that my friend Sheila, a former San Francisco bike commuter, pointed out: Once I get to work and change out of my wet clothes, I have to put them somewhere during the day. Festooning the office with damp and potentially odorous garments might be perceived as antisocial by my officemate and unprofessional even by my tolerant and flexible management.
   
   
3. The load I carry to work is getting heavier. Ever since I broke down and bought the bike lock, I’ve been reluctant even to carry my lunch in my pack. Carrying a full change of clothes could be the straw to snap this camel’s back. Sheila suggested I could stash a couple pairs of black pants and grey sweaters at the office. Eventually I’d have to take them home and wash them, but that shouldn’t be too sucky. Every so often I have to drive in anyhow.
   
   
4. I carry a laptop to work on the train. Part of what makes my work schedule manageable is that I put in work hours on the train and am rarely in the office for a full eight hours. Plus I have my wallet, cell phone, flash drive, and other goodies in my (formerly triathlon-specific) pink backpack. The pack might resist light rain, but a downpour would put all my crap at risk. Sheila helpfully noted that there are commuter backpacks with rain covers. More $$$. Dang.
   
   
5. The dreaded “brown stripe” effect. In the absence of a rear fender, the wheel will throw up water and dirt, creating a deeply unattractive brown stripe up the back of the unwary rider. Now I have to spend money on a fender? And this also brings up my resistance to making my venerable but racy bike into a commuter mule. Yeah, I know I’m not racing at the moment - but I will. Even if I never race again, though, putting a fender on the Specialized Allez Epic would be like hitching Secretariat to a wagon. I shudder at the thought.

Possible solutions abound. I can look for raingear on the cheap at Sierra Trading Post or Marshall’s. Even Land’s End has pretty reasonable rain pants. Same for the waterproof backpack. The pink tri-pack is looking a little tatty anyway. If I wear rain gear, I won’t care about the Brown Stripe of Doom. I might be able to get away with hanging wet biking clothes in the server room, which is very, very warm, dry, rarely visited, and located behind a door in my office. I already use it as an impromptu changing room for getting out of my bike shorts. I don’t
In the end it’ll all come down to force of will on a dark wet morning. The will will feel a lot more forceful, though, if I feel well prepared. On Monday, I dodged two huge cloudbursts by minutes, and either might have damaged the will in a big way. No rain forecast for the next five days. Stay tuned for updates and storm watches.

Unstuck - Not Undone

Well, I'm delighted to report that one of the biggest October storms in Northern California history swept my indolence away in a gust of warm and humid wind. Tuesday, the day of the deluge, I didn't venture out of the house at all, just sat in the house working and checking the rainfall totals. Wednesday I did the walk to and from the train station after sleeping in too late to do the bike thing. Thursday was crazy humid for this part of the world, but I was eager to get out and break up a long day at the laptop, writing endless, uninteresting paragraphs under deadline.

I had planned a bike adventure for Thursday, an extra 8 miles on top of my regular commute, from the Richmond train station to a meeting with a client and thence to the office. These are long-standing clients with a casual dress code, so I wasn't worried about showing up in my deeply nerdy cycling sandals and cargo capri pants. I was more worried about riding through the heart of Richmond's Iron Triangle (in photo) - either about ripping up my tires on broken glass and discarded syringes or being set upon by Deep-C gangbangers, who might find a fat middle-aged white woman riding by with cycling sandals and a pink backpack simply too irresistible a target for youthful highjinks. I could do most of the ride on a bike trail along the bay, but to get there I'd have to negotiate the Triangle, a gnarly overpass over I-580, and another freeway undercrossing near the clients' office. It was a perfect illustration of how urban enviroments in much of California are not set up for people to walk or bike with any kind of feeling of safety.

Anyhow, my meeting got rescheduled. So I worked at home and then I tried to figure out what to do for exercise. I'd have another bike ride scheduled for the next day, and just walking sounded boring. I considered a kiddie playground workout but settled on a session of shooting hoops at Leroy F. Greene Middle School. I used to be a serious basketball fanatic, dating back to when my very cool fifth grade teacher, Gordon Russ, taught us proper form for the layup, the jump shot and even the esoteric hook shot. I was never a speedy player, but I had a pretty decent shot, could dribble with either hand, and could be quite insistent about using my butt to back my opponent down low in the post.

But it had been a while. Years, probably, not counting the 20 minutes or so I spent shooting a strangely bouncy basketball on the little court on board the Norwegian Sun on the Alaska cruise in August. I strained my knee slightly then, so I was determined to go easy this time. No driving layups or sprinting for rebounds. Just some "jump" shots, a few drop step moves around the basket. Greene Middle is about a three-quarter mile walk, so it was a struggle just getting there with the ball. When I got there, I was slightly disconcerted to see that the kids were still there from the after-school program, shooting and giving each other crap. Twelve-year-olds can be scary. But fortunately they ignored me as I spotted up from various points not far from the basket and launched my high arcing shot. I mostly missed at first, but after a while, I started making a few and feeling like I remembered how to focus on the back rim, getting the range a bit. That was cool. And then I was tired, and I felt a brief twinge in the knee, so I walked home. And that was that. And later I felt fine. Probably 30 minutes of walking, 20 minutes of shooting and walking or jogging after the ball.

Friday I did ride the bike, and that was all good. It was insanely foggy in the early morning, the tule fog that comes up over the Central Valley and makes things very interesting for drivers. I was glad for my LED headlight and red blinky lights as I made my way along the levee, the familiar landmarks looming strangely in the mist.

Saturday I lazed about for much of the day, feeling tired, stiff, and cranky. The weather has been strangely humid since the storm, sucking the oxygen out of the air and making things smell bad. I had a stiff neck and shoulder and the only thing I wanted to do was swim. Still no pool on my horizon, so I put on my unflattering suit and clashing orange swim cap and went over to the river. Perfect! The water was cool, cool enough that I even hesitated before plunging in, and there were just enough people there that I thought someone might save me if I got entangled in a vicious clump of weeds. But I had a huge stretch of open, weed-free, boat-free water to myself, and I swam up and down, 50 strokes each way, until I felt fatigue set in. A little backstroke to open up the shoulders, some dolphin kicking for the lower back.

I'm back at the laptop now, obviously, and the neck and shoulder are tensing up again, but I'm not cranky, and I'm tired in a different, much way. And I'm unstuck and unstalled. I got some form of exercise 5 out of the last 6 days, and had fun at least three times.

Tomorrow, a bike ride to the farmers' market for veggies, apples, honey, and maybe a cinnamon roll from the Davis bakers.

Weather No Longer Perfect

And now the perfect weather is gone. Wow. Is it. Huge wind, huge rain, huge tree limbs flying through the air. It's cool. I like it. I sure as hell didn't go outside in it though.

Stalled. Stuck. Stopped.

A week of perfect fall weather, almost entirely wasted. I am disappointed to report that last week was the worst week to date in terms of moving forward in the Big Fat Fitness Comeback. If I start the workout week on Monday, as I still tend to do after years of structuring training that way, I managed exactly one day of exercise. On Wednesday, I did my bike commute and even put in a couple of extra miles at lunch running some errands over on Fourth Street. But that was it.

Monday we drove back from Sea Ranch, and then I ran out and got a pedicure instead of doing exercise. Sometimes you just have to get the feet pretty before you can think of anything else. Tuesday I was in stressed out work mode from the time I got up (too late, too late!) till after dark. I didn’t make myself take a 20 minute walk before dinner. I just didn’t. Thursday… what happened Thursday? Oh, yeah, I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, a ton of work, and then a meeting at Capital Stage in the late afternoon. I had planned to ride my bike to the theater, but was dealing with work stuff until it was too late to ride the bike and be on time for the meeting. After the meeting I had more work.

Friday I had to drive to the office to pick up all the supplies for the all-day training I was doing on Saturday. Got home with a headache and couldn’t face going outside. Saturday I did the all-day training and got home with a stiff neck and serious fatigue. Hit the couch and fell asleep. Well, I thought, at least I’ll get a ride in on Sunday. But I woke up with mild vertigo - that’s a new one - and moving my head made it worse. So I tried to keep still until it was time to go out to the theater. The vertigo gradually subsided, but I felt pretty weird throughout the day. Maybe connected with my neck stiffness? After the matinee there was some hanging out with my family, whom I hadn’t seen in weeks. And then it was night.

Some weeks happen like this. But I can’t let this stretch get out to two weeks, or we could have trouble, and that starts with T and that rhymes with D and that stands for “D’oh! I turned into a couch potato again!” I need to work less (at my job) and yet remain a model employee.

By the Beautiful Sea

Pretty much every October we head up the Sonoma coast, about as far as you can get before it becomes the Mendocino coast, for a long weekend at Sea Ranch. It's a spectacular corner of the world, where high sandstone bluffs meet the cold north Pacific, redwoods loom on the mountains just beyond the meadows, and rich white people go to retire. Sometimes, not-exactly-rich white people go there to vacation. Tim's brother Dan had picked out a little gem of a rental house overlooking the ocean and the golf course, or, as the deer like to think of it, the 24 hour all-you-can-eat vegetation buffet. There was a hot tub on a private patio, and another deck open to the sweeping view. Schweet.

Sea Ranch is the scene of some of my most treasured athletic memories. The trails along the bluffs and through the meadows are perfectly arranged for running, undulating gently for miles, soft and springy underfoot, offering some of the most amazing views you could ever hope for. And the air! Fresh off thousands of miles of open ocean, it seems to have more oxygen than regular air and invites you to run with every gust of sea breeze.

In my fitter days I ran miles and miles along those trails, and many of those runs felt like dream runs, good dreams where I bound along with ridiculous ease and strength, not those other running dreams where I'm trying to run but I'm stuck. I ran here with a whole posse of friends (and Elwood the dog) on the morning of my wedding. Did wonders for my nerves. I did long training runs for significant races; I did short, medium, and long runs preparing insignificant races and just for fun.

One of the chapters I should have written in Shape Up with the Slow Fat Triathlete would have been "Don't Compare." I guess we can extrapolate from Chapter 32, "Be Noncompetitive," which is about the pitfalls of being competitive with others, to the pitfalls of being competitive with your former self. Fortunately, I knew well that there was no way I could hope to compete with my triathletic self of five years ago. So I wasn't tempted to lace up the Asics and try to do some epic eight-miler or anything. I just wanted to do some brisk walking.

Sea Ranch was also the scene of one of my most memorably unathletic moments, two years ago during the baffling onset of Boo-boo Kitty Syndrome. We had all ventured out for an easy walk down to Gualala Point, and on the way back, I could hardly lift my legs to put one foot in front of the other. I felt ill and exhausted, falling further and further behind the group, who ambled along without apparent effort. I dragged myself back up to the house and promptly fell asleep for an hour. Michelle, who has been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and has suffered quite a bit with it, observed that I just wasn't right. No matter how out of shape I might be (and Michelle has known me in shape and way, way out of shape), I wouldn't drag my ass around like that. It was one of many low points.

So being back at this familiar, beloved spot, feeling reasonably full of energy and able to walk kind of fast for an hour along the headlands, laughing at the wind poofing up Tim's jacket -- that felt like a pretty decent accomplishment. And being able to go out for another 40 minutes or so the next day, jogging a few steps here and there, enjoying some localized soreness in my ankles from the uneven terrain rather than a full-body ache? Bonus.

I still haven't made it to the pool at Sea Ranch (or anywhere else for that matter), and I did pretty much eat my body weight in salty snacks and cheese over the weekend, but as we know, exercise is one thing, and diet is another thing altogether (Chapter 33, "Don't Make the Donut the Reward").

Child's Play is Hard Work

So this blog is having one of its intended effects, which is to make me move around on days when I might otherwise blow it off, just so I can have something to write about. I know all 25 of you are waiting with bated breath to find out whether I'm going to ride my bike to work or walk around the park or dip myself in some river or other, and I hate to disappoint you.

Today was a glorious, beautiful, wonderful day in that the temperature probably peaked at 75 degrees. I'm more acclimated to Sacto heat than I was last year, but it'll still be a year or two before 95 feels comfortable, if it ever does. After a full day of reading the unreasonable requirements of county agencies and private foundations, emailing clients who suffer from varying degrees of panic, stress, and underfunded infrastructure, and other grant writing delights, I was damned if I was gonna transition straight into Cheetos and junk TV. But part of me really wanted to. Look, there's a "Mythbusters" I haven't seen yet! Oooh! But I couldn't figure out what to do. Bike, swim, walk? Nothing appealed, despite the weather.

But I figured I'd been cycling and swimming more than doing any actual weight bearing activity lately, so I slipped on the Asics and headed out aroud the neighborhood-school-canal-levee loop. But I decided I would take a work-play break at the playground in the park next to the school (See Chapter 5 - Embrace the Awesome Power of Fun). It's a little kids' playground, so I had to be creative. I climbed fearfully onto the middle section of this crazy spring-rigged seesaw, and just as I had anticipated, it acted like a balance board from hell. My ankles wobbled, which made the springs jiggle even more, which made my ankles wobble further, setting up a self-feeding energy loop that threatened to hurl me out of the galaxy in a blaze of glory. So I jumped off. I tried a couple more times, but each time I only managed to stay up there 15 or 20 seconds.

Next was a session on the swings (good for the abs, arms, shoulders), followed by the spiral slide (good for the abs as you keep your feet up). Then some fake pushups and fake pullups, a few step-ups onto the climbing structure, and voila! instant exhaustion. I continued past the skate park, over the canal, and back home with a satisfying sense of exertion. My torso and shoulders felt like they were lined up over my hips and legs, much more so than before my little playground adventure. I even jogged up the levee path to test out its suitability for future hill repeats.

A future task - figure out how to use the ferocious dinosaur playground equipment pictured here as a means to a workout. Without killing or maiming myself or others. (Note: I love the internet. I think this is actually a picture of the very dinosaur in my playground. How cool is that? And if it isn't my dinosaur, it's the exact same model.

The Houseworkout

Last Sunday, I posted a status update on Facebook about the tiring effects of vacuuming my house, and I couldn't believe how many comments I got about it. Made me decide to write about the houseworkout in a little more detail. I don't know how many calories vacuuming burns (those online calorie counters are pretty bogus and my heart rate monitor is missing), but it sure feels like a lot. The bogus calorie calculators tell me it's somewhere between 350 and 475 calories per hour for my weight, which is - let me be perfectly coy here - considerable.

I've been leery of doing the whole house vacuum, stairs and all, ever since I put my back out doing it in December. Now I try and watch my posture, engage my not-so-mighty core, and avoid crazy twists and bends as I wrassle with the monster machine. It's heavy and wkward, and I have to use the attachments to do most of the downstairs, which is hardwood and faux wood. By the time I was done on Sunday, I was dripping with sweat and ready to while away several hours watching football. Which I then did.

Strangely, I later developed an urge to mow the front lawn with our push mower, another hot and exhausting activity. Fortunately the lawn is small, but there were the early leaves of autumn to be raked, too. And may I just say that it is wrong to have to rake leaves when the outside temperature is above 90 degrees? More heat, more sweat, more water, and then more football. John Madden's absence leaves a huge void which Cris Collinsworth will never fill, but sports on TV after a guilt-allaying houseworkout is as close as I get to nirvana many weekends.

A Pleasant Fatigue in the Shoulders

One of the things I missed most during the worst of Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome was the sensation of pleasant muscular fatigue. My muscles went from stiff and unused to burning, cramping and aching with nothing in between. So when my arms and shoulders felt loose, heavy, and tired yesterday evening, I relished that.

I hadn't done too much to get that feeling, but I will count it as my first real swim of the Big Fat Fitness Comeback. The heat was squatting over the big valley, and I was feeling oppressed by it. Having failed to get outside in the morning while it was still cool, and having sat through the entire California-Oregon football debacle, I decided to shed my frustrations and get into the water.

Last time I'd swum in the American River, my friend and agent Dave was in town. Dave is a big proponent of swimming at every opportunity (Chapter 14), but the water was chilly and crowded with kids and boats, so we didn't get too serious, just splashed around some. But I got an annual pass to Discovery Park and I thought it was worth exploring the beach there as an option for actual open water swimming.

Just upstream from the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, an old erector-set metal bridge crosses the American. The kids were mostly down on the wider sandy area of the beach, and the boats were sticking to the middle channel, so there seemed to be an opportunity on the river-left side of the bridge to swim up and down. The current in late summer is pretty negligible.

I slipped into the water, relishing the cool green rush. I quickly ran into some weeds though, which I loathe, and I flailed about a bit before finding some deeper water without the hideous scratchy tentacles of green. I went up and down a bit, focusing on what I could remember about technique: high elbows, high hips, rolling body, getting a full breath. I wasn't going hard at all, but I did feel like I was really swimming. I had to pause a few times to dodge a soggy football, but there was no malice involved, just kids having a good time.

The swim probably lasted less than 20 minutes, but I felt it in my arms and shoulders, even my hips from a little vertical kick drill. I eased my way out of the water and the 95 degrees of Fahrenheit felt great. Not oppressive at all. Later in the evening Tim and I went to see Inglourious Basterds and my arms felt like sandbags on the armrests of my seat. It was awesome.

The Path of the Bike is Twisted

Even the endless Sacramento summer is grudgingly retreating as the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun. We’re still dry-roasting in the afternoons, but the longer nights cool things off more quickly, and when I set out for the morning train, the sun isn’t yet over the horizon. Last fall I was a much more occasional bike commuter, still adjusting to my new home and schedule, and still making my first tentative forays back into exercise of any kind. When the days got shorter, I bought a headlight and an extra blinky red light for my stern, but I think I only braved the darkness once.

This year I’m pretty committed - so far. I could tell you how the crisp morning air wakes me up and the ride gets my blood flowing, and how the rising sun lights up the trees along the river, and those things are true. I’m even coming to enjoy the late afternoon warmth as I roll the bike off the over-air-conditioned train and back to the bike path.

But the real reasons that I’m a pretty regular rider now are my dislike of the walk from the station to the office and the cost of parking the car at the Sacramento station. The overflow lot is a very reasonable $4/day as long as you’re in by 7:30 and out after 5:30, but it adds up. I suck at saving money, but this one seems like a no-brainer. And the walk to the office on the other end, through a mixture of warehouses, some cool modern offices, and a bunch of dilapidated South Berkeley housing, is not the kind of walk one would particularly savor. Sure, there are some fun businesses to think about - the sake factory by the station, a number of specialty photo processing and printing shops, an organic sauerkraut joint, and Mork’s sheet metal and fabrication, which boasts its own gargoyles (of sheet metal) over the shop entrance. But mostly it’s a dull walk, and there’s only one route that makes sense from an efficiency standpoint.

So we'll see if, as the darkness creeps in, I'll be able to keep my bike groove going. I think that part of the problem last year was that I wasn't sure what to wear in the early mornings when it was cold. Full cycling tights seemed extreme, not to mention a struggle to pull on fresh from the shower. Cycling shorts - too cold, definitely, but pulling my winter jeans on over the shorts felt constricting to ride in.

I know some people just jump on their bikes in their street clothes and ride to work, but I'm afraid I find that extremely uncomfortable. I have to have some padding in the nether regions. Maybe I'll add some stretchy track pants to my ensemble, over the bike shorts, and then carry my work jeans in my ever-expanding backpack. Laptop, power supply, reading material, thin hoodie for the cold train and the cold fog of Berkeley, and now my PitBull bike lock system (U-lock and cable). My train was an hour late the other day and without a lock I couldn't go anywhere. So even though I bring my bike up to the office, I carry around what feels like 15 pounds worth of lock against the predations of Berkeley bike thieves.

Yeah, I could attach my lock to my frame with the bracket, but I don't want to clutter up my frame with a bunch of commuter hardware. I'm hanging on to my vision of my bike as a workout and racing machine rather than a pack horse. So instead I load my back down with the weight and keep my bike streamlined. (Chapter 11 - Outfit Yourself Judiciously)

The Path of the Bike is a twisted path.

Fear, Pain, Granite, Hope

About a mile into our hike to Twin Lakes, which perch in a cirque high in the Desolation Wilderness, I confessed to Anne that I had been fearing this two-night car camping trip more than any outdoor trip ever. This was astonishing to me, since I have been on some scary trips. In 1993, I got into a helicopter that dropped me, two other Americans, and a Russian photographer in the absolute middle of roadless nowhere in the bogs of Siberia. The pilot had a crudely drawn map of where to pick us up in two weeks. Scary. Rafting the Zambezi, a river with fierce crocodiles and fiercer hippos? Also scary. I liked to ensure that there was at least one person sleeping between me and the river.

But I had been absolutely petrified of driving up CA Highway 50, camping at the perfectly nice Wrights Lake campground (running water included, though the potties were pit, not flush), and going on a hike with Anne. I was afraid of full-body cramps and spasms that would make me cry out in the night. I was afraid of a week or more of relapse into fuzzy-headed, queasy, achy, crampy fatigue. I was afraid my various cranky and creaky bits would simply not allow me to sleep on the ground anymore, even with extra foam under my ThermaRest. I was afraid of seeing once again, in a new arena, how poorly my current state of fitness compares to my fitness of three or four or five years ago. And I was afraid that I would push myself beyond what I thought were my reasonable limits

I was not particularly afraid of being humiliated by Anne's superior hiking prowess. Even at my most mighty, I could never keep up with Anne on an uphill grind. And I tried really hard not to compare my un-hiking self of September 2009 to my backpacking self of 2002 or 2004. I even tried not to remember my backpacking self of 2006, when I developed full-body cramps for the very first time after a hard day's uphill work. Every time I moved any part of me, bits would spasm: rib cage, abdomen, back, inner thighs, shoulders - even parts that hadn't been very much involved in the climb. I cried out so loud and so often that Anne was kind of embarrassed about what the campers down the lake might think.

Just four weeks ago, a couple of days of hard physical effort getting ready for Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary party had brought on a slight reminder of the full-body extravaganza, as well as the week of mild relapse. So I had lots of historical data about what could happen to me during the kind of exertion that I could experience during a high mountain hike.

Twin Lakes was about the easiest hike out of Wrights Lake that would get you up into the granite, and granite was what this trip was all about. I love granite, especially the luminous Sierra Nevada granites, and I had been pining for it ever since our Alaska cruise reminded me of how great the mountains are just a couple hours from home.

So I laced on my new boots (REI swapped out the Merrells for lighter Vasques); we packed lunch and water and a layor or two against the uncertain-looking weather, and set off from our walk-in campsite to the trailhead on the other side of the lake. The first twenty minutes or so went quite well, as I concentrated on keeping my pace slow and steady, engaging my core for big steps up, breathing through my nose.

Pretty soon I had co-opted Anne's trekking poles and was beginning to feel my muscles fatiguing. It took what seemed like hours to reach the trail fork at 1.4 miles, but the sheets of granite, Jeffrey pines, and views down the western slope of the Sierra were amazing. It seemed worth it. After the fork we sidehilled over a bit before pushing up a wall of granite where the trail was mostly marked by trail ducks, piles of rocks set out at irregular intervals.

I was starting to feel queasy, lightheaded and uncoordinated, as well as extremely tired and dry-mouthed. A bit of altitude, probably, as we went up from 7000 to 8000 feet. I wasn't feeling too bad aerobically, though some of the steep bits made me pant quite seriously. I was just very, very tired. We came across a troop of Boy Scouts, loud and energetic, running up parts of the trail, ignoring their leader. Lots of other hikers passed us. I was used to that from my Slow Fat Triathleting.

At about mile 2.2, I started getting really cranky. We had been up another steep up, and the lake was nowhere in sight. I was seriously exhausted, but it's very hard to turn around on a trail that promises an exquisite alpine lake. I wanted that lake to appear and I wanted it NOW. "Where's the f---in' lake?" I yelled at Anne, who was ambling easily ahead. "Soon!' she promised.

It really did not feel soon, and my crankiness increased. But the lake was in fact exquisite, pure, blue, dotted with islands, nestled among peaks of at least three different kinds of granite. Lunch was accidentally sparse as we had left the cheese in the cooler in the car, and I was having a hard time choking down what we had. After some food and a rest though, things were better. Anne read a couple of chapters about Maud Flynn, who was plain, clever, and bad, and we listened to the Scouts running around the lake, and then leaving. Eventually, I plucked up my courage for the descent. A couple of cramps as I got up made me nervous. We set off.

Again, I had a burst of optimism at the beginning which proved wholly unwarranted. Leaning on Anne's trekking poles, I made my way painfully down huge steps hewn of the beautiful granite, among tree roots, through large rocks and small ones. I couldn't believe how steep the down was - but it certainly helped explain why the up had been so very trying. We missed the trail for a while, mistaking stray rocks for trail ducks, and scrambled across the mountain for a while until we ran into it. Usually we're prepared and have maps, but this was kind of a half-assed trip in some ways.

I tried to appreciate the beauty around me, but things were hurting and I was stumbling, twisting my ankles and jarring my back. The boots fit great though. No hot spots or blisters. Just aches from the pounding of my weight on the rocks below. Gravity plus weight equals less fun in the mountains. Having less weight would mean more fun.

Anne, bless her, went and got the car once we got to the trailhead. Along with the forgotten cheese, we had icy Diet Pepsi in the cooler, the best beverage I had ever consumed. I had some cramping, but I downed a massive amount of ibuprofen back at the campsite, and later on I was able to move around with just kind of average post-exertion soreness. We dined on Thai vegetable curry and chewy brown rice, pretending to be backpackers, a bit. I built a fire; we read more about Maud Flynn. The stars were blazing, and I felt content.

No screaming pain in the night, no pounding headache the next morning, altitude or no. I had pushed myself too far. A reasonable decision would have been to turn back after an hour of hard hiking or maybe an hour and a half. I had let my ego drive me; my eagerness to reach a goal; my idea of how fit I should be as opposed to how fit I am. I had ignored my body's pleas for mercy and forced it to endure past the point where I should have quit. The accomplishment of reaching the lake was memorable, and I think it turned out not to have been a mistake. I feel some glimmer of hope that I might be able to work up to some real mountain trips, maybe next year. But I have to do some practicing.

Out of Water. Boots Not Good Either

Today I made another big (financial) commitment to the BFFC, toodling over to REI to buy a pair of hiking boots. In the spirit of Chapter 45 (Get High (into the Mountains)), I tentatively agreed to go camping with Anne this weekend. And camping with Anne is not like, let's get the lounge chairs and a case of beer on ice and sing some songs. There is singing of songs, but not the lounging. At least not until after a vigorous hike. Anne was campaigning for backpacking, but as weird as my back has been lately, the idea of carrying even a light pack around didn't appeal.

Tried on four pairs of boots, ended up with the Merrell Passion Peak or Phaser Peak or something like that. A lighter backpacking boot, in the optimistic belief that Anne and I will backpack next summer in another, more advanced phase of the BFFC. I liked some Vasques and some lighter Merrells, but they didn't have the backpacking sturdiness. I walked around a lot in the store, up and down the fake mountain they have, and the boots felt great.

Filled with glee, I proceeded on my fitness odyssey to Clunie Pool, in beautiful McKinley Park. It has a rose garden, tennis courts, basketball courts, kiddie playgrounds, huge trees, a jogging path, and an enormous pool. Finally, I was going to swim laps again. I think it was December 2008 when I was last in a lap pool. I rounded the corner behind the Clunie Memorial Center and the pool looked beautiful: clean, blue, sparkling. And empty. WTF? It said on the City's web site that this pool was open 4-7 pm for lap swimming, and it was about 5:45. Nope. Pool closed. No reason posted, but I assume it's the insane budget situation (about 390 city jobs up for the axe, at last count. Recessions suck). Back to the drawing board for lap swim. Might have to bite the bullet and join Natomas Racquet Club or the YMCA once my car is paid off next month. (Whoo hoo!) Any Sacramentans reading this, please feel free to let me know what my other options might be.

Only slightly daunted, I loped back to the car and pulled out my new boots. I could walk a mile or so around the park and break them in, work up a sweat, and not be defeated by the stoopid budget cuts and closed pools. I laced up and set out. But oh no! About 15 minutes into the walk, my feet started killing me along the outside edges. What was up? How could walking in the park, on the flat, feel so different from walking in the store?

I made it around the park, but my feet felt pretty achy by the end, and that was not a good sign. As soon as I post this, I'm going to go over the soles of the boots with a wet paper towel and remove all traces that the offending footwear ever touched a dirt path. And hope that nobody from the Sacto REI reads this blog, at least before I get back there on Thursday.

Growing Pains

The first major hurdle of the Big Fat Fitness Comeback is upon me. From the base of my skull to the sacro-iliac joint in my pelvis, my neck and back are cranky. Not in spasm, not blown out, but just grumpy, painful, stiff, and threatening to blow out at any moment. I can’t place a starting point for this phenomenon. The upper back has been stiff in the mornings for weeks now; the mid back and lower back got pretty tweaked when I was working as my brother’s assistant stage hand for my parents’ party a few weeks ago; and I have the neck of a typical computer slave, ready to seize up at any time. Last night as we drove home from our friends’ house, muscles cramped up in the front of my neck, creating a nifty combo of pain and choking, though the muscles in question were on the outside of the neck, not really my throat as such.

I did a modest workout on Saturday morning, in an unusual late-summer rain shower that hit the pavement in fat drops. I walked, and jogged a few steps and walked again. I did my semi-pushups on the metal gate, and a few sets of sideways shuffling along the path on the way home, just to move in the lateral plane for a change. Going forward (or backward) on a bike or on foot is movement in the sagittal plane. I had to look up how to spell that. Twisting the night away - that’s the transverse plane. Well-balanced athletes move easily in all those directions. I do not.

There weren’t any major strains though. I got home feeling peppy enough to deadhead a few roses and do battle with the ferns invading our front walkway. After all that, though, I was struck by fatigue and spent the rest of the day and evening watching sports on TV from the BPC. This is almost not an exaggeration. At some point in this great immobility, my hip/lower back sent out a communique that all was not well, so I stretched my glutes and piriformis as best I could without actually leaving the BPC’s warm embrace. Felt better, and virtuous for having stretched however perfunctorily.

Sunday - “eh.” This “eh” is pronounced with the short “e” of “pet” rather than the “ay” sound of the Canadian generic interrogative particle. A flat tone of voice and a wry twist of the mouth convey the appropriate emotion. Back felt bad in many places, energy was low. Eschewed exercise completely and visited friends instead, which involved much driving, which it was my turn to do. My neck joined the chorus of disapproval.

Monday - same “eh.”. The walk to the office from the train felt hard and uncomfortable, though my ankles felt worse than my back for some reason. Day at desk didn’t help much but didn’t exacerbate the situation. I weenied out and got a ride to the afternoon train from my co-worker.

Tuesday has the feeling of a critical day. If I let three days go by without real work-up-a-sweat movement, I feel like I might lose momentum in a serious way. But I don’t want to wreck my back. So maybe it’s just walking again. Sigh.

Flexible like Gumby

Some things just don't seem to come together. Of all the things that needed to happen for me to get back in the pool, the most unlikely one came the quickest and easiest: I got two swimsuits that fit. I found a reasonably accessible public pool with lap swim hours from 5-7 pm - also a little unlikely as Sacramento cuts back on just about every service it has - and I packed my bag with suit, cap, goggles, towel. But have I been in the pool yet? I have not, ladies and gentlemen.

Tuesday, I planned to head out after a conference call at 5 pm, but that call didn't start till 5:30 and by the time it ended at 6:20, it was too late to get across town to the pool and still get a swim in. But, being flexible like Gumby, I did jump on the bike and ride for about 40 minutes. Learning from previous mistakes, I just did a couple of intervals of harder work, and I made sure to do them on the way home.

Yesterday I forgot to put my bag in the car, which was particularly stupid as I would have been able to get out of work early and get to the pool by about 5:30. And I missed my bike commute too, since I was picked up from the early morning train and taken directly to a meeting with clients. Can't really stash the bike in the boss's car, or meet with clients in my usual bike-commute attire. So yesterday was pretty much a waste from the Big Fat Fitness Comeback perspective. Or it was a day off.

Today, a work at home day, seemed like a perfect day to make it to the pool, but then my internet went out in the late morning (curse you, Comcast!), which pushed back my work schedule well past 5 pm. But I took advantage of the opportunity to jump on the bike again and ride for 45 minutes. Average speed of 13.5 mph, which is pretty reasonable for me at this stage. I did a two mile mini time trial, but then I forgot my starting time, so it wasn't much of a data point. Still might make it to the pool later on, if I commit to Chapter 29 - Work Less (At Your Job). Kind of a tough one in this scary labor market.

Hey, It's the Fair, OK?

Woke up the day after my Capitola walk-swim-walk adventure feeling tired, headachy, a little queasy. It might have been a hangover except that I only had a single Dr. Funk at Hula's Tiki place, and it wasn't that strong. This was a feeling I knew well from Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome, when it was my norm for months on end. I started to freak out. Did I overdo it? Mostly modest activity on 5 out of 6 days - was that too much? Or was it just the rigors of a little travel, a strange bed, a few hours in the car, not getting my usual oatmeal/fruit/walnut/yogurt brekkie? Or were those rigors part of the overdoing it? This sort of hypochondriacal second-guessing was also typical of BBKS, and believe me, it's more tedious to experience than it is to read about.

So I ditched the bike ride or vigorous walk in favor of the Big Poofy Chair and a morning of tennis and golf on the tube. I sound like a serious country club queen, but in reality I'm just a sports nut, and it all looks awesome in high-def. Morning stretched into afternoon and the Giants game (won handily, fortunately for my equilibrium), and I found myself feeling better, even a little restless.

Couldn't persuade Tim, but I lit out for the last day of the State Fair - couldn't pass up the calling of stinky livestock and fried foods. I perused the livestock show, admiring the enormous Dorset and Hampshire sheep, the pigs, the llamas (llama!), the horses, and the competent, low-key folks who cared for them and kept them clean and fluffy. I ate a corn dog of pornographic proportions. I saw portraits made of Jelly Bellys and exhibits of every California county's splendors. I saw fire artists, kaleidoscopes, chinchillas, lovebirds, cookware and mattresses. I watched a 13-year-old girl ride the mechanical bull with grace, rhythm, and determination, and a guy built like a defensive tackle almost win the basketball shooting game. I walked all over the massive fairgrounds, tired and footsore, but intoxicated with the silly fun.

Plus I was looking for the perfect deep-fried dessert. I had heard there were deep-fried Snickers bars, Twinkies, and Oreos. I never found the Snickers, but in the middle of the thousands of food stands, I did find one that offered both Twinkie and Oreo delights. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Oreos. They arrived completely unrecognizable, covered in a half-inch of batter, sprinkles, and a little chocolate sauce. Wow. They looked very, very decadent, but they weren't that great. The cookie part got soggy and didn't contrast enough with the batter. They were just ok. I didn't even eat them all, but I ate enough to feel a little ill afterwards. But hey, it's the fair, ok?

Slogging back to the car, I calculated that I had been on my feet for about 2 hours and 45 minutes, and walking for at least 2 of those hours, albeit slowly. I was really beat when I got home, but not in a BBKS way, and although I doubt I burned anywhere near the calories I consumed in deep-fried Oreos alone, I did succeed in moving around outside. It wasn't my plan, and it was slow, but that's cool.

Making a Splash

There was no doubt in my mind what the Shape Up with the Slow Fat Triathlete chapter reference was going to be for this post: Swim at Any Opportunity (Chapter 14). Being in the water fills me with childlike happiness. If the water is open, unconstrained by concrete and untreated by chlorine, and the weather is crazy glorious, that's pretty much like crack.

This is Labor Day weekend, and Tim and I were visiting our friend Steve in one of the charming hamlets of the Santa Cruz mountains. My two key objectives for Sunday were to take in the floating begonia floats at the Capitola Begonia Festival and to swim in the ocean. Technically it's Monterey Bay, but since the bay is not particularly enclosed or protected, I think of it as the ocean.

Only nine floats came down Soquel Creek, but they were covered with real begonias and showed a lot of flair. My favorite was the giant pelican, complete with fish-costumed kids in its enormous bill. (Photo to come!) The crowds were disproportionate to the number of floats. We could hardly move along the creek path, but once we turned into the village, it turned into normal Labor Day madness. I arranged a rendezvous with Tim and Steve, ducked into the decently-appointed public restroom, and wiggled into one of my new suits. I picked my way through beach blankets and umbrellas and walked boldly into the water.

My internal wetsuit served me well . The temperature for the Monterey Bay this time of year usually hovers in the high 50s to low 60s. The calm water and hours of sunshine, though, had probably gotten the temperature up a couple of degrees from normal. It felt great to me, washing off the sweat and fatigue of parade-viewing in the heat, not to mention the hike from the car down to town. (Note to Steve: Hey, bud, the "great parking spot" that works for you on Thursday afternoons may not be such a great option for Labor Day freakin' Weekend!)

Not much to say about the swim itself. I had forgotten my goggles and swim cap, so I wasn't set up for a serious open water workout. A few strokes of freestyle, a few backstrokes, a bit of breaststroke, some of my patented Esther Williams (no relation) sidestroke, a lot of floating about, kicking, stretching, and generally feeling aquatic. I looked on it as preparation for my upcoming regime of lap swimming and a reminder of what I love about triathlons. I managed to work hard enough to feel it in my arms and legs, and the walk back uphill to the car seemed inordinately difficult afterwards. I mean, it was over a mile uphill in 82 degree weather, and I was carrying my beach bag and heavy wet towel, and I hadn't eaten anything since a bagel in the late morning... but still. I didn't feel too much like a trained-up athlete as Steve and my semi-sedentary hubby strode away from me.

But that's not important. I swam in the ocean. It was good.

Postscript: The sweet potato fries at Hula's Island Grill and Tiki Room in Santa Cruz are serious, and the drinks are tasty. But don't order anything "Jamaican Jerk" style - ludicrously unauthentic.

Seems Better Already

A potpourri of positive signs after just a week or so.

I woke up this morning around 7:30 and decided to go for a walk. This is positive for a few reasons. For years, the idea of me waking up voluntarily and without an alarm at 7:30 on a Saturday was pretty much inconceivable. I was always pretty ready to sleep 9 1/2 to 10 hours any night, and weekends were an invitation to sleep more. I never, ever woke up feeling alert and well rested, no matter how long I slept, and I usually felt tired and often headachy, in no mood to move or talk, let along exercise. Yeah, I became a pretty dedicated triathlete and even marathoner, but early morning workouts were few and far between during that time.

The alert reader will probably recognize that I had sleep apnea, a fact that went undiagnosed for at least four years and probably more like 20. But I got my APAP machine last year about this time, and very gradually some of the symptoms that had gotten so much worse during the Boo-Boo Kitty Experience began to subside (they had already started subsiding prior to APAP therapy, so I'm not willing to ascribe the whole BBKE to sleep apnea). First the headaches diminished, then I started feeling a bit more alert in the mornings, then it actually started to feel easier to get up, and recently I've had a few mornings where I woke up before my alarm and just felt like getting out of bed. This is really, deeply weird for me. I haven't had that happen since I was about 11 years old.

Anyhow, after feeling pleased with myself for a few minutes, I got dressed and went out. To my amazement, I felt much stronger and more energetic than I had just two days previously. I know from long experience that a great session of exercise can easily be followed by a sucky one, but I was still extremely gratified. I went up and over the levee and down along the dock by the Virgin Sturgeon, walking cautiously along the narrow, tippy floating it. It wa cool and breezy by the river, like the first day of fall, though I know that we could get quite a few more days of 97-100 degree heat before fall really kicks in.

I jogged a few steps as I reached the giant oaks by the Ghost Offices, and did a few step-ups onto the lowest-lying concrete bench. I even jogged part of the way back up the path onto the levee. My back didn't hurt, my calves and ankles weren't tired. I got home and found I had only been out for 32 minutes, but I'd done some semi-vigorous things during that time.

The final piece of excitement - and all this before breakfast - was that my Junonia swimsuits had arrived while I was at work yesterday. Like most women, I had a sort of sinking feeling about trying them on, but to my amazement, they both fit perfectly! I don't know how Junonia knows how to keep my boobs covered and in place, but they do and I thank them. Just in time for a Labor Day weekend venture down to the beach. Swimming in the ocean is one of my great joys, even in the frigid NorCal Pacific.

Today's chapter: Take Two Steps Back, One Step Forward (18). The one step forward days feel so good.

Making the Best of Walking

I'll let you in on one of my many guilty little secrets. I don't really like to walk that much. Ooooh, bad Jayne! Fitness and health writers are supposed to LOVE walking. The Mayo Clinic, for example, blathers on about how walking is so good for you, so safe, so cheap, etc. (And excuse me, Mayo Clinic, but do you really think that walking is going to "trim your waistline"? Y'all must be walking in some different shoes than I am.)

Well, sure, walking's all those things. It's a low-impact way to move the bod, and if the bod is sporting many pounds of excess flab, you're a lot less likely to damage yourself by walking than by playing badminton or basketball. Plus walking takes place outside, which is a positive.

That is all true. But I find walking to be tedious. I admit it. I'd much rather run or jog than walk. I like hiking, certainly, but that involves being really outside, somewhere with mountains or other nature-y benefits. And there are parts of the world that are just so magical that walking in them is pure joy. Much of Wales or Scotland, for example, or the Mendocino coast. But that's more like hiking, really. "Walking," to me, generally involves being a flat, paved environment, probably suburban or urban, and is either something I have to do, like getting from the train station to the office, or convince myself I should do, like this morning.

Now I know I am diametrically opposing many of my own dictums here. Chapter 5 - Embrace the Awesome Power of Fun, for example, states unequivocally that exercise should not be drudgery, and I have just confessed that walking is a bit on the drudgy side. I have also written about how every time you go out and move your body, you should feel grateful for the privilege of doing so (Chapter 40). How you should move like an animal (Chapter 13) - relaxed, graceful, efficient. Well, fine. Some days the reward for the exercise is not the awesome power of the fun; it's the awesome power of the smugness that you can radiate when you know you got up and exercised before work. Sometimes the animal that you're moving like is a tired old hippo, not a young gazelle bounding over the plains, and the hippo is grouchy from the parasites that live under her skin.

And until I feel like my core and my joints are strong enough to run, I will walk. I'll do a few "pushups" off the metal gate along the path, and a few "assisted pullups" on a low tree branch, just to break up the monotony and use a few more muscles. I'll enjoy the ground squirrels and the mountain plover (pictured) in the landscaping of the Ghost Office Complex. I'll try to make it fun. And I'll look forward to running again.

4 +1 +4 +1 Is Not Equal to 12 or even 10

It's a gorgeous late summer day in Sacramento. The temperature was only around 80 degrees at 1 pm, so I decided to take some of my own advice and Go Outside (Chapter 17) on my bike. I was finally starting to feel a bit of pep after a rough week recovering from putting on my parents' 50th wedding anniversary bash. Lots of people put in lots of effort - and your thank you notes are sitting on the hall table waiting for a mail run - but I really crashed after that weekend. Aches, involuntary naps, muscle cramps, mental fog, headache, all that crap.

But hey! Yesterday I felt all better and did my modest bike-train commute in fine style. It's about 4 miles from my house to the Sacramento train station, then another mile or so from the Berkeley station to the office. The ride along the Sacramento River, across the American River, and back over to the Sacramento was inspiring both ways. Big oaks and cottonwoods, geese on the beach, sunlight glinting on green water - excellent.

So today at lunchtime I saddled up and headed out along the levee, west and then north along the Garden Highway, where the Sacramento makes a huge bend. I was planning to go about 10 miles, warming up for the first 15 minutes or so (Chapter 3: Be Slow), and then doing a few intervals to get my heart rate up and feel like I was working out rather than commuting.

The warmup was delightful, and the modest intervals felt good. I felt my quads work and my heart rate go up without getting a huge anaerobic burn or sucking ghastly wind. I went out about 5 miles, but instead of making my usual U-turn, I turned onto Power Line Road, thinking to explore it and get a mild challenge climbing back up on to the levee. I bumped along the cruddy road surface, but enjoyed my proximity to the cornfields and apple orchards and the massive live oaks.

Coming back, though, I felt like complete and utter dog-doo. Getting back onto the levee, an elevation gain of about 30 feet, felt like climing Mont Ventoux, and the five or so miles back to the house seemed unimaginably long. My overall ride was going to be twelve miles, and I couldn't believe how tired I was. The Garden Highway stretched out before me for miles; I couldn't even see the big bend in the road.

So I switched my focus to Chapter 48 - Endure. I slowed down to a crawl, found a pace I could live with, and tried to block everything out of my mind, especially thoughts of time or distance remaining. I was looking for a Zen place of total mental non-focus. Without actually falling off the road, that is.

I drank my water in measured sips and contemplated a Gu, but I didn't feel like I was having a hunger knock. I just felt very, very slow. I worked on embracing my slowness, taking coasting breaks, taking breaks to get my butt off the saddle and air out the nether regions, and staying as comfortable as possible.

Finally the road started swinging east and I reached the Bridges restaurant - 1.3 miles to go. I gained a slight tailwind and a final spurt of energy to make it to the turn off the levee and down to my neighborhood. I coasted to the garage, feeling dull and weak. But I made it.

Note to self - an easy four miles to the train station, during which you try not to get too sweaty, is not really a workout. It's fun, and it's exercise, but it is in no way equal to an hour ride with some intervals thrown in. I need to start putting a little more extended saddle time in. And then think about intervals. And then, maybe next year, think about hills.

How It Sucks Having to Take Your Own Advice

So for over two years now I've been struggling with a not-officially-diagnosed variant of something like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I think. Whatever it is, it has sucked fairly extensively and precipitated my decline from a not-terribly-slow, somewhat fat triathlete to an extremely slow, extremely fat, usually tired non-triathlete. I wrote about this on my website (www.slowfattriathlete.com) as Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome, but I didn't really get to write about it in my latest book, Shape Up with the Slow Fat Triathlete, for a variety of reasons, primarily because the book wasn't about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and my troubles. It was a set of 50 essays on how to enjoy your body and its strengths and talents; how to have fun moving around; how to take care of yourself; and how to get your mind inspired in the face of the everyday grind. Kitty litter, commuting, work, kids, groceries and the ever-present lure of the Big Poofy Chair.

So now, somewhat in the spirit of the recently-famous Julie and Julia project, I plan to do a Jayne and Jayne project - use the advice in Shape Up with the SFT to get myself back on the road to more exercise, more being outdoors, more fun, more energy. I may check in with some other writers, coaches, experts, etc., but I'm going to built this blog on my own framework, starting with Chapter 1: Abandon Self-Consciousness. How did I do that today? I screwed up my courage and ordered two swimsuits from Junonia. I looked up the nearest lap swim location (McKinley Park) and made a vow to get back in the pool, then realized that I had no swimming raiment that would actually cover my newly expanded personage. So I gritted my teeth and spent $140 on the suits. I hope they fit. I'll let you know. If I really take the advice of Chapter 1, I'll post a picture.

I'm not sure how this will work, or if it will work, but it's time to try. I want to feel more like the person who bounded onto the cover of Slow Fat Triathlete, and I want to live some athletic dreams again.