Ok, I did not post on Saturday because it was just a bad day. I had woken up in the middle of the night to use the washroom only to fall flat on my ass. Why? Because the condo was flooded due to a cracked toilet tank. I had no idea that crack could cause an inch of water to cover most of the floor in the condo. We spent most of morning mopping up the damage and then installing a new toilet tank. Of course we had a neighbour who pitched in to help which was much appreciated.
After the fall I ended up with a massive bruise on my hip and a sore wrist which of course had broken my fall. I realized that I may need to give myself a bit of a break to let things heal. Then on Sunday after a lovely day on the beach I landed hard on my left foot while getting off my bike (yes, I had at least gone for a bike ride) which caused some pain in my ankle. While I did go for a bike ride again yesterday, last night while enjoying an evening downtown with our neighbours I found my ankle hurt more that I thought it would though I admit we did do a fair amount of walking.
I decided to do 2 things, firstly I picked up some Voltaren cream (easy to do since every street corner downtown has a pharmacy) and secondly, give my body recovery time. Of course that doesn’t mean doing nothing, it just means doing some gentle exercises. That shouldn’t be hard since we are off to the beach today and I always find swimming in the Caribbean Sea to be very therapeutic. The next few days I’ll focus on swimming and some bike riding to make sure my body is recovered before working a bit harder.
The end result of all of this has been the condo floors are really clean and I get to spend more time laying by and swimming in the pool.
Ok, I am excited. Yesterday I bought a vacuum for the Mexican condo. Now I admit that we have no carpet in the condo but it is a pretty big space with 2 large bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It is all tile but it takes some work with a regular broom to keep it clean. Now today I get to try out the new vacuum and then I can simply turn it over to my husband to regularly do the floors.
I’ve been good the last 3 days doing my modified run each day. My husband laughs at me when I get back to the condo as I am just soaking wet which is somewhat from exertion but mainly from running in the humidity. Not to worry, I always have my running belt on with both bottles of water full when I start out and not so much when I am done. I’ve been getting in at least 10k steps each day which is my minimum but yesterday I realized that I have not been doing any ‘floor’ equivalency which is an important part of my routine.
Let me explain, my Fitbit tracks me via GPS and it can calculate changes in elevation. It then converts those changes into the equivalency of climbing a flight of stairs. In my usual run I log 24 floors so the equivalence of climbing 24 flights of stairs (coming mainly from the dreaded hill at the end of the run) though on longer runs I have done as much as 40 floors. Here, however, it is flat pretty much everywhere so I don’t show any floors climbed which is disappointing.
This morning I got back from my run, drank down a fruit smoothie and then headed out again. Our condo is on the bottom of a 4 story building and there is an outdoor set of stairs that lead up to the top floor. Yep, climbed up and down those stairs 5 times so I logged 15 floors on my Fitbit. The good news is that didn’t kill me despite the already rising heat. I’ve decided that is a simple thing to add to my daily workout and will help keep me at my current fitness level while I am here enjoying the sun.
I have to say the weather here in Playa del Carmen is beautiful. We have had a couple of rain squalls come through though nothing lasting more than about 1/2 hour. Of course after the rain happens it gets really humid but that’s ok. What I really like is that we can sit at our dining room table and look out at our beautiful park. This is such a great alternate home for us.
As I mentioned in my previous post I decided to take a week off but committed to getting back to working out today. Well actually I started yesterday with doing a nice bike ride. We are fortunate in that we have some commuter bikes here though I admit my husband likes to go for leisurely rides while I put everything I have into them so that I get a good cardio workout. The really fun part of the bike rides are when we leave our complex of the roads are not paved and are full of potholes. I admit I have to slow down a bit on those roads but it makes for a challenging ride.
This morning it was time to do a run, well sort of. I learned in previous trips that it is hard to run here. Firstly it is because of the heat but secondly because of the humidity. I find the humidity makes it harder to breathe and in past trips I have resorted to just doing brisk walks. However, today I decided to challenge myself so I set my Fitbit to interval workout, 2 mins running with 1 minute of walking 15 times. No don’t get me wrong, by time I got to the end of the workout the running part was a bit slow and I was absolutely covered with sweat but the important part is I still did it. I plan to try again tomorrow to see if I can’t start working at my keeping my speed consistent through out the workout.
Who knows, by time I head home in 2 1/2 weeks maybe I’ll be able to run the entire 45 minutes.
I need to start this post off with a couple things. Firstly, huge congrats go out to my friend Cheryl who ran 10k for the 1st time today. I swear we will be running a 1/2 marathon together next year. Secondly, I didn’t post on Thursday because of wifi issues. Our service here in Mexico can be horrible and it was so bad I couldn’t get wifi on my laptop and I hate having to type out posts on my iPad. However, I decided today I would suck it up and get a post out with the iPad anyways. That was the point where my husbands asks if his Bluetooth keyboard would be of any use. Well hell yeah!!!
We got to our condo in Mexico Wednesday afternoon. In order to reduce the cost of the trip we had opted for a red eye flight Tuesday night to Mexico City and then a flight over to Cancun. It wasn’t too bad but I admit we were pretty exhausted when we got here. I knew there was no chance of doing a run Wednesday but we opted to walk to a restaurant for dinner so I at least got a few km’s in.
I woke up early on Thursday (because I had set an alarm) and went, screw this and immediately went back to sleep. This is the point where I acknowledge I had a couple of choices. I could force myself to keep to my usual routine or I could take some time off to enjoy my vacation. I went for the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I refuse to take the entire 3 weeks off from my workouts. As I have done in the past I set a deadline for when I will be back at it and I thought 1 week was fair and I could easily handle it without any sort of loss of momentum. I originally thought I would start back at it on Monday but then I realized that I would be getting up early to watch the Queen’s funeral and quite frankly that is something I am not willing to miss. The problem is by time it is over it will be far to warm here for me to go for a run.
We have now order some new, high speed, fibre optic wifi which will be installed sometime in the next week. While I will do my best to post on my regular schedule it will all come down to if our wifi cooperates. If it does I will talk to you all on Tuesday.
Since we are leaving for Mexico tonight yesterday I went to the salon to get my nails done and a pedicure. However, when I got up yesterday morning I realized that I had lost one of my big toenails. I wasn’t too concerned about that since I knew I had runner’s toe and that nail had been completely black for months. What concerned me was how I could get some nail polish and some fancy art work on that nail. Not to worry, the great tech who does my nails simply built a fake toenail. As a matter of fact you can’t even tell that it is fake. Yes, I’m a little vain when it comes to how my feet look in sandals.
On my last blog I posted about the wild fire smoke in the Metro Vancouver area. It actually got quite a bit worse and Sunday morning when I opened the patio door to let the dogs out the smell of smoke was almost overwhelming. When the sun came up there was that orange glow in the sky that unfortunately we seem to get every summer now. Some of the smoke is coming from the States in the south and some from the Fraser Valley in the east. As a matter of fact on Sunday Metro Vancouver’s air quality was rated the worst in the world. Trust me, it was not a great time for running outdoors.
Yesterday the news advised the air should start to clear up but Environment Canada still had us under an air quality warning. That put me in a bit of a dilemma, Monday’s are now when I walk my group of seniors. I absolutely have the authority to cancel our walk but I know how much the women look forward to it. I decided the best thing to do was for me to walk to our meeting place (it’s about 2 km from our house) and see how things felt. The air was quite a bit clearer than it had been on the weekend but I already had received a text from one of the walkers advising she would not be joining us (she has asthma so it was no big surprise to me that she opted out). I met with the walking group and took measure of how all of them felt about doing the walk and everyone seemed to feel the same in that the air didn’t seem too bad. It was agreed that if anyone felt any issues when walking we would stop. We made it through the 5k walk without any problems and we were all glad we did it.
The important thing is being conscious of the air quality and how it can impact you. I’m pretty healthy at this point in my life but I still think about whether an outdoor run is worth the risk or if there is some other safer activity I can do. Really, I don’t feel bad about changing a hard run into a long walk. I also have to think about those around me including my walking group. While these are all active, healthy seniors they are still at higher risk. I would have canceled that walk yesterday if I thought it could harm any of them. Air quality is becoming important here especially during the summer and we all need to be cognizant of the impacts it can have.
I am going to try to keep the blog going while I am in Mexico for the next 3 1/2 weeks but I’ll just apologize in advance in case I miss a post.
Today I had trouble focusing on my run because it was so beautiful at the beach. There was a large harvest moon happening made orange by the haze caused by wildfires across the border. That moon reflected beautifully off the ocean and framed in the hazy sky was a sailboat. What a great sight to see early in the morning.
Thursday night I started to panic. I realized I had once again overloaded my schedule and I just didn’t know how I was going to get everything done. I was out for dinner with my husband and we were discussing it and he suggested I take a day off from working out. Of course that just made me panic every more. However, as we talked it through I realized I could probably get in a few brisk walks and still do at least get in 10k steps. Not optimum for me but better than nothing.
I got up yesterday morning and checked my Fitbit only to find that my readiness score was very low. My Fitbit recommended just some light walking to give my body time to recover. I admit that I am not good at the concept of light walking, I like to walk at a pace where I can get my heart rate up. But for once I took Fitbit’s advice and toned the walking down some (though still got into fat burn zone). After a couple of walks throughout the day I did get in my 10k steps so felt better about the day.
This morning I was a bit surprised when my Fitbit said my readiness was only fair. It recommended a lower level of zone minutes (fat burn/cardio/peak) than what I thought I was going to do. I decided to change plans so instead of an easy 8k run I would just do a 6k. I started off and realized Fitbit may actually be right because my knee was a bit cranky. I opted not to push it with any intervals and just enjoy the run. I realized after the 1/2 way mark that the knee felt pretty good but I still kept my easy pace. That was until I got to the dreaded hill where I thought ok, easy run so you’ve got the strength left to give it your all. And so, I ran up the steepest part of the hill giving it everything I had and while I was breathing heavily by time I slowed my pace it felt awesome that I had done that.
All of this leads to the fact that sometimes you need to look for a balance in what you are doing. I should not be panicking because I might not get in a run, I should not be putting my workouts ahead of absolutely everything, I should be reminding myself that I had several days of hard work this week so stepping back for a day is ok. Actually, it is more than ok as apparently my body did need that break.
Find the balance in your physical activities so that both your mind and body stay healthy.
Out for my run this morning and because it wasn’t quite dawn I made sure I was wearing my reflective vest over my running jacket. I came up to a well lit intersection and though I should have been very visible an upcoming car, who had plenty of time to see me, it didn’t even stop. Instead he just rolled through the intersection. I am pretty sure even as he turned past me he didn’t notice me.
I have been working hard lately and even changing things up. Yesterday I decided I really needed to up my hill training so decided instead of 10 intervals up 1/2 of the steepest part of the hill I would do 5 intervals up all of the steepest part. I started with the first one and thought, ok, this may kill me. But, the next thing I knew I had done 5 intervals and was running home up the rest of the hill pretty proud of myself.
Today I decided to also increase my fast intervals. I had been doing 1/2 block as fast as I could and then backing off for 1/2 a block. Today I ran my hardest for a full block then eased off for 1/2 a block. The only part of the run where that didn’t happen was up the hill but that is normally what happens. I got to the 6k mark and thought wow, that has got to be the best run you have ever done. Imagine my surprise when I checked my Fitbit and I had only shaved a few seconds off Tuesday’s run. You have got to be kidding me! I put everything I have into that run and I didn’t see any results.
Ok, time to regroup. The fact that I was able to double the distance I run up the hill is pretty impressive. The fact that I ran more than 1/2 of my 6k at a hard run is also impressive. Time for me to stop beating myself up when I don’t get the results I want. Instead, I am just going to try harder on my next run. I swear, sheer determination is what is going to get me to my goal.
Out for my run this morning and quite frankly I had not done as much as I planned while being at the lake (always happens). Started running and when I upped it I thought, hell you haven’t run for a few days so let’s just do an easy run. So did not happen. While it was slightly slower than my fastest run it was pretty good and I was proud of myself.
Sunday was the family day at the lake. We haven’t been able to do this for the past 2 years so it was great to see things coming back to normal. There was hay rides, bouncy castles, races for the kids, bingo, raffles, hot dogs and hamburgers for sale and of course some lovely Fraser Valley corn.
I had prepped up a storm of food in anticipation of the Harris family arriving. These are close friend who for more than a decade have been coming to the lake Labour Day weekend (with the exception of 2020) to just kick back and enjoy the day. We had everything imaginable to eat for this event, hamburgers, hot dogs, roast beef sandwiches and fries. The food absolutely went over well with the teenagers being bottomless pits.
But it was what happened when they arrived which was so amazing. Our friend got there and parked in front of our hedge obscuring their vehicle. She encouraged my husband, brother, and I to come see a surprise. I thought it was a bit strange but as it walk past the hedge I took in a deep breath, she had driven out to our home town, probably 60k, to pick up my sister from the convalescent home to bring her to the celebration. Seriously, who does this.
We spent a brilliant afternoon with us and our extended family. At the end of the afternoon my sister was driven back to the home she has been staying in. To put it in perspective, this friend spent about 5 hours driving to make this happen. This is the kindest gesture anyone could have done for us right now. Thank you for making it the best Family Day ever.
Another hard run this morning. I managed to knock another minute off my 6k and am hoping with some challenging training at the lake this week I can shave even more time off that run. I am just so determined that I am going to significantly up my speed by the end of the year that I look forward to my training sessions right now. Ok, maybe not so excited about the hill intervals I plan on doing tomorrow but I will get them done. I should note one of my regulars on the promenade commented on how much faster I seem to be running. Kinda made me feel good.
The past couple of days I have had some medical appointments and while I know I have spoken about this in the past I thought it would be good to remind everyone about how important it is. Many men I know don’t bother to get checkups often saying, I don’t feel sick so why should I go see the doctor. Hmm, I don’t know, maybe to check for some hidden illnesses such as hypertension? It took me years to convince my husband that getting an annual checkup was really important but it wasn’t until his best friend was diagnosed with cancer that he finally agreed to do it. Even now it is sometimes like pulling teeth to get him see the doctor but at least he does it. I believe it is even more important to do this especially as we get older. Diagnosing illness early can literally be a lifesaver.
Yesterday was the dreaded mammogram for me. Dreaded not because I find it embarrassing but dreaded because squishing your boobs into that imaging machine is physically uncomfortable. I know how important it is for me and my sister to get this done annually because our Mom was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and maybe if she had been a little more diligent about getting her mammogram then it could have been caught sooner. I now just have to wait a few days and then I will get the results, no big deal.
Today I had another appointment that some consider not essential, the dentist. I admit I didn’t go the the dentist for a number of years but have been at least twice a year for the last 2 decades. I very seldom need to have anything done other than a cleaning (which is a good thing now as my pension plan barely covers the cost of 1 cleaning each year). Most of the stuff they have done in the past decade has been replacing 30 year old fillings that were way past their expiry date. Do I like getting my teeth cleaned every 6 months? No, but that kind of preventative care is what is keeping my teeth healthy.
I know that over the past 3 years my health has improved significantly so much so that I normally only need to go to my doctor now once a year for my annual physical. I do this without fail every year to make sure my health is where I want it to be. I also have my eyes checked annually (a must for diabetics due to things such as retinopathy) but because my diabetes is so stable the optometrist said after my next appointment she will recommend that I go to a bi-annual protocol. Finally, what is now part my routine, seeing a podiatrist who recommends getting my feet checked once a year (or if I develop issues from my running). Again, this is all preventative but in my mind it is all part of keeping me healthy.
So, if you have been avoiding seeing your doctor/dentist/optometrist or any other medical professional, now is the time to suck it up and get it done. Yes, sometimes you find out things aren’t quite as peachy as you would like but knowing that gives you the opportunity to hopefully do what I did, start that journey to health and fitness.
I am heading up to the trailer tomorrow to enjoy the last big weekend of the summer so won’t be posting for the next week. Hopefully when I am back I will be able to proudly say that I met all my training goals while there. Wish me luck!
I went to do my workout this morning and had to go back in the house to grab my jacket as there was quite a wind. I decided since I haven’t done any hill training intervals in a while that maybe that would be a good workout today. I was only at interval #2 when I realized it has been too long since I have done this. I managed to finish them and then do a short run and walk but decided going forward this needs to be a weekly workout so that I don’t fall behind again. Funny, I run the 4 blocks up that hill on average 6 days a week but doing those intervals today was hard.
A friend was telling me this week about a former local politician who was frequently writing a blog criticizing our current mayor and council. As I know this former politician I thought why not go have a look. I was completely taken aback with the negativity contained in these posts. Now don’t get me wrong, as a political activist I know how nasty politics can be but I don’t understand how someone can regularly spew this kind of negativity and still be having a happy life. It’s like this person just has so much pent up anger and hate that they think they should be sharing it with others. Moreover, in my opinion, some of what he is saying is 1/2 truths so he is not even providing correct information.
I decided I am not going to read anymore of his blogs. I have worked so hard in the past 2 years to put myself in a good place that I really don’t need to let that kind of vibe into my life. Don’t get me wrong, I know on this blog I have on occasion gone on a bit of a rant but most posts I keep positive. Quite frankly I like the posts to be that way because I know of several people who find it encouraging and have been helped by what I have had to say. I would be lying if I said when people call me inspiring that it didn’t give my ego a boost. I’d much rather feel good when writing a blog than sending out a bunch of negative energy.
So I am going to look at the world in a positive light as much as I can. While my life has at times been extremely challenging, I have always come through it. I have a fantastic circle of family and friends (many of whom are considered family) and a house full of wonderful pets. I don’t think right now I can ask for more than that. I choose positive over negative and for that I believe I am rewarded with feeling good about myself.
gwennefarrell 