Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Betsy Devine weighed in on Happiness and why she thinks the Netherlands lead the pack in happiness. She bases it all on bicycles:

• Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar? : Happiness is a Dutch bicycle

She has a full list of why she thinks riding your bicycle everywhere would increase your happiness:

• Exercise makes people’s bodies feel good.
• Exercise lifts people’s spirits.
• Bikers are not anonymous the way drivers are; hence their traffic interactions are much more civil.
• Riding a bike instead of a Hummer to work is just one example of the general Dutch aversion to flaunting wealth–the struggle to keep up with (or better) your neighbors creates much unhappiness in many cultures.
• Almost running over clueless American tourists who will go home and blog about you gets your pulses racing.

I agree with her. I’ve enjoyed riding my bicycle around my town. When I was riding it to work was the best time I had working for other people. There is something about the physical activity with a definite purpose that really makes me content. I would much rather ride my bike to work than go for a ride in the mountains. The ride to work accomplishes more than just a pretty ride.

Over the summer, I forgot that The Biggest Loser is the show that takes 30 minutes to weigh 13 people. The repetition and the way they drag things out to last two hours really got to me this time because I was watching it live last night. I used to tape them on my VCR and watch them last year, so I could fast forward through the neverending weighing when things got too much. This time, I was stuck with watching every grueling minute.

Let me tell ya. I’ll be taping it next time.

Oh yeah, I had also forgotten about the blatant commercials. Jello? Yep there it is. The girl who was voted off is eating Jello at home to “limit her carbs.” One-A-Day vitamins was given a couple of minutes with Bob introducing them to his team. Plus, One-A-Day had paid for two commercials during the breaks: one for women and one for men.

More disturbing were the commercials (two) for surgical weight loss during the breaks. Here in Utah, they were for a local company that promotes gastric bypass surgery and lap band surgery quite heavily. Those surgeries go against everything taught on The Biggest Loser. I wonder if there were similar commercials in other areas.

On a lighter note, did anyone notice that everyone is wearing Timex watches? I’m a watch fanatic, so I notice those sorts of things. At first, I thought, “Hey, there’s that HRM Timex that Mike has.” The second time, I thought, “I’ve looked at that watch… almost bought it.” The third time, I thought, “Oh, I get it. Timex gave everyone watches. Smooth…” I have an OLD Timex HRM watch (the first one they made) that is still going strong, so I really don’t have a problem with them providing watches to everyone. Long after they have been voted off the show, those watches are going to be reading their heart rates and timing their workouts.

Will I still watch the show despite all the commercials and trumped up drama? Yeah, but next week, I’m fast forwarding through the weigh-in.

Jason Kottke said it better than I could I’m just passing this on to you:

• The democratization of the marathon (kottke.org)

Jason noticed that Gabriel Sherman wrote an article called, “How sluggish newbies ruined the marathon“. He is sick of slow runners in “his” races. With searing wit, Kottke has the best reply:

“Why should the almighty institution of The Marathonâ„¢ be more important than the people running in it? And why doesn’t he want more people to enjoy a sport that he loves? Should we implore Mr. Sherman to stop writing because he’s ruining journalism with his shallow, insubstantial articles? Hell no! Keep writing, Mr. Sherman…we’ll keep reading in the hopes that you’ll one day improve and recognize the importance of, every once in awhile, doing something for which you’re not ideally suited because you want to.”

It seems like so many people join sports (or religions or country clubs or whatever) in order to feel better than other people. If anyone can run a marathon, then the marathon isn’t special anymore, is it? WRONG! No matter who does it, if they finish a marathon, they have completed a great thing. For one shining moment, they were able to conquer the distance and any clamorings their body had to stop.

Bad form, Gabriel. Bad form.

Don’t let any elitist athlete tell you what you can and cannot do. If you have qualified and trained for the race, don’t let anyone stop you from running it. Sorry, Gabriel, you’re going to have to let a few more people into your “exclusive” club.

When I first started running, I signed up for a race to inspire me to run every day. Every race that I’ve ever run has been to inspire me to keep exercising every day so that I would keep myself healthy. The race was a by-product of the daily habit. I didn’t care how quickly I finished. Just showing up to the race was good enough for me.

Anne over at Complete Running Network suggests that going to a race with the idea of just finishing it is selling yourself short.

• It’s Not Supposed to Be Easy » Complete Running Network

Anne believes that it’s not good enough to just show up:

“Runners shouldn’t show up at the starting line of a race planning to just finish. There’s far more challenge to reaching a realistic target time.”

I don’t agree with Anne. We all run races for different reasons. I run races for inspiration and weight loss. Other people run races to raise money for charitable events. Still others run races to create bonding family experiences for their children. There are as many reasons to run races as there are people who run races. Focusing on finish time is merely one way to keep score.

She did have some good advice toward the end of the article:

“Extreme weather on race day may mean quickly adjusting expectations. Or, you may get hurt or sick on the course and instantly modify plans. But don’t sell yourself short. Finish up by the time you said you would. And declare what that time will be on your blog (if you have one) and to your friends. Even if you finish dead last, if you hit your most conservative goal, you’ll have won.”

If I have trained enough to show up for a race and finish it, then I have won. I don’t need a finishing time to prove it. Just showing up at the race is more than most people ever dare to do. Focusing on the finishing time isn’t “selling myself short” it’s just short-sighted.

Remember: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen

Laura,

I hate to be a bother, but since I have your attention – do you have any advice on what to look for when buying a treadmill? Hey, what a great idea for a blog entry!

(Of course, I’ll do a search in your archives.)

Ernie

Ernie,

I haven’t written that entry because it’s so complicated. It depends on a lot of things, like your space requirements. We live in an 890 square foot house, so the only spot we had to put a treadmill was a tiny area in Mike’s office. It was essential that we had a fold-up design, so we compromised on horsepower and stability because of space.

We use ours so much that I wish we had gotten an industrial grade treadmill (like the kind they use in gyms). One that works with a Polar heart rate monitor would have been nice also. I thought the iFit thing would be important, but I rarely use it anymore. I used to use it a lot with a program called i2Workout, where I could program workouts that controlled the treadmill, but I haven’t used it lately.

• Pick Me! » i2Workout

The most important thing is to wear workout clothes and running shoes to test them out. If the store doesn’t let you test them, then don’t buy them. And REALLY test them out. Try running on them at top speed and see how they vibrate. Ours makes a lot of noise and it has been a bother because I will wake up Mike when I’m running, even though the treadmill is in another room.

I just remembered that Wendy Bumgardner wrote a few entries back in March about the latest treadmills. Maybe they will help:

• Best Budget Treadmills

• Top Picks for Mid-Range Treadmills

• Top Picks Quality Treadmills

I guess I WILL turn this email into an entry on Starling Fitness, if you don’t mind.

Happy Shopping, Laura

Sometimes WHEN you exercise is as important as what you do and for how long. Choosing your time carefully can keep your exercise routine a routine or kill it in the water:

What time of the day do you exercise?

How often do you exercise?

Does this work for you? Are you able to keep your exercise appointments or are you tempted to skip them?

What would be the best time for you to exercise and how often?

What have you done in the past? Did it work?

The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.

Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.

Bonking happens when you are exercising and your glycogen stores run out. It’s like running your car on fumes, except your car doesn’t have fat storages to draw from. It has been described as painful and long distance racers avoid it by loading up on high calorie supplements like Gu Energy Gel and PowerGel.

You can find out more information about bonking here:

• Dr. Mirkin – BONKING

• Bonk (condition) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bonking is actually a very rare condition and usually only shows up during extreme exercise. Of course the marketing for products like Gu and PowerGel don’t want you to know that. They hype their products by providing them for free to the extreme athletes who need them, focusing the cameras on Lance Armstrong when he sucks down a mouthful of the sugary stuff.

Most of us are exercising to get rid of the fat in our bodies. Consuming mass quantities of sugary goo is counter-productive to that goal. If you are going to be exercising for more than an hour, eat half a banana before your workout. Longer than that should probably be broken up into two workout sessions.

There is also the idea that doing extreme exercise in the morning before breakfast, when glycogen levels are low, burns more fat than doing the same amount of exercise after eating. This hasn’t been proven and can lead to dizzyness and shaking. Be careful and listen to your body.

I told you about Lisa some time ago when she was training for her Century Ride:

• Starling Fitness » Training for The Century Ride

Well, she finished it and here are her thoughts about it:

• Learning The Lessons of Nixon » 100k!

She did pretty well until the last five miles:

“I was fine up to the 50 mi rest stop, but the last 5 miles were very, very painful — I felt like my legs were on fire from just above the knees to just below the hips from all the lactic acid built up in my muscles; my hands had started to go numb, and my neck and shoulders hurt. I ticked off every little bit of a mile during that last stretch. It came on very suddenly — maybe I was bonking (experiencing muscle failure due to depleting glycogen, a condition that happens when you’ve used up all your body’s available quick energy stores).”

We’ll talk more about bonking tomorrow.

Congratulations, Lisa!

52 Projects is a craft site with projects to do each week, but this week, in addition to the project, we got a lovely story about running on a path in a park.

• 52 Projects: Tree

The author had run past that tree for years and has a craft project to prove it. Running has been very helpful:

“Running is a way to keep the pounds off my mid-riff, to keep me from screaming because the TV volume is up too loud or some other stupid thing that I shouldn’t be losing my temper over, to keep my blood pressure down, to do some thinking or to do no thinking at all, to help clear my mind, to be alone, to move forward, faster and faster and faster. And throughout and within all of the running, that tree was my fixture: to reach the tree, to see the tree, to think back on it as I walked into my apartment, winded, soar and soaked in sweat, but smiling down to my core.”

If you run a similar route every day, pick a tree on the route that is YOUR tree, just like this person did. Hopefully, yours won’t suffer the same indignity that this tree did.

Mary, from fitfemme, opened up in the locker room with a woman who had lost eight pounds in just a couple of weeks. Her secret:

Don’t eat the donuts at work.

• fitfemme: Mary’s fitness blog: In the locker room

They discusses the behavior of coworkers who bring fatty and sugary treats to work every day and came to an interesting conclusion:

“The colleague replied that she had a family member who worked at Krispy Kreme, so she got a discount–and then she added that perhaps by eating lots of doughnuts some of the older workers would vacate their jobs more quickly and create promotional opportunities for the younger ones.”

They’re not only trying to sabatoge your diet, they are trying to sabatoge your life. Next time you see a box of treats in the break room, pass them by. They’re not worth your waistline or your life.