Startle

I've been doing this thing at work for a while where I go for a short walk every thirty minutes to keep myself active and healthy. I was watching a show on YouTube, and a doctor said that they'd done a study on it, and they found that you got more out of a walk if it was broken up throughout the day than you did if you did it all at once. I guess, remaining sedentary for long periods of time is bad for the body.

So, I set a timer on my phone to go off every half hour, and when it would ring, I'd get up and walk around for a couple of minutes. Usually, I'd go outside and take a lap of the parking lot...but there's only certain times of year that such a practice is feasible in Houston. I actually went a few months without doing my walks at all, because it got so hot when summer came along that I couldn't handle it. I would get so sweaty, and I didn't want to be smelling like a locker room at work or something.

Then I realized that I could just walk indoors. Our building is pretty big, I could just take loops around the hallways inside the building. I've been doing a lot of that for the last few months. Sometimes, I'll head outside and do the parking lot still if it's an exceptionally nice day (which is rare) or maybe after dark when the heat retreats a little (though the humidity keeps those rare too), but mostly I stay indoors.

One of my favorite spots to go indoors is the office where the sales folks are. It's one giant room with a bunch of cubicle-like desks in the middle. I can go there and cruise the perimeter of it at a pretty high rate of speed and get in a lot of steps. I don't like going there when there's people there, though. I don't know anybody in sales. Their job and mine do not co-mingle. I work to make the product that they work to sell, but we don't work together in any way, so we are not even acquaintances much less friends. I always wait until all of them have gone home for the night...which happens pretty early most days...and then I'll cruise their empty office.

Recently, however, I've been caught off guard by a few of them a couple of times. I thought the room was empty, but there was one straggler left, and their head was hidden behind their monitor, so I didn't see them there. I went in, started walking, then found someone still at their desk, and felt like a creep for walking through their office uninvited while they were still around. I hurried back out of the office and waited until it was fully empty to come back again.

I check better now. Now that I've been caught more than once by a straggler, I make sure that there is no one left before I go in there, and if anybody still remains, I casually walk through the office and down the hall to the other office that is connected to it like I always meant to go there in the first place.

Just the other day, though, they decorated the office for Halloween. These guys went all out. There's several fake severed limbs in places, ghoulish heads hanging from windows, and so on. There's not a single group of desks that doesn't have some kind of decorations. Two of them in particular keep giving me problems, though. First, there's this guy:

He's a cute little skeleton that looks like he died at his desk or something. It's kind of funny, and I don't have any problems with it. It's not like it scares me...but it does give me a start sometimes. They've put him in a chair that is a good place for me to miss as I come in the office. I walk in, see that nobody is there and think, "Okay, I'm safe to walk in here without seeming like a weirdo," and then I go around the corner of desks, look up, and there the guy is. Pretty much every time, I've been fooled into thinking that there was someone that I missed and I get a quick shot of nervousness and embarrassment before I realize that it's just the skeleton decoration.

Then there's this guy:

He's hanging from a coat rack in the corner by the printer. It's the same deal with him. I think I'm safe, I walk around the office in a half circle, and when I turn back toward the side I came in on, I catch a glimpse of this humanoid thing standing in the corner, and I think, "Oh, crap, there was one more person that I didn't see, and now they're wondering what this weirdo is up to walking around their office when he doesn't belong here." Again, it's just a momentary shock before I figure out what is actually going on, but it happens again and again.

The rest of the Halloween season is going to be a bit of a pain. I bet they'll just replace them with Santa Clauses or something, and it'll be the rest of the year even!

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | Getting Back On My Routine | Journey to One-derland | Week 15 Roundup

After a week of unusual activities while out of town on vacation, it was nice to be home this whole week and slip back into my usual routine. I did alternate day fasting the whole week, and stuck to my way of eating like glue, and I think I did pretty well. The scale did some weird things, but I think that was all the scale's fault, not mine...no really!

10K 2: The Electric Boogaloo

I was supposed to run a six-miler as my weekend run this week. When I got to the three-mile point, the halfway there spot where I turn around and go back, I thought, "I might as well do an extra tenth of a mile so that it will be another 10K." So, I did.

I also tried hard to increase my pace this time around. Compare it to last week.

I brought my pace down by 41 seconds per mile. That's pretty good...not as good as I was hoping. It was better earlier on, and then flagged at the end, slipping down below 16:00 minutes per mile. Which was a bummer. I was very tired there at the end, though.

Runkeeper tried to make me feel like I accomplished something big, though. It always gives me these little badges when I do something that can be classified as impressive...at least if you're not paying too much attention to what it says. For example, I got this:

For someone who has been running a long time, and has done dozens of 10Ks, this might mean something. For me, of course, who has done two, it's not as big of a deal. My fastest 10k! I beat out all the others to be slightly faster. Wahoo!

It was very generous with the badges today, though. So I got this one too:

Yeah, baby! Oh, I guess not as great after all. That just means that I didn't beat out last week's 10K, in which I actually ran 6.33 miles because I was desperately trying to get my pace back under 17:00 per mile to hide my shame at being so slow. Still long though.

I also got this badge:

2nd fastest in the 5-7 mile range. That seems like it could be good, except that I've only done three in the 5-7 mile range. Also, if you look at the info there at the bottom, it says that my pace was 1:46 slower than my fastest five mile run. That was the one I did with my sister when I went out to visit Rish Outfield. We ran five miles, and because I was with her, I went way faster than normal. That's a pace that I'll probably never even come close to. But thanks for reminding me, Runkeeper.

Now I've Done 10K

I've been doing a couch to marathon program for the last few months, running every other day at increasing lengths to one day in January arrive at the ability to run a marathon. A month and a half ago, I made it to the 5K, which was the first big milestone of the process.

Well, today I hit the second milestone, the 10K.

I was horrifyingly slow, and it took an awful lot out of me, but I did it, and I can be proud of that. I suppose, over the next few months, I can increase my speed, because this won't be the last time that I run a 10K. No, pretty much every Saturday from here on out my run length will exceed a 10K. So, I'll be getting used to it.

A Couch to 5K Video Celebration

It's been four weeks (five really, if you count the week where I was out with a really bad sunburn), and I've reached the end of the Couch to 5K program. Here's a little ode to the joy of training your body to do something it couldn't do when you started!

I Made It to 5K

If you've been following my Big Anklevich on Health videos (and I know that most of you don't), you might have heard about how I am following a program called Couch to 5K to get myself in to shape for running. It looks like this:

So, I started out slow, and then I started to grow. It was tough, and I often wanted to quit, but I've been a runner before, so I knew that I could do it. I just had to stick to it.

Before you know it, I had worked my way through the whole program and I was a day away from running the 5K. That was when my wife's sister's family was in town visiting us. We took them to New Braunfels to tube down the Comal River. While we were there, I got a horrible sunburn, and when the day came to run the 5K, I had to wimp out.

The sunburn was really bad, particularly in my armpits, which is a spot that doesn't get a lot of sun, but that day I laid on my back with my arms behind my head for most of the time, so they got it good. Moving my arms hurt something fierce, so I decided to delay the 5K one week, and just rest that day.

Well, that one week is up. Today was my day, I was to the last green square on that chart: RUN 5K! So, that's what I went out and did today.

It was kind of anti-climactic. It was just like every other day running, really, except that I went longer than I usually do. In the past, I've done actual organized 5K races, and that would have been a much better culmination of the process, but here in Houston, they don't even bother to put on races in the summer. No one would come. It's just too hot.

I'm not really sure how I did compared to other runs either, because I changed my distance calculation from miles to kilometers just for today. My average pace is usually kept in miles, but today it was in kilometers.

I tried to work it out to miles per hour pace, and if I did it correctly, then my pace was pretty terrible, but it usually is. Of course it's only going to get worse if I run much longer than I usually do.

I did get some congrats from my Runkeeper app that I use to track this stuff. At the end of runs that are noteworthy it will give me little award things. Today I got an award for running my longest run:

A new personal record! I also got this award which makes me chuckle:

My fastest 5K! Wow! Also my only 5K...at least that Runkeeper knows about. I've done 5K countless times before, and I'm pretty sure that most of them were better than today's run, but that's okay. I'm ramping up. Eventually I'll get there.

Now it's time to move on to the next part of the process, 5K to 10K. I'm moving straight into that training on Tuesday. I won't be able to run the 10K as a race as well, because the training should end on August 27th, which is usually the worst part of the summer down here. So, still no organized races.

Doesn't matter though, 5K wasn't my final goal and neither is 10K. I'm not even shooting for a half-marathon (although there may be one I could run in when I get to that point in my training). I've done all those things before. 

On my bucket list that I made when I was a 20-year-old, I wrote: Run a Marathon. That's what I'm finally going to get around to finishing. In 2013, I tried to get to that point, but I only made it as far as the half-marathon, and then I got lazy and didn't keep my training up for the marathon. This time, barring any injury, I'm going for it. I'm going to make it.

The Houston Marathon is in January, and that's what I am shooting for. So, in the end, I will get to run in a race, and it will be the biggest one around these parts. I am determined to finally achieve what I started and mark it off my list forever.

ADF & Carnivore : Really Getting It Down - Journey to One-derland - Week 3 Roundup

This week, things really started to come together. If it wasn't for the fact that we celebrated my wedding anniversary this weekend, I might have had a perfect week. No matter. I'll just get right back to it, because I am getting totally used to this, and I'm loving it.

Wildlife

I've been going on walks as often as possible recently, to help me feel a little better and stick with my eating plan. It's not hard, because they have these absolutely beautiful trails that wind through my neighborhood.

Sometimes I see wildlife out there too. There's squirrels, of course, but I've seen armadillos, deer, dozens of different kinds of birds, and I even showed off the video of the rabbit that I saw in my Easter post.

Sorry, that picture should be better. It's a still frame from a video.

Today, however, I came across some new wildlife that I hadn't run into before. I got a picture of them before they disappeared back into the brush.

I'm a little nervous to go out into the trails now. They looked kind of fierce. They did leave behind some meat hanging from a rope, though. I can't say why, but I really want to eat some of it, and since I'm on the carnivore diet, it fits right in with my plan, so maybe I'll just take a bite...

The Rebirth Of Spring

I figured that I could do no better for an Easter post than to show you the wildflowers that I saw yesterday when I went for a walk...the first walk that I've gone on this year, and, in particular, the first since Marshal and I started the Road to 50 Challenge. It was really pleasant, and it made me wonder why I haven't been doing this all along.

What I saw mostly were these tickseed flowers.

I kept trying to get a picture that would communicate just how abundant the flowers were. This next one is the best I could do.

They just covered the slopes leading down to the canal.

The next thing I found were the Pink Evening Primroses. They are usually one of the most plentiful flowers out there, and while they are quite prevalent on the roadsides, there weren't as many as usual by the canal.

 That was most of what I saw. I did get to see a couple of Indian Blanket flowers.

And these itty-bitty baby's breath-like flowers that I think are called fleabane.

And, something that I always find interesting, these thistle flowers.

I think of those as being desert flowers, so it always seems strange to me to find them in such a rain-drenched, humid environment as Houston, but I guess they're just fine, because I saw plenty of them.

So, that was my Easter post for you. The wildflowers are back, the world is turning green again, and we can finally be happy again.

Oh, one other thing, you wouldn't believe who I ran into while I was out...well, actually, maybe you will, because it makes perfect sense. That's right, I found the Easter bunny out hiding the eggs for the kids.

More 'Shrooms

I had a post a few weeks back about seeing some mushrooms in the parking lot at work, and how, as a boy from the dried out west, this was a big deal to me. Well, it's been raining a lot around here recently, so there have been plenty more mushrooms where those first ones came from.

I ran a bunch of them down this weekend when I mowed the lawn, for example.

But today, while I was out doing my morning walk, I found some that I don't think I've seen before. Check these guys out.

I thought they were cool enough to stop and take a picture of. But then I turned around, and on the other side of the trail, back in with the thick brush, there were dozens and dozens more.

The vines and branches are really thick off the side of the trail, but I decided to push my way back through and get some pictures of them too.

On my tiny phone screen, I couldn't tell if the scale of the number of mushrooms was coming through, or if they were just to spread out to be able to tell. Now that I've got the photos home, and I can see them bigger, it seems like you can tell that there is just a ton of these things, and the pictures actually look pretty good.

I took a couple of wider shots to try to show how many mushrooms had sprung up in this spot, but they are the ones that don't seem to show the scale nearly as well.

This one is a little better.

I do really like how the pictures turned out.

They're neat looking mushrooms. They look like tiny umbrellas. Umbrellas for fairies or something.

I'm not sure if it was worth it to traipse back into the brush like I did, however. At one point I got stuck, because the vine I had brushed up against wasn't like the others. This one had thorns. It felt like I'd bumbled into a wild blackberry bush or something. I had to stop walking, and back up several steps just to get the thorns to release me...and they didn't leave me unscathed.

I look like I've been playing with my cat. She's a vicious little beast.

Activating

It's been almost three weeks since I got all excited about running and went out and started doing it out of the blue. I surprised myself both for having the motivation and for how little it affected my lungs. 

My muscles did get sore, however. I wonder if they were surprised too, because the day after I went running, my back gave out on me while we were removing the old granite countertop from our kitchen. Was it purely the effort of moving a giant slab of rock? Or did the unexpected running cause some of the issue too?

I hadn't run in years, and the main reason why was because my back was always hurting when I run, and it was just too much to bear. I figured that I was too fat to be out there pounding the pavement. If I wanted to run, I had to lose weight first so that my body could bear the force of the footfalls.

It took longer than usual for my back to feel better, though. Normally it takes only about a week before I'm all the way back to normal, but this time it was aching for heavily for a whole week, and I didn't feel back to normal until just the other day. Part of that might have been due to the fact that there was constantly more work to do with the renovation of the kitchen, and my wife had me picking up and carrying heavy things plenty even though my back was not 100%.

With my back feeling better, I decided I should get some exercise again, and I went out and walked the trail that I ran a few weeks ago. I didn't want my back to go out on me again, so I thought I'd take it slow.

My back felt stiff the whole time, and I paused to do toe touches and hopefully stretch out my quads and lower back enough that it wasn't a problem. I wasn't very fast as my Runkeeper stats prove.

More than twenty minutes per mile, but it's okay, I'm not out to get a good time, I'm just trying to get into the groove again. Hopefully I can get it going on again soon.

Here's a question for y'all. What kind of a doctor would I go to if I had issues with posture and muscle aches? Is it a physical therapist? Or is there something else? I feel like a lot of my issues stem from bad posture and also possibly from past injuries that I have been compensating for in ways that have caused all new aches and pains.  For example, my back pain is not on my spine. Anytime I get back problems, it's over on the right side of my lower back down in the muscles there.

Don't they have doctors that can help people straighten out and get rid of pain just by changing the way they walk or by doing certain exercises to strengthen muscle groups that should be bearing a large portion of the load but aren't because they're too weak? Just curious. Have you ever done something like this?

I think I may post that question by itself over on Facebook to see if I get some actual answers since not a lot of people are willing to comment on these blog posts.

Real Running, Day 1

I went out to walk my normal route today, except not to walk it, but to run it. I downloaded a run-tracking app, and when I got to the mouth of the greenbelt trails, I started out jogging. I went for about a half mile before giving myself a walking break. I ran for a second time, making it less distance before taking a rest, and then ran for a third time to finish out the course.

All in all, I'd say I might have run about half of the distance. I walk, usually, for two miles, so I ran for one mile today.

When I walk, it usually takes 45 minutes, so this is a pretty big speed improvement.

The thing I found to be so weird is that I still didn't have any issues with burning lungs. I expected it yesterday, and didn't get it. Then today, when I stepped it up so much more, I still didn't get it. I guess that it's just not coming my way, unless maybe I do some sprinting or something...which I'd like to do. Apparently, sprinting is much more effective exercise than just jogging. (You can't sprint a marathon, though).

I'm On The Leader

I went out and took a walk this morning again--day two in a row for that, though I'm not making any goal to go every day or anything.

It was nice out there, and I was enjoying myself. Then I guy went jogging past me, and said "Morning." I have no idea what came over me, but I suddenly wanted to go run as well.

I started thinking about the goal that I never achieved of running a marathon. I first came up with that goal back when I was in college--along with a bunch of other goals on a bucket list I made. All the others were things like going bungee jumping and skydiving. Things I feel no desire to do anymore. The marathon, however, I still really want to achieve.

I thought about the Houston Marathon, which runs in January every year. Is it too late to start preparing for running that this year? Probably, but maybe next year...or maybe there's another marathon around town that I could try a few months later.

I thought about how, once I left town, Rish got into all the things he used to make fun of when I did them, like hiking and running. Yet, I fell out of those things when I got here. I hardly ever go hiking, and I never run anymore.

The next thing you know, I started jogging on the trail. I ran as long as I could, then took a short rest, walking instead of running for a bit. Then I ran some more, pushing myself to make it to a certain spot before quitting.

I should have felt miserable, lungs burning or something like that, but I didn't I was feeling a little euphoric instead. I felt great. Amazing!

I rested, walking for a little while, then ran again, all the way until I emerged from the greenbelt trails back onto the surface streets. I was sweaty and stinky, but I felt wonderful. Spectacular!

I'm going to have to keep going with this, I think. It's how I first got started with running back around 2010 or so. If I just push myself a little farther each day, before long I'll be running the whole way. Then I can run a little further each day. Then...maybe I can run a marathon and cross it off my list.

I certainly can't let Rish be the only doing the things that I love, anyway. I ought to do them too. Watch out, Rish, I'm on your back.

Maybe we could do a marathon together? What do you think, Rish? (I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to that one).

The #1 Exercise

The number one exercise for promoting longevity is...

Walking.

If you can walk, you'll last longer than those that can't, or don't. Walking helps maintain the muscle tone needed to not fall and break your hip.

I'm still a long way from needing to worry about longevity yet, but it's a good exercise, especially to get started. You don't have to be starting out, like me though. Shawn Baker, who is known as the guy who popularized the carnivore diet, and looks like this:

Still goes for a walk every day. So, it's not just for out of shape guys who can't do more.

However, I am still an out of shape guy, and I need something more simple to get started.

So far, even though I've been eating right since March 15th thanks to the help of Marshal Latham, I haven't done much in the way of exercise. I thought it might be a good idea to change that, so today, I went out and took a walk on the greenbelt trails around my house.

I've said it before, but I absolutely love the greenbelt trails here. The vegetation out there is so lush that you can barely see the houses behind it. I could easily believe that I was walking one of the more manicured trails at a national park. It's a great thing to have access to.

I'm going to do my best to keep this up. I'd like to take a walk every day. I'm sure that it won't always work, and I'm not going all crazy about it like I did when I was trying the 75 Hard thing, but I'm going to push for that achievement as much as I will toward writing every day and eating right.

I'll see if I can't bring my good camera out and get some cool pictures of birds and stuff. I saw a particularly cool looking bird today with a really bright beak. It would have been a picture worth sharing if I'd found it.

I also may see what I can do to combine my goals. If I take my phone, and talk into the recorder, I can write while walking. Now that'd be some good stuff, right? 

I'm sure some of the folks that I pass will look at me a little funny, but what do I care? I don't know those people, so it's not like I'll lose their friendship for being weird. I've seen plenty of people talking on their phone as they walked. This wouldn't be much different...except when I'm narrating a murder scene or a sex scene or...well, maybe I'll just pause when I pass people if I'm doing something like that.