Kiss My Knits!

Running, attitude, and hidden causes.

Okay, I tried and tried to get the text to wrap, but I don’t know enough about Flash, so instead I have this gigantic white space around a tiny window. Oh well.

I went out last night when it was drizzling and did Couch to 5K week one up my street. The forecast was for rain today, so it seemed prudent to go ahead and get out there while the getting was good. Today it’s clear and beautiful. Of course.

There are a lot of variations from peak to peak and valley to valley because as you may recall, I live on the slopes of a hill we have named Mount Doom. A portion is pictured to the right. Also, apparently you have to program in your weight for it to give you an estimate of calories burned, which I didn’t realize before starting. It tells me I burned zero calories. Call me crazy, but that feels a little low to me.

I need an armband or other device for holding my iPod. I had it in my pocket, but the cord to the earphones wasn’t quite long enough to reach my head without the earbuds popping out of my ears. I finally had to stick it in my bra. It was in a protective neoprene glove, but still, I can’t recommend this. I kept thinking that the screen was going to come on and give me a kind of E.T, chest glow through my shirt.

The iPod’s positioning obviously made it difficult to gracefully change tracks. I went all the way through the Couch to 5K podcast for week one and had to listen to part of week two. The public domain electronic music that makes up those podcasts isn’t going to win any awards, so I usually get out of the podcast after I’ve done my final run section. I know from there it’s all walking so I might as well just listen to whatever I want. Being able to access the control wheel to change it would be nice.

This was fun, though, and I look forward to trying week two on the greenway.

Instant messaging with my husband late this afternoon:

Me: You have a package from Amazon.com
Me: Why would you go and buy something from Amazon this close to your birthday? You don’t make things easy!
Him: Actually, it’s not for me!
Him: SURPRISE!
Me: What??
Me: Um, sorry about busting your chops, then.

Yes, turns out my wonderful husband bought me something I’d been talking about for a while now, the new Nike + iPod. It’s a little dealiebop that attaches to your shoe which you sync with your iPod Nano (which I have one of, thanks to the lovely and generous Ellyn Ritterskamp of TV game show fame). When you sync your iPod with the internet, it transfers all the data from the last time you worked out and creates graphs of your performance, calories burned, etc. You can join up with online groups (runners for Obama, anyone?), download customized playmixes, and generally nerdify your workout however you like.

Goodbye, plateau!

Mr. Tvini, after I opened it and went nuts: Well, you’ve been a little low, and you’ve been talking about this, and I thought you deserved something nice as a pick-me-up.

I’m the luckiest geek girl ever. Let’s hope the hurricane only skirts us so I can try this baby out tomorrow morning!

The last few days I’ve been launching into the day full speed. Did you know that the grocery stores don’t have their bananas out at 7:15 in the morning? Slackers!

I’m trying to decide whether to go running this morning. It’s still fairly cool, but even though I did get to bed at a reasonable hour last night (see, Mom? Your Mom Guilt^TM worked!) I’m still pretty tired. Something had me kind of sickly last night, and I think I’m still recovering a bit. So maybe I’ll let it go, since I did run yesterday and since the Greenway smells like dead skunk.

This morning: I’m stamping more padded mailers, knitting a hat for a guy in Belgium, and watching Becket. I may also stop by the hardware store and pick up some PVC pipe for a side project that I’ve wanted to get underway for some time.

At right, for no particular reason except that it amuses me: a cat’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

Can you say “plateau?” I knew you could. Weight loss has slowed to the barest crawl. I thought I’d have more time to exercise when Em was back in school. Instead, I’m running around more than ever, and am more tired. I lack the energy and motivation to exercise as vigorously as I did before, when it was a special treat that I stole time for wherever I could. Hopefully now that the first week is behind us, I’ll be able to slack off on the errands and calm down into a routine.

Also motivating: posting your weight loss or gain for the entire internet to see. Yikes.

Next up on the “just for me” front, which doubles as a stashbusting exercise, are these socks. These probably won’t go too fast, as I have an awful lot of “just for everyone else” knitting to take care of.

This yarn is Knitpicks Memories in the S’Mores colorway. It was a gift at least a year ago from Turtlegirl76’s voluminous stash. Reminder: she’s selling off a buncha stuff. If you’re on Ravelry, check it out. She adds new stuff periodically. I see she’s got some Blue Sky Alpaca Silk up that would make a fantastic scarf. Branching Out, anyone?

Okay, back to the salt mines. The hubby’s off for the night, gone to visit his folks and ride in a bike thingie with his dad. Lest anyone think I’m working too hard, childcare tonight consists of watching Road Runner cartoons and eating pizza with my daughter. Beep beep!

Something other than fingering weight! This is Knitpicks Bare DK weight 100% superwash merino. It was crockpot dyed, then I decided I wanted to add something to the chartreuse, so I overdyed it with black and a bit of midnight blue. I was concerned about how the blue would play off of the yellow tones, but it works. It’s actually more striking in person. I’m pleased with this.

This morning, it had finally stopped raining, so Em and I walked to school. It turned out to be a good thing, since she had had a bit of a fragile morning. Walking up seemed to give her an opportunity to regroup. She told me a story about her dolls coming to life, and about a guinea pig magically turning into a white duck. She’s big on magic wands and transformation right now.

Em felt she was running a little late, so she said, “We’ll walk quickly.” She did. I had to stretch my legs a bit to keep her pace, and she was shorter than me by a foot and was wearing a pack. That’s my girl. She comes by her speed and walking determination honestly. It’s a trait from my mother’s side of the family. Soon she, too, will be alarming tour guides by rushing to the front of the group, rest of the tourists be damned.

It was also good to walk her to school, since I’m not running this morning. Instead, I have an optometrist’s appointment. For quite a while now, I’ve been having difficulty focusing on things. If I look at something close up for more than a minute, then look up at something far away, it will sometimes take a good 20 seconds for my eyes to refocus on it. And I’m squinting a lot, even this morning when I should still be fresh. I’ve increased the size of the type on my computer, and that’s helped, but clearly I need to get this looked at.

I have a feeling my optometrist is probably going to tell me I need bifocals. At right: artist’s rendition of me in new eyewear.

It’s been raining since yesterday evening, and I’d been wanting to go run on the greenway. This morning on the way to the store, it was sprinkling, but I thought, “well, this isn’t so bad. I can still run.”

That marks the first time that I’ve actually wanted to go out and run in less than ideal conditions. So I’m going to go do it. And although it may be a spectacularly bad idea, I’m also going to try to move up to week 2 of the Couch to 5K program. If I have to drop back down again, no big deal, but I think I’d like to try to move up today.

I stayed up late last night and watched Dara Torres swim. If she can get out there and do her thang, so can I.

ETA: I just got back. I did week 2, and it went great. Clearly I’m ready for it. Go me!

Em is fascinated with miis, which are the little characters on our Wii. When we run using the Wii Fit, she gets very excited to see which mii we’ll pass next. When I was done running today, she decided to take a turn on the Island Lap so she could see which miis came up. I’d be hard pressed to get her to run long distance outside without complaint (especially in our 90F heat), but she really enjoyed this.

Disclaimers: If I’d known we were going to be doing videos, I would have vacuumed. And picked up things. And bought a new couch. Also, my overenthusiasm is meant to encourage her to keep exercising; I don’t always sound like I’m hopped up on the happy juice.

Thanks again, Dad!