Category: training

Bonnie ran with the bike today and she was flying. I was glad to see it. She was not wearing a seat belt yesterday.

After Bonnie’s ride I did 25 miles, mostly in drizzle and post-drizzle, wet roads. I don’t know how people who live in the NW do it. I hate riding in the rain. It gets my bike dirty.

I frequently don’t respect what a big effect my food choices have on my day-to-day energy level and outlook. It took me a while to catch on, but I’ve learned in the last few years that how I eat has a huge impact on my training. When I am eating well, I nearly always feel recovered and ready to work hard every day.

Kaitlin Quistgaard has an article about greens, Green Party, in the April 2007, Yoga Journal. It will probably be a while before it makes it to the Yoga Journal archives, but here are a few nutritious facts:

• For 18 calories, a half cup cooked Swiss Chard provides 150% of the recommended daily value for vitamin K, used by your body to maintain bone health; 55% vitamin A, important for vision and lungs; 26% vitamin C, for a healthy immune system; and is also an excellent source of iron, potassium, magnesium and fiber.
• Calcium – A half cup of cooked collards provides 179 milligrams. A cup of cooked kale 90 milligrams.
• Oxalic acid – Oxalic acid can bind with calcium and prevent your body from absorbing it. Chard, spinach and beet greens all are high in calcium and oxalic acid. Cooking them reduces the levels of oxalic acid.
• Lemon, or other foods rich in vitamins C, boost your body’s ability to absorb the iron in spinach.
• Drinking black tea with your meal inhibits iron absorption.
• Eating a little oil (as in oil and vinegar) with your greens increases absorption of carotenoids.

The article also has a couple of recipes and a few other ideas for incorporating more greens into your diet.

The World’s Healthiest Foods website maintains a list of the 130 healthiest foods with nutritional data and preparation tips.

You’ve probably wasted a lot of time lately wondering how you’re ever going to get those rollers clean. If so read on …

This morning while I was changing the belt on my rollers I was inspired to go after the tire gunk as well. I tried ski wax solvent, soap and water, Windex, Super Green, and acetone. All of them got some stuff off, but none of them was the magic potion. I was about to try Comet, but decided to write to Kreitler instead.

This is their response:

The Kreitler drums will get a buildup of tire rubber on them over time from normal use. We do recommend that you use a standard household degreaser such as simple green. You may need to use a soft bristle brush with the degreaser to remove the built up rubber. Please ensure that the product you choose is a non-abrasive cleaner, as it may scratch up your rollers.

Since I didn’t want to splatter Simple Green all over my bedroom I used a Scotch Brite pad rather than a brush. Not sure if that qualifies as non-abrasive, but my rollers are as shiny as new. : )

By coincidence, I learned that Simple Green works pretty well for cleaning the carpet underneath the rollers too.

I’m attracted to ultra distance events because of a genetic mental defect. For some reason my family, at least the women in my family, seem inherently incapable of accurately judging the enormity of any task they want to undertake. If a job can be started it can be finished. We tend to only see the next step, or next shovelful, of our current obsession.

My mother for example, looks out her window at an acre of leaves, and heads out with box of yard bags and a rake. She has been known to rake from sun-up until after sunset and has filled more than 100 bags in a weekend. These are no fluffy, lightweight bags. To save bags she compacts the leaves as tightly as possible. She also collects plenty of sticks and pecan shells, and a significant amount of wet dirt while she is raking. She does this without Gu or Heed or Clif Shot Bloks and sometimes NO food at all!! We ultrarunners are such wimps.

Then there is my sister. She decided to dig all the post holes for a 5 mile cross fence on her property. Ok, it’s not really 5 miles, only a couple hundred yards. Might as well have been 5 miles as far as I am concerned! She did not finish her fence in a day or even a weekend. Turns out her land is very rocky. In some places it took her and a friend 8 hours just to dig one hole!! With the best intentions, I offered to help her while I was visiting. I lasted about an hour. We, she did most of the work, had only accomplished about one quarter of the required depth, and the top half is the “easy” part of post hole digging.

Yesterday I did about 40 miles on my rollers, and another easy 5 with Bonnie. I am already feeling better about the 508. Like I said, it is a genetic mental defect. Unfortunately I apply my dis(functional)-abilities to less productive tasks than the rest of my family.