Favorite Things of the Month--Part II

Two things that make the week go by faster:

1)  Exercise

I do like to work out, but I can be really lazy about it when I'm home.  My hotel has a little fitness room with a treadmill, stationary bike, stepper and weights.  Those are nice, but to give variety to my exercise schedule, I signed up for Beachbody on Demand.  It's pretty cool--hundreds of different kinds of workouts varying from 10 minutes to 50, and I can play it on my laptop, Kindle or phone.  So some nights I've come home from work and done the Country Heat workout, sometimes yoga.  In the mornings, I usually do either something from the 21-Day Fix or Turbo Fire.  I like Turbo Fire because it's very kickboxing-oriented.  It's also pretty inexpensive, particularly if you're thinking cost/use.

https://www.beachbodyondemand.com/programs

2)  Culture

There's a surprising amount of good cultural opportunities in this area.  I normally don't go to things by myself, but it's been easy and fun.

The local community theater group put on this very cute play.  I was impressed with the acting. There was one particularly madcap scene that they pulled off perfectly.

My "nephew"/"godson"/"cousin" invited me to his choir concert.  It was great!  

"If the United Nations had a house band in 1962, we'd be it!"  So goes the blurb on their official YouTube site (https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialPinkMartini).  I was acquainted with at least one of their songs, so it seemed like a good choice over the local symphony concert.  Three ladies out on a Girls' Night were seated next to me.  I had a pleasant chat with the one nearest me, so when the singer announced that she wanted all of the women in the audience to come to the stage to join her in singing the next number, my seat-neighbor was able to convince me to go up with her.  Yup.  Yup.  We sang, "I Am Woman".  It was easy to get into it and have fun with it.  I mean, how much of a Northern California experience is that--getting onstage and singing a feminist anthem with a bunch of chicks that remember when that song first dropped.  Lots of hugging all around.  

Coming up this week:  Star Wars and Handel's Messiah!!!!!  I can't wait!

The Best Ingredient! #4--Food!

Since I burned 8,738 Cal extra during the Muffin Man, I made the most of my caloric intake.

First of all, the gels:

My friend, Stephanie introduced me to this flavor.  It's now my favorite.

A seasonal flavor from Gu that is amazing.  No weird aftertaste, just pure peppermint goodness.

If you eat this with a Chocolate Outrage Gu, I swear you will think you were eating German Chocolate cake.

I always had water and a bottle of Endurox on my bike or in my car for after runs.

I prefer the Tangy Orange flavor.  The Fruit Punch has kind of a fruit-punch-flavored barf smell and taste.

This gave me the chance to indulge in two of my favorite restaurants, East Village and Tender Greens.

A Monk's Bowl at East Village.  It's really bi bim bap.  So marvelous with the rice and the meat and the veggies and the egg. 

Tender Greens' salt-and-pepper roast chicken, spinach salad with goat cheese and hazelnuts and mashed potatoes.  They make really lovely mashed potatoes.

I had some good home-cooked meals, too, and lots of deli turkey with crackers or as a wrap or something.  I also had a burger and fries at Smashburger with a scoop of Baskin-Robbins' Peanut Butter and Chocolate ice cream for dessert.  On another day, I had a Peanut Buster Parfait from Dairy Queen.  It was a very good week for food.

And the piece de resistance!  Homemade blueberry muffins on Saturday morning to celebrate!

Muffin Man Ingredient #3: Perserverance

Remember these people?

Yes, my peeps who pulled a handcart across the plains.  Whenever I was having a hard time, I thought of them.  My pain was self-inflicted.  I could have stopped at any time, and who would have cared?  But I come from stubborn stock.  I made a goal and I wanted to stick with it.  

However, this clip from Sealab 2021 came to mind several times.  How to keep from being incredibly bored?  Podcasts like "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!", "Car Talk" and "Fresh Air" were more helpful to me while riding and running than music.  Swimming was just a mental game, trying to think of ways to break down the laps into manageable bites.

It would have been nice to have people to train with, but:

1)  I'm socially kind of backwards and have a hard time asking people to join me and
2)  It's hard to find people with the same interests, pace and time (but that can be overcome, if you are not socially backward).

Another way to break the monotony is to pick different locations for your run, ride and swim.  I do know people who had to do much of their Muffin Man indoors due to time and other constraints.  I am lucky to live in a beautiful city, and I was able to have this scenery to get me through:

The Coronado Bridge from Tidelands Park

Coronado Beach

Lake Miramar--a 5-mile loop

Lake Murray--a little over a 5 mile loop

Lake Murray

  Windansea Beach, La Jolla

San Diego Temple!!  I finally took the Rose Creek path to the Rose Canyon trail and over to the temple.  So easy!

Muffin Man Ingredient #2

The next ingredient is Time.  Like a good physics problem, the Muffin Man equation involves time and distance.  The distance if fixed, so it helps to have adequate time to complete the goal. Fortunately, I had the week off of work, with only three appointments to consider:  the Toro y Moi concert on Tuesday night; temple baptisms with the Youth on Wednesday night; and a dental appointment on Tuesday afternoon.  I had time to do long rides and runs, time to recover and replenish, and time to get to the places I wanted to do my events.  In total, I worked out for 16 hours over the six days of my Muffin Man.  (An Ironman has a 17 hour time limit, for reference.)   Remember, I am a slowpoke, and I hadn't been training much before that.  My runs were often run/walks.  Your results may vary.


My recording devices were my good, old Timex for the swims and MapMyRun app on my iPhone.

This was the time for my first 1.2 mile swim.  The next one, two days later, was ten minutes faster.

The longest ride was just over four hours (50 miles), and the longest run was two hours (11 miles).

What Makes a Muffin Man?

I finally did a Muffin Man!  That was 112 miles on a bike, 26.2 miles on foot and 2.4 miles swimming, all completed in six consecutive days.

What does it take to do a Muffin Man?  Over the next few days, I will share with you how I did mine.  Maybe you will be inspired to do your own.

Ingredient #1:  A Plan

You know what they say, "Plan to work; work the plan".

First, I broke down the distances into segments.  If you want to do something every day, the breakdown is this:

Run--3.75 mi/day
Swim--24.1 lengths/day (25 m pool)
Ride--16 mi/day

I wanted to finish it in five days, and I had most of each day to do long rides or runs.

Next, I worked the plan.  Not to say that I stuck to it exactly, but pretty close.  If you get behind, it just makes things more difficult.  On Friday, instead of riding 20 miles and running 5, I had to run 11 miles, in addition to riding the 20, because I didn't run 5 miles on Wednesday like I'd planned.  I also had to finish up with a 2.2 mile walk on Saturday.