The Ellimpics: Rules of Play and Schedule of Events

If you've been anxiously awaiting info on the upcoming Ellimpics, a Games intended for those relegated to training on machines, your wait is over!

The events that shall comprise The Ellimpics, whose motto shall now be  

"It's time to stop lamenting that we cannot run very much for now and embrace the gifts we have, enjoy the outlets we can utilize, and celebrate what we can do," 

will begin Saturday, August 4, 2012 and will conclude Sunday, August 12, 2012. Do what you can when you can during that span of time.

The official events will be the following:

• Elliptical 10K
• Elliptical 5K
• Recumbent Bike 20 min. (how much distance can you cover in 20 min?)
• Recumbent Bike 60 min. (how much distance can you cover in 60 min?)
• StairMaster 5-mile
• Alter-G 10K
• Alter-G 5K

The unofficial events will be the following:

• whatever wacked out thing you can come up with that takes place on a rehabbing machine (I'm thinking Elliptical Half-Marathon or Marathon and Recumbent Bike Century or Metric Century and Individual Medley Relay or Decathlon comprised of many different machines)

Rules:

• You needn't be injured to participate but you must compete on a machine. 
• You may set the machine on whatever resistance or incline, etc. that suits you...and you may change it during the course of your event.
• You must complete your event in a single shot...no getting off and on. Well, if you're doing a LONG event, you might need to go pee or get more water. In that case, breaks must be calculated into your finish time. Although, it is acceptable to post a DNF time with the distance actually completed. And not finishing is not grounds for disqualification. We are just here to do our best...sometimes that means stopping before we are 'supposed to'.
• Music, video entertainment, trashy tabloid magazines, and any/all other distraction devices are acceptable for use during competition.
• No puking...we are injured athletes who are rehabbing and shouldn't be pushing ourselves that hard ;-) And the gym might get annoyed.

There will, of course, be cool prizes. Some will be given at random and some will be awarded. I'm not organized enough to know how many will be in each category or even what the categories will be, but there will be a minimum of 3 prizes given out in total. You will like the prizes. 

I'm thinking of entering the elliptical events and the StairMaster event in addition to some wacked out events. And maybe even an IM. I will not be eligible for prizes...I'm just going to do it to motivate you! :)

Leave a comment indicating your interest and which event(s) you're planning to attempt...if you know. Tell your friends, tell your family...fun for everyone!

If people share their Ellimpics stories of challenge and triumph, I will be sure to post links :)

Who's in?

Stream of Consciousness and the DAR...

I'm finding myself mired in the debilitating doldrums of despair...ignited by the insidious inhibitions of inertia. It is neither a good place nor a good look for anyone.

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Just imagine a toddler jumping on that person and the sounds of "Jay Joe Jeans and his jelly beans, hey! Let's sing a song about JAYYYY!" playing in the background and you have created my life.

I plan to bust a move as soon as I finish cleaning the bathrooms, washing my hair, balancing my checkbook, folding and putting away the laundry, going through the toy piles in the living room... HA! Who am I kidding? None of that is going to happen. So I need to just bust a move. Slap myself out of this funk... NOW. Inertia, be GONE!

Whew.

So I had a gadget for you, but it broke. I think I can fix it, but in the meantime I'm showing you another old family photo...are you sick of those yet?

This lovely young woman was married to the guy who ran the tight ship. They had six children...part of my big family legacy. She is one of my great-grandmothers...the mother of my paternal grandfather. She hails from distinguished lineage...founders of towns, an American Revolutionary War hero, judges, some lords in the middle ages (for real)... so yeah...I come from good stock :)

I'm thinking of applying for DAR membership, but something in the back of my mind is saying something bad about the DAR but I can't quite make out the message. And it is kind of incongruous...a Berkeley-raised, free-thinking person who loves traveling abroad deciding to join a staunchly patriotic group of historical zealots (or maybe that's a bit extreme)... but I suppose it is these contradictions that make me who I am :)

Boy, I really need to start working out again. My mind is gone...

Anyone know anything about the DAR?  How about the Mayflower Society?

What it is to be TOUGH...

My most favorite race I have ever run would be the Schuylkill Navy Run in Philadelphia, PA. It's a fairly small race run through Fairmount Park on every Thanksgiving Day. It is a closed race as you must be a member of a Schuylkill Navy club or a member's guest. This means that it is almost all rowers or former rowers.

It is cross-country... part of it is on streets but much of it consists of dashing across park lawns, and there is a section cutting through the Horticulture Center (I remember a few years the access gate was still locked when the runners showed up, so some of us ended up hopping the 20' fence while others ran around... sooooo much longer). Knowing the course is a real advantage. Practicing the sight lines and the tangents really increases your chances of placing well. If you are the front-runner and don't know the course, you will ultimately be screwed.

What I loved about this race wasn't just getting out there and sweating on Thanksgiving morning surrounded by a whole lot of friends and teammates. I loved that it was physically and mentally challenging. Working the course to one's advantage was a huge part of the fun...if you knew it, that is. One of my rowing coaches prided himself on how well his athletes did in the Schuylkill Navy Run every year...it was because he had us out there practicing the course. We did mile repeats over sections of the course. We did intervals coming up on the most challenging of sight-line sections. We were prepared.

It was an intimidating race, and I didn't run it every year. There were a couple of years I was injured, a couple of times I had out-of-town family gatherings, and one time I was snowed in at a friend's house in New Jersey. I only ran this race three times in the 8 years I lived and rowed in Philadelphia.

Just three times.

But this post isn't really about me.

This year, Fred Duling will be racing for the 52nd consecutive year. He has the oldest active race streak in the country. Fred is a long-time member of Malta Boat Club and former national team rower. And for many years, he was a solid masters competitor.

What makes his situation even more compelling is that shortly after Thanksgiving last year, Fred suffered severe injuries after a very bad fall. Please click the link to read more about Fred Duling's story. Paralyzed from the abdomen down, Fred will be competing in the Schuylkill Navy Run 2011 in a wheelchair. The linked story tells us that his daughter Sara will assist by pushing the wheelchair up the steepest and grassiest portions of the course.

When I think about the fact that he ran in this one race fifty-one years in a row... 

When I think about his fall and injuries and rehab...
When I think about his drive and determination...

It all renders me awe-struck.

And so very thankful.

It is not simply my own mobility for which I am thankful, it is also the knowledge that a person can persevere and keep finding a way to continue to do what he loves against seemingly insurmountable odds. I am thankful for the human spirit.

Go, Fred! Go, Sara!

Wishing you strength and desire as you head up to the Belmont Mansion at the turnaround...you can do it!  You WILL do it!

Happy Thanksgiving.

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legs, legs, and more legs...

and toss a little core in, would ya?

Going with mixing it up this training cycle was one of the best decisions I have ever made. And again, I really can't thank Patrick and Big Daddy Diesel enough for their urging me in the bike direction. It has saved me. Riding my bike has integrated beautifully into my training regimen.

Keeping my fitness level up while recovering from the few mishaps I have had over the last couple of weeks has been easy, largely due to the bike and P90X. While my running miles have been cut, my bike miles and plyo hours have increased, and my overall fitness and strength has not been compromised.

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I love the P90X Plyometrics workout. Must be because I am a mother... and it IS the Mother of All P90X Workouts ;-) It is an hour of jumping, leaping, hopping all with quiet, cat-like landings. You sweat like a mother. And you wish your mother was there to pick you up off the floor and give you cookies when you're done. Or maybe a big glass of that recovery drink stuff my husband swears by but I have yet to try.

In addition to the Plyometrics, I have been using the X-Stretch workout a ton. After my physical therapist practically ripped my hip capsule open the other week, the X-Stretch has helped further the range of motion in that joint. Finally... it moves! My PT also prescribed core work, so I have turned to Core Synergistics... also part of the P90X series. As my core has gotten stronger, I have finally added in some of the resistance parts of the workout. The B-Lines® resistance bands are working better for me than hand weights at the moment. I just need to hide them from my kids. They enjoy snapping them at each other... which really can hurt!

These workouts are all intense... as Tony Horton says... "this is P90X, boys and girls... the X is for X-treeeme!" I do what he tells me to... I do my best and leave the rest. While I am not fully up to speed with all parts of each of these workouts, I find them manageable and infinitely enjoyable.

I did do these workouts for awhile when I was pregnant with my fourth baby, but when it got too intense, I switched to the Power 90 In-Home Boot Camp series... until I was huger than a beached whale and could hardly get my socks on let alone work out :P I am simply amazed at how some people (myself included during in my other pregnancies) are able to work out pretty intensely (or at all!) for their whole 40+ weeks of being pregnant. Just wasn't happening at the end there with Miss C.

On Saturday night, I did my first longish run since the beginning of the monkey-wrenches... 6.27 miles in one hour. While it didn't feel effortless, it wasn't at all tortuous either. It was even and very consistent (thank you, new Garmin, for telling me that!)... though at the end I swear I must've looked like a Baby Huey-esque, 3rd-string high school football player trying to muster some speed for tackling drills or something. I am seriously crediting my biking and my dates with Tony H and P90X for how well it did go...never mind that last bit about Baby Huey!

Bring it.

If you do P90X, you get that last part... it's kind of an inside joke :P

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Today is the last day to enter the Hood to Coast Movie DVD giveaway. Click here or see the sidebar for the link to enter. This is a great movie... even if you aren't a runner. I can't believe it is less than 2 weeks until I will be running in the Hood to Coast Relay myself!


Tomorrow is the last day to enter my Match the Rack contest. Click here to see if you can figure out which boobs are whose? There will be prizes!

My New Best Friend

Please bear with me while I pull together the last installment of "You Ask, I Answer"... the fabulous Q & A game that bares all, tells all. (Answers vol. 1, vol. 2. and vol. 3 can be found by clicking on those numbers). The video is just boring and long, and I am figuring out how to spice it up and make it interesting and entertaining. I hope to debut it on Monday, at which point I will also announce the Nuun winners :)


In the meantime...

I would like to introduce you to my new best friend...

This is her good side.

She's doesn't have a whole lot going on on the inside.

My physical therapist introduced us. She goes by the name The Grid... click on it to read her specs. What I love about her more than other foam rollers are the following:

• the little ridges and groove things make it hurt more while rolling, thus making me hurt less after,
• no deforming over time... my other roller started looking like an hourglass, and
• the hollow, PVC-pipe core make her easier to take on trips... I can pack stuff inside of her so she really doesn't take up a whole lot of space in the bag/suitcase.

She and I have been spending a lot of time together since I was rear-ended a week ago Tuesday. I do believe she is helping get me back to running sooner than if we hadn't met. She wasn't cheap... but she's worth it ... and so am I :)

So... yep... haven't really run in over a week. It sucks. I did get a little, easy 3-miler in on Tuesday. I was going to run yesterday, but I was slammed by a migraine that sent me to bed at 7:30 (about 5 hours earlier than normal... and before my normal running window of opportunity). I hope the headache lifts enough by this evening so that I can log a few miles. I am working on my patience big time. I don't want to be a DASA.  I know that waiting until I don't feel off-kilter and bound up will pay off. And I know that not waiting will come back to haunt me... so I wait.

I've gotten a couple of bike rides in... one early enough in the evening that I was able to take these cool pictures...

At the southern end of my ride that day was an old city dump. 

People make all kinds of interesting things out of found objects

(read: junk)

This little amphitheater-ish thingy is one such creation.

There is a community of 'homeless' squatters who live in lean-tos and tents in the near vicinity...

I think they have little bonfire parties in this amphitheater sometimes.

At the northern end of my ride was the Rosie the Riveter Memorial...

These structures are an artist's rendition of ship-building...

I think this is the bow...

this may or may not be the part in the middle of the ship where the control guys hang out

(my Love Boat-watching self seems to think this was called the 'bridge')

and in the distance, out over the water, is the stern.

But I may have the bow and stern reversed :P

There are a whole lot of commemorative pavers between the bow and stern...

below are three of them...

Fascinating stuff, history. 

World War II, the war efforts and the ship-building industry are largely why my mom's side of the family wound up in these parts.

A less experienced athlete and younger person might be getting super duper agitated by needing to sit out for two weeks when in the middle of training for a half-marathon AND getting ready for a rapidly-approaching team event like the Hood to Coast Relay... stressing about letting her Nuun Platuun down. Well, I know that I will be much more likely to perform at my highest level by taking care of this pain biz NOW. I'll come back fresh and feisty... raring to go... Commando, I am :)

On the parenting front, I am struggling. My kids fight a lot. I know I need to get more authoritative with them... but I have been doing this for 16 years and am feeling a trifle burnt out. 

I just found out that my 6-year old has been going across the street to play Halo video games. We don't have video games over here... long story involving my stepsons, and husband hurling the nintendo down the street into the vacant lot to get them to finally stop needing to be glued to the darn thing. So Q-Man has been having nightmares and lots of separation anxieties lately... thanks, Halo. I just read the parental reviews on that one. What are those neighbor parents thinking? Clearly not what I'm thinking :P No more video games for now.

Baby X begged to go to another session of camp. She loves it so much. She has her father's awesome social streak. Lucky her :)

Big G is reading like the reading fiend he is. And fighting with his younger siblings. 

Miss C is into anything and everything. She can climb all the safety gates... they are now just decorative. She has figured out how to bust the doorknob covers off so can enter any room she wishes whenever she wants. She learned to push the chair over to and climb up on the kitchen counter to access the upper cupboards, where the cookies and chocolate live. She has started biting! Even herself! And now she likes to slide down the bannister...

But she gets stuck at the bottom. And screams.

Here's hoping for lovely weather for us all, enjoyable and healthy exercise, relaxing family moments and world peace :)

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Musique pour Mercredi... Boum!

Ha! In light of my accident-prone weekend, I chose this one... BOOM!  LOL

But the 'Boum' he refers to in the song is the beat of a  heart in love... not the sound of someone crashing into a bedframe in the dark or cracking her nose on a doorframe :P




Love the oldies :)

The Double-Whammy Wounding Weekend

"Wounding" might be a little strong. That word usually conjures up images of torn skin and blood and bandages. I was injured... through some really stoooopid accidents... this past weekend, but no blood flowed and no bandages were necessary. 

I hadn't posted about this sooner because I was waiting for my leg injury to produce a really awesomely colorful and humongous bruise... but this is all I got:

the darkish spot above the knee that looks like muscle definition is the bruise

Note to self:  do not use arnica if you are wanting a nice juicy bruise photo for your blog :P

It doesn't look like much, and I sound like a SuperWhiner... but wait'll you hear the story...

Darkness. Screaming. Dream-state. I think I woke up to go save my 2-year old from whatever scariness had woken her. I leapt out of bed on the other side (the side I never get out on) and dashed full-throttle toward her... unfortunately, the solid and sharply-edged footboard was in the way :(  I'm awake! I'm screaming. I'm on the floor. I think... seriously... that my leg is broken. I can't move it. I can't even feel it except that it is in deeeeeeep pain. 

Babe is still screaming, "Mammma! Mammmmma! Maaaaaaammmmaaaaaa!" 

From the floor, I manage to tell her, "Mommy can't come right now. Mommy is really hurt. Mommy is really, really hurt." And she actually stops screaming, lays herself down and goes back to sleep!

Somehow, I haul my agonizing body up onto the bed, curl up in the fetal position and fall asleep. When I awake, my leg is throbbing. There is a significant lump. Huge lump. I put arnica on it. I can walk but going down stairs, sitting on the toilet, sitting in a chair... and getting up again from all those... is excruciating. I can drive the car, but when I apply the parking break, the pain nearly sends me into orbit.

So I didn't run because that might have hurt it more. It no longer hurts to use the quad (nailed that sweet spot where the tendon and muscle all connect up) though it does hurt if you push on it and there is still a hard lump. But it's pretty much fine now, and I'll run tonight :)

The other moron-of-the-century maneuver I did involved my nose. 

In my defense, it is a rather looooong nose.

It sticks out pretty far, so you can see how I might whack into things with it, right?

I was standing in our cloffice (closet-office) and heard someone come in the front door. I turned quickly as I also stepped backward... but not sideways. I nailed my nose at its bridge on the doorway. It issued a very loud "CRACK!" Doorways are solid. In an earthquake, that is where you are supposed to stand because they aren't going anywhere and you'll be safe. So the "CRACK!" definitely wasn't the wood of the doorway.

It was my nose.

I expected blood to come spurting out. It hurt like a nose-whacking hurts... a whole lot! I was afraid to look. Then I did. And I'll be dad-blamed if it didn't look better!

When I was 15, I dove into a pool that was shallower than I had expected and hit the floor with my face. Broke the nose. It wasn't as bad as Owen Wilson, but it was pretty messed up. (But not as messed up as I would have been if it had been my neck that got broken!).

The good, hard whack on the doorway did something. Sort of like really cheap and really fast cosmetic surgery... without any knives!

Score!

But still, getting hurt is no fun.