health + fitness / race training

how not to train + accountability

• by kerri

How not to train:

  1. Miss a month of workouts for no good reason. Sometimes there are reasons. Sometimes there are stupid reasons, but those are still reasons. Kind of. No reason at all, though, is the stupidest reason of all to miss an entire month of workouts. And, from July 18th to August 18th, I did just that.
  2. Register for a race. Forget to use that race as motivation. I go into so many races with the mindset that I am going to rock training for the race. That I am going to train to be able to do the race distance comfortably, rather than dragging myself across the finish line.
  3. Let previous goals slip.
    1. Nutrition is a goal that I’ve been trying to build on slowly, or else I know I overwhelm myself. Part of nutrition is not only ensuring I’m eating proper things, but now includes that damn iron supplement that makes me feel yucky. However, in order for me to be able to exercise properly, my body needs to be able to transport oxygen to my muscles. And what’s responsible for that? Hemoglobin. Iron. Boom.
    2. Asthma. I am good at taking care of my asthma when it needs to be taken care of. I’m good at the morning and evening inhalers. I am not so good at doing the evening inhalers on time on weekdays, or the morning inhalers on time on weekends. This is not a huge deal, but it DOES have an impact on how I feel in those spans of time. I am also not doing so well at taking my Atrovent regularly. I need to get it in my head that when I am exercising, i need to be taking my Atrovent four times a day so that I feel good and want to keep doing it.
    3. Regular training. I need to once again focus on the fact that anything is better than nothing. If take half an hour and slide a few kilometers in, if I take ten minutes and do some yoga, if I take 3 minutes and do some push-ups. It all adds up.
    4. Active choices. I got a new bike in the Spring. Part of the hope with the new bike was that I would ride to/from work. I didn’t think that goal through well, as it worked fine in the spring but when summer hit I realized getting to work all sweaty and gross would not be awesome. Once again, that is only an excuse, as
  4. Make a training plan–ignore it. I made a beautiful, colour coded, training plan for this race. Had I followed it, I would have built up to 10K slowly and easily over about six to eight weeks. Instead? I have a passionately-exercising binge for the last two weeks following the race. If nothing else, I hope this is getting me back in the groove for when school starts again.
  5. Be unaccountable. During the July/August exercise lapse, I probably told myself at least three times a week I am going to exercise today. I didn’t. I did not make the choice to hold myself accountable to my decision by putting that decision into action. The hardest part of exercise is often putting on my shoes and getting out the door/on the trampoline/to the gym.

I have an amazing, beautiful community of people around me to help keep me accountable. However, I have to rely on myself, and I have to let this amazing community know what my ambitions are so that they can hold me accountable. Even if I simply tweet my plans to work out, it is that much harder to back out of those plans because I know that somebody read it, and later that night somebody could shoot me an @ reply saying: “Hey, how was your workout today?” — “I didn’t work out” is an awkward answer. Making an excuse is an awkward answer. “It was awesome, I felt so much better after!” is not an awkward answer. Even if I am only going out for a ten minute walk, even if that does not spill into longer than ten minutes, I can almost guarantee that even if it is short, it will still be sweet, and I will still feel better after.

Race training has not gone well. That does not mean the race will not go well. So long as I don’t get as sick as I did following my last 10K, I am okay (two years ago I did my first 10K and I had a ridiculous asthma flare that evening, and had I not been fortunate to have a nebulizer at home would have required intervention, read: an ER visit. Put that in the awkward category!). Tuesday I did a 7K training walk, needed my inhaler at about 5.5K and again when I finished, but had few residual symptoms. I am hoping this is the case on race day pending I post-medicate as well. Mostly, though, I know I can handle the asthma. I just need a better idea of how I’ll handle the rest of the distance that I know my body is not adequately prepared for because of being a master in How Not to Train.

The ultimate in accountability though is having a training partner to get out on those long walks with. Because it’s not like you can get lazy and go home early when someone is out there slogging through that same distance with you. Tomorrow is practice 10K day, and I am going to accomplish that with Danielle.  One week until race day.

I’ve rocked the fundraising. I’ve kicked up the training in the last week. I’ve gotten my head in the game. Now I’ve just gotta get myself out there and make it happen.

dare you to move / health + fitness / kinesiology

make it happen.

• by kerri

When I finished tutoring at the end of Winter term, I said to the student i was working with “You know this stuff now. Implement it — make it happen”. The guy I was tutoring had a lot of really good, creative reflections on the course content of Issues in Health. He knew the content. He knew how to implement the content. Now it was beyond ‘course content’ and had become ‘choice’, and was in his hands.

I am the first to admit that knowing it is the easy part. Doing it, on the other hand, is another story. Some more than others, but we all are aware, to some degree, of which activities/behaviours promote our health, and which behaviours are detrimental to our health. I’ve said it before, that I spend all day (and sometimes night) long some semesters learning about health and wellness. Today, for example, though not the most wellness-promoting, I wrote an anatomy exam, wrote a lab quiz, then came home and ate Sweet Chili Heat Doritos while on Skype for hours.  Still, I am in the same environment as I was the past two terms, but the content around me has changed and thus my behaviour has changed. February and March, for example, I spent tons of afternoons in the gym for class, plus regular exercise outside of class. Last May I was in a physical-activity oriented class.  Each hill and valley in the below graph I have either an understanding of why I was successful, or an excuse for why my numbers [kilometers] are lower:

Dailymile graph.png

I think often that my last year seems to have been in two parts: Before Promotion and Adherence and After Promotion and Adherence, with a transition period in between when the course was occurring. The transition period was like my intervention. I was surrounded by Good Things two days a week, by words and motivation and people who were fighting the same battles as I was: the balance of school, work and maintaining a specific level of physical activity. Some also with the additional mixer of unpredictable chronic disease affecting their routines.

This said, my environment on the whole did not change. I was still surrounded by the same people with the same goals [or a different array of the same people with the same priorities] but it wasn’t freely discussed. We weren’t bouncing ideas off each other all the time, like the discussions about reading textbooks on the stationary bike, or having accountability partners, or eating five bowls of cereal a night [that happened. Not to me, but to people in my class. So good.]

It is not about that that class is done. it is not about my asthma sidelining me for over two weeks. It is not about the anatomy midterm sucking the proverbial life out of me.

It’s about me. It’s about my choices. It’s about me finding ways to continue that process that started nine months ago and do what i am capable of, and then some.

It’s about getting back into it.

I know it. I know what I should be doing and I know how to do it. Now I just have to implement it.

Make it happen.


note: there is some crazy thing going on with my tags. i’ve got tech support and my friend Mike on it :].

advocacy / asthma / badassmatics / dare you to move / mirror mantra

world asthma day 2012

• by kerri

First, there will be more road trip pictures eventually. But because I do things non-sequentially, we’re gonna roll on.

The mirror mantra for this week [because, dang it, I forgot to leave a mantra for the housekeeping staff in Watrous, SK last Monday]:

Winnipeg-20120430-00913.jpg

The above mirror mantra may have to be a permanent addition to my bathroom, unless my mom gets rid of it like she has some other ones after a few weeks [she actually is responding rather positively to the mantras. Win!]. Once again, thanks to Jay for that piece of focus, and Dia for being my teammate in the crazy journey of asthma, perspective, #kinwin and keeping me accountable to it all.

Today is World Asthma Day.

Winnipeg-20120501-00922.jpg

[Good picture there, right? #sarcasm. You get the deodorant and the ID bracelet and some med boxes.

Also the intended World Asthma Day tree tee I designed a couple years ago.]

My Facebook status, Facebook page status and earlier tweets today have been variations on this same theme:

NewImage

Okay, so I can’t go down on my own encouragement to kick ass and get active. Because “k-i-c-k-a-s-s, that’s the way we spell success”! [Thank you Giant by Matthew Good].

Really, the only ass I am kicking, or plan to kick, is my asthma’s [and my own].  I am pretty sure I picked something up on the road and am getting sick, because the three day mild sore throat has gone but turned into some increased sinus issues, dyspnea and coughing. Obviously the asthma finds the need to make itself known on World Asthma Day.

So what do I do? Well, my lungs feel like shit anyway, so might as well go take some meds and do a breathing treatment and give the neb an “eff you, asthma” finger for some perspective, strap the Garmin on it and ride that new bike, right?

Winnipeg-20120501-00932.jpg

If the right answer today was to sit around because of the asthma . . . I’d rather be wrong. [The professionals would say I’m wrong. I’m not practicing what I preach either]. Come on, what is more appropriate than riding the bike called INSPIRE on World Asthma Day with the mantra of Being Intentional? Answer: not a lot.

So . . . I was intentional at kicking my own ass. Good enough, right? Also why is it not possible to not look like a total dork when protecting my brain? [The other part of my helmet is pink with flowers, but of course you can’t see the awesome half, right?].

Winnipeg-20120501-00930.jpg

Representing for the Asthma Society of Canada.

So I got out there for my first bike ride in . . . years. [I am not very good at riding straight again yet. I can’t do sharp turns. Also when I met up with a lady with a stroller on the sidewalk I totally just pushed my bike along so as to not, you know, ride into them.]

Was it coughtastic and breathless? Yep. Will I pay for it later? Probably. Am I exhausted? Totally. Do I wanna go out there again? You bet.

Was it worth it? You know it.

Winnipeg-20120501-00933.jpg

World Asthma Day or not, “We breathe it in, the highs and lows.” [Needle and Haystack Life, Switchfoot].

The goal? Do Good Things. Make a person or two think differently. Kick my own ass. And keep on doing it. And the disease? Kick it even harder.

Having chronic disease isn’t a choice. Perspective? It is. What I’m going to continue in regard to the asthma. I’ve made those choices:

Owning it. Being intentional.

#hawmc / advocacy / asthma / badassmatics / health + fitness / life / wellness

health time capsule – #hawmc day 1

• by kerri

HAWMC_2012_dayprompt-1.png

For April 2012, I’m taking another shot at completing the wegoHealth Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. Like BEDA, or Blog EveryDay April, the aim of #HAWMC is to complete thirty health-related blog posts in thirty days. With finals and a road trip, it’ll be a tough go, but I’m going to once again try giving it my best shot . . . And hopefully complete it this time!

Health Time Capsule: Pretend you’re making a time capsule of you and your health focus that won’t be opened until 2112. What’s in it? What would people think when they found it?

Twitter – My Twitter account, as it stands now, is very health-focused, but also very diverse. Because I have asthma, I obviously follow many people with asthma [but not as many as I’d think considering 10% of Canadians have asthma]. I’d say I might even follow more people with diabetes, type one, type two, or LADA, than I do people without diabetes. I follow people with cystic fibrosis, people who have or care for people with severe food allergies, fitness and nutrition bloggers, physical activity and health organizations, people with a host of other chronic diseases such as Crohn’s and lupus, the list goes on and on.  And of course, I follow a bunch of accounts that have nothing to do with health at all.

School – I often forget to really appreciate all that university has done to amplify my focus in regard to health knowledge and current topics in health. My favourite courses thus far have been Physical Activity: Promotion and Adherence, Issues in Health and Adapted Physical Activity, because of the desire to encourage and implement positive health-related behaviours to as many people and special populations as possible. My focus thus far is always chronic disease or disability and physical activity, from a physiological, psychological and sociological perspective, so many of my courses have been able to tie into that passion.

Asthma – The first Ventolin inhaler, the one that started it all. The huge Mini-Wright Peak Flow Meter I got about a year after being diagnosed would have to be included, because it’s so ugly. I then moved forward to a little green TruZone meter and since then, a digital. The first beat-up AeroChamber. The nebulizer. And of course, the bottle from my first course of prednisone.  The chronicles of the constant inhaler switches and doctors visits in my first few years with asthma. Conversation snippets from friends far away, like Natasha, Elisheva, Steveand many more, and pictures of meeting my friend Rona in Chicago who I met through the (smallish) Twitter asthma community and has been a huge supporter for many years. A shot of the Second Cup where Dia [who not only is a badassmatic, but a kinesiologist working in adapted physical activity] and I met in Real Life for the first time. Amazing people who I never would have met if I didn’t have to live with chronic disease.

Exercise – In this I would have to include many conversations with Steve above on how to figure out making the exercise/asthma thing work. Steve has been a huge supporter of mine over the years since my asthma diagnosis [hello, the man finished multiple Boston Marathons on far less than half his lungs. So badass]. I’d throw in the first pair of Saucony shoes that made me a convert. An UnderArmour shirt which made me a convert to the tech-shirt side permanently. The encouragement of so many amazing people on Twitter.  The discussions on exercise and chronic disease via e-mail with Jay–along with his constant motivation to focus on the Good Things. And of course, my Team Asthma.ca t-shirt and the support of the Asthma Society of Canada in my crazy projects [like the TeamAsthma-based Intervention Project for Promotion and Adherence] and endeavours in advocacy through physical activity.  My motivational dailymile friends. And finally, my Fitbit, which makes me increasingly intentional about my physical-activity choices throughout the day. Because the truth is, if I didn’t have asthma, I wouldn’t have met Steve, and I’d still probably be sitting on my ass :].

Perspective – The blog posts and journal entries that encapsulate transformation in my own thinking and attitude towards living with chronic disease. Because in this journey, it all comes down to choice, and the road that it took to get me to the place where I realized that it came down to my thoughts.  With this, finally, I would enclose my personal mantra:

Perspective is crucial, positivity is essential, and ignorance is a curable disease.

health + fitness / life / wellness

moving forward.

• by kerri

Hello, exercise, I am back. Nothing like a lapse to make you really appreciate moving forward.

I would like to mention that this lapse was not a simple I-don’t-want-to-exercise lapse. It was an injury-induced rehabilitation-esque lapse, thanks to some sort of patellar tendon injury, or something of that nature.  Really the lapse started before the injury. I may not rock at nutrition, but I was doing better than, say, last year, prior to the lapse. And the journalling? I derailed on that for over two weeks. This is why Lent is not my thing. Add that this is the last Sunday before Easter and I am choosing to sleep instead of go to church. With the excuse that it is too complicated to figure out rides and it has been a long week and I would rather sleep. Honestly, I can’t seem to stick with anything anymore.

[This is Resistance, people.]

Now that I’ve finished making myself sound like a bad person who doesn’t care about anything, what am I doing about it?

  • The stir-fry thing today was a Good Thing as far as restaurant choices go. Could be worse, yes?
  • I went to the stir-fry place with my friend Jess who I have not seen for a long time. So awesome.
  • I did an hour on the trampoline today, plus ~3K walking. This needs to stick around.
  • I am done tutoring, and have wrapped up the 22-hour-work-week-while-going-to-school. Classes are [mostly] done. Good time to begin the journey again? Yes. Always a good time.
  • Paying closer attention to the Fitbit. 
    • My Fitbit friends Mike, Mike and Ashley are good motivators. [Are you on Fitbit? Add me as a friend!] I have yet to do a full post on the Fitbit, but the best thing about it is that it logs ALL of my physical activity, not just exercise. And everything adds up!
  • I am aware of the journalling issue. And I am changing the pattern.
  • Focusing on the Good Things.

Last night, when I re-opened the journal and realized the lapse I took off. In part:

it is not bad

but i am not balanced

cause i just woke / to eat some chocolate / and go straight back / i’ll go straight back to bed / where’s my head?

[where’s my head?, copeland]

body. heart. mind. spirit.

mind strong / body strong / try to find / equillibrium

[sound of winter, bush]

i.can.do.better.


I can do better.

change stops in your mind, leave the past behind, forget everything you know

make a change, let go. […]

stay on top if they let you. ’cause the change is permanent.

[fear, creed]

So, once again, going in to April, it is time to awaken.

Go.