The Daily Procrastinator

It is with no small amount of fanfare that I would like to make an announcement: I, TallGirl, am a runner.

You’re probably shrugging your shoulders.  People run all the time, right?  And even I have run a couple of half marathons in the past.  But here’s the thing: even in the middle of training for 13.1-mile runs, I never felt like a runner.  It was hard.  It was grueling.  It was about as pleasant as listening to my in-laws rant about how my best friend is singlehandedly going to ruin the world because she is… a registered Democrat. (Insert your shocked, audible gasp here.)  I would come home from a run completely demoralized, with my joints aching.  My back would be so tight that I couldn’t even bend over to touch my toes.  It hurt.  Running sucked.

I’ve never been much of an athlete.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t like sports.  It simply means that I’ve lacked the coordination and skill to be good at them.  But it’s one thing to not be good at basketball or baseball, and another thing to not be good at running.  It’s running.  I’ve been doing it since I was a toddler.  Why did the enjoyment elude me?

People told me that it wasn’t fun because of my height.  My body simply wasn’t designed for this, they’d say.  But I just couldn’t believe that this was true.  Sure, I’m a six-footer, but I’m carrying around less weight than most 5’6″ women that I know, and physics seems to indicate that weight, not height, should be more of a factor.  So after my last injury, I started doing what a research geek does best: I read.  A lot.  And while there are dozens of sources and studies that I read online, it was all largely encapsulated in Born to Run, a book so chock-full of “a-ha!” moments that I wanted to immediately go out for a run.

I ditched my orthotics.  I changed my shoes.  I changed my stride.  I practiced and concentrated and focused on what I was doing, rather than just pounding the pavement.  And by god, it worked.  Not only have I not re-injured that tendon that sidelined me for the first eight months of the year, but I’ve increased my speed by 25%.  I come home happy, relaxed and limber enough that I can not only touch my toes, I can reach beyond them.  And every morning, I look forward to going out for my run.  YMMV.

It’s not to late to become a runner.  Really.  I’m proof.

A woman in Indonesia has given birth to a 19.2 pound baby. The boy, named Akbar (which means “the great” in Arabic”) is 24 inches tall.

That kid is a TANK.

Much to his mother’s relief, I’m sure, he was delivered via Cesarean section. According to medical professionals, Akbar’s tremendous size is linked to his mother’s gestational diabetes. The abnormally high levels of glucose in her blood allowed the baby to absorb far more nutrients than most while in utero. Dr. Binsar Sitanggang, who delivered the baby, said, “He is greedy and has a strong appetite, nursing almost non-stop.” Thanks for the enlightening update, doc. Who’d have thought that BabyZilla would eat a lot?

I don’t have anything especially insightful to say about this baby except, “Look at that baby! He’s freakin’ huge!” Just thought you should know.

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly. In the past 48 hours, procrastinators, I have discovered the sad truth: I am not manly enough for yoga.

I have to preface this story with a little background. Last January, I resolved to become the “SomewhatLessBigRedPoet.” Thus far, it’s been going pretty well. I’ve changed the way I eat, and I try to work out at least occasionally. When I first started on this mission, I ran four or five days every week. I quickly discovered that my knees and ankles didn’t appreciate the impact of feet on concrete, so I gave up on running and just redoubled my efforts to eat healthy. All went well, and I reached a weight that I’m really happy with.

Now, I want to tone up. Weighing less is good, but weighing less and looking sexy would be even better. Conveniently, my mother is a big supporter of my efforts to get in shape, and about a two months ago, she sent me one of those sets of workout DVDs that are advertised on obscure television channels in the middle of the day. On Saturday morning, I opened the DVDs for the first time.

There are a dozen discs in the set, and many of them have intimidating titles like “Ab Ripper.” I flipped through them with some trepidation until I saw a disc called “Yoga.” Immediately, visions of thin, meditative, far Eastern men flashed to mind. Aha, I thought to myself, Yoga. This will be a nice, easy way to slowly immerse myself back into the world of working out.

Wrong.

After practicing the positions Downward Facing Dog, Warrior 1, Warrior 2, Reverse Warrior, and Runner’s Pose, my entire body hurts. I have pain in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles. After some tentative inquiries on Google, it seems I may acquainted myself with such positions as Groin Pull and Strained Oblique.

Behold: the Downward Facing Dog. I'm not sure it looks like this when I do it.

As I shambled up the stairs to work this morning, I’m sure the look on my face was similar to the face I might make while simultaneously hitting my thumb with a hammer and passing a kidney stone. It couldn’t have been pretty. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a little voice that keeps saying, That soreness is PROGRESS. It means you had a good workout, but you need to work a little harder. I hate that voice.

Still, the voice is right. I don’t think I’ll go back to yoga just yet, though. Maybe I’ll try the “Ab Ripper.” What’s the worst that could happen?

I’m originally from Philadelphia, and now that I’ve spent a decade living in California, I’m astonished by how horrible my Back-East Eating Habits are.

I’ve been living in Eastern Daylight Time since late night Saturday, and have consumed, on average, 13,240,000 calories per day.  I have eaten:

• Ham & cheese omelette with a side of pancakes and plenty of syrup
• Iced lemon pound cake… for breakfast
• A sandwich slathered in blue cheese dressing, with a side of chips
• Canneloni in cream sauce
• French toast, sausage, bacon, pancakes and fruit salad (guilt begins to set in)
• Ham & cheese sandwich and fruit salad (guilt becomes more intense)
• Vegetarian burrito bowl from Chipotle (not the worst thing ever)
• Chocolate… and chocolate
• Donuts
• Horrible pizza
• Chocolate
• A deep-fried chicken sandwich with wing sauce, ranch dressing and fries
• More donuts

I still haven’t had any cheesesteaks, hoagies, soft pretzels, Tastykakes, good pizza or any other fat and calorie-laden favorites, so I have all of that to look forward to tomorrow and Thursday.  If I can make it back to California on the 10th with even one pair of pants that can still button, it will be a miracle.

A few years back, I owned a Pilates and yoga studio. As the child of a mother who died young from heart disease, health and fitness have always been very important to me, and my goal with the studio was to make fitness fun.

To vary the offerings a bit, and to give cardio offerings to balance out the strength and flexibility focus of Pilates and yoga, the studio offered several dance classes: salsa dancing, belly dancing and a class called ballet body, which was a lower-impact, ballet-themed workout. All three were popular, but they weren’t the phenomenon that dance-based fitness has now become.

Now, six years later, you can’t leave the house without hearing someone talk about Zumba. It’s branded and trademarked, but the classes that I’ve seen at my gym appear to be fairly basic cha-cha and salsa-based Latin dance, with a touch of belly dancing thrown in. I never would have guessed that I was so far ahead of the popularity curve with those classes.

With everyone up in arms about the swine flu, I thought it was a good time to put things in perspective and remind people to use common sense.

Swine flu can kill you!

I really hate to be all anti-hysteric and burst your bubble, but all flu – true influenza and not the inaccurately named “stomach flu” – has the potential to kill you.  In the U.S. alone, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from influenza each year, and more than 40,000 die.  That’s just in the United States.  Worldwide, the population is culled by up to half a million annually, just from flu.  The same flu that you don’t really give any thought to each year.

This is why there’s a flu vaccine.  This wasn’t developed just because epidemiologists want to prevent you from feeling like crap.  It’s because the flu can kill you.  Not just swine flu, but regular old flu.

But I heard it on the news!

Yes, this has lots of publicity, just like SARS and bird flu before it.  That does not, in and of itself, make it more dangerous.  

Don’t leave the house!

Have you ever worked in an office where the flu took out coworkers one by one?  This one operates in the same way.  Wash your hands, use antibacterial hand gels and encourage the sick people to stay home, the same way you would if any other cold or flu was traveling through the office.

It’s the same as the 1918 flu!

Yes, it is an H1N1 strain, just like the 1918 flu.  But H1N1 strains are not uncommon, and that doesn’t mean that some hideously deadly form of flu has resurfaced after 90 years.  In fact, an H1N1 variant is present in this year’s flu shot.

Rush to the doctor at the first signs of illness!

If you’re sick today, odds are good that it’s something other than swine flu that’s sickening you.  Avoid the doctor’s office and all of the nasty germies that are floating around there.  You’re more likely to catch something from the doctor’s office than you are from maintaining reasonable health practices out in the real world.

For more information

Some wonderfully informed bloggers and resources are out there.  Check out the Global Health Report from Christine Gorman, Aetiology from Tara C. Smith and an excellent article on swine flu genomics from Wired.

All I know about cosmetic surgery I’ve learned from living in suburbia.  And trust me, kids, it’s not always pretty.

Lesson #1: Botox is contagious.  It spreads like wildfire among friends.  Friends who no longer have the power of facial expressions.

Lesson #2: If you just get your eyes done, it only draws attention to how much the rest of your face is sagging.

Lesson #3: Sometimes bigger boobs don’t make you look younger or more vibrant, they just make you look top-heavy.  And ridiculous.  Especially when you’re chasing your kids around in anything that prominently features the “Juicy” or Victoria’s Secret “Pink” logos.

Lesson #4: I understand that lips get thinner as you age, but those collagen injections make you look like a duck.  And not a young duck, either.

So ladies, please think twice before your next cosmetic procedure.

HEY!  GOOD MORNING!  BEAUTIFUL DAY TODAY, ISN’T IT?

How’s that hangover this morning, Big Red Poet?  Before you try to hunt me down and bludgeon me, I want to remind you that I come bearing supposedly tried-and-true hangover cures.  Be nice and I may share them with you.

Let’s start by explaining why you feel so lousy this morning: alcohol.  I can tell by your unintelligible grumbling that you already knew that.  Well, here are more details.  You’re dehydrated.  Thanks to curious little chemical processes that go on in your body, with each drink you actually lose more fluid than you take in.  

99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...

Now, if you’d come looking for advice yesterday, I would have told you that you should chase each drink with a glass of water.  Too late for that now.  This is a recovery mission today, and I’ll give you some suggestions that are widely rumored to work.  As a disclaimer, I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on a blog for procrastinators, but I will spare you the hassle of your own Google search and give you the answers that I’ve gathered from the interwebs.

Gatorade.  Sports drinks aren’t just for athletes.  In much the same way that they replenish glucose and electrolytes for marathon runners, they’ll do the same for your abused body.

Greasy Eggs and Bacon.  I personally can’t handle the eggs on a hangover morning, but there’s definitely benefit to the salt in the bacon.  And really, is there ever a bad time for bacon?

Tripe Soup.  They swear by it in Mexico.  The spices most likely give your brain and body a chance to focus on a different kind of pain.  Either that or the tripe makes you vomit what’s left of last night’s bender.  The sources I’ve seen aren’t very clear on that one.

Hair of the Dog.  Another beer, my dear?  People swear that this is a solution, but the added alcohol will continue to send you down the path of dehydration.

Vitamins.  B6 and B12 the morning after can help to replenish what drinking has taken away.

Over-the-Counter Pain Meds.  Sure, they might work on your headache, but use them wisely.  Those with ibuprofen — Tylenol or Excedrin — can wreak havoc on your liver when mixed with alcohol.

Water, Water and More Water.  Your body needs the hydration, but water alone won’t do the trick.

Water and Chips.  My personal favorite combines the hydration of water with the saltiest bag of chips I can find.  A big bottle of water and bag of BBQ chips from an airport newsstand saved me from my worst hangover in the dry desert air of Las Vegas.  I was startled to discover that I was back to normal in 30 minutes.

Here’s hoping that you’ll find a solution and be able to drag your butt out of bed before noon.  Cheers!

I have a confession to make: I am afraid of the treadmill. 

You’re laughing. I can hear you. “It’s just like walking,” you say. “If you can walk, you can use a treadmill.” I am living proof that this is incorrect. God help me, I have never mastered this piece of equipment. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get the pace right, so I’m either scrambling like a hamster in a wheel that’s moving far too fast, or I’m slowly lumbering along, like I should be wearing a flannel shirt and have a blue ox trailing behind. And god help me when it’s time to slow the thing down and get off! I’m convinced that I’ll end up planted face-first on the ground.

I fear that I would be less graceful, ending up in a mangled heap on the floor.

I’ve never been a fan of the treadmill, but this fear has only increased with time. I have a vision of stepping at just the wrong angle and sailing off the back of this machine in front of everyone, like in some terrible Saturday Night Live sketch. This is how I’ve come to be particularly fond of the stationary bikes and the elliptical machine.

But none of these pieces of equipment will work with my beloved Nike+ sensor, which only registers the pounding gait of walking or running.  I started using this to train for my second half marathon in 2008, and I just love it.  I used it all the time back in the warmer, drier weather when outdoor workouts were possible.  Integration of my iPod music, miles and workout tracking is fantastic, plus you get this little voice telling you that you’ve had your best time or best distance ever.

But now that I’ve had a winter without it, I struggle with the idea of returning to it.  Will the little voice ask me where the heck I’ve been?  I want to tell her that I’ve been working out — no really, I swear! — but that my workouts haven’t been compatible with the little magical accelerometer in the sensor.  I want her validation and positive feedback for the 30 minutes that I spent on the elliptical this morning.  I want credit for the miles that I’ve gone this winter.  I just don’t want it quite enough to try the treadmill.

So when the winter rains finally give way to springtime sun, and I once again hit the streets with my Nike+, I hope that the little voice will be welcoming.  But I have this sneaking fear that she’ll calmly ask me where I’ve been and why the heck I couldn’t use the treadmill.

I firmly believe in the power of the placebo effect.

I am 97% certain (margin of error =/- 3%) that Airborne, Emergen-C, echinacea and any number of other supplements and herbal remedies don’t do a damned thing for you.  And yet, here I sit with a citrus-flavored effervescent drink fizzing beside me.  Why?

Because in every cold there is a pivotal moment.  In some cases, it’s that terrible moment of realization that you don’t feel quite right.  In others, it’s the day that you realize that you’re the only one in the office who isn’t half-dead.  It’s the feeling of inevitability.  It’s way too early for NyQuil, or even Tylenol.  It’s a horrible, powerless feeling, and you just want to do something to make you feel like you have some element of control over your body.  This, I believe, is why Airborne and its compatriots exist.

And so I sit here, confident that thanks to this magical little cocktail, I will have a great day and wake tomorrow feeling good as new.

But because I’m also a realist, I’ll be stopping at the drug store to buy some NyQuil and tissues.  Just in case.