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My 101st post is about workout music…

March 8th, 2010

Exercising in middies & bloomers circa 1915 (thanks to Cornell University Library)

As most of you know I volunteer my time at the downtown YMCA in Victoria BC as a fitness instructor. I lead “freewheel” stationary bike (or Spin©-type) classes that are fun, challenging and give a great cardio workout.

Recently I’ve had a request for workout music playlists. I’ll list a couple of my playlists here with an apology to those who (when I polled readers a while ago) told me they are not interested in my music playlists!

During my classes I do largely play music that I myself like. I have very eclectic tastes so my choices seem to appeal to participants. However sometimes I do search the internet for inspiration. I just Google: “spin music” or “spin playlists” and see what comes up – then acquire what songs I need based on recommendations. I don’t like all the songs I include, but I feel it’s important to have a good mix for the people who come to my class.

A note: sometimes I play blues or rap music with a lower beats-per-minute (bpm) count. These are for hill routines that don’t call for a higher spinning cadence while on the bike. You may find many of these choices unsuitable for running. I also sometimes include local bands whose music may be hard to find.

Unless I am forced indoors to the treadmill due to freaky weather (not often in Victoria), I never listen to music while running. I am either a) alone and enjoying the outdoors in a meditative zone or b) with my running group, talking and laughing.

Without further ado, here are three playlists: two popular ones, plus my newest which I will try out this week. Good luck and happy workouts!

Sprints and Hills:

  • Go – Moby
  • The Weight – Jeff Healy
  • Put on the Red Light (Police/Coldplay mashup)
  • Vertigo – U2
  • Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
  • Hot ‘N Cold – Katy Perry
  • Mama Ararira – Afro Celt Sound System
  • Move Your Ass – Scooter
  • Love Lockdown – Kanye West
  • Sandstorm – Darude
  • 1901 – Phoenix
  • Shipbuilding – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (cool down)
  • Iemanja – Angélique Kidjo (cool down)

April 2009 mix:

  • You! Me! Dancing! – Los Campesinos
  • The Storm – Dharmakassa (A Vancouver world-beat group I saw in concert a couple years ago)
  • Motivation – Sum 41
  • BlitzKrieg Bop – The Ramones
  • Don’t Mess With The Dragon – Ozomatli (rocked out with them at Victoria’s last Folk Music Festival a few years ago)
  • Pump It Up – Elvis Costello
  • Sunshine of Your Life – Junko Onishi (A Japanese jazz musician covering the classic rock standard)
  • Come a Long Way – Michelle Shocked (this was sent to me by a participant, I take requests.)
  • Get Out of London – Pretenders
  • Sweet Lullaby (2003 version) – Deep Forest
  • Acci-dent – Baha Men
  • Teardrop – Massive Attack (cool down)

March 2010 mix:

  • Big Sun – Phoenix
  • Buckin’ at the Buckin Bar – The Rusty Augers (young guys my son went to high school with, from Regina Sask.)
  • Empire State of Mind – Jay Z and Alicia Keyes
  • The Magnificent Seven – The Clash
  • TKO – Le Tigre
  • Black Widow Blues – The Rusty Augers
  • The Stars – Moby
  • Publish My Love – Rogue Wave
  • Sound the Alarm – Thievery Corporation (feat. Sleepy Wonder)
  • Miss You Now – Elliott Brood
  • What I Like About You – Romantics
  • Take Me Into Your Skin – Trentmoeller
  • Paper Planes – MIA
  • Gangsta Blues – AR Rahman, Blaaze & Tanvi Shah
  • Lament – Deep Forest (cool down)

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From Torino to Vancouver

February 14th, 2010

The doors crafted in B.C. and shipped to Italy for BC-Canada Pavilion for the Torino 2006 Winter Games are displayed at the BC Showcase at Robson Square during the Vancouver 2010 Games. I have a picture of me standing in front of those doors – taken last Wednesday when I was in Vancouver for work. (I will add it to this post when my computer is in a better mood.)

I started working for the government of B.C. four years ago. My first assignment was preparing for media coverage for the 2006 Games. Now, I am leaving government for another position, and one of my last assignments is preparing for media coverage during the 2010 Games.

One door closes, and another one opens. Sometimes it’s the same door …

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Running with the tide

February 1st, 2010

Listen – hear that? it’s the ocean, only four blocks from here. Its waves are washing up on the shore, desperately calling to me – “Come out, come out Tori – we are waiting for you to run past and to delight in our relentless tides, our frothy foam, our detritus and our seaweeds, our stories drowned and washed up on shore for you to witness and tell the world. Run Tori, run!”

I have yet to go for my run today, and it’s 7:30 pm. Normally my run is over by 7:30 am. Tonight, I feel like crawling into bed. However: I am on a training plan and that plan calls for a 45-min easy run today. Consider this my kick-myself-in-the-pants to get the hell out there on the moist and mild (or is that wet and wild?) streets of Victoria.

Tonight I run for one who would run but cannot — for who am I to blow off a run with a race coming up, a PR to be set, a victory to be savoured — for a friend who could only wish he had a choice? Hoping he is back on his feet soon, sorting out his smelly gear, hitting the trails on his continuing Road to Ruin - although from what I hear it’s more like a road from ruin, but I’ll let him explain for himself.

And so I shall.

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Running with children

January 25th, 2010
Tori_Oliver

Tori with grandson Oliver, 3 days after running the 2009 Royal Victoria Marathon

I love a running group: meeting new people, finding out why they run, what they do besides running, what motivates them. It makes the hours and the effort float by effortlessly. One new running buddy is a woman with two children, aged 6 and 9.

I must admit – at this stage of my life, with a self-sufficient teenager at home and two grown children (including one grandchild) – I couldn’t imagine at first how one trains for a half marathon with little ones. Case in point: my new running friend was going home after our run to prepare for her son’s birthday party and host a family dinner –that same day.

“Whoa – I usually go home and have a nap on Saturdays,” I said.

“Yeah – I’m going to be exhausted,” she said.

In contrast, I went home to have a glass of chocolate milk, a leisurely soak in the tub, eat some lunch, do some errands in the Village, have coffee with friends, make some appetizers and then, later on, shake some martinis a small get-together with some other friends.

I do remember training for a half marathon when my children were that age. It can be done! with a little creativity and trusting that your kids are all the better when their mom takes care of her health. For instance, my kids and their friends loved that I could do cartwheels, especially when they were really little.

Here are some of my tips I shared with my new friend:

• Figure 8’s: while the kids played with each other in the front yard, I ran 800 m figure-8 loops around the two blocks surrounding our house, waving at them as I ran by. Even if it’s a short run it’s better than nothing.

• Candy Cane Park: along the same lines, I found an open play park with a nice loop where I could keep an eye on the kids playing while I ran around, and around, and around. Hey, it gets boring, but you can join the kids afterwards and do stretches and pull-ups on the playground equipment. Note: tracks are really boring for little kids, try to find an open playground instead.

• Cheap child care at rec. centres: take advantage of it! Look around – most of them have some child care times. They’re usually bedlam – but they’re only there for an hour or so, and most of the time the kids have a ball and you can get your workout in.

• Swim or skate lessons: most facilities have a workout area that’s available for you while kids are in their class. Get on that treadmill and work out when they do!

• Bikes: kids on their bikes, you running. Try and keep up, will ya?

• Take them running with you! This usually meant my son – he’d sprint ahead and stop to catch his breath. When I caught him he would sprint ahead again .. and so on. Make a short loop so that when child decides he’s had enough, he can go play with friends while you keep going. (P.S. my son – now age 22 would still be running if he hadn’t torn his ACL playing football last summer.)

• Get Dad (or a friend) in on it to trade off child minding duties. My ex-husband and I liked to run together, but it was a treat because usually we could only go one at a time while the other stayed home to mind the children.

• Get up at an unseemly early hour. I still do this. It’s my “me” time: 5 – 6:30 am.

• The running stroller. Never had one, they were out of our price range – but I always wanted one. Train while pushing your child, and when race time comes you feel so light and free! Actually, I did wear out (very quickly) one cheap stroller when my youngest was about 18 months old. We found out the hard way – I was running down the street and the thing just – disintegrated. Wheels fell off, I’m eating pavement, daughter is laughing, tipped over sideways on the sidewalk. Luckily we weren’t far from home, and I only wounded my pride.

No excuses – just do it. You do have time to take care of your health – if you make it a priority.

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Laundry Day

January 15th, 2010

by Muse

Blowing off a rainy hill workout to sit at the laundromat. A group of runners trots past, headlamps bobbing in the winter evening’s darkness.

Laundry Day by Peekature Studios

<<Guilt>>

OK, that passed quickly.

Hey maybe this is a good place to meet single men. Or women. Or not.

Nevermind.

Maybe the resolution last year would have been more successful if it been “Remain celibate and joyfully single” rather than the trap-door-open-for-sex-and-entanglement wording: “Remain joyfully single.”

Reverse-engineering, as far as she can tell, means taking something apart to see how it works rather than building it from scratch.

She’s discovered she reverse-engineers her relationships: she jumps into full-bore couple-hood with no user documentation. She falls in love right away and imagines herself waking up with him every morning. Convinces herself that her life is imperfect without him, impatiently waits for him to Be Exclusive. Stops seeing friends socially, drops any other romantic prospects. Imagines a life of comfortable domestic bliss.

(One of these days she’s going to realize the guys giving their assent to all this are just as unlikely as she is to be candidates for Lasting Happiness.)

Then, one day, sooner rather than later – maybe two months, maybe six months into it, she looks at him with renewed clarity. He’s got his eyes tightly closed the whole time they’re having sex, or he really does look like the cartoon guy from MAD Magazine with a vapid smile and even more vapid personality, or he won’t stop inflecting the end of his sentences up like a teenager when he speaks, or he’s petting her like he pets his dogs, or he tells his jokes too loud in restaurants, or he asks to borrow her car for the umpteenth time, never filling it with gas.

At that point, she’ll look at him with complete transparency, and a switch goes from “On” to “Off,” and just like that —it’s over. Pieces of a hurried relationship all over the floor; she has no clue how to put it back together again.

He usually senses it. The whole facade is deconstructed in a heartbeat. She tries to recapture the magic, tries to remember what she saw in him in the first place – tries to backtrack into the Just Dating stage; realizes she’s already given her heart away and invested her emotional capital in a fantasyland of Couplehood.

He of course is usually completely mystified, left with pieces of his heart and his manhood strewn about in little pieces.

Her phone rings-his name comes up on the screen-she startles; the drone and hum of the laundromat has lulled her to a stupor. She tries to perk up, moves to answer, but her plastic smile doesn’t make it to her eyes and she loses her nerve. Instead, she hits the “ignore” button and folds her towels.

The running group trots past again, going back the other way this time. She lugs her laundry home, pulls out her runners and straps on the headlamp, seeking redemption in the shiny streets.

(Then again, maybe she just hasn’t met the right one yet.)

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

January 10th, 2010

If I had chocolate chips in my cupboard right now I would start mixing and beating and creaming and dropping by spoonfuls in a warmed kitchen inoculated from the Pacific winter wind and I would bake and cool and wrap and box and mail.

Oh well. Another time perhaps.

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My dumbest running mistakes

January 7th, 2010

I realized a year ago when I started training for my third Half Marathon that I’m really no newbie when it comes to running. Despite my lack of prowess or natural talent, I’ve been doing it a long time.

I’ve learned a few things along the way. The hard way. In the spirit of “if you can’t be a role model, then serve as a warning” here are the less-than-stellar moments of my running career:

  • Starting out too fast. Everyone says they won’t start out too fast, everyone does it. Everyone. At least once. Possibly every race. I don’t – not anymore. I’m joyously starting at the back of the pack, running negative splits (first half slower than the last) and passing people eventually. I still have to resist the urge to surge at the start line though. Having a Garmin GPS-enabled sport watch to tell your pace helps stick with my race strategy, I’m so grateful I got one for Christmas last month!
  • Undertraining. You’ve found Hal Higdon’s Half Marathon training plan on the Runner’s World web site? Go for it. Do. Not. Miss. Workouts. Leading up to my first and second Halfs, I only “half”-assed followed the plan I was on. Speed workouts? “Meh, that’s hard, I’ll do it next week.” Mid-week tempo runs? “Oh too bad I didn’t get up early enough, I’ll just do a 40-minute run then get to work.” Come race day I felt it. During my first Half Marathon, my SI joint seized after the first 5K. When people asked me how the run felt, I laughed it off: “Only the last 10 miles were painful.” They needn’t have been.
  • Underfueling. During my second Half Marathon, I carried nothing with me. I took some water at the stations, that was it. No gatorade, no energy gels. The first 10-15 K were fine, but the last part of the race was pure hell: I had simply run out of gas. I watched my friends down gummy bears and gels, and refused their offers to share. Then I watched them pull away from me at the 15K mark while I struggled to keep the pace. You simply can’t run for more than 2 hours without refueling along the way.
  • Changing your diet the night before a race. The day before I ran a 15K – my first – I decided I needed more fibre in my diet and ate two or three kiwi fruit with rye crackers for a before-bed snack. This was in the days before race directors’ S.O.P. was to rent port-a-potties and place them along the route. The “runner’s trots” threatened that whole race, most of which was through parkways and along a highway (believe me if I’d run past a house I would have knocked on a door and asked to use the bathroom). I actually finished (dead last) – dogged stubborn determination not to be humiliated by a DNF (Did Not Finish) got me there. I must have looked hilarious: running while trying to hold in a bowel movement.
  • Wearing brand-new shoe inserts for a 2+ hour run. OK I didn’t do this; my friend did while we were training for the marathon last year. She was excited when she showed up for our Saturday morning run through Vic West, across the Esquimalt Lagoon, up to Royal Roads University, winding our way back again to Spinnakers on the waterfront. “Look at these new inserts, I think they’ll help with my hip pain,” she said. “Um – have you tried them out yet on a shorter run?” I asked. “No, not yet,” she said as she slipped them into her shoes straight out of the package. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’re running an awfully long way today if they don’t work out.” I said. “I’ll be fine,” she said: famous last words. I saw the blister afterward and I can’t believe she finished the run. Dogged stubborn determination, right?

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Running through time

January 5th, 2010

Last post I fibbed just a little – by omission. I neglected to state my goal for running this year:

In 2010 I will run a Half Marathon in 2 hours or less.

Gulp.

My PB for that race is 2:12:24.

In 2003 I did the Queen City Half Marathon in 2:20:21; and in 2005 in 2:16:16

Don says I can do it, and I don’t think he’s just saying that because it’s His Duty As A Good Boyfriend to say things like that. He says it based on my performance at the Run Through Time on New Year’s Eve – a 5 K “fun run” at UVic.
Race day at RVM 2009I ran it in 28:04, which I think was a PB for me but I can only find results online for one other 5K I’ve done – the rest I did before the days if the interwebs and timing chips.

Apparently I ran the 34th Annual YMCA Regina Buffalothon 5K in 2005 in 29:17. I don’t remember running it at all, probably because I was training for the Half Marathon that year, or perhaps because I was crazy in love: earlier that month I had visited Victoria and decided I wanted to move here.

In any event, I decided on Dec 31 not to treat the race as a “fun run” but as a test/training run. I wanted to see how well I would do giving it some effort. Don did run it just for fun, having done his real workout earlier that day, so he stayed behind in he pack to run it with me.

I did better than I thought. I went out with my Garmin at the ready, but after a couple of kilometres I stopped looking at it and asked Don to keep us at a 5:45 per kilometre pace. I started out back of the pack and slow – about a 6:15 pace to start. I like to pass people at the beginning and I like to do negative splits (first half slower than the second, finishing strong).

The race is two laps around a circular drive at the University of Victoria. At the second lap I started to pick up speed and there it was again: the focus, the tunnel vision I get when I’m working hard and I’ve got the finish line in sight. I passed a whole lotta people. That’s when I asked Don to keep us on my goal pace.

About 1 K before the finish I made the mistake of asking him what pace we were on. I was working hard.

“I shouldn’t tell you,” he said.

“Tell me!” I gasped.

“4:31.” he said.

“Holy crap!” I said, still gasping.

“It’s OK – you’re doing fine. Breathe deeply. Don’t slow down your breathing, just fill up your lungs, use your diaphragm.”

I did back off that pace for the last couple of hundred metres. Don explained that I was probably running at my lactate threshold pace – a pace close to which most serious runners run every race.

“Even marathons?” I said.

“Yes, I’m running that way every marathon,” (he’s done 18 of them). “That’s why you do speed work, to get yourself used to going the distance at pace. You could have run the entire 5K at about a 5-minute pace, you just didn’t know it.”

Later we went out to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but I was so tired I had trouble staying up to ring in 2010. That’s life as a runner!

Last night we played around with paces and race distances on a handy calculator on the Prairie Inn Harriers web site. To run a 2-hour Half Marathon means holding a pace of 5:41 per kilometre for 21.1 kilometres.

Gulp.

I can do it.

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Funky goal-setting

December 31st, 2009

Westwood LakeHappy New Year, and happy first birthday to my blog.

A year ago I started this blog as a way of journaling progress on my New Year Resolutions for 2009: to run a marathon or half marathon, to rediscover my love of rock climbing and to remain joyfully single.

  1. I ran a Half Marathon and my first full Marathon – an incredible accomplishment of which I am immensely proud.
  2. I did rediscover my love for rock climbing, but my toe injury is keeping me off the cliffs – permanently I’m afraid. The injury is chronic and recurring, and I am still unable to foresee a day when I can again jam a toe onto a hold and balance my full body weight on it. Oh well, there is always hiking!
  3. I did not remain single throughout the year, and that’s OK. Early in the year I started a relationship with a lovely fellow who lived in Vancouver-but I ended it after a few weeks. I did remain joyfully single after that for several months, until after the marathon when I met Don. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, in fact he just kinda snuck up on me! A couple of casual get-togethers, a low-key walk in the woods, some increasingly flirty instant messages – and suddenly I realized I had an intelligent, fit, handsome, courteous, affectionate, single man right before my eyes who wanted to be with me, and I with him. Isn’t that the way love should be?

So this past week I have been stumped as to why I’ve been in such a funk. True, I had a very eventful Christmas wherein I accompanied Don to Nanaimo – his hometown – and met his family. It was wonderful, but tempered by the fact that I missed my own children and my grandson’s first Christmas. It’s not the first Christmas I’ve missed being with my kids, but it’s the first in several years, and it was because I couldn’t afford an extra plane ticket at the most expensive flying time of the year.

I was also in a funk because this year is so different from last. I had such absolute clarity about where I was headed last year at this time. I’ve done it – I’ve run a marathon! I’ve even – unexpectedly – got me a man! I can do anything!

Now what?

I had intended, when we got back from Nanaimo on Boxing Day, to put my mind to forming my goals for 2010. What about my Big Life Goals? Where am I in my career – where do I want to be in five years? Ten years? What will I do this year to get me there? What do I really want to do with my life?

But when I got back home to Victoria and some drunk a**hole had smashed into my parked car while I was gone. Here is my stream of consciousness after that piece of news sunk in:

ohmygod i can’t afford to replace my car i don’t have room for a car payment and i couldn’t afford to go see my baby grandson this christmas and the only reason my stupid old car was parked on the street is because I live in a cheap old rented place without a parking space and they never fix anything in that run down old building that doesn’t even have my pictures up on the walls and it needs a new paint job and why did I move here in the first place? And I really love the people I work with but  I am just living pay-to-pay..oh crap now they’ve put parking tickets on my rental car because the license isn’t on their list of residents oh what a pain now I have to contend with city hall too…

You get the idea. Then the “shoulds” set in.

I should be living in my own place with a parking spot. I should be more focused. I should be a better mother. I should have a neat home with nice furniture. I should have better clothes for work. I should be more committed to my career. I should at age 44 own my own home. I shouldn’t have so much debt. I should be able to run a half marathon on 2 hours. I should be able to fly to Saskatchewan to see my grandson at Christmas. I should work on that web project more. I should have a better workout routine for my spin class at the Y.

I’ve been driving myself crazy! And the January 1 deadline to set my goals loomed: Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Results-based and Time-limited (SMART) goals. I realize now that’s OK, because shit happens at any time, and the deadline has in fact forced me to think about things more clearly. Don’s been very helpful in pestering me with asking me the right questions (erm – the massages help too).

First – enough with the Shoulds. They are driving me crazy. Time to turn the nasty-blaming-unproductive “shoulds” into positive action. I ran a marathon a couple of months ago – I can do anything I want. Including nothing. That’s right. Nothing is an option. I don’t need goals, I want them.

I have a full and active life: I have a fairly demanding job which isn’t perfect but it pays well and I enjoy the people I work with; I have a teenage daughter who needs me present and accounted for more than she realizes; I have a new relationship; I volunteer at the YMCA: I signed up for the Vancouver Half Marathon in May; I have this blog.

Given there is nothing I “should” do, only that which I choose, it’s pretty clear there are a couple of things I would really like to focus on in the near future: writing (my first true love), and getting out of debt. My buddy and intellectual sparring partner Cameron has said a laser-like focus is key to success: “It’s about getting the critical few things done, not the important many.  It’s not rocket science.”

So – I have no resolutions but two broad goals for 2010: writing and paying down my debt (I will hone those into SMART goals for my own purposes). Of course I will keep running and volunteering and living my life – but in 2010 I will not take on a new project that is not related to either of those goals, and I will reduce time spent (or jettison) anything extraneous that distracts me from that focus. The good news for my legions dozens of fans is it will mean more writing on this blog.

—–

Oh – and by the way – I still don’t know if my twelve-year-old smashed-up car is fixable or not. If it’s written off I will apply the settlement to pay down my debt and explore a car co-op option.

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Awkward Hellmark Moments

December 16th, 2009

(by Muse)

Girls. Store pictures of your old boyfriends:

  • in a box somewhere in a storage locker beside old halloween decorations,
  • or on a memory key or disk in a multimedia box shoved deep in the closet or better yet -
  • under your new bed with the pocket coil springs whose endurance you now test thrice weekly.

Never, ever keep them on your bajillion-gigabyte handheld where you can be absebtmindedly flipping through pics to show your new flame while standing in line for a concert and there it is, that shot of you and your ex on a beach, or by a waterfall, or at a party.

Or worse.

Not like that’s ever happened to Tori. But it could to you. Just sayin’ is all.

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