Tag: active lifestyle

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Pinnacle Peak

Remember how I’ve been working on my walking?  Not walking, but getting my steps in.  Well, it’s a good thing! I was just in Arizona to visit my beautiful and talented friend K who recently relocated there.  Among the many fun shenanigans that we got up to, she took me for a hike at Pinnacle Peak Park in Scottsdale.  Since I’m barely a walker, you can imagine that I’m not much of a hiker at all.

Of course, K happens to be an elite marathoner, so walking (even up and down hills on a rocky trail) is a piece of cake for her.  Let’s just say that it’s a good thing that she is so kind and sweet-hearted because I was certainly not anywhere near being able to keep up with her natural pace.  My accomplishment was that I didn’t hold her back too much for at least part of the trek.

It was an incredible experience.  Shortly after we began our hike, we saw a couple of Blue Angels fly overhead.  Since it was a cool day the beauty of the dessert landscape was easier for me to appreciate.  The trail had great signage identifying the different plants along it.  We took a break to admire this in-between things tree.  It was certainly thriving in the gaps.

There were also fantastic views of gigantic Scottsdale golf course homes.  This one has a bridge to the guest home!  A guest home that is probably at least twice, probably three times the size of my little bungalow.

Once I got home, I looked up Pinnacle Peak Park. I was guessing that we hiked around three miles.  The trail is 1 ¾ miles one way (so 3 ½ miles round trip) which is a do-able walk.  It was all of the up and down hills that got me, especially the last third of the trail (where the “strenuous past this point” sign was) which became a long, steep uphill coming back.  Turns out that the 1,300 feet of elevation change is something that I don’t get in my ambles around town.

It was such a fun excursion.  Even though it was strenuous and pretty challenging for me, I can’t wait to try it again.  We’re already planning my next visit and that will give me a training goal to make sure that at a minimum, I’m getting my steps in every day.

Are you a hiker?  Where do you like to go?

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100 Cycle Classes with Rachel in 2018

On Saturday, November 17, I completed my 100th cycle class with my instructor, Rachel.  Not only that, I was the first person to complete the challenge that she set out for us in January.  I don’t know how that happened, but I am basking in a sense of accomplishment over it.

I had only become a Rachel groupie a few months earlier.  There is just something about when she is yelling, “yes, you can!” at you that makes you believe it.

Rachel teaches twice a week, Wednesdays at 5:45am and Saturdays at 8am.  No one goes to spin class at those hours for just for kicks, those are serious, get the grrrr out people. But 100 classes is still a formidable challenge.  I love getting activity credit, checking things off, and discrete goals so I signed up right away.

At first blush, it seemed nearly impossible: Rachel teaches twice a week and there are 52 weeks in a year, so you can only miss four.  All year. Yikes. If she was subbing for another instructor, that would count; also, you could count up to ten classes with other instructors toward your 100 (so really you only need to take 90 Rachel classes). If someone was subbing for her, that counted toward your ten.  Ok, still challenging, but potentially moderately do-able.

I wound up using nine of my ten freebies, so I’ve decided to dedicate the rest of the year to making those up.  My new-improved goal is to have 100% Rachel classes before Christmas.  I’m not a perfectionist, but I do like to go back and fine-tune things when time allows.

Did I mention that there were prizes?  How fun is that?

At 25 classes, you got a certificate.  To me, this is a prized possession.  For so many years a big part of my job was creating and producing recognition certificates and awards but this was the first one that I had received since I was in school.  It makes me so happy to see it on my refrigerator every day.

Best certificate ever

At 50 classes, you got a granola bar.  I somehow neglected photographic evidence of this award, but let me tell you, it was delicious.

At 75 classes, you got a water bottle. A fancy, Lulu Lemon squeezy-style water bottle.  It says, “Your GOALS are showing.”  This treasure spent a few weeks on my desk (aka dinning table) as a trophy before I deigned to put it into action.

Anabel practicing her trophy pose

I had to show up to class number 101 to claim my final prize.  It is  starting to feel like winter in So Cal and as I walked out to my car at 5:30am that morning, I remember thinking that I really should spring for one of those cozy Lulu Lemon snappy scarf things.  Long story short, that was my prize!

Manifesting dreams

Sally and Anabel thought that my accomplishment was great and sure, that was a nice gift, but they really thought that the gift bag was the real prize.

Kitten priorities

I am very grateful to Rachel for all the time and energy and resources that she put into this challenge because she loves her spin tribe.  And I am so honored to have found and been granted membership into this group.

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Stretching Helps

Here’s the thing, flexibility is relative.  People are just put together differently, and some people are just more flexible than others.  And some of it has nothing to do with muscles.  Tendons and ligaments impact joints’ range of motion.  And some joints, like hips, have a lesser or greater range of motion because of the actual skeletal structure of the joint.

But everyone can benefit from stretching.  Think about it like stretching allows the muscles to support a joint’s optimal range of motion rather than restricting it.  Think about it like everyone can stretch to their optimal capacity but your optimal capacity and mine are not necessarily the same.

For better AND worse, I am naturally very flexible (worse because hypermobility can strain joints).  Being flexible does help make stretching more enjoyable for me.  It’s something that I can feel like I’m “good” at even though it has nothing to do with my goodness.  That being said, I am no where near as flexible as I once was, and some stretches that used to be pleasant are uncomfortable these days.

Back in the day, stretching was an integral part of my day.  Not just the stretching before/during/after dance class, but something that happened during hanging around the house time (while watching TV and especially before going to sleep).  I remember one time either during or just after college when I was visiting my family.  My brother and I were hanging out having a conversation about something and I decided that it was a good time to stretch my back.  Apparently, it is unusual to carry on a conversation with someone while contorted in that way and J was a little surprised.  Well I tell you, if you don’t use it you lose it!  The last time I tried to do that stretch, I couldn’t get close.

While I would love to think that I’ll get back to being able to fold myself in half again, I don’t know that I am up for putting the kind of time in to get there.  And I feel like that is ok for where I am in my life right now.  But I am going to try to start making a point of getting up and getting a quick stretch in here and there throughout my day.  I’ll start with some easy forward folds and see if I can’t work back up to something more interesting.

Remember when instead of saying “forward fold” we would say “touch your toes”?  I’m a fan of this evolution of the nomenclature.  Because “forward fold” allows for so much more variation in the position.

I tend to like to move through a few different styles when I’m doing this stretch.  My favorite variation these days is with bent legs and resting your chest on your thighs.  Then it’s not about hamstrings, but more about your back, neck, and shoulders.  I’ve even gotten Mr. Man to do this sometimes when his back is bothering him.  Because it helps!

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Indoor Cycling, part 1

I love to watch the Tour de France on TV every July.  The drama!  The metaphor for the human condition! The scenery!  I totally get why folks like to spandex up and ride bicycles for miles and miles outside in the fresh air, but cycling as a sport is something that I prefer to participate in as a spectator.

I do like ride my beach cruiser around the neighborhood.  Sometimes I’m going somewhere that is just a little too far to walk, or the parking situation is too much trouble.  But serious outdoor bike riding is not for me.  The two big reasons why are: 1) the ground is hard; and 2) cars.

I do like to ride bicycles inside.

I first tried indoor cycling about 16 years ago.  I have never been a cardio person and cycling is super challenging for me. The great part back in those days was that there really wasn’t anyway for anyone to know if you weren’t keeping up.  I could just dial the resistance down or slow my pace or both when I started to feel like my lungs were on fire and my heart was going to explode.  I still got stronger as time went along and could maintain an increasingly greater levels of effort but I certainly wasn’t ever keeping up with the class.

I credit indoor cycling classes for helping me discover the beauty of morning workouts.  I think that it’s a great way to start a morning workout habit because you don’t necessarily need to be fully awake to do it.  I mean, there’s not a lot of coordination or balance involved.  And usually the room is pretty dark.  You can get half-way through your workout before you realize what’s happening.

My current cycling routine is Wednesday mornings at 5:45am and Saturday mornings at 8am with Rachel.  There is a great camaraderie in her class and once I had started showing up regularly, I was warmly welcomed into the tribe.  Which is great and all except it’s not like the old days when no one really knew what you were doing.  These bikes light up!  Blue = easy, green = moderate, yellow = hard and red = breathless.  So everyone can tell who is keeping up.   Fortunately, everyone is very supportive and we really just judge each other on whether or not you show up.

Rachel’s class is very different from other instructors.  She has us  grind it out at various moderate-to-hard (green and yellow) intensities for long stretches with occasional bursts of red sprinkled in (last Saturday was 28 minutes straight through before any recovery, then repeat).  It’s a different kind of mind game to hold pace for those long stretches.  I’ll tell you, I still remember the first time I kept up on a six minute hard hill.  Something clicked over somewhere around the four minute mark. I don’t know how to describe it, but all of a sudden I wasn’t just surviving anymore.  I’ve been a Rachel groupie ever since.

I will tell you all about Rachel’s Great Cycle Challenge of 2018 in a future post.

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Wisdom, Kindness, and Love

My journey with yoga began twenty years ago.  Yoga is ubiquitous these days, but in 1998, it was just starting to become widely accessible.

I haven’t maintained a regular yoga practice but every so often, I find my way back to my mat for a period of time. I’m sure I would be much closer to inner peace and never having back pain if I could maintain a regular, daily practice indefinitely. That’s ok though, yoga welcomes me back every time and seems to give me what I need at that time.

I started taking yoga at the Bally Total Fitness in Huntington Beach.  The Sunday morning step instructor started offering yoga immediately after step class (yes, I was a step aficionado and I had the cankles to prove it). Gosh, I wish I could remember his name!  He was a very sunny and bright spirit who was in the process of yoga training and wanted to share his journey with us.

I loved the opportunity to stretch and move in different ways.  I studied Pilates in college as part of my dance studies so for me, my first exposure to yoga was evocative of that discipline (the intent and breathing is different but I’m sure that old Joe was influenced by ancient India somehow). For me, it was a non-threatening way to work on strength while retaining the flexibility and balance that I had developed through dance.

A few years later, my friend at work invited me to join her for a yoga class after work.  We headed WAY into downtown Los Angeles (this was in the days that no one lived downtown).  The class was a revelation, it was fast moving and energetic and transformational.  I felt like I was attacking my practice with a sense of fearlessness.  There wasn’t time for fear, you just kept moving and when you were finished, you realized that you had done things that you never would have thought you could.  The owner/instructor always closes her lessons with, “wisdom, kindness, and love. Namaste.” Wherever I find myself, I still like to always close my practice with, “wisdom, kindness, and love.”

About two years ago, I was procrastinating with making a decision, nothing life-changing, just a little thing that was important to me.  One day I decided to go to a random yoga class.  Somewhere in the middle of class, that anxious feeling in my chest that had been hanging around for months went away and I knew that it was time and that I was making the right decision.  How does yoga do that?

Currently, I do yoga at my gym. Usually but not always twice a week.  The class is billed  as “ yoga for athletes,” which is not a how I would describe myself these days and I was nervous to try it. But it was on the right day at the right time, and turns out is just right for me right now. The instructor is very straightforward and the class is only 50 minutes, which is long enough for me anymore. We don’t do inversions or crazy back bends or arm balances and I don’t need those things right now.  It is challenging and strenuous, but energizing.

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Its official, we’ve begun!

The plan is that Mondays will be dedicated to health and wellness topics – exercising, eating right, inner peace, moisturizing…that kind of thing. So today’s post will be a sort-of intro to this topic.  Here is where I’m coming from when it comes to health and wellness – I like to exercise but I am in terrible shape; I love to eat vegetables and do a good job at drinking a lot of water but I also love cheese, tortilla chips, and adult beverages; I try to take good care of my skin but I love to spend time in the sun.  I’m trying to do all those things that are supposed to be good for you but maybe not all the way.

When I was growing up, I loved to move and be active. There was soccer practice and ballet lessons along with the general running/climbing/bicycle riding around the neighborhood – all the kid things. When I couldn’t get outside, I would roller-skate in the house or put on Leo Sayer and dance it out.

I studied dance in college and earned a bachelor’s degree in it. I supported myself through college by teaching ballet to children. Throughout this entire time, I also spent 8-10 hours a week rehearsing and performing with a local dance group (we called it “modern” dance, but these days I think it would be considered “contemporary”). I was spending up to 8 hours in a dance studio on any given day.

After I left the dance world, I joined a gym and stayed fairly active.  Those were the days of Stairmasters, when step aerobics was still a thing and indoor cycling was just getting going. It was always a fun time to take my rollerblades down to the beach and cruise the bike path from Sunset to Huntington Beach. I discovered yoga around that time as well.

At some point several years ago I noticed that I wasn’t moving anymore.  All I did was go to work and sleep. My clothes didn’t fit, I couldn’t lift anything over shoulder height and I couldn’t actually turn my neck when I was driving.  Even though I’ve realized that I have to prioritize taking care of myself, I’m still trying to come back from how far I let myself go.

I’ll be writing about the ways that I like to try to keep active (here’s a hint, not running), my fitness goals and milestones, and the other things that I do to try to take care of myself.  I might use this forum as an opportunity to experiment with new things (I’d love to try rock climbing and wouldn’t it be nice to have a regular meditation practice). I hope this will serve as some sort of inspiration for you to try some new good-for-you thing. At the least, I will feel accountable to keep striving for a healthy lifestyle because I’ll have to tell you about what I’m up to!