Change of Plans

It’s the first of April and that should mean that the snowy days are behind us, right? It’s all daffodils and baby bunnies from here on in!

Before I forget, you can go and check out our Weekend Away complete with pictures on the blog that I share with my sister.

It is gorgeous sunny and warm weather here for the first part of this week and I’ll be walking home tonight. The last day I rode my bicycle, the day I fell into traffic and ended up bailing and having Ray’s son come and get me, made me nervous for riding. I really want to enjoy this gorgeous sunny weather and I want some quiet time on the commute home and unfortunately the bicycle isn’t providing that right now. It is SO hard…..45-53 minutes of only uphill pedaling and also traffic to contend with and to be a bit honest, I’m truly not in decent enough shape right now to do the ride home safely. With walking, I’ll leave my car down here, put all my stuff (lunch bag, tea cup, purse) in it so I don’t have to carry it home, put on some music, eat an apple and walk home. It’ll take about an hour, I think.

I feel kind of fail-y in admitting that the bicycling didn’t work out (right now) but on the other hand I don’t think there is anything wrong with shifting and shimmying and trying different things to get the result you want. If I drive to work and walk home I get the sunshine, the air, the exercise and the alone time but I don’t get the crashing, the traffic, the having to get ready at work, the missing breakfast/coffee with my hubby. So more of the “pros” that I was looking for when I undertook biking and less of the “cons” that I ended up with.  After work I’ll walk the 8 kilometers home. I did drove to work this morning so we’ll just run down and pick my car up after dinner…it’s a 6 minute drive so that shouldn’t be too cumbersome. I’ll let you know how it goes!

We made the decision last night that the garden on the side of the house that I was going to do this year is not going to get done fully this year. We’re going to take some measurements and possibly build the beds but we won’t be filling them with dirt this year….at least not all of them (dirt is expensive!!!!!!!). Instead, I’m taking the money that I had set aside for that and we’re going to properly finish the basement gym….proper flooring (not bare concrete), a mirrored wall, some paint, a rower and a dumbbell rack (we already have the equipment). We used to work out together down there many moons ago and really enjoyed it…..and even if we don’t do it together in the mornings (which is when I would use it), I still want the gym downstairs done properly. I want to stop paying over $60/month for gym fees and it would be great if Ray would lift again, he loves it and he wants to put muscle on (he’s an awesome gainer too, the bugger!).

So…..now I’m pricing rowers and mirrors and imagining paint colors (I’m thinking a soft buttery yellow?). We figure with the floor, the mirror, the rack, the rower and the paint etc….it will be about $1500 – $2000 to get it done. And if there’s leftover money I want a big punching dummy and a pair of gloves!

So that’s my update for today. Trip recap over on Half A Pear, bicycle is being benched in favor of walking shoes and we’ll be working on the downstairs gym. I’m trying not to feel too badly about how short lived my bike-commuting career was…..but I wildly over-estimated nearly everything about both it and me. As I’d mentioned, I want everything I do in April to be self-respecting and self-valuing and I think this change to walking shoes over cycling shoes is the best decision right now on several levels.

Moving Slowly

I have been awake since 1am…and not in a good way….if there is a good way to be awake at 1am when you should be sleeping.  I’m pretty sure that someone took my pillow and used it to wipe up pollen last night because at 1am I was awoken with enraged allergies.  My eyes were itched shut and I was sneezing and wheezing, the whole nine yards.  So unpleasant!

 

Last night’s allergy attack might have something to do with the hour that we spent walking last night.  I had read somewhere (I think in Robb Wolf’s book; Paleo Solution) that if you abide by our genes and how we lived thousands of years ago, we aren’t built for long, hard cardio.  In our hunter/gatherer lives we would walk long distances, run short distances sporadically (running from predators or chasing dinner) and we would lift heavy things (logs, boulders).  So the idea is to move more frequently at a slower pace and lift heavy things. 

 

In the last two months Ray has lost around 20 pounds (just from being grain free on evenings and part of the weekends), he has about 25 more to go and he’s starting to get his desire to be active back.  He sustained a very major back injury almost two years ago and he only really recovered from it about 5 months ago.  He’s also going to be 54 years old this year and that combination took a huge toll on his fitness.  Fortunately it’s all coming back and he’s embracing “move more frequently at a slower pace” at the moment.  He also has a gym membership that he pays monthly for but never uses and I think for an Easter gift I’m going to buy him New Rules of Lifting (the men’s edition).  He loves lifting weights and wants to go to the gym but I don’t really think he knows what to do when he gets there to see results at this stage of the game.

 

So Ray gets some benefits, what about me?  I’m not sure.  I’ve always been a cardio junkie and it’s only in the last couple of months (since grain free) that I haven’t wanted to do that.  The walking on the other hand, I’m really enjoying.  We don’t go overly quickly and Ray takes it as a challenge to get us as far away from home as we want to go and then getting us back without ever crossing over where we’ve already been.  He’s lived here his whole 54 years so he knows every back alley and side street around us.  I, on the other hand, just follow along like a sheep, never really knowing where we are.  (Our turnaround point last night was a great surprise, Como Lake, a little puddle of a lake you wouldn’t expect in the middle of a residential neighborhood.)  I also notice during our walks that I’m engaging different muscles than I do when I jog and that my back aches a little which means that my core is not as solid as I would have liked to believe.  

 

We've logged 11km of walking in the past two days!

 

Anyway, I’m trying to adopt the “move more frequently at a slower pace” theory in both exercise and in my regular life.  It’s one of those things that I’ve discovered by listening to what my body wants and needs rather than trying to force a preconceived notion on it.  It’s a little scary though, trying these new things and trusting that my body will tell me what it wants and needs to be the most healthy.  It’s hard to toss out all the Conventional Wisdom that has long preached hard cardio for weight loss, that weight lifting is for men and that we should all eat a balanced diet of whole grains as the base. 

 

Last night we had our seafood medley and it was delicious.  I roasted some baby zucchini open-faced drizzled with olive oil and then coarsely chopped it and put my seafood mix over that instead of pasta.  Topped with butter and a dusting of garlic powder, it was great, the zucchini was a nice mild flavour so it didn’t overpower the seafood.  Tonight is a TV night at our house, Ray is having leftover seafood medley and pasta and I’m having Sweet Basil Pesto Chicken & Turkey Sausages from Trader Joe; probably with some mashed cauliflower.