Monday, December 12, 2005

A SIGN OF IMAGINATION... and other stuff




Now, that's clever! The Gecko as seen on top is a staple of Arizona folk art. Some local resident with an enviable mix of imagination, humor, and artistic genius made the improvement in this road sign. I love this sign.

I passed it today at about mile 4 of my 16-mile run. I had taken the picture earlier... it's on the road to town and we pass it all the time.

TODAY'S RUN
16 miles down... I'm glad I didn't have 10.2 more to go. But I'm only 4 miles now from a 20-miler, which I know is more than adequate for a marathon. I will get there. I walked 1-2 minutes after every 20 minutes. At 2 hours I walked 5 minutes. The whole trip took 3 hours moving time (I stopped my watch for true stops, like doggie pit-stops.)

AFTER-RUN
I'm tired. My feet feel stiff when I get up and walk after sitting. Either I'm getting old or I need new shoes. Probably the former... the shoes have one marathon and a long recovery period on them (worn for ChesapeakeMan practically brand-new, maybe 20 miles on them, the few short runs in the month after, and then my slowly-increasing training since the middle of November.) I don't think my shoes have gone more than a hundred or so miles. Two hundred at most. Maybe I need to take more glucosamine. I took a couple of aspirin (still my favorite mild anti-inflammatory pain med) when I got home, hoping to get ahead of aches.

AND ABOUT CALORIES....
Folks have been asking/pondering about Weight Watchers Points and exercise. In general, the program is not geared for extreme endurance exercise. People who do that have to wing it. I know that I earn/use/whatever about one "point" per mile or ten minutes of running. That would give me about 16 extra points for today, nearly a whole day's food. So I just forget it and eat what I want the rest of the day. The old "calories don't count for as many hours as there were miles in your run" system. Makes plenty of sense to me!

4 comments:

Dr. Iron TriFeist :) said...

I agree that weight watchers excercise points do not work for endurance athletics or for speed work, especially if are overweight. I was gaining weight while using their method of calculating the calories expended because I would feel starved, then eat everything I could find. Does your heart rate monitor calculate calories? My real weight loss started when I started using the calories calculated by my hrm, then subtracting 15% from that number as a correction factor. It worked for me.

Ellie Hamilton said...

I don't have a heart rate monitor... :-/

TriZilla said...

Congrats on the long run! And, love the sign. :)

Flo said...

I've found the same problem with WW. It seems to me that for the first hour or so their formula works okay and it's a linear relation between time exercised and points earned. But once you pass the 1 hour mark it becomes an exponential relationship, you are earning way more points then time exercised would indicate. I'm with Linae, a HRM is a much better indicator. I like that 15% rule too, I'll have to try that.

(Sorry, for all the math talk, I'm a chemist and that's how I think. Scary, huh????)