Part of the learning I had from the dietician we visited last week was to try to do all of your exercise at one time in the day. Your body starts off by burning carbohydrates, then moves on to burning fat after that. If you do little spurts, you probably will not burn as much fat if you completed it all at a time. This caused my husband – who just last week nodded his head in agreement of my assessment of endurance runners as crazy – to increase his running distance to 10K. But both Saturday and Sunday, he ran 10K (only walking a couple of laps). Now I think he is crazy too.
This lead me to change the way that I do exercise too. Often, I would do two or three bouts of working out in a day as I accomplished other things. Sunday, I completed 66 minutes of cardio/strength training followed directly by a 3K run. This was not fun, but I’ll try it to see if it garners better results for me.
I choose to run on a side road out here near my house. The local tracks are great, but the continuous round and round – I think I am going to tip over sometimes. And I lose count. (How hard is it to count to 12.5 or 25?) No only that – it was a nice spring day out – people were out. When I run with other people around, I don’t want them to see me stop or collapse. So I push myself to go a bit further around the bend until the people are out of sight. It is effective.
I do not trust dogs. Several of you have dogs and you know that I rarely touch them (they smell) and I don’t like to be close to them. I think it is because I could be seriously injured or killed by a dog. I know, I know . .. you will all say to me. . . “Buttons here is so gentle, so well trained”, but the fact remains if Buttons decided to use his teeth and weight to attack me, I would be maimed. My cat often decides to attack me and it is generally futile – he doesn’t have the strength to be able to seriously injure me beyond a deadly case of cat scratch fever. I was assaulted by a Doberman while swimming in Fairy River a couple of years ago. He wanted to play, but in water over my head he was much too strong for me. I was badly scratched on my legs and I was certain I was going to drown. The dog was not on a leash nor was he trained well enough to return to his owner when called. (Please note, I did not engage this dog in any way except being in the same beach area.) That was one of the most terrifying events of my life.
I am not writing this to say that dogs are evil, or dogs should be destroyed, but I do believe that a dog must be trained and kept on a leash (if not at home). For the dog’s safety as well as mine. Bottom line: if my cat wanted to kill me, he’d probably have to sneak into my bed and put arsenic in my mouth. If a dog wanted to kill me, most wouldn’t need arsenic.
So, I am nervous around dogs – big and small (they are all dogs). While I ran down the street, I passed a house where everyone was gathered at the foot of the driveway in lawn chairs. Why do people sit in the front of their property like that? When I ran by, all FOUR of their dogs started chasing me and barking at me. They did not return home when their owners called them. It was frightening, and I burned some more fat by bumping up the pace trying to outrun their territory.
May 6th, 2012 Extra-Ordinary: Running down the street with four tiny little yappy dogs (mini yorkshire terriers?) barking their hearts out at me. I was frightened and felt ridiculous about feeling frightened. Afterall, wearing other clothes I could have been an heiress with my accessory dogs on Rodeo Drive.
Maintenance May Day 6:
Agreed to have my résumé presented to another employer by a recruiter. (Career)
The Daily EO 