Fatty Fights Back

US Nats: The Championships Begin

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:24:00 +0000

People who watch skating on TV and aren't involved in their local skating scene, are often completely unaware that there is any skating going on at Nationals other than the Senior level, which they call the Championships. If you normally read my blog for the weight loss and workout content, you have probably been thinking "Novice? Junior? What the heck is that?" Well, now you know... in fact, there are skating levels below Novice starting with Pre-preliminary. (Yes, there is a level below Preliminary. In fact, there are several as there is also a Basic Skills program with 5 levels and Pre-preliminary skaters have often been skating for years.)

Yesterday was the start of what most people think of as Nationals as the first Championship events were competed. Coming to the arena, you could feel and see the difference. First, when we pulled into the parking lot, it seemed full of cars. It turns out that some people had sensibly parked near the exit so they could get out earlier and there was plenty of room just past them, but there were easily twice as many cars as any other day we attended.

The second thing I noticed was that the arena had gotten fancier. There were balloon arches everywhere in USFSA colors (red, white & blue just like 20 million other sporting agencies and clubs). There were pretty vinyl stickers on the risers of the concrete steps advertising one of the sponsors.

But the most important change is that more than the generic arena concession stand was open. Yeah! Unfortunately, it became clear that Armadillo Willy's would never open as it's trapped behind some TV broadcasting area but at least we've got Sonoma Chicken Coop and Gordon Biersch to try out.

Oh, you want to know about the skating...

Senior Pairs

The first event was Pairs. As with all Short Programs, the order of the skate was done by random draw. This can make it interesting as you might see the eventual winner in the first group and sometimes one group is full of medal contenders and other times they are more spread out.

Vise & Baldwin were first up and did not have a good skate. They ended up in the high 40s which is not a good score at all. This does not bode well for the future of this team. What surprised me, though, is that Baldwin has turned into the strength of that team. When they first paired up, Vise was the one with all the experience.

I had noticed Bautista & Young in warm-up. There are some skaters who your eyes are just drawn too and these were the team in this warm-up group. Then I realized they were skating to Slumdog Millionaire. Score! My notes are quite enthusiastic about their skate but they only got 42.16 for it so I assume the technical stuff wasn't there. For example, their Side-by-Side (SBS) jumps were doubles and not triples.

Dolan & Speroff were last and they had nice costumes (I want her dress as a cocktail dress!) and an excellent skate with a score that put them in the mix for a medal just behind the top three.

The second group of three teams was interesting. On the one hand, we had Fehr & Biver which are a coach skating with his student. The idea is that she gets more pairs experience and maybe can find a pattern as she can now say she's been to Nationals. A good idea in theory, but he really didn't present her well (and skated with his mouth open, which is not pleasant to watch) and they are in last place. I thought she was adorable though so hopefully some potential partner or their coach was in the stands and noticed her.

Denney & Coughlin are two former National champions with other partners. There has been some controversy about this team since Coughlin won Nationals just last year with his last partner and people were hailing them as the future of US Pairs and then -- BOOM -- they split up and -- BOOM -- he was with Denney. What I don't understand is why people seem fixated on demonizing her though. Her partnership broke up because her partner got injured and decided he didn't want to skate competitively any more as he's getting older. It was a natural break up that wasn't mystifying or her fault at all. Plus, I just adore her. She's spunky and I like that in a Pair Girl. I also really like this pairing. I think they are more naturally a physical match for each other as neither is super-elegant and John's last partner is super-elegant and I always found that a bit jarring.

They started out with a huge triple twist and nice SBS jumps. They looked happy through most of the skate even though she fell on the throw jump. Their score was quite high due to the quality of what they did do (vs. the fall) and they are in third place going into the final.

The other team in the group, Poapst & Knierim had a reasonable skate and end up in 6th.

The next group of three ended up 8-10 and in the order they skated. I liked Zhang & Bartholomay in warm up by not so much when they did their program. They all had both good and bad aspects of their skating and they all ended up above Vise & Baldwin who were expected to possibly vie for a medal or at least a top six finish.

The last group had four teams and three of them were medal contenders. First up where Marly & Brubaker. This team paired late last season and I saw them in their first competition ever when they had only been together 1-2 months. They were quite good even then, in spite of the fact that she'd never done pairs before, and managed to get to Nationals and ended up fourth which is just amazing. I was really looking forward to them skate and they did not disappoint. They posted a score higher than last year's highest SP score and are currently in first place!

Next up were Castelli & Shnapir another team expected to vie for the podium. They had a very nice skate even if it was to Phantom of the Opera (can't stand that music) and when their skate was done, I thought "that was really close to Denney & Coughlin but I bet they don't quite pass them. I was too insecure to tweet this though. I didn't want to look like a fool when the scores were posted and I was dead wrong. Too bad because their store was 60.56 only .32 points behind. So I would have looked like a genius if I'd stuck my neck out!

Evora & Ladwig have been around for a long time and many have been saying it's "their year." I am not one of them however and I think that either Denney & Coughlin or Marly & Brubaker are going to win. See, I've decided to stick my neck out after all.

Jumps are often an issue with this team and I noticed that their steps leading into the jump had him doing twice as much as her and I wondered if that was so she could concentrate more on the jump. And just as I thought that, they did the jumps and she fell. Overall, I thought the skate was pretty sloppy and was surprised they ended up in second. I would have had them behind Denny & Coughlin and Castelli & Shnapir. However less than a point separates all three of these teams so I think it's just a matter of personal preference and the vagaries of the scoring system.

The last team of the night was Cain & Reagan. Yes, that Ashley Cain who came in second in Junior Ladies just last night and whom I called the Mirinda Cafree of Junior Ladies. She and her partner had a nice skate which started out with some moves very reminiscent of a Pattern Dance. Of course, ice dance fan that I am, I loved that. They are in 7th place which has promoted some people to say she should stick to singles but I think it's just a reflection of how strong our Pairs are this year.

SkateBug Convert

During the break between Pairs and Ladies, I decided to buy a Skatebug. This a receiver that lets you listen in on different audio feeds in the arena. Since I had bought a program earlier they sold it to me for $15 and it was totally worth it. I used it for Ladies and was so sorry not to use it for Pairs. I listened to Channel A which is the technical controller channel. You don't listen to the actual TC but to someone is who a TC in other events. And they can see the scoring computer that the judges see and their tell you what each element is that was performed, what level it got and whether it will be reviewed during the skate. That's it. No inane babbling about how this skater started skating at age 4 because her older sister played hockey and she was at the rink a lot and no inane comments such as "she just fell on that throw" (really, I didn't realize that's what happened) or "she's really feeling the music." They do talk in between skates but it's all technically focused. They will explain why they think an element is being reviewed and explain why the skater got the Program Component Scores they did or how this stuff works in general or why certain moves give you certain levels.

It's EXACTLY what I want to be hearing when I watch skating.

But, if you like banter of the tv broadcast, there are two other channels: IceNetwork which has commentary for their internet broadcasts and NBC for the stuff they are broadcasting (usually just the finals). Me, I'll stick to the Technical Controller channel for now.

It's most time for me to leave for the arena for today's events so I think I'll post this and do the Senior Ladies Short Program later.

US Nats: Jr Pairs & Ladies

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:09:00 +0000

Junior Pairs

I thought it was interesting that during Junior Pairs, a bunch of people were tweeting about how horrible our Pairs are at the exact same time I was thinking how much better our pairs are than they were when I first started going to Nationals.

For example, there used to be a time when almost no Pairs team in the US was able to do SBS Spins and keep them in sync for the entire time. Now almost all of them do it. They also don't have Pairs Spins that crash into each other and get all wobbly and kind of die out. And this is Juniors we are talking about. It used to be that all but the top Senior Pairs and even some of those also had these issues.

That said, I think Death Spirals have gone downhill in some ways. Well, in one way. That is pretty much every single Death Spiral I've seen this weekend, the Lady has gone down into the final position by sticking her butt out and then laying down. That is NOT how you are supposed to get into a Death Spiral. The whole idea is that you are swooning, you gracefully sink down to the floor and then you die all why some guy is spinning you around on the ice. That's why they call it a Death Spiral. Er, at least I think that's why.

As far as the actual competition is concerned, the first skaters up where Cali and Nick. I enjoyed their program even they didn't have the hardest elements but it ended up putting them in last place.

AnnaMarie Pearce and Craig Norris were fourth to skate. He stepped out of the SBS jumps and she fell on the throw but it was still a credible performance. They were fast and they really interpreted the heck out of the program. But they fell from sixth to seventh and now I'm worried they'll break up or stop doing Pairs or something. So I will have to pray to the Gods of Pair Skating again or maybe take up a chant: Stay in Pairs, Stay in Pairs, Stay in Pairs. You guys are going to be really good Pairs if you do, I am sure of it.

Another fun team was de la Mora & Wilson. I am not a big Transformers fan but the music was okay. It was the costumes I loved though. I loved them so much I want them to skate to the Matrix next year so they can wear them again!

In the top group, I really wanted Denney & Frazier to stay in first. I am crazy about this pair and I think Haven is destined to be the Next Great Pairs Diva. So that was my focus. Plus their main competition, Simpson & Blackmer skated to Titanic which reminds me Celine Dion which makes me want to puke. Okay, that's not fair. Plus they skated quite well and actually won the Free skate. But not by a big enough margin to pass Denney & Frazier.

So I was happy because I got to see some great skating and also my favorites win.

The gap between Pair and Ladies

There was a big gap between the end of Pairs and the start of Junior Ladies so Jobob and I went to the Fairmont to "lobbychick". We didn't see too many skaters or coaches except for Frank Carroll but I did get to have the most amazing martini. It was called a Chocolate Kiss and it was made from raspberry and chocolate liquor. It was to die for. It was even worth $10. Sort of. I want another one.

However, between it and the bar nuts, I took in as many calories as I normally do for dinner so that basically became my dinner. Not something I want to be repeating on a regular basis.

This is also the third time I've had alcohol and found it really helped my head. This is disconcerting because I am not a big drinker so I really don't have to have a drink every night of Nationals in order to not get a headache. Plus the martinis at HP Pavilion are not worth the $9 they are charging for them.

Junior Ladies

In some ways, the Junior Ladies championship reminds me of watching the Ironman World Championships. There the question is: who's going to come in second to Chrissie Wellington. Here it's who will come in second to Grace Gold. So I guess that makes Gracie figure skating's Chrissie Wellington.

In the first group we had my personal favorite Gwendolyn Prescott. When I first saw here skate, she was much younger -- it was 7 years ago after all. I think she was in the Preliminary level. She as tiny and zoomed around on the ice with great speed. She had the jumps, but wasn't just a jumping bean. I loved how she moved her body and performed even at such a young age.

Fast forward to 2012 and I haven't been to a local comp in 1.5 years and haven't really followed the local scene for longer. In between, Gwen won the Intermediate title at Jr Nationals and was criticized for staying Intermediate another season. The thought was that she should move up to Novice and give someone else a chance.

I have to admit, I find that reasoning exasperating. This sport can really chew up young girls and sometimes it's better for the younger skaters to take their time and not be such godawful hurry to get to Seniors. In Gwen's case, she's grown a lot and when she did move up to Novice, she didn't continue to win everything. So I hope some of those naysayers are a bit embarrassed now because clearly staying Intermediate another year was a good idea. (And, if they aren't embarrassed, they can suck it.)

Anyway, even though she's grow quite a bit and hasn't got the same sort of jumps that a skater like Gracie Gold does, she's still the same skater I fell in love with back in 2004-2005. Her program was delightful. She is a happy skater and everything she did was secure and had good technique. She did fall on her first triple. But she landed everything else. Her score was quite good but since she was the first skater of the night, it wasn't clear how it would hold up.

Some of the other Junior Ladies did post bigger scores for this portion of the event but they had lower scores in the SP so when the second group took the ice, Gwendolyn was still in first place. That means the lowest she could finish was 7th - One place higher than her SP finish!

In the second group my favorite skaters are Gracie Gold, Hannah Miller, Mariah Bell and Polina Edmunds. Gracie skated first and her first combination was a freaking triple lutz-triple toe! I was sure I was seeing things and it was probably a 3T-3T because what Junior Lady has a 3Z-3T, but, no, it was a 3Z-3T.

But Gracie is more than jumps. She also moves well and whenever she's on the ice, my eyes are drawn to her even if there are other skaters. In fact, I first noticed her during a Jr. Ladies practice before I knew who she was and had the same reaction to her that I had to Mirai Nagasu in the exact same circumstances. The only difference is that everyone expects Gracie to win this year while no one was expecting the same from Mirai that year.

The scores Gracie posted were out of this world and it was obvious she had won even with five more skaters to go.

The rest of my favs had a lot of issues with jumps unfortunately. Hannah Miller skated to Masquerade Waltz and the same person on Twitter who questioned her Dance Macabre in the Short questioned that music choice. I disagree. I thought both pieces suited her and weren't too old for her at all. She ended up in third down one spot from the Short. Mariah Bell and Polina Edmunds ended up in fifth and sixth respectively. Polina got a lot of new fans on the internet though and Mariah got me as a new fan. She could fall on everything and still be interesting to watch.

Oh, and if Gracie Gold is the Chrissie Wellington of Jr. ladies, then Ashley Cain is definitely the Mirinda Caffre. You know, the one who is so good that normally she'd be winning everything if only she didn't have the misfortune to compete at the same time as a phenom.

So that finishes up the Junior events. On to Seniors!

US Nats: Junior Finals - Dance

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:29:00 +0000

I'm a bit behind in my blogging as is normal for mid-week in Nationals. Therefore, I won't be talking about every performance, just the ones that stood out in some way or won a medal or were done by my favorites. I may not even do the Seniors at all. After all, there are a ton of people out there that only do Seniors so it's not like there is a need for one more.

Anyway...

Junior Dance

Wednesday was the last day of the Junior events. We started off with Junior Dance, which is my favorite event. Based on the Short Dance, my favorites were Howe & Janke, Pogrebinsky & Gudis, Bonacorsi & Mager (who I wanted to win) and Hertigage & Fast.

Unlike a lot of years, I didn't end up with a lot of favorites in the lower levels. This is true all across the board in every discipline and level. Normally there are at least a couple of skaters who haven't quite got the technical goods to be vying for the podium but are quite entertaining or exciting or otherwise fun to watch. I'm not sure why that is, if it's a side-effect of some rule or the judging system or if it's just a coincidence. But it's actually been a bit disappointing because it's turning me into one of those fans who always skips the first flight of an event because "all the good skaters come later" and part of the fun for me is to watch skaters who aren't in the limelight and bring other things to the table.

In the first group, Howe & Jahke were up first. They were skating to Adams Family, always a crowd favorite, and I liked that they didn't start out with the obvious music cuts and that her costume wasn't trying to make her look exactly like Morticia. It even had a wisp of purple in the skirt and that made it interesting. He was in a vest which is always a good look for a male skater in my opinion. My only complaint is that the dance could have been a bit more slinkier, but that may be my preconceived "this is how an Adams Family dance should be" notions as everything they did went with the music.

In the second group, we had Bertsch & Kaplun. In the Short Dance, I noted that she had the Latin Diva thing down but they didn't really grab me in a fandom way. The Free Dance was another matter. They skated to Howl's Moving Castle and I have to say that during one of the 50 million times Mini-Mac watched this movie at home, not once did I think "ooh, someone should do a free dance to that." After tonight's performance, I am perplexed as to why not though. The music choice was inspired with lots of waltz time music and I just loved, loved, loved the whole dance and think the music choice was inspired. So now I have a new favorite.

Pogrebinsky & Gudis skated to Master and Margarita by Kgor Konrelyuk and had some really nice lifts. Elliana, in particular, just moves like a dancer and has great expression. I really hope this team stays together and keeps progressing.

In the last group, we had the eventual medal winners. Bonacorsi & Mager were first and had a distinct Samuelson & Bates vibe. Oh, so that's why I like them so much! I have to say I hated the music. But the dance was divine, they were powerful and had such deep edges and neat feet and were very flowy. They had a minor stumble on a rotational lift at the end but it wasn't enough to keep them from winning the Gold. Yeah, one of my favorites actually wins!

Now, Alridge & Eaton who were in first coming into the Free Dance were quite good and they have good twizzles which are important to me. In fact, as I noted at some point during the evening: A good twizzle is like a nice butt on a guy. So I enjoyed their dance. But I'm not a big Riverdance fan so I wasn't gutted when they slipped into second.

Next up were Heritage & Fast and they skated to a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy medley. So, yeah, they automatically won my hearts with that. They may not be as crisp or as fast as the top couples, but they were fun and good expression. I did get the impression he was having trouble lifting her though and I worry that this will be one of the inevitable 'break up after Nationals' teams so that they can get a pairing with a bigger height difference. They came in fifth.

McNamara & Carpenter skated last came in third but for some reason I have absolutely no notes on them. They skated to The Four Seasons and had lovely costumes but without notes I can't really report much more than that. Obviously they skated well since they got Bronze.

I will post Junior Ladies and Junior Pairs later as it's time to drive back to the arena for the start of Seniors, aka the Championship events.

US Nats: Time for Juniors

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:27:00 +0000

The Junior events started today. Well, Junior Men finished. There were only three events though so it was much more restful than yesterday.

I started the day having "one of those days". Got up late, got out of the house late, had to take Mini-Mac to Concord, realized I had left my coat at home and had to go back instead of straight to the arena. Rush, rush, rush and I ended up getting to my seat about 5 minutes before the Junior Dance Short Dance started.

It was totally worth rushing to get there though even if the first event was Junior Pairs and normally I'm not big on watching Pairs. But this was different because I had some horses in this race.

Junior Pairs

Cali Fujimoto & Nicholas Barsi-Rhyne were up first. They are a local team and they've been skating together since they were at the Juvenile level even though some years they hardly competed. They move nicely on the ice and are very much a pair. I always enjoy watching them skate and today was no exception. However, they don't have the harder elements of the top couples, so they are in ninth.

Haven Denney & Brandon Frazier were next. I was very impressed with her in particular and thought their program was a solid effort that would score well. They supposedly ended third and I wasn't paying enough attention to think that was odd but it turns out someone somewhere made a major mistake and the scoring software was giving people credit for the strangest elements including things like Step Sequence+Jump. That isn't even a real element!

Eventually, after the event was over, the data was corrected and suddenly Denney & Frazier were in first, which I think makes more sense.

Simpson & Blackmer skated next. They were quite fierce, looking to each other's eyes so intently that I was afraid they'd look at me as they skated by and give me the Evil Eye! They were (supposedly) in 1st after this above Denny & Frazier which my notes didn't agree with and the corrected scores put them in 3rd.

(I have to say, I bet that sucked for them to think they were in first but only be in third.)

Jessica Pfund & AJ Reiss were next. I was curious about them because there were rumors that Caitlin Y., last year's Senior Pairs Champion in a now defunct partnership, had tried out with him. From what I see, they made a good decision not to pair up as they wouldn't have matched well. Jessica looked very familiar to me and her hometown is listed as a local town, so I think I've probably seen her skate in singles at some point.

Calalang & Sidhu were next. I had notice them in the warm-up and liked them and thought they looked good together in their skate. I expected them to place well and they ended up in 2nd.

Oltmanns & Santillan did an interesting Pink Panther. I really liked the costumes but hated the music and I thought the program didn't really suit them either. They are in 10th.

Duarte & Grafton had some quality elements. In particular, they had one mirror footwork sequence where they were passing so close to each other and it was quite impressive almost like watching synchronized skating. They are in 4th.

At this point only one group was left but we'd already seen the top four finishers. The guy next to me said "we've seen the medal winners." His reasoning was that all the kids on the Junior Grand Prix had already skated. I pointed out that Aaron & Settlage hadn't skated and they'd won their Sectional (and done a Junior Grand Prix last year). I don't think he was convinced.

But before they skated and we would know who was right, we had to get through everyone else.

Goldberg & Dolkiewicz were first up. They were perky, but didn't have the harder elements and her hand touched the ice on their Death Spiral which I'm pretty sure is mandatory deduction off their GOE. They are in last place.

They were followed by de la Mora & Wilson who also didn't have the harder elements but did enough to end up in 8th place.

Finally, we got to AnnaMarie Pearce and Craig Norris. I had been looking forward to seeing them for weeks. They are in my skating club and I've seen them skate as single skaters many times. AnnaMarie had performance qualities that are through the roof and I loved to see her compete, but she never would score well because of jumps. Craig Norris also hadn't managed to break through the pack in singles skating in spite of some very nice qualities. I was very curious how they'd be as a team. Two singles skaters teaming up to get the chance to go to Nationals or a Real Pairs Team?

Answer: Real Pairs Team! Not only did they skate like a pair even though they've been only together for just over a year, they did a Throw Triple Loop. Right in front of me too and it was enormous! They have moved to LA to train with Meno and Sand and are making great progress and I really hope they stay together because doing Pairs seems to bring out the best in them and I think they have a great future together and it's so nice to see some of my favorite skaters have some real success. I will now stop gushing and go pray to the Gods of Pair Skating on their behalf.

Or I will when I'm done with this report anyway.

Aaron & Settlage finished up the competition and with a fall on their throw, it was looking like my seat mate was right. But the rest of their program was strong and they ended up in fifth, nicely positioned for a medal should they be able to seize the moment. Oh and AnnaMarie and Craig are in sixth ahead of the team that beat them at Sectionals. Whee!

Wait! What about Mozer & O'Shea? I am sorry to report that they had to withdraw and aren't here. She hit her head recently and isn't cleared to skate yet. Boy can I relate to THAT. I hope she recovers faster from her head injury than I have from mine.

An aside during the long break between Pairs and Dance

Which reminds me... I haven't given a Head Report in a while. I am happy to tell you that attending Nationals has not been the head-pounding experience that WDW was. I have been wearing ear plugs everywhere, which has helped. The sound system at the arena has been horribly loud, which hasn't helped. (Everyone has been complaining about it.) But what seems to be saving me is that there are lulls. At WDW, it was loud all the time and my headache would grow and grow and grow. Here, I get a headache, then it goes away. I get another one and it goes away. Tylenol works and so does finding some place quiet to hide for a bit. So my head isn't getting better, but it's not getting worse over the course of the week.

I think I'm going to make it.

Junior Dance

The Short Dance is a recent and interesting phenomena. They've taken the old Compulsory Dances -- which are now called Pattern Dances -- and told the skaters to smoosh them into something that looks like what the old Original Dance looked like with prescribed rhythms.

This year the Short Dance for Juniors is two patterns of the Cha Cha Congelado and then original stuff to one or more of the following rhythms: cha cha, mambo, merengue, rhumba, samba. It has to include the following:

short lift
not touching midline step sequence
one set of sequential twizzles

When I first heard about the Short Dance, I thought it sounded messy (okay I thought it was the stupidest idea known to man), but the reality has been some fun dances, both last year (the first year this was done) and this year. It's fun to see what original choreography people come up with, yet everyone is skating one section exactly the same so you can make meaningful comparisons even if you don't know that much about dance. Like you can say "their feet in that section looked crisper than the team before them." Plus, the Cha Cha Congelado is a very fun dance.

Another great thing about Latin Short Dances is that even the lower level teams can be fun to watch.

For example, Jeandell & Dodge who started out the night and are now 11th out of 13th had some nice knee action that made their dance really feel Latin. Howe & Janke ended up in the mid-pack and I thought their Cha Cha was particularly nice. Macini & Brooks were very happy with their skate (fist pumps at the end) and her costume was endlessly fascinating because it reminded me of tiger stripes.

Unfortunately, Dzierzanoski & Dispenza stood out by falling on their ending pose. Oops. But their music was fun combining Buster Poindexter and Santana. They also got a Level 4 on their straight line lift.

The next couple was Lauri Bonacori & Travis Mager. She is in a local club and I swear I've seen them skate before but it was a while ago and I couldn't quite remember the details, only that I was looking forward to seeing them. I thought their program was a nice change of pace and they had good interaction (i.e., they danced with each other). I was very impressed with their Cha Cha and they certainly got more points for it than the teams that came before them.

In fact, their dance put them in 2nd overall. And that was with getting no credit for their lift according to the protocols. My notes say "nice lift" so they did one but the protocols have 0 for it. I am perplexed.

The Parsons are a brother and sister team. I loved the costumes and noted that their twizzles were in sync (often a problem even at higher levels) but were slow. However, they were complex enough to give them a level four. They also got 0 for their lift but are in 3rd. I'm obviously missing something with these lift marks.

Aldridge & Easton's first twizzles before they changed feet made me squee. (I'm kind of a twizzle gal. Which explains why Davis & White are my absolute favorite.) Their Cha Cha was also excellent and they are in first place.

Pogrebinsky & Gudis were up next. Elliana started skating in this area and I remember when she passed her first dances and started skating in her first dance events at local competitions. And now she's got a partner and is competing in Junior Dance. It's so exciting! She has a lot of personality and is very much a dancer. I wonder if she knew that when she took up dance or if she started just to improve her single skills (as many of the girls do) and caught the bug? Oh and Ross was nice too. (Smile) They are in seventh.

Bertsch of Bertsch & Kaplun had the Latin Diva thing down pat. I love a good Latin Diva. They are in 9th.

The other brother and sister team are the Gamelins. They are also dancing twins like the Lorellos, but actually skate with each other instead of other people. Unfortunately they had a BIG fall in the middle of their Cha Cha. While that only gave them 0 for one element out of 5, they also got a 2 point deduction for the fall (one for each of them). Their first pattern of the Cha Cha got almost 6 points so that's as much 8 points they lost! Which is probably why they are in 12th out of 13.

Next up were Hawayek & Bramante. They had cool music: Sway by the Pussycat Dolls and Tequlia by the Champs. Serious, how could you go wrong with that? I liked their lift too. It was a rotational lift and he was rotating extremely fast! They are in 6th.

The final couple of the night, Heritage & Fast are a local couple. However, I wasn't familiar with them. They did a different kind of Latin, skating to Adele (what?!), and going for smooth rather than bouncy. They crowd loved them and they ended up in fifth. It was nice to see Pam and John O'Dougherty in the Kiss 'n Cry. Since I don't ice dance any more, I haven't seen them in ages.

Junior Men

After skating their Short Programs two nights ago, the Men were ready to vie for the crown.

Tomasello was the first skater and his costume reminded me of some socks I own, namely these:

http://www.sockguy.com/ProductInfo/SHARKX.aspx

Yes, he was skating to Jaws! Duh.

He got a lot of teasing about the costume on Twitter but I'm sure that was partly the idea. He started off with a nice double axel and a triple-triple. But at the end he fell on this footwork and was down for a long time so not only did he get the -1 deduction for a fall but he lost a lot of levels. This dropped him from 7th in the SP to 8th overall.

Emmanuel Savary had a horrendous Short so we were all nervous for him in the Free skate. He did a good job though. He did fall once but he didn't let it derail the program and he managed to get in pretty much all of his planned content with only one downgrade. In fact, he came in 9th in the Free skate, up four places. But, sadly, it wasn't enough to change his final position. Still dead last.

Andrew Nagode and David Wang (whose last name is pronounced as Wong confusing a lot of people online who started typing Wong) were next and they both had disappointing skates each dropping from their short program placement.

The next skater, Ryan Hartley, has horrendous jump technique. But he lands them. He landed seven triples! In fact, he put enough content out there to have the 5th best free skate of the night. However with being 11th after the short he was still behind Shark Boy.

The last person in the first group was Harrison Choate. He was dressed like a Mime. But without the white face, thank goodness. He did some miming in his program but it wasn't heavy-handed and, even though I really hate mimes, I loved the skate. He really threw down the gauntlet to the guys in the 2nd group. Mime Boy to 2nd group: Beat that, suckers!

So Jay Yostanto came out and did some Big Ass Jumps to start off. First a 3X-2T, then a 3X, then a 3Z-2T-2L. The triple axel is a very hard jump and I'm pretty sure no other guy in this event has one. Heck, some Seniors don't have one, at least not a reliable one.

So it looked like he as going to answer the challenge. But he couldn't sustain that and had a lot of issues with a fall and some pops and dropped from 6th to 7th overall.

The next challenger was Phillip Warren. He had been 5th in the SP. His program was very clean with only a hand-down on a triple flip. He had a lot of hard jumps too. Plus his program component scores were excellent. It was the second best free skate of the night, in fact, and it pulled him up to 3rd overall. Obviously he was very happy and so was the crowd who liked him very much.

Of course all we knew at this point is that he was above Choate pushing him to second place.

The next challenger was Timothy Dolensky who was actually first in the SP beating the expected winner, Nathan Chen by a fraction of a point. Timothy's skate was excellent with lots of triples and interesting leg positions in his Change Foot Camel Spin (for the no-teknic that means you do a camel spin, change feet and do another one with possibly other spin positions on each foot too since more positions equals more levels). This free skate did not beat Philip's. But Dolensky was enough ahead after the Short that he pulled into first anyway.

Uh oh, now Mime Boy was in third with the 2nd and 3rd place SP skaters still to skate! His medal chances were waning fast.

Nathan Chen was next. He's the skater everyone expected to win. (He's been winning a lot.) I hated the choreography of his SP, if you recall, but I loved his free skate. It had a maturity that the SP was lacking and he really looked like a Junior skater out there and not a little kid who had wandered into Juniors by mistake. So I take back everything I said two days ago, okay?

At the end, we all jumped out of our seats we were so excited by what we saw including 7 triples and an amazing footwork sequence to end the program.

And this kid is only 12! He's not even eligible to go out on the Junior International circuit (which is different than the US Junior level but overlapping).

Of course, he was in first after that. Now Mime Boy was in 4th! We so wanted him to get a medal but there are only four medals and Timothy Koleto, an excellent skater, was up next. It didn't seem like Nathan was beatable at this point, but Koleto was definitely in a position to get on the podium.

Unfortunately, he kind of melted down. It was horrible to watch so the least said about that, the better. He came in 10th in the free skate after being third in the short. Major bummer. But Mime Boy still had a medal (they have a pewter medal at US Nationals) and the last skater, Lukas Kaugars, didn't do anything to take it from him and in fact dropped from 4th to 6th.

Yeah to Harrison, pulling up from 10th to 4th. That has to be some sort of record! In honor of your achievements, I will stop calling you Mime Boy.

At the medal ceremony, everyone was very happy, too, which is nice to see.

P.S. "We" is the people sitting on either side of me who are all pretty hard-core, coming to everything when a lot of people only come for the Seniors or certain disciplines. We've been chatting between events, which is something I enjoy about coming to Nationals -- not just getting to see people you only see at competitions or talk to online but also meeting new people who are all as geeky about figure skating as you are.

US Nats: Novice Monday

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:49:00 +0000

Today was the end of the Novice events and start of Junior Ladies. It was a very, very long day.

Novice Dance

It started around 10:30 am with Novice Dance. Just as I was unhappy with the "dance" qualities of the Pattern Dances, I felt like most of the Free Dances were just programs and not two people dancing with each other, but on ice. There were some notable exceptions.

One was Meara Lorello & William Dean. They skated to 50s rock music and they really interacted with each other as well as performed to the audience. They are a little slow compared to some of the top couples so they ended up in sixth place, but they did move up a spot from the Pattern Dances.

My new favorite Novice Dance team is Chloe Lewis & Logan Bye. I loved their dance and how every movement flowed from the movement before as one continuous stream instead of "now we're doing our lift, here comes our step sequences, time for a dance spin". The judges liked it too. They came in 3rd in the Free Dance. But it wasn't enough to move them up in the standings so they stayed in 4th place.

The other couple I liked a lot are Holly Moore & Daniel Klaber. Not only were they very dance-y, but their skating was crisp and fast with some great lifts and dance spins. They moved up to 1st and are now Novice Dance Champions!

Some other notes: Hannah Pfeifer & Grant Lorello (twin brother of Meara) skated to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy which is always a good choice and one of their lifts was super cool.

We also had another duplicate costume moment. This time I didn't notice during the warm-up. So I was confused to see the team that I thought had just skated standing on the ice ready to start their program. I am serious - their costumes were that much alike!

Hannah Rosinski & Jacob Jaffe had some fast twizzles and he is very expressive, which you don't always see with the guys.

Novice Ladies

The only question with Novice Ladies was how much Karen Chen would win by. Answer: a lot! Some other notes:

Avery Kurtz has springy jumps.

Bradie Tennel has some really interesting spin positions.

The two AGs did not disappoint. Their free skates were as good as their short programs. Amanda doesn't have a lot of triples but everything she does is very high quality. After her scores were announced, her coach squeed. They were very excited and that was cute to watch. Amber started off with a very nice 2X-2T with hands over her head. Her costume was very interesting too. It was a Black Swan costume but it was subtle.

In the end, they swapped positions with Amber coming in second and Amanda coming in 3rd only 3.5 points behind. Madison Vinci was at the top of a pack of girls in the 111-117 range so she got the pewter medal.

Novice Men

Once again Wilber Ji skated as well as I've ever seen him. He did fall and then pop his last two jumps so he wasn't perfect but he moved well and sold his program and had a lot of nice elements before that. His scores were so low though. I didn't understand that until I saw that he actually did two triple salchows. The second one should have been in combination and you aren't allowed to repeat jumps so his score suffered for that.

When the second group came out, I was so nervous. I wanted both Vincent and Kevin to do well but I also kind of wanted Kevin to win just because I've been watching him skate since he was seven years old and also Vincent beats him a lot so I wanted Kevin to have a turn beating Vincent.

Vincent came out and his costume was red with a dragon on the back, which was perfect since it's Chinese New Year this week and also the Year of the Dragon. His program was good. He nailed everything, did a lot of hard stuff but made it look each and was generally the same kid whose been winning everything all season. However, I did feel like he was a bit tight and maybe the 120% kid was only 110%. So, it seemed like he could be beaten. But only if Kevin was spot on in everything.

I had to wait a while to find out, but Kevin came out and went into his first jump and ... popped it. Yikes! Okay, so it's unlikely he could win now but it's only one jump. But then he popped the next one. And the next one. It was kind of horrifying actually. But he got it together and skated the rest of the program clean and got in a lot of combinations by adding toe loops to jumps that were planned as single jumps and some nice spins especially his last combination spin (which got a level 4). His score seemed kind of low but he was so far about skaters 3-12 after the short, I thought it might hold up anyway.

The only skater I figured had the goods to pass him was James Schetelich who skated next. James had what I would call a Happy Skate. He wasn't perfect, but he was close and he was so happy while he was skating and so happy afterwards with his performance. It was pretty obvious he was going to move up and no surprise when he did.

There was one more skater but I didn't think he had the goods to rack up that many points and then his program was kind of a hot mess so I figured that was it. Kevin would get bronze, which is nothing to sneeze at, if slightly disappointing and my three favorite Novice Men skaters would come in 1, 2 & 3.

Then they announced the scores and Hot Mess was in 3rd pushing Kevin down to 4th. Our entire section all said "What?!" at the same time. Seriously, we actually said that out loud. (And so did a lot of the audience elsewhere from what I can tell.)

I ran into Kevin's coach afterwards and she said he lost a level on one of his spins on top of the pops due to not rotating enough times. He also didn't get his triple-triple in. But I think what really hurt him is that the judges really dinged him on the program components, which I don't think is fair. Because for 3/4 of the program, he was his normal self with his normal transitions, interpretation, choreography, etc. So maybe a little lower than normal, but most were fully 1 point lower than in the Short program. He only lost 3rd place by 1.54 points so just a few more fractions of a point on the five PCS marks would have kept him in 3rd place.

Oh well, it's over and done with and it's just skating. No one died. So I guess I have to move on and start thinking about Junior Ladies. Who were up next.

Novice Pairs

Just kidding. I knew Novice Pairs were up next. But I decided not to watch more than the last group as I didn't feel like drinking today. I didn't 100% hold to that. I watched Lucy and Robbie on the tv screens. They did well and moved up two spots, from 10th in the SP to 8th in the Free which netted them a 9th place finish overall. Yeah!

I also caught Middleton & Henning who ended up third in the freeskate after skating much better than they had the day before.

Then I went back to my seat for the final group. Zaitsev & Stevens were as delightful as the day before but stayed in fourth place overall. Likewise the top 3 teams stayed in the same positions.

Novice Awards

Then they did the Novice Awards and it went over which delayed the start of Junior Ladies. I found this annoying as I don't think it's fair to the skaters to make them stay up so late and then skate. They also did something I've never seen before. They had the Novice medal winners signing autographs on the concourse after the ceremony. I went to give Kevin another cake pop but he wasn't there. So I gave it Karen Chen instead. From one Fremont gal to another. (I asked her coach first if it was okay.)

Junior Ladies

Polina Edmunds skated second in the first group and she was just awesome. Her score was so high, I knew it would hold up and she'd skate in the final group for the free skate. Sure enough, she came in fourth!

I also liked Barbie Long's program. It was Swan Lake which can be an old hoary chestnut, and it's not my kind of classical music, but her costume had no feathers and she made no flapping wing movements with her arms. Yet, through her movements and choreography, it was perfectly clear she was a swan. So props to both her and her choreographer (whom I think is her coach) for being able to do that.

In the second group, we had all these gals who spent the fall on the Junior Grand Prix circuit. So I was afraid they'd all get put ahead of Polina due to reputation. Some did, but not all. Um, I mean some ended up ahead of her, not that they only did that due to reputation judging. The only placement I questioned was Ashley Cain's. I would have had Polina over her. They are only .72 points apart though so it was probably some technical issue I didn't notice that put Ashley on top.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first to skate was Gracie Gold. I'd seen her in practice and was quite impressed. She did nothing to unimpress me here. She delivered a quality program with a triple-triple and mature presentation. I think she's going to win just as she's been winning all season. And so does everyone else.

Next up was Gwendolyn Prescott. I was so impressed with her program. Her jumps were secure and confident. Her spins were textbook. (Doug Mattis tweeted that she had the best layback of the competition.) The only problem is that some kids in the audience yelled and distracted her and she slipped a bit on some footwork. She recovered though and continued her program as if it hadn't happened.

But her score was so low. I was unhappy about that. She's currently in 8th which is respectable, but I would have had her over Mariah Bell who is in 6th. There is only 1.91 points separating them though so it's not like it was highway robbery. Basically Gwen had a higher tech mark but lower PCS than Mariah and lower tech but similar PCS to Katarina. It probably did come down to that slip on the footwork, which is a shame.

We also had two Dance Macbre's in this group. I preferred Hannah Miller's to Jessica Hu's.

Yes, half the girls in this comp are named Hannah. The rest are named Madison.

US Nats: Novice Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:36:00 +0000

The first few days of any US Nationals are packed. That's because all the Novices do their Short programs (or Pattern Dances for the Ice Dancers) the first day and they throw in the Junior Mens SP too. The second day, the Novices do their Freeskates (or Free dance for dance) to finish so then they do Novice awards and also start the Junior Ladies. It's a LOT of skating over two days.

Today I got there just as Novice Dance was starting. I experimented with tweeting after every performance. It was hard but doable but it killed my iPhone battery and I never did figure out how to log onto Twitter on my iPad. So I had to stop eventually.

Novice Dance

The first Pattern Dance was the Argentine Tango. This is an interesting tango because it's softer than a regular tango. So it can be hard to be soft enough to be an Argentine but sharp enough to be a tango. I am sad to report that most of the teams didn't mange it.

My favorites were Holly Moore and Daniel Klaber who ended up in second but only by a fraction of a point. The first place team was good too but they had a visible skid on their second pattern. Plus I thought Moore/Klaber's tango was more tango-y.

The other team I really liked was Chloe Lewis and Logan Bye. I thought their marks on the AT were low but I could kind of see it because this team is really small. They still managed to have as much ice coverage as the mid-pack teams but not as much as the top teams. But they did much better in the second dance and pulled up to 4th overall. That made me happy.

One interesting thing about the Argentine Tango this year is that the skaters could pick their own music. There were some interesting choices. For the Starlight Waltz that they did next, they couldn't pick their own music and I had "Once Upon a Dream" fatigue by the end of it.

For the Starlight, I again would have put Moore/Klaber over Miller/MacMillan but the judges had them in the other order and by a few points not fractions like for the first dance. I think I'll stand by my own judgment until one of those judges convinces me otherwise.

Which could happen as one of the judges is my former next-door neighbor. It's his first Nationals appointment and I'm very excited for him. I bet I could get him to explain the results in general terms after the event.

Novice Ladies

The Novice Ladies were next. The overall quality of their skating was good. Karen Chen who has been winning everything and is coached by my sister and niece's old coach, skated early. She had a fall but the rest of her skating is so good that she is still in first place. I threw her a cake pop! I hope she doesn't think some crazy skate mom of one of her competitors is trying to poison her with it!

Anyway, I was really rusty at jump identification so I just went and looked at the protocols and I see that Karen had a Triple Lutz-Double Loop for her combo. No wonder she's in first place. That's a hard combo that you don't even see that often in Juniors or Seniors! She also got a bunch of Level 3s and one Level 4 on the spins and footwork sequences. Her Program Components were high too.

The other two I liked are now in second and third, Amanda Gelb and Amber Gleen. Or as I think of them, the two AGs.

Novice Men

Three of the Novice Men from our section are skaters who I've seen grow up in skating. So it was fun to see them all make it to Nationals. My favorite is Kevin Shum. This dude has a Triple-Triple! But he also has a very mature presentation and always has to some extent. (That is to say, his presentation has always been mature for his level, not that it hasn't changed in 7 years!)

I guess you'd call me a Kevin Shum uber. I try not to get too excited about the younger kids because they grow up and stuff happens and then they aren't skating any more. (Plus I'm a middle-aged lady so too much gushing over young boys is creepy.) But sometimes I can't help myself. I'm not alone either. No one around me had seen Kevin skate before, but afterwards they were raving about him.

And also about Vincent Zhou who I had heard a lot about but was afraid wouldn't live up to the hype. I've seen him skate before, but he's very young and he used to be at a lower level than Kevin and Wilber so I didn't have a strong memory of him. He's really burst on the scene lately. He's one of those skaters I call 120% skaters. He's on every second, it seems, but in a cute way, not an obnoxious way. It's like he can't help giving 120%. Part of it that he's coached by Tammy Gambil and she is great at packaging younger skaters so their personality really shines. And it's their personality too, not some fake "the judges like this" personality.

Vincent is in first, slightly ahead of Kevin. The Free skate should be interesting!

The other area skater is Wilber Ji and he's really come into his own as a skater since I last saw him. He hasn't got the technical content of the other guys but his program was a complete blast. It was over the top and could have been oh-so cheesy and wrong, but he gave it the perfect combination of seriousness and irony and it completely worked. Too bad he's in last place though.

Honestly that seems a little low to me but I see from the protocols that his step sequences was only level one and he got negative GOE on a jump and both spins. That's fair, but sometimes the marks don't really reflect the accomplishment that skate was for that skater and I think this is one of those times.

The only other Novice Men I really remember are James Schetelich who had very strong jumps and is now in 4th place and Nicholas Vrdoljak, the third place skater. He was good but didn't float my boat. Sorry, Nicholas, it's not personal. It's a style thing. Like punk rock vs. classical music.

Novice Pairs

Okay, I admit it. Novice Pairs scares me and normally I avoid them. I probably should have this time too. This is the first pairs level where the teams are doing real tricks like you see on tv with the higher level skaters. Their lifts go above the guys head (well, theoretically), they do a split twist, they are doing side-by-side double jumps, etc., etc.

And it often goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Like today when the teams in the third group kept almost killing each other in the warm-up. Not on purpose. They just couldn't get out of each other's way. And one team, the one team I was curious about seeing because they are local and I remember the guy from when he was a singles skater, had the most disasterous warm-up. They couldn't do anything right and it got the point where I was upset enough that I wanted to yell out "stop trying to kill your partner and get off the damn ice!"

But I didn't because I try not to be a crazy woman at skating events. But pretty much that was the only thing holding me back.

Then, during the actual skating, the team before them had a bad fall. They were doing a lift and she went up but not very high (though it seemed like that was actually on purpose). But then she did something, I'm not sure what, and suddenly the whole lift wasn't balanced any more and they both fell. Not only that, he came this close to skating over her hand. When she bounced back up, she was holding her cheek and I could swear she was going to stop skating. But she shook it off and they went back and finished the program. It was messy with lots of falls but they finished. (Way to HTFU!)

In the "Kiss and Cry" she had ice on her cheek so she really did hurt it.

Then the team that upset me came out and I was so scared. But they were actually not too scary. The guy who couldn't lift her or throw her in warm-up did those things just fine and their only falls were on her throw jump and she also fell on the side-by-side jumps.

I have no idea what the issues were. (Just because one team member falls doesn't mean the other team member wasn't at fault.) All I know is that my heart was in my throat for their entire performance (because of the warm-up) and afterwards I ran up to the concourse and had an alcoholic beverage.

Seriously, I did. I was that upset by the entire event. And not just these two. They were the last two teams to skate and had the most obvious problems, but that doesn't mean other teams didn't get my heart in my throat as well.

And, no, I'm not going to name them. If you were there or watching on Ice Network, you know exactly what I'm talking about and, if you don't, well it's not important. The point is they drove me to drink, not who they are.

I do have to say one of the teams not only didn't scare me but actually skated like a real pair. That's pretty rare at this level. That team was Christina Zaitsev and Ernie Utah Stevens. They are in fourth place.

Junior Men

To finish off the evening and me and my head, we had Junior Men. I was familiar with none of them. The first skater impressed me and he's in first (Timothy Dolensky). The second skater impressed me and he's in 4th (Lukas Kaugars). After that it was the usual mix as these skater do their short program in random order. I also really liked the skater who ended up in third, Timothy Koleto and the 5th place skater (Phillip Warren) who skated to Stevie Ray Vaughan doing a Jimi Hendrix song! (My kind of music, baby.)

Okay, my readers who are in the know are now thinking... Nathan Chen, why aren't you talking about Nathan Chen? You know the guy in 2nd by .05 point who is winning everything.

I have to admit, I had mixed feelings about his skate. I hated the choreography of his program and his shiny copper shirt threatened to give me a headache. Plus his ice coverage was not good because he's tiny and has no power. But his technical content is amazing. He's got all the same goods as the other Junior Men when it comes to jumps and spins even though he's 12 and they are more like 15-20. So how do you grade that? It's a dichotomy.

Wrap-up

As we left the arena, it started to rain. Way to go Mother Nature -- stay dry when we're indoors and only rain when we have to go out. And my head hurt. But not nearly as bad as it did at WDW so I think I'm going to make it through the week especially if I hide for most Novice Pairs tomorrow and don't attend any practices. I also figured out how to charge my phone so I should be better on the Tweeting. Much to the dismay of some of my followers who are used to me never tweeting and only about triathlon. Sorry! It will over in a week, I promise.

A bit of blathering about US Nationals

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:02:00 +0000

The 2012 US National Figure Skating Championships are in town this week. The last time they were here was 1996 and that was my first live "real" skating competition. It was pretty memorable for a number of reasons. First, it was the year Rudy Galindo had his big breakthrough and won. Second, it was the year Michelle Kwan became "Michelle Kwan" (with her Salome program) and won. Third, it was the first (and last) time a reigning National Champion (Nicole Bobek) had to withdraw for medical reasons and yet wasn't put on the World team anyway. Finally, and more personally, it was this competition that launched my career as a figure skating photographer.

What a difference 16 years makes.

This time around, I'm a veteran of the live figure skating comp. I've been to two World Championships, the Olympics, 4CCs and five Nationals. I'm also pretty much not a photographer any more. I rarely take pictures any more and my good, professional camera is broken so I only have a point and shoot and my iPhone to work with. Good thing I have front row seats!

I also haven't been to see a National or International level competition since 2007 or a local club comp since 2010. I still love to watch figure skating but I no longer skate, I am on longer trying to get a judging appointment, and I am no longer a hard-core fan. This week, I am just playing at being one.

Because I have an "All Event" ticket, I can attend every official event but also all the official practices. So today that's what I did.

I had other commitments so I haven't been as organized as I usually am about a Nationals. I didn't have as many printouts and notes. I didn't even get to the HP Pavilion until after 4:00 pm, just in time to watch the Junior Ladies run through their Long Programs (aka the Free Skate).

The first group came out and I barely recognized Polina Edmunds, who I first saw back in 2005 when she was maybe a Preliminary skater. (Or maybe Pre-pre?) I've been watching this kid skate for years but she's actually a young lady now and I wasn't expecting that for some reason. I had no idea who the rest of the skaters were because I haven't really followed the lower level skaters in years.

But I immediately found some new favorites. Here are some thoughts and impressions:

Gracie Gold - I've heard a lot about her as she is apparently a young phenom, being touted as the next great thing. Grace for Gold, they say! Gag me with a spoon was my reaction. I was prepared to be cynical and negative because of all the hype. But I really liked her! I was expecting this pre-pubescent girl because I was told she's only 14 but she looked more like 16 or 17 and she moved well. (According to her bio, she's 17.)

Mariah Bell - I noticed her first off. Who's that girl in the purple top? I asked my friends. We think that's Mariah Bell, they said. And it was and she moves like an ice dancer. I like that. New fan.

Allison Timlen looks like one of Mini-Mac's friends. Not like they could be sisters but a dead-ringer. I find this endlessly amusing and keep trying to take her picture so I can tease Mini-Mac about it.

The rest of the skaters have faded in my memory by now. Sorry about that "Rest of Junior Ladies Group A." I'll try to do better next time... maybe take some actual notes or something!

The second group contained my "friend" Gwendolyn. (We're FB friends but I'm sure she has no idea who I am.) I really didn't recognize her. I only figured out who she was because she was the shortest in Group B and Asian-looking. She now looks a lot like Michelle Ito did at the same age which also was freaky. Ins spite of having grown up while I wasn't looking, she was still the same great skater and she was clearly having a blast out there. I can't wait to see her again.

By this time, the noise was getting to me. Even with ear plugs on, my head was not good. So I can't remember pretty much anything else that happened during that practice. I do remember at the end of the practice hailing down Justin Dillion and giving him my extra tickets for tomorrow to give out to someone who needs a ticket. He said he might give the Novice Pairs ticket to Naomi Nari Nam! So, if he does, and she actually sits in that seat (for early events people tend to sit 'wherever' so she will probably sit with friends), I will be able to watch the event with former National Pairs competitor who has actually been on tv. How cool is that?

After practice, I went home and made cake pops. Making cake pops always makes my headache go away. I had a big headache so I made 8 dozen! It worked too. But now I've got eight dozen cake pops. I gave a bunch of MacBoy's friend who here playing some nerd card game like Magic the Gathering. But they can only eat so many so I'm bringing a bunch tomorrow. I've got three kinds, Apple Cinnamon, Sour Cream Brownie, and Chocolate Peanut Butter. If you are reading this and you will be Nationals tomorrow, come to Section 116, row 1 and I'll give you some. Seriously, come get some. Otherwise they'll go bad and I'll have to throw them out.

Quitting while I'm ahead

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:28:00 +0000

In general, I have a tendency to push the limits. So today when I went out for my first run of 2012 (and my first run since Oct. 27th and my first run since I hurt my brain) and I made myself turn around at the 5 minute mark so I really would do a 10 minute run and not push it to a 15, 20 or even 30 minute run, I was quite proud of myself.

In the past I would have run until my brain started to hurt and then limped back home and spent the remainder of the day scolding myself for being such a bird brain.

Hmmm. Maybe you can teach a old dog new tricks.

Adventures in Cake Pop Land

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:19:00 +0000

Cake Pops, The Prologue

Recently I have become obsessed with cake pops. The funny thing is, my obsession was full-blown before I'd even eaten a single one. There is something just so completely appealing about them -- a little bite of cake and frosting on a stick -- in a way that cupcakes are not. (For the record, I think cupcakes are everything I don't like about cake magnified; I can't wait for the cupcake fad to fade away.)

My first obsession with cake pops became how to make them without using icing. I am not a big fan of icing to start with and the idea of a cake smooshed up with icing and then covered with chocolate just seemed way too sweet to me. So I got interested in the cake pop makers that I was seeing on tv. But I worried they wouldn't really work and then I would have wasted my money.

Fast forward to Black Friday...
Macys had a Belle Cake Pop Maker on sale for $9! All I had to do was stand in line (for over an hour it turned out, ugh) and I had a cake pop maker for a price I was willing to pay and would feel like I got my money's worth even if I only used it a few times.

After I bought it, I decided to search the web for reviews. Unfortunately, the first one I found said that the cake pops didn't come out round. Which was precisely my worry. However, a bunch of indignant people posted comments about how theirs were coming out perfectly round and how the author was clearly doing something wrong! While their indignation amused me, it didn't exactly convince me. But it did give me hope that I'd luck out and get one that made round balls.

Alas this was not to be.

Cake Pops, Take One: Cake Pop Maker

I tried everything too. Actually Mr. Mac made the first set. It was for Mini-Mac's performance in a Christmas play. We sell baked goods in the lobby to make money for the foundation and I had to deliver four dozen baked "somethings" the very next day, but I also ended up staying at work until 9:30 pm due to unforeseen circumstances (including a 3 hour lunch break).

Anyway, he and Mini-Mac got to it. They went out and bought some cake mixes (I had planned to do mine from scratch) and they heated up the cake pop maker and had a dozen balls ready by the time I got home. Mr. Mac continued to make them while I trimmed off any excess cake and put sticks into them and then eventually dipped them in various types of melted chocolate and sprinkled Christmas and Winter-themed sprinkles on them.

We ended up with exactly 4 dozen of the things, of which I'd say maybe four were actually round. The rest looked sort of like acorns when they came out of the maker. However, the melted chocolate tends to pool around the stick at the bottom so as long as you stick the stick into the flatter part of the "ball", their lack of roundness wasn't that noticeable.

Plus making them was a lot of fun. I made some blue ones with snowflake sprinkles, some white ones with red, white and green sprinkles, and some red and green ones with matching sprinkles.

I used Wilton's Candy Melts for the dipping chocolate for the first batch and was underwhelmed with it. The chocolate is a bit thick so you need to thin it out. In my Cake Pop Kit booklet (By Bakerella) she said to add paramount crystals or oil to the dipping candy. I didn't have paramount crystals and couldn't find any quickly so I added some oil. They coated better than without it, but I didn't like what the oil did to the taste.

In fact, I was disappointed overall in the eating experience. It was just okay. In addition to the candy coating being off, I found the cake to be a bit bland. I was starting to see the merits of making them the traditional way with some icing inside.

Later on, I made some brownies with a sugar free brownie mix that I bought. The recipe in the book that my cake pop maker had called for adding a cup of sour cream to a brownie mix. I found that helped with the "bland cake" problem. However, it did nothing for the shape of the pops. They were even less round and it was more noticeable. However, I made them into Santa's Reindeer pops so the weird shape worked well and they were a big hit at the party I brought them to.

Another issue with these pops was that I used sugar-free Dove candy to make the candy coating. Between the sugar-free candy and the sugar-free brownies, that's a lot of sugar alcohols and they did make me gassy.

Cake Pops, Take Two: Traditional Method

At this point I decided to compare using the cake pop maker to the traditional method and I made the other cake mix that Mr. Mac had bought (yellow cake with pudding in the mix). I found this method to be a lot of work and very messy. I put whipped cream in the crumbled cake instead of icing based on a recipe I found online. I tried to make shapes like Christmas Trees but when I dipped them into the green candy melts, they started to break apart!

It seemed like the main reason was that they were too heavy so I pulled some of the cake off them and shaped the remaining "pop" into the more traditional ball shape. That helped somewhat but I still ended up losing one pop for every two I successfully coated. It seemed like the balls would just break apart sometimes and, once that happened, there was nothing you could do about it. They wouldn't go back into a ball and hold the stick.

For these balls, I used Baker's White Chocolate and I liked that a lot better as a dipping candy. I also had some Ghiradelli White Baking Chocolate but that was bad, bad, bad. They dipped just fine, but they would NOT set up. I had one sit out overnight to get it to set. That's a long time.

Cake Pops, Take Three: I'm Addicted!

Okay so even though using the traditional method didn't work well at all for me, I was hooked on making these pops. I ended up making several more batches of cake pops using a combination of the cake pop maker and the traditional cake pop method of crumbling up cake with something moist and rolling it in a ball. I used a bunch of different candy dips too.

These are my conclusions:

The cake pop maker can never make truly round cake pops. I don't care what those people who claimed it can said. The reason is that even if you open the lid and the pop is round -- as did happen to me with one brownie recipe, when you let them sit the required one minute before removing, the top of the pops fall down a bit. They continue to flatten out as they sit on the cooling rack. That's just what cake does when it cools - it puffs up in the oven and falls a bit when you take it out.

The keys to making good cake pops the traditional way are to really crumble up the cake until it's as close to crumbs as you can get it and to put enough of whatever you are putting into the mix to help it hold together. I tried whipped cream, icing, sour cream and peanut butter. The pops that held together the best where the ones I put the most "stuff" into.

This turned out to be the sour cream which I added to a homemade mixture that I call "protein pops." (More on that in a later post.) The brownies were very moist and dense and I put lots of sour cream in one batch and lots of PB2 (a low-sugar, low-fat peanut butter powder you mix with water to make peanut butter) in the other. I lost none of these pops though a few did start to come off the sticks (this happens sometimes with the cake pop maker balls too). The ones I made with icing worked better than the ones I made with whipped cream because I crumbled them more and put more icing in than I had whipped cream. I still lost balls though. About 2 per dozen balls. If I make the peanut butter protein pops again, I will put more peanut butter into them.

Pros and cons of the various methods and materials:

Cake pop maker:
Pros: balls are a consistent shape and size, balls don't fall apart, much less time-consuming and messy to make
Cons: sometimes the balls fall off the stick during dipping (you can recover from this but it's a pain), balls aren't truly round
Conclusions: best for making round shapes out of cake (not brownies)

Traditional methods:
Pros: balls are round and you can make other shapes for speciality pops (like penguins, ducks, etc.), you can add some cool flavors by varying what you put into the balls as "glue"
Cons: balls sometimes fall apart and have to be thrown away, there are more variables so it's easier to screw up (cake not crumbled enough, not enough moist "stuff" added to get the balls to retain their shape, etc.), crumbs of cake sometimes end up in the coating, which looks funny,
Conclusion: more work, but more versatile and tastier. A must for any recipe that is based on a brownie mix or where you need a shape other than a ball.

Dipping mixtures:
Wilton Candy Melts: there was a lot of variety between different colors and batches. Some needed to be thinned, some were acceptable as is, some set up right away, and some set up too early (if you weren't careful, you couldn't decorate them as they were already hard).
Baker's White Chocolate: gave the best results. Candy wasn't bland but it didn't compete with the insides either. Set up well with enough time to decorate the ball. My dipping candy of choice for a white dip.
Dove Sugar-Free Chocolate: performed adequately. Took a bit longer to set up than I liked but it wasnt' outrageous.
Baker's Dipping Chocolate: seemed okay to start. Worked well for dipping, set up okay. But two days later the chocolate was starting to turn white in spots. So you have to eat the cake pops within 24 hours with this dipping candy.
Ghiradelli White Baking Chocolate: the worst. It's not great chocolate and it took forever to set up.

Cake Pops, The future

I plan to keep making these. My "protein" pops don't actually have that much protein in them but they are also only around 50 calories a piece and mucho tasty. I'll keep experimenting with what to combine them with and also trying to find a milk and dark chocolate dipping candy I like as much as the Baker's one for white chocolate.

I'm also going to try making some cool shapes. I got the reindeer pop idea from Bakerella and they worked great. I tried making Santa pops and they were less successful. I might make the penguin pops from Bakerella's Cake Pop Kit book and I am thinking about what I can make for Valentine's Day as that's the next holiday.

No exercise = weight gain

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:31:00 +0000

Apparently, if you stop training for a marathon, you can't keep eating like you are training for one.

Who knew?

Okay, I knew it, but after I hit my head and had to stop working out, I felt kind of helpless to stop eating. I felt so hungry! And then I gained 5 pounds in a few weeks and I knew I had to cut it out.

I should probably start at the beginning. Which is either back in September or October depending on how you define "beginning."

I spent most of September recovering from my Ironman. And refeeding. I had gotten rather thin right before the race and for the month after I was extra hungry and ate a lot but I wasn't gaining like crazy and I didn't feel out of control.

No, that happened in October.

At that point a few things were going on which resulted in me deciding that a race I was going to put on wouldn't happen this year so the 75 Erin Baker Breakfast Cookies I'd ordered for the goodie bags weren't going to be used and neither were the several bags of Erin Baker Granola I'd ordered for prizes. We started eating them at home and I started going nuts. I was eating nothing but Breakfast Cookies and Granola with Soy "milk" 2, 3, 4, even 5 times a day! Not only was this a lot of calories but it was mostly sugar and about half the protein I normally consume.

Now at this point my weight wasn't going up dramatically, probably because I was running all the time. Plus it was "Fat Free Talk" week and I had made a pledge not to engage in Fat Talk all month. So I didn't want to post a lot of whiny talk on my blog about being three pounds over where I wanted to be and how horrible I was because I had just eaten granola.

But I knew I was out of control and that feeling is more important to me than what my actual weight is on the scale.

At some point, it just stopped though. I'm not sure what the cause was but it's like switched turned off in my brain and I wasn't going crazy eating stuff daily that I really only wanted to eat as an occasional treat.

In fact, I ended up having to order another $300 worth of Erin Baker products (because they were out of the bags I was going to use as goodie bags and my gift certificate was expiring). I was planning to give them away to a food bank but Mr. Mac said he liked the breakfast cookies and Mini-Mac liked one of the flavors of granola so I left them in the cupboard and an amazing things happened.

I stopped feeling compelled to eat them. In fact, I haven't had a breakfast cookie in over a week and it's been even longer since I had some granola. Most of the time I forget they are even there. There's a single serving of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia in the garage fridge as well and every time I think about eating it, I go "eh" and don't. So food is back to being fuel for me most of the time. Thank goodness!

I also started working and with work came more structure and that helped a lot with my eating habits. In fact, the first day of work, I found myself logging on to My Fitness Pal and logging my food even without thinking much about it. I'd thought about logging my food again before, when I felt out of control, but it seemed like such a major pain. But when I'm working, it's a nice break and not a pain at all.

So it's all good right?

Well no. It's better but I'm still not where I need to be.

When I started logging my food, I realized I was still eating every day as if I was training for a marathon. I was logging 500-1000 calories a day more than I was burning! No wonder I gained so much weight in such a short amount of time.

As a result of going back to work and also logging my food, I made some discoveries:

I am a boredom eater.
I don't drink enough if left to my own devices
My appetite didn't reset itself when I cut out exercise
A lot of eating is based on habit, not listening to the body

Let's take these one at a time.

Boredom eating

If you had asked me before my accident if I was a boredom eater, I would have said emphatically NO. I would have said that I eat most of the time in response to hunger and the rest in response to social situations.

But I would have been wrong.

This realization actually came to me the week before I went back to work. I was running errands in preparation for not having free time during the day so I was out of the house all day and I ended up eating about half what I was normally eating. But I was no hungrier. Whoa.

Going back to work has reinforced this even more as it's been a lot easier to cut back now that I don't wander into the kitchen for a little something-something every hour or so and I can go for hours before I even think about food if I'm in the middle of something.

Drinking enough

First of all, for some reason I seem to need a lot more water/fluid than the average person. It's not that anything horrible happens to me if I don't, but if I get 80-100 ounces of fluid a day, everything flows better and my pee is the right color and my blood pressure stays in the normal range. If I don't, my blood pressure goes up and I get a bit constipated.

However, my body doesn't necessarily give me clear signals about this need.

I have figured out over the years that when I start craving things like ice cream and chocolate, that generally means I'm actually thirsty. But what I figured out recently is that sometimes my body gives me vague "you need something" signals and that I always interpreted "something" as something solid but sometimes it means I need fluid.

The ironic thing is that I've always had no issues with nutrition while racing because I just listen to my body. And it always tells me what I want. But not so much in real life I guess. Or maybe I don't listen as well when I'm not racing.

I have figured out that if I have these vague "need something" feelings, I need to check to see if my mouth is dry. If it's even slightly dry, I now drink something. When I do this, I feel better and I don't feel hungry as soon as I'm done drinking so I guess that's my "drink something" sign after all.

Appetite Not Resetting

While every winter I tend to gain a bit of weight because I'm not working out as much, for the most part my appetite has reset itself. Or at least I remember it that way. If I was eating 2000-3000 calories a day during the summer, I would be eating 1600-2000 during the winter.

But that didn't happen this year. Well, not automatically anyway.

Once I started logging my food and realizing how much I was eating, I deliberately cut back. Sure, I was hungry at bed time for a few days but pretty soon my appetite reset itself to a level closer to my activity level. Did I just naturally do this last year and the year before and not remember it or did my appetite reset itself with no work on my part? I don't know. I'll have to pay more attention next year and see.

Eating by Habit

This whole thing with my appetite led me to a rediscovery of something I rediscover on a regular basis: A lot of our eating is based on habit.

It's lunch time so we eat even if we aren't that hungry because we just had a mid-morning snack. I bring three cheese sticks to work and I eat them for an afternoon snack even if I'm really only hungry for two. But my habit was to bring three so three is what I ate.

I remember a time when I first got to my goal weight and wanted to stop losing when I was eating about 1600 calories a day and still losing and thinking how will I ever be able to eat more?! But now I'm burning 1600 calories a day and having a hard time eating that little and lot of it is that I just got used to eating every 1-2 hours and eating a certain quantity of food and it's not that I'm all that hungry for it.

So I've taken to cutting back and seeing what happens.

In the cheese stick case, I found I was satisfied with two and didn't need three. But sometimes I find I've cut back too much and an hour after I eat, I'm hungry again.

So I'm still experimenting, but I have gotten myself down to 1600-1800 calories most days and I'm perfectly happy with that. My body isn't telling me I'm starving and I don't feel like I'm on a diet or depriving myself.

On the other hand, I'm only burning 1500-1700 calories a day so there is still a disconnect. But it's a lot less than it used to be.

Plus, I don't feel out of control with my eating like I did both in October and November. My weight seems to have stabilized and I'm not gaining any more. I also know that soon I will be back to working out and then it will be a lot easier to burn what I'm eating.

So I think everything is going to be okay in the long run but right now I'm not happy with how I look or how my clothes are fitting me and I definitely don't want to get any bigger. In fact, now that I've stopped the gain and am back in control of my eating, I want to start thinking about losing.

I doubt I could go back eating 800 calories a day or even 1200 and I'm not sure I want to go on any sort of formal diet. In fact, when I finally saw Dr. Awesome for my three-year checkup, he said he wanted to see me in late January and he wanted me to be under 120 and I said No.

Mainly because I don't think I could get under 120 without losing muscles and I worked pretty hard to get them so I don't want to lose them. But also because I have sworn off dieting.

My plan is to do what I normally do... as my workouts pick up once winter is over and it gets nice outside, I have always just naturally lost the winter weight. Maybe I will have to give myself some extra help this year but that's okay. Watching what I eat and not indulging so much is fine with me. Counting points or eating special food is not.

Finally, I have to say this path to intuitive eating is a hard one. Every time I think I've got it nailed, something happens to smack me upside the head. It's disappointing and I've come to realize that maybe I will never be 100% an intuitive eater but I do think I've come a long way and I do think further improvement is possible.

My favorite protein bar recipe

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:09:00 +0000

I stole this recipe from Rob at Former Fat Dudes. It's awesome. I'd just link to his but his is a video and I don't have the patience to watch long videos. If you like the video recipes, here it is. If you don't, here it is in words:

Homemade Protein Bars

The Dry Stuff
1 cup rolled oats (anything but instant)
1 cup cooked quinoa (or a second cup of oats, if you have no quinoa)
1-1/2 cups protein powder (unflavored or a flavor that goes well with your "other stuff")
1/4 cup ground flax seed

The Wet Stuff
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup Splenda or other sweetener
2 eggs

Other Stuff
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup dried fruit

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8x8 baking pan with non-stick spray.

Mix the dry stuff together in medium bowl.

Mix the wet stuff together in a larger bowl.

Dump the dry stuff in to the wet stuff and mix well. Fold in your nuts and fruit.

Pour in to baking pan, bake about 18-20 minutes.

Makes 12 bars. Store in fridge, or freeze and take out about 4-5 hours before eating.

Variations! It's all about the variety.
Rob uses an unflavored, unsweetened protein powder and says: If you use a pre-sweetened (vanilla, chocolate or whatever you like!) you may want to eliminate the extra sweetener... unless you want it a bit on the sweet side. I use Chike and I don't cut back on the sweetener. I guess I like my bars sweet!

Rob also says: Instead of peanut butter, I've used walnut butter and sunflower seed butter that I've made. I've also used peanut butter powder in which case you need to add some water per the powder instructions, and maybe a bit of oil to keep them from being too dry. (I usually use PB2 and I concur about adding in extra moisture somewhere.)

On the nuts and fruits, go with what you have or what you're in the mood for. Also try adding some other extras like SF chocolate chips or some shredded coconut.

Different form factors.
Also, instead of bars, try spooning out 1/4 cup portions and flatten in to rounds, it will make a sort of cookie. If you do this, you'll only need to bake them about 8-12 minutes.

MacMadame says: you can also bake them in a muffin tin. Mini-muffin tins bake fast, a similar time to making them into a cookie. Regular muffins take a bit longer but not as long as baking them in a pan.

Happy baking and I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

2011 Workout Stats

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Since my brain is still broken, it's hard for me to write blog posts... they require a certain amount of concentration. So I will entertain myself by posting my workout stats for the year. My workout spreadsheet is already set up with them by month so no math is required!

	Swim (yards)	Bike (mi)	Run (mi)	Strength (min)	Total Miles	Activity Score
Jan	3,550	98.0	10.2	421.0	110.4	202.4
Feb	5,650	37.0	24.0	270.0	64.5	207.4
March	8,182	100.4	16.4	315.0	122.0	269.0
April	16,180	272.6	8.8	270.0	291.5	487.5
May	7,480	289.0	18.0	150.0	311.0	444.0
June	12,619	25.0	8.8	100.0	433.0	632.0
July	23,566	314.0	55.0	120.0	384.0	779.0
August	13,102	344.0	58.0	170.0	410.0	719.0
September	3,166	40.0	41.0	120.0	83.0	244.0
October	2,250	0.0	55.2	120.0	56.6	251.1
November	2,050	146.0	4.0	0.0	151.0	181
December	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Total Year	97,795	2,041	315	2,056	2,417	4,415

So you can see I started out slow and put in more work as the weather got better and it got closer Wildflower at the beginning of May. That's pretty typical for me. Run mileage was low because I was still dealing with the injury and it was still unstable.

Then in May I got laid off and lost focus and had trouble building up new routines and also had a period I wasn't allowed to run.

But I was back into it by June and then July was a killer month getting ready for IMC in August. August looks light (except for running) because I was tapering for half of it and then in September I was recovering.

October is when I should have started back up or held steady, but I was lazy about biking due to all my running -- or at least that's what I was thinking at the time but I ran less in October than in August when I was tapering! So maybe I was fooling myself? Or maybe I was running faster so it too more out of me? Keeping track of miles doesn't really say anything about intensity so it's hard to tell.

I had my accident the first week of November so that killed November but the brevet gave me a lot of points anyway.

December has been a total loss so far and will probably continue that way for a while.

The other thing I notice is that I had a big jump up in running miles in July compared to June yet it didn't feel that way at the time. I think part of it was that I went from running twice a week to three times so each individual run wasn't that big. Then I upped my mileage of my long run.

If only I could have stayed at that rate through November and December, I would have been golden for the Goofy Challenge next month and even for the marathon I didn't do today. Stupid accident!

Cold, wet, suicidal deer and (possible) concussion but I finished

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:14:00 +0000

It's been two and a half weeks since I attempted by first 200km brevet and I haven't had the energy to write about it until now. A brevet, for those who don't know, is an organized, but self-supported bike ride. Unlike Century Rides and even most Double Century Rides, there are no aide stations. You prove you did the ride by collecting information, cash register receipts and stamps along the way.

It's a bit more social that doing the same route by yourself but it can be no different than setting out yourself if you haven't got people who promise to stay with you and you can't find anyone riding at your pace.

I signed up for the ride with a friend and I thought we were going to ride together. It turned out we had very different ideas of what that meant and next time I will be clearer about my expectations because after the first 5 miles or so, I spent most of the ride by myself. At first I tried to keep up but the thing is, I really had no business being on that ride to start with and I knew it and I knew I had to pace myself so I stopped trying to keep up with much faster people than me pretty quickly into the route.

Let's back up:
I signed up for the ride in a wave of enthusiasm after I crewed on the Furnace Creek 508. I wanted to do a Double Century and had my eye on Solvang. But it's in March and I was sure I wouldn't ride enough this winter if I didn't do something different. So I signed up for this brevet and then I .... proceeded to not bike one single minute from that day forward.

Obviously, that wasn't my plan. My plan was to do a long bike ride every weekend and a spin class every week. But I was also training for The Goofy Challenge and that meant running. Lots and lots of running. I thought I could run three days a week and still do two bike workouts a week but I soon realized that I can't. I needed those other days off for recovery. Plus there was some rain. And life. And, next thing you know, it was time for the brevet and I was screwed.

So I figured I'd just take it easy on the bike ride. It was "only" 128 miles and I had done 112 just 10 weeks before with regular long rides of 80-100 miles every week for several months before that. I'd also been working out pretty regular for the six weeks leading up to the race, just not by biking. So I figured I had general fitness in my corner and vague memories of bike fitness and I'd just gut it out.

The morning of the ride, it dawned nice and ... cold and overcast. Rain was in the forecast but the weather lady (a fellow triathlete) said it wasn't supposed to start until 7:00 pm and it would be mostly to the south, around Monterey, and it wasn't going to be rain exactly... Since I figured I'd be done by 8:00 pm at the latest and we were in the Livermore-Tracy-Patterson area for most of the ride, I figured I'd be okay rain-wise with my bike wind jacket.

We set out and at first everything was great. I had people to ride with and I did get separated from my friend but I could at least see him and everything was pretty and I was on a bike and meeting new people and it was all good.

We passed the first "info point" which was a place we had to answer a question that was answered by a sign. This is when I realized I hadn't brought a pen! But one of the riders gave me one so that was good. I didn't stop to write the answer down because I figured I'd save myself some time and do at the next check point.

I was still being passed by riders and thinking I was the last one until another set would pass me and it continued that way until we got to the first ascent and descent. The ascent was pretty easy and I loved the descent.

I was sailing down it having a grand time when I turned around a corner and saw:

2 Ambulances
3 downed riders (it seemed)
2 cars
Several other riders and ambulance people helping the downed riders.

I said "Oh no!" but one of the riders gave me a thumbs up and there were so many people there I figured I could help the best if I just kept going and got out of the way. But I decided I should slow down a bit just in case. But not too much because I just love to fly down hills.

I knew I wasn't the last person because I'd passed someone on the descent but he caught up to me later and then I figured I had to be the last person. I got to the control point and realized I was not just supposed to write down the answer at the info control but also the time. The good news is that while I was futzing around buying things and peeing and re-organzing my stuff, two more riders showed up and they were still there when I left. Still not last!

I was starting to feel it in my legs at this point but I was okay and I made it to the next control only about 20-ish miles away by the time one of the people behind me caught up to me. I saw my friend waiting for me at Carl's Jr. so I split off from Germanic Dude who wanted to go to Subway and while I was eating my Fried Zucchini, Slowest Guy showed up. My friend and I decided to wait for him and we'd all ride together. But he was so slow we just couldn't take it so we ended up leaving him behind.

This part of the ride was very flat at first but we knew it had this big hill. My legs were starting to feel it from having gone about 66 miles to the 2nd control point. The long, straight part until the real hill was not fun because I was dreading the hill and also because I am just not good on the long, flat parts. Then my right leg started to hurt. Yeah, the UNinjured one. I took Advil but it still hurt a lot. I was so worried I was going to blow out that calf too and that made me conservative.

Then we got to the hill and the fact that I was completely undertrained kicked in and I was just not going up that hill pedaling.

I did as much as I could but I walked a lot. My friend walked less and soon was long gone. Slowest Guy never caught up to me though.

Then it started to sprinkle. Really? At 3:30pm? Great.

Plus all the walking was hurting my left leg. I was not in a happy place for much of this trip.

I finally got to The Junction on Mines Road and I made the cut off by about 16 minutes and I figured I was home free at that point. My legs were totally dead and we had two more climbs to go but it was all downhill and then flat for the rest of it.

My friend was waiting for me and wasn't ready to leave so he waited while I ate my chili. But then he started to get impatient. I didn't want to go because my legs were still trashed but it was dark and it was completely raining. It was a misty rain, enough to make the roads wet, but not too miserable to ride through.

So we took off and we had to about three hours to make it by the cutoff. This seemed completely doable to me so I wasn't concerned when I had to walk up some of the second hill. Until I looked at my watch and realized I was averaging 9 mph over the entire trip. To get in by the cutoff, you had average 9.4 miles per hours which seemed like a ridiculously long amount of time when I first signed up for the event but now I was in danger of not making it!

I knew I'd make up time on the descent but I also knew I wouldn't be flying down as fast as I normally do due to the dark and wet. So I started to RUN my bike up the hill. I rode when I could but my legs didn't have that in them. I guess I could run my bike because I'd be training my run.

Eventually I got to the top of the second hill, my friend long gone, and the road completely dark and wet. I headed down and it was a very interesting experience.

I have never driven my bike at night before except one time when I got caught out without lights but had street lights. I still made Mr. Mac come get me because it was too dangerous even with the street lights and I was too far from home.

So this was the first time using my lights. They were not strong enough. They were mostly okay but this road had no street lights and was in the mountains. So there was pretty much no ambient light either. I knew my lights were less than adequate but I was still unemployed at this point so I was waiting for a Sports Basement Shopping Party with the 20% off discount to buy the super-duper lights that people who do these sorts of rides mostly use.

Between reflectors and the white painted line, I was actually doing okay at seeing where the road would go and I was not feeling out of control or that I had to slow down to a crawl.

I did almost hit a deer. It was on the side of the road and got started by my lights. So it very cleverly jumped out in front of me and then froze. I was pretty cold by this point and my fingers weren't working that well and I didn't really react to the deer but luckily it unfroze and ran to the other side of the street fast enough that I didn't hit it.

That was close, I thought. What I should have thought was: you are tired and cold and not reacting quickly so you need to be more careful. But I still felt in control.

Except, suddenly, I was heading toward the middle line in the road. The road didn't seem to be that curved. (Looking at the map later, it wasn't.) But obviously it was more curved that my speed could handle, so I started to pump my brakes and try to slow down so I wouldn't cross it. I still wasn't out of control. I wasn't skidding or slamming on my brakes or otherwise in a panic. But I could see I wasn't going to slow down enough to not cross the line.

I was almost slowed down enough and I figured I'd cross it and then immediately cross back over. I could tell there were no cars anywhere remotely near me but I was annoyed about crossing the line on general principles as it's not safe and I try to ride so I don't need to do it.

So I braced myself to bump over the reflector and .... I hit it sideways and go into a skid... I think: crap!

I also think "oh well, my ride is over" but I think that happened later.

Then I'm down on the ground and I can't move. I'm lying on the other side of the road but out in the road not in the shoulder and I can't get up. I urgently tell my arms and legs to move. I can tell there are no cars for a long way (you can see their lights from pretty far away) but I don't want to take any chances because I'm on a curve and no car is going to expect someone laying on the road so even with reflectors and lights, I'm kind of a sitting duck. My Garmin goes off and the light goes on and I think that it's 8:00 pm (when the Starbucks at the end of the ride closes) and I think "Guess I'm not getting that Soy Hot Chocolate").

But my legs and arms start to move again and I get up and start assessing the damage. I can tell I've skinned my right knee and elbow because they sting. I can't tell how bloody they are because I have on leg warmers and a wind breaker and arm warmers and no blood has seeped through, at least not that I can see in the dark. I also have a sore spot above my left knee. Plus, my head hurts. A lot.

I then realize I have spilled the entire contents of my Bento box all over the shoulder. I pick up what I can see and am annoyed again because I was saving wrappers so I could calculate my calorie burn and now I've probably lost some and some pretzel M&Ms are probably gone from the opened bag, but who knows how much.

I look at my watch and realize I can still make it by the deadline! I start to cross the road when I realize I've also lost a bike bottle. So I start swinging my handle bars around trying to find it in the dark. I give up and cross the road. Then I see it on that side. It went one way while I went the other! So I go over and grab it and get on my bike and take off.

I am going down the hill and riding the brakes because I really don't to fall again and it start to really rain. Drops not mist. And the temperature drops "like that" at least 10 degrees.

I start to freak out a little at how fast I'm going downhill so I end up stopping. I wonder if I can get down the rest of the hill. I have no idea how far I am from where the road levels out. I think I will be okay if I can get to the flat part.

As I am standing there trying to get myself under control, an RV comes by and stops. They say Slowest Guy is still behind me (I can't believe he hasn't caught up by now!) and I tell them I crashed and they say they saw that (what? how, there were no cars passing me when I was lying there??) and offer me a ride. This is when I realize I have only 19 miles to go and about an hour and 45 minutes do do it. It's all flat so if I can average 15 mph, I should be okay!

I do ask them where does Mines flatten out and they say about a quarter of a mile from where I am. How embarrassing! I didn't need to stop at all! So I get on my bike and take off. And just around that corner much less than 1/4 of a mile, it's flat!

The rest of the ride was bit surreal.

First, there are some really rude people in Livermore. This guy is coming in the opposite direction from me and he starts LAYING on the horn. Why? I'm not in his way in anyway. I have lights on my bike. I am clearly visible. Yes, only a moron would out riding their bike at 8:00 at night in the rain and cold, but what's it to him? Apparently, a lot as he was clearly angry and it freaked me out.

Then I'm getting to where Mines deadends and there is no one behind me so I can easily get into the left-turn lane without worrying about dying when this other care starts to lay on the horn. He's coming for me in his big pickup and I think "he's going to run me over" and I race through the intersection just as the light turns red so I went through a red light!

I'm not happy at this point and I'm shaking a bit because I could have been hit by a car and also I'm afraid that pickup is going to come after me. But he doesn't. I think he turned right. Which means, once again, I wasn't in his way or bothering him in anyway. He was just a jerk.

Anyway, I collect myself and I'm heading towards Pleasanton and I'm getting back to 9.4 mph average and I am cold and it is raining but I think I'm going to make it. It's going to be tight but I should be okay and then another car honks at me. But it was more of a gentle honk and then they pulled into the shoulder ahead of me and wave me down. I'm thinking "just let me go, I'm on a time schedule" but it turns out its' Rob, the ride leader!

The first thing he says to me is: Where's Slowest Guy? So I tell him he's behind me or he was when the RV stopped and I tell him about the crash and that the RV saw him. Then I realized I am completely shivering and I must get on my bike or I'm going to die so I tell him I have to go. And I go.

The rest of the ride is uneventful except I couldn't get two lights to turn green for me and I was sure I'd miss the cutoff because of it, but I get to the Starbucks and the volunteers are sitting outside and they say "you made it!" and I say "but did I make it before the cutoff?" and they say "by 7 minutes."

Yeah!

So then I find out I'm supposed to have signed my receipts and I need to write down the answer from the info control on the way into town and my fingers dont' work and I'm shivering and they give me a blanket and a hat and take of my soaked wind breaker and my reflective vest.

It at this point that I realize my reflective vest was shredded. My Camelbak was open too. It's possible I didn't zip it up well enough but I think the impact made it open up. Inside is a plastic baggie that's shredded and the cap of the pen I borrowed is shattered too.

My friend is waiting for me and I tell him there is no way I can ride my bike back to BART to his car but someone there offers us a ride.

Somewhere in this scrabbling around I figure out another friend of mine was one of the volunteers! Hi, Jobob! I think her husband was the one who drove us back to the car because apparently he was there too.

I get home and I'm telling my husband about it all and he inspects my helmet which I thought was fine (which means I'd have to throw it out even though it looked perfectly fine) but it turns out it was cracked straight through. You couldn't tell from the outside because the vinyl cover was only crinkled a bit but that really scared me. That could have been my head!

In fact, if I hadn't had a helmet on, I would be dead. I think this is the first time that I have really realized that biking is dangerous and I could die doing it. I mean, I knew it intellectually before, but I was still in "but nothing bad will happen to ME" mode until I saw that helmet.

The next day, I was incredibly sore. Like I'd been run over by a Mack Truck. Or what really happened: I hit the pavement going about 15 mph. My head hurt too but every time I'd think about going to Urgent Care, it would ease up and I'd think I'd be okay.

Monday I woke up okay but once I drove to a job interview and got through it, my head was killing me and this was 46 hours after the big bump so instead of driving home, I drove to Urgent Care. The doctor I saw said I had no signs of a concussion or a cracked skull but I did have signs of swelling and probably had bruised my brain. She recommended ice, ibuprofen and gave me strict orders to not workout until I'd gone 24 hours without a headache. Then I scheduled a follow-up appointment with my PCP and went on my way convinced that I'd be back to running by Thurs. or Friday at the latest.

But by Thurs. I was still having headaches. No more swelling through. My PCP said I probably had blacked out and that's why my arms and legs wouldn't move. Plus, I'd figured out that a lot of my memories of the time before and after the crash did not match what I saw on my Garmin. So they were scrambled. This made me suspect the same thing.

I mentioned the 10k I had signed up for Sat. and she said: Absolutely not! So now I'm 3 for 1 for Mermaid events this year. Sigh.

It's now been 2.5 weeks and I'm much better. However, my head does bother me by the end of the day. I had to bag on my 10k Turkey Trot and now my marathon in a week and a half is in jeopardy too. I haven't run in 3.5 weeks and I went on one bike ride this past Sat. when I was feeling better and I got a headache on it so I haven't done anything since then.

I'm sort of worried that getting back on my bike after the crash made everything worse and that I may not be able to do the Goofy Challenge in January! I can tell you, if I had realized I'd blacked out, I never would have done it! But at the time I was thinking:

I'm in the dark and the rain on a hill with a narrow twisting road with no cell phone access. I have to get down to where it's warm anyway and by the time I have cell phone access, I'll be so close to the end point, that I might as well go for it.

It made a certain amount of sense but I was missing the "you have a concussion" piece of information that would have made it not make sense.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Slowest Guy did eventually pull into the checkpoint with 1 minute to spare! So, no DNF for either of us and I didn't even finish last after all I went through.

Don't tell us to "Lighten up"!

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:23:00 +0000

Humor is a funny thing. It's very personal. Something you think is funny can leave me cold and vice versa. The other issue with humor is whether or not it is okay to offend people in the name of getting a laugh.

Some people hate Adam Sandler movies; some people love them. Some people find them offensive and some do not. The same with Kevin Smith, South Park, Joan Rivers and a lot of other humorists who tend to be controversial.

Several incidents have come up recently that were targeted by the "Bias Busters" program of the Obesity Action Coalition that have caused me to think about humor and what is entertainment and particularly about the oft-heard phrase when people do find a particular piece of humor to be offensive: Lighten Up! followed by the equally popular: Can't You Take a Joke?

One incident in particular happened when a doctor wrote a "humor" piece in something called the Outpatient Surgery Magazine about doing surgery on large-sized patients.

Since this controversy is largely over, I will not link to the article or mention the author's name. He has apologized and the purpose of this post is not to stir up trouble and get his inbox flooded with angry emails again, but to give my own thoughts on humor and when it's okay to make fun of an entire group of people and when it's not.

There were two problems with the article as I see it.

First, it wasn't remotely funny and second it was offensive. Which leads to the twin questions of: what is funny and when is it okay to be offensive in the name of humor?

I will be honest. I don't find South Park to be funny. It doesn't offend me most of the time but it doesn't make a laugh very often either. On the other hand, I find Joan Rivers' humor to not only not be funny but to often be offensive. Then again, I am a big Kevin Smith fan. This is another person who writes comedies that some people find offensive and/or not funny but I find his movies to be hysterically funny.

What is the difference between the humor of each of these comedians that some seem funny to me and some do not?

When it comes to funny, I think that the following sums it up:

It's funny because it's true.

The humor that falls flat is the humor that has no core of truth behind it. The type of humor I find rip-roaringly funny is the humor that speaks to my own experiences or at least ones I've witnessed and that exposes the truth of those experiences in a way that lets me laugh at them.

South Park probably falls flat for me because I never was a small boy, have no brothers, and basically can't related to a lot of what goes on during each show.

Kevin Smith, on the other hand, grew up Catholic on the East Coast (New Jersey) and is obese. I grew up Catholic on the East Coast (across the river from NJ in Pennsylvania) and was obese. I see the world in a lot of the same ways as he does and his humor speaks to me even though he's a man and I'm a woman.

Part of why this doctor's "humor" piece wasn't very funny to most people, including me, is that the jokes were not based on his own experiences of treating large patients. They were one-liners he recycled from other comedians as he admitted in his apology. Such as:

When your patient has more chins than a Chinese phone book...

Yeah, that gem managed a two-fer - both racist as well as offensive to fat people.

Another 'gem' from the article:

Your patient has a dog named Twinkie...

Um, what? Why exactly was it supposed to be funny? Because we fatties love junk food so much, I guess. This is the easy stereotype of fat people that's not particularly true. Not to mention that a quick Google search shows that Twinkie is actually a pretty popular dog name even if a lot of people think it's lame. So the joke fails on every level.

There were a lot more like that, but the magazine's web site won't send me my "activation" link so I can go back and pluck some out for you. Trust me, I read the article when it was posted on someone else's site (before they were ordered to take it down) and they were 90% head scratchers like that one with a few that induced mild chuckles at best.

But even if they were all rip-roaringly funny, the fact that this article was written at all was completely offensive to me. The reason is that here we have someone in the medical profession, the one whose motto is 'first do no harm' who is making fun of patients and for something that is very hard to control and most are already ashamed of.

Many overweight people shy away from getting medical attention already due to the way they are treated including having every problem they have being attributed to their weight. (Oh, you broke your arm roller blading? You should lose some weight!) And here was a doctor reinforcing every negative experience they'd ever had. ("See, I knew my medical team was disgusted by my weight even if they never said so.")

Now humor is sometimes offensive even as it's funny. So what if you tell a joke and someone finds it offensive? Does that mean it's not funny? If even one person finds it offensive, even if they are not a reasonable person, should the joke not be told?

When it comes to being offensive, I believe the following:

If the target of the joke finds it offensive, then it's offensive.

That means if you tell a joke about black people, women, fat people or any group that you don't personally belong to, and a lot of people who belongs to that group says the joke is offensive, please don't tell them to "lighten up" and "it was just a joke." Because only members of a group are allowed to define what offends that group, not people outside the group.

This is actually pretty simple concept yet it's not one that everyone gets. The editor of Outpatient Surgery Magazine, Dan O'Conner sure didn't get it as is shown by his non-apology on the magazine's website.

Of course, the polite thing to do when you offend someone, even if you didn't mean to, is to apologize and learn from the experience. Not tell them to get a sense of humor or threaten to sue them for quoting a bit from your article (which is covered under fair use) or say "see, this other person (who is also not a member of the group being made fun of) thinks it's funny, so I didn't do anything wrong."

Which is pretty much what Dan O'Conner did even if he didn't use the phrase "lighten up" or told us fatties we have no sense of humor, but just implied it very, very strongly.

Sometimes people act like this because they don't want to think of themselves as someone who would laugh at something that would make the subject of said humor cry. So they get defensive. I suspect this is Mr. O'Conner's problem. At least I hope so.

Because often times people use humor as a weapon. I was made fun of constantly as a child and when I would protest, I was often told to "lighten up" and "can't you take a joke?" as if the problem was me and not them.

Not liking South Park aside, I can most certainly take a joke and I tell many jokes and find many things funny. I make fun of myself all the time, in fact.

But I knew the purpose of the "jokes" I was subjected to in Elementary School and Junior High was not to get people to laugh at something that was truly funny, but to hurt my feelings. The "lighten up" accusation was just a way to justify being mean to me.

Which is not to say it's never okay to be a offensive in the name of humor. There is humor to be found in everything if you are willing to look for it and not all of it will be politically correct. There are comedians in wheelchairs who make jokes about the trial and tribulations of being in a wheelchair. There are people who are obese who make jokes about what it's like to be obese. And both sets of jokes are funny because they are the true life experiences of those people.

Likewise I'm sure there is humor in operating on people who are large especially when the OR is not made to accommodate them. If the author of the "XXL Patients" article had stuck to his own personal truths, maybe he could have written a truly funny column, one that he could have been proud of that wouldn't have offended nearly as many people.

Because facile, easy humor at the expense of another person is rarely funny and we should not "lighten up" about it.

When the numbers fail you

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:18:00 +0000

My weight has been going up since my Ironman. This is pretty normal for the off-season, but it does worry me and also there are certain numbers on the scale I have trouble with no matter how I look or how much of it is muscle.

The thing is, I can look at my body and know I'm a bit fluffier than I was right before Ironman Canada. But I can also see I'm no more fluffier than I normally am during the off-season. I can fit into my clothes and they are as tight at they normally get in the winter. So I have objective and subjective measures that tell me where I am.

But that doesn't stop me from getting upset when the scale says I'm a certain weight. My head tells me that I've put on a bunch of muscle and I look pretty good if not my 100% best, but my emotions say "fatty!"

It doesn't help that my scale lies to me.
It's never been accurate for body fat. When calipers said I had 17% body fat (and I suspected I had more like 15%), my scale told me I had 9-12%. That was a clearly ridiculous number. Essential body fat for a woman is 10-12%. I clearly had non-essential body fat. For one thing, I had boobs!! I also had thighs and a tummy.

Later on, my scale started saying I had 14-16% body fat when a dunk tank test said 18%. So I figured my scale might not be accurate but it will show me general trends. That's good enough for my purposes.

Except lately it's been showing me ridiculous numbers. As I have gained weight over the past year, a lot of it has been muscle. I can see the muscles in my arms and I have pictures that show I have more muscles than a year ago in that area so I am not fooling myself about this as humans are prone to doing.

But my scale claims that every single pound I've gained is fat. It claims my arms are now 28-29% body fat. Except anyone can look at my arms and see that I have almost no extra body fat in them. Guessing, I'd say they are 10-15% body fat. At most.

It says similarly that my legs - 21-25% body fat. But I've seen an MRI of my calves and they have only the thinnest layer of subcutaneous fat so something like 5-10% body fat. Now the scale may be counting some of my rear end as my "legs" and my thighs do have more fat than my calves. But my arms are thinner than my legs while my scale says my arms have proportionately more body fat. Like that 9-12% number from 2.5 years ago, it defies common sense.

So when my scale tells me that my torso is 24% body fat -- a more believable number -- I don't know what to think. I want to think I have no more fat there than I normally do during the off-season. But this area has a lot of loose skin and it's got a lot of room for fat internally where you can't see it. So I don't want to be fooling myself like I did when I was 225 and told myself I 'carried my weight well.'

Therefore, to definitely answer this question, I decided to have a body fat test done. Last time I did this, I used the dunk tank method and it was okay. The number it gave me was completely believable. However, there are two companies in the area that do this test, and they both seem to specialize in going out to events rather than individual appointments. Plus, you get wet doing this test.

So I decided to go with the BodPod test instead.

The BodPod uses a similar principle to hydrostatic testing (dunk tank) but it uses air displacement instead of water. I had read that it was just as accurate as the dunk tank. Plus, there are about five places in the area that do it, not two, and scheduling a test is easy and you don't get wet. So that's what I did.

I arrived at Sunnyvale Health and Fitness Club for my test. I thought this was a typical gym but it turned out to be a small place, more of a 'trainer starts a gym' place, a hole-in-the-wall in an industrial park. It was kind of grungy and the BodPod looked like it hadn't been used in a while. The owner was a big dude with a really red face and I felt uncomfortable being alone with him.

I had had second thoughts about this place before I got there because every time I called, the dude answered the phone with "Hello" and not "Sunnyvale Health and Fitness" making me think I'd called a wrong number. (Also, the first time I called, I got a strong impression that he was high.)

But I was there, so I stripped out of my clothing to my bathing suit underneath and got on the scale. He asked me my height and my age but nothing about my fitness level. I got into the "pod" and it was okay. I was thinking I might feel claustrophobic but there was plenty of room. The seat was cold though and I had trouble sitting back against it at first.

The test is run three times. Each time you are old to breath "normally" and to stay still with your hands in your lap. The chamber gets opened up in between each test, I guess to rest the air? I didn't have too much trouble sitting still but I did have trouble breathing normally because I tend to hold my breath when I sit still.

Then I got out of the machine, I changed back into my clothes while a single sheet was spit out of the printer. (I got a full 6 page printout from the dunk test people.) The guy goes over it with me.

First, he claims my body fat percentage is 32%!! He tells me I need to eat about 1550 calories (which assumes I am lightly active, not extremely active like I am) and I should lose about 5 pounds to get down into the next category, but that 32% is actually pretty good.

I keep looking at him like he's insane and I hightail it out of there before I explode all over him.

Looking back, I should have said something such as: There is something wrong with your machine as anyone can look at me and see that my body fat is not 32% and therefore I'm not paying for this obviously flawed test. But I couldn't figure out how to say that without having hysterics. (I have this problem where I get upset about something and don't feel like I can express myself without losing control so I say nothing.)

What I should have said:

First of all, I am not "lightly active", I am "extremely active". Second, you only have to look at me to realize that 32% is a ridiculous number. I have no visible fat on my arms and legs and very little anywhere else. Plus, you are claiming that my lean tissue weight is 10 pounds lighter than when I had my last test done when I've gained muscle since then.

Of course, I said none of that. I just fumed all the way home about how I'd been ripped off of $45 and still don't know what my body fat percentage really is.

It's been interesting to me in an intellectual way to see my reaction to this test. Normally I'm all about the numbers and I would just accept them because numbers don't lie and this is an accurate test. So it's weird to be in a position where I refuse to believe a hard number.

However, I was so incensed by my experience, even though it's not like the machine was personally attacking me, that I did a little more research and I found out that the BodPod was found in studies to be + or -3% on average but that results for individuals can be off as much as 15%!

So, in fact, it's not a very accurate test at all. In fact, you can have a body fat percentage of 17% and it might tell you that you have 32% body fat. That is a big range to be off by and it makes the test basically useless.

As a result of this experience, I have realized that my need to live by numbers needs to be balanced by common sense. Does it matter what my weight is on the scale if I'm happy with how I look? Does it matter if my body fat percentage is where I think it should be if I'm not happy with my fitness or how I look? Numbers are good for accountability but they have their limits.

Right now, no matter what my body fat percentage is, I am not happy with my weight. I want to lose some body fat from around my middle. I wanted this test to give me a handle on how much fat I should lose, but really it doesn't matter. When I get to where I like what is in the mirror, I will be happy whether that means losing two pounds or ten.

It's nice to have a goal to shoot for though and I'm overdue for my three year follow up visit with Dr. Awesome and I'd like to be able to talk some real numbers with him. Therefore, I do plan to get my body fat tested again.

But not with a BodPod.

That sucked, but I survived

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:41:00 +0000

I had a free entry so I did the Morgan Hill Half Marathon today. Unfortunately, most of the course is on roads that are banked. So I was constantly running with one side of my body lower than the other. This really aggravated everything that is wrong with my calf and by mile four I was really feeling it.

The really bad part came when I was trying to go down this big hill. I made a point to run up it because I could and I knew down would be hard. But down on a banked course is beyond hard. It was hell. If an official had come by in a car and asked me if I was okay, I would have said "no" and let him or her SAG me to the finish.

I must have looked pretty bad because a ton of racers asked me if I was okay including the 3:00 pacer.
Yes, even she caught up to me. I told them I wasn't okay, but I would be once the course flattened back out. I pretty much just limped down the hill... I was so slow that people I had passed at mile 1 caught up with me. Walkers caught up with me.

I figured my race was toast and it was just about getting back to the finish without too much damage.

However, the road flattened out near the bottom of the hill and was relatively flat (a few banked shoulders but not as extreme as up in the hills) all the way to the finish. There was one more uphill part but no downhill so I just ran as fast as I could... which was actually pretty fast. I caught up to and passed all the people who had passed me on the downhill including the walkers, the 3:00 pacer and the guy who was limping at mile 1. (I have no idea how he made it through given he was in a lot more pain than me from the beginning.)

I was doing so well once I wasn't running on a slope that I thought maybe I could catch the 2:45 pacer -- who had passed me at the halfway mark. But I couldn't quite catch up.

I did come across a women who had the following on the back of her shirt: "If you can read this, I'm not last." To which I said (to myself): It's on, lady, it's so on. I made it my mission to pass her and I was finally able to do it with about half a mile to go.

I finished in 2:48:16 and came in 22 out of 43 finishers in my age group! I am somewhat mystified by that result. But I'll take it.

The best part is that I am in no more pain now than I was after the Rock 'n Roll Half. I think I'll even be able to run again on Tuesday.

Oh and the medal we got is gorgeous. It almost makes up for the horrible slanted course. But not really.

Results:

Age Group: 22/43 - 51%

Female: 390/565 - 68%

Overall 872/1105 - 79%

Say something nice about your body today

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:15:00 +0000

And I mean something really nice. Not "my thighs are enormous, but at least I have nice ankles" nice.

Here's mine:

I love my calves. Every time I look at them, I think about how lovely they are.

Now, what's yours?

Today is the first day of "Fat Talk Free" Week

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:31:00 +0000

This week was set up by the sorority Delta Delta Delta (the Tri-Delts) and is a way to get women (and men too) to stop ragging on ourselves about our bodies and our perceived imperfections and stop focusing so much on weight.

From their website:

Fat Talk describes all of the statements made in everyday conversation that reinforce the thin-ideal standard of female beauty and contribute to women's dissatisfaction with their bodies. Examples of fat talk may include: "I'm so fat," "Do I look fat in this?" "I need to lose 10 pounds" and "She's too fat to be wearing that swimsuit." Statements that are considered fat talk don't necessarily have to be negative; they can seem positive yet also reinforce the need to be thin - "You look great! Have you lost weight?"

The motto of "Fat Talk Free" Week is "friends don't let friends fat talk".

"I believe all women deserve to feel good about themselves. We need to prevent negative body images and get away from this obsession over the thin ideal. We should focus on our health instead of our size and weight," says Stacy Nadeau, a former model for Dove soap's Campaign for Real Beauty.

I had originally planned to make my life a "Fat Talk Free" zone for the entire month of October, but the first thing I did on October 1st was make a comment to a group of friends meeting for a bike ride about how the only reason I was on the bike ride was because I needed to burn the calories instead of staying home and getting fat.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I heard how ridiculous I sounded so I changed fat to 'fatter' in mid-stream and then stammered some more trying to explain myself. But, basically, I felt like an idiot and it was not a good start to what I had been planning on as a "No Fat Talk" month.

I am not sure why we talk to and about ourselves this way. I do think it's good to be realistic about our bodies. I do gain weight this time of year because I'm not working out as much. I need to be on top of this though so that 3-5 pounds doesn't turn into 10-15. But there is a difference between watching what you eat and talking smack about yourself. There's also a difference between being realistic and being obsessed with being a certain weight.

How does fat talk hurt?

When I was obese and some twig complained about her body, I wanted to smack her for not realizing what she had. I also would think "if she thinks she's disgustingly fat, she must think I'm so fat I should just go home and shoot myself."

Now I understand where the normal-weight person who is unhappy with some aspect of her body is coming from. Just because I'm not overweight, doesn't mean I don't sometimes get a little "fluffier" than I like. But I can't imagine referring to myself as a 'fat cow' because I'm softer in the middle than I want to be. That shows a certain lack of perspective in my opinion.

I know some people think this sort of talk is harmless, just a way of women (because it's mostly women who do this) bonding and getting other women to say nice things about them. (You aren't fat! I'm the one who is fat!) But I don't think it's harmless.

You can't call yourself names every day and beat yourself up every time you don't eat optimally or skip a workout and not have that negatively impact you. According to researchers Rachel H. Salk of the University of Wisconsin and Renee Engeln-Maddox of Northwestern University in their study “If You’re Fat, Then I’m Humongous!” Frequency, Content, and Impact of Fat Talk Among College Women:

Study results found that while frequency of fat talk was associated with increased dissatisfaction with women's own bodies, over half of the participants reported that they believe fat talk actually makes them feel better about their bodies. It's concerning that women might think fat talk is a helpful coping mechanism, when it's actually exacerbating body image disturbance.

On a more serious note, fat talk also contributes to eating disorders.

Twenty-five million Americans suffer from anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders. According to Jeff Cannon at the National Eating Disorders Association, ninety percent of those sufferers are women. By the way, that's more women than are suffering from breast cancer!

It's also insidious and being pushed down to younger and younger ages:

According to statistics in Margo Maine’s book “Body Wars: Making Peace with Women’s Bodies,” 42 percent of first, second and third grade girls said they wanted to be thinner while nine percent of 9-year-old girls admitted to vomiting in an attempt to lose weight.

But this is the statistic that kills me:

In 2004 and 2005 a study done by Harvard University asked women how they perceived themselves. When asked if they considered themselves beautiful, only 2% said yes.

That is only 64 out of 3,200 women.

I believe we need to take back our body images from the media and start talking nice to ourselves. A good first step is to stop the fat talk. So please visit endfatalk.org and sign the pledge!

Stopping When You’re Full or Satisfied

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:58:00 +0000

I haven't done a post about The Rules of Normal Eating in a while or anything that wasn't endurance race related for that matter. So I think it's time to start back up!

Full vs. Satisfied is an interesting topic because a lot of obese people never do feel full or satisfied. The part of our brain that registers satisfaction and fullness tends to have weaker signals than non-obese people. Also the hormones that tell us we should stop often aren't produced in high enough quantities for the signal to register.

What this means is that after weight loss surgery, many of us have no idea what "full" feels like. This can lead to the uncomfortable phenomena know as "the foamies" when we eat just one bite too many, our bodies think we're choking and start producing saliva like crazy (to get the food to slide down) but there's no room for anything more. The end result is pain and often throwing up.
Yes, it's as gross as it sounds.

But even if you haven't had weight loss surgery and you aren't obese, a lot of people are not really in touch with their full signals. Many of us belong to the "clean your plate club"and eat until the food is gone. Or we eat until we are full, even uncomfortably full, even though we were satisfied earlier.

What a minute? Full is different from satisfied?

Think of full as being enough food (fuel) in your belly and satisfied as being the high point of pleasure.

To some extent, the difference between full and satisfied can just be semantics. A lot of people say they are full when they are satisfied and that's fine. But there is a difference between that bite our mind registers as having satisfied our current level of hunger or just having experienced a certain taste to it's ideal level and the feeling that there isn't any room in our tummies for more food. Eating behavior experts call the first feeling "satisfied" and the second one "full."

The problem with eating past satisfied is that you train yourself to always eat the maximum your stomach holds and this can cause unwanted pounds.

Think about eating a bit of your favorite dessert. For me that would probably be something chocolate, maybe a chocolate mousse or chocolate silk pie. I take the first first bite and the chocolate kind of melts all over the tongue and I am in heaven. The next couple of bites continue that feeling. But at some point, the feeling peaks and each succeeding bite is no more delicious than the last. In fact, if I keep going, sometimes the succeeding bites start to sour the experience. I get uncomfortably full or maybe the sweetness of the dessert start to overwhelm me and maybe I even feel a bit nauseous from all that sugar and fat.

So why do I keep going?

Make sure you’re not focusing on the food that’s left and believing you have to finish it or clean your plate. You decide when enough is enough.

Part of it is that I feel like I've paid for my dessert and not eating it is "wasting food". It's taken me a while to realize that eating food that you don't need is just as much of a waste as throwing it out.

The rest of it is probably just habit and training. Sometimes also there is an expectation that you should want to eat it all because, hey, it's dessert!

When you’re done eating, put down utensils, push away your plate, get up—do whatever you need to do to disconnect yourself from the food.

I also find that looking at food still triggers me to want to eat it sometimes. It isn't as bad as it was pre-op when I was hungry all the time. But I still have to remind myself that, if I am done and really don't want any more, I may need to get the leftovers out of my sight or I'll eat them anyway.

The Rules of Normal Eating gives some other tips to help combat this natural tendency to want to eat food past being satisfied:

Quantify fullness and satisfaction with numbers or words such as nearly, too, just or a 1-10 scale. When you feel full or satisfied, focus on that sensation and broadcast it to your whole body.

These two tips are good to practice when you are first trying to figure out what "full" is and what "satisfied" is. When I was early out from surgery, I would ask myself with every bite "Am I done? Am I satisfied?" If I didn't, I'd take that one bite too many and be in pain.

I do it less now but it's a good exercise to perform every once in a while, particularly when I feel I've lost sight of these concepts and need a refresher course. Kind of like now.

So it looks like this was a timely subject for me. I am definitely struggling a bit with my eating. It's this way every Fall/Winter when my exercise routines ramp down, but being out of work has made it doubly hard this year. I feel like a lot of good habits have fallen by the way-side due to a lack of routine.

Furnace Creek 508 - my introduction to insanity

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:34:00 +0000

A couple of friends of mine do these "ultra" races. In bicycling, the ultras are often hundreds of miles over more than 24 hours. I have always thought this was insane. I am happy to push my body for an entire day, but I want to be able to go to sleep afterwards.

In fact, part of the reason I set my sights on Ultraman Canada was that the race takes place over three days so you get to sleep each night. While some people may think doing a 10k swim, 90 and then 171 miles of biking and a double marathon over three days is crazy, it seemed completely doable to me once I get my bike speeds up from where they are. Staying up for 40-48 hours biking, on the other hand, just seemed completely undoable.

However, when given the opportunity to crew for a friend at this year's Furnace Creek 508, I jumped at it. I figured I'd get to sleep a bit in the car and crewing isn't the same thing as biking. Plus, I figured I'd learn a lot that would help me with Ultraman.

We started out for Santa Clarita/Valencia around 8:00 am on Friday and got to the registration hotel around 2:30 pm. There were already tons of people there. We checked-in and then got our vehicle expected.

This is when I began to get a glimpse of how elaborate an effort completing one of these events is. And also how expensive!

First, it turns out that the racer is responsible for all expenses including feeding the crew. I hadn't really been expecting that as I figured I have to eat whether I'm in a mini-van in the middle of the California dessert or at home on my computer. Second, there is a ton of equipment necessary. Also, because every racer is self-supported, for every piece of equipment provided, there is also at least one back-up version.

To get our inspection approved we needed:

- "Caution Bike Ahead" signs on our vehicle
- A reflective triangle that attached to the vehicle
- A backup reflective triangle
- Flashing orange lights for the back of the vehicle
- A backup set of flashing vehicle lights
- Proper reflective tape on the bike (and any backup bikes)
-A proper blinking reflector light for the back of the bike
-A backup blinking light
-A proper white light for the front of the bike
-A backup light for the front of the bike
-A first aid kit

But we needed way more equipment than that. We had food, sunscreen, chamois butter, blister packs, more first aid stuff, extra wheels for the bike, an extra bike, extra tubes, a patch kit, an extra seat, chain, cleat, pedal, etc. Tools to fix pretty much anything that could go wrong with the bike or car. Twine, scissors, various types of tape (electrical, duct, etc.) Blankets, a pillow, a sleeping bag, changes of clothes for the rider. Changes of clothes and toiletries for us. Snacks for us. Several coolers for all the perishable food and drinks. Plus other stuff too numerous to mention that I am also forgetting.

We ended up needing little of the backup equipment (thank goodness) and we ended up putting a bunch of it on the roof rack to keep it out of the way. But, if we'd needed it, we would have had it.

One thing we didn't have was a way to broadcast music. Apparently this is a very common technique to keep your racer going. We did have a PA system to talk to our rider and we did use it when we were direct following him.

After registering for the race, we checked into the hotel for the night. Then we went off to the pre-race meeting. It was kind of long, but also interesting. They went over the major rules. They also talked about this year's theme. It seems the race director had talked four of the guys considered the fathers of Ultra Cycling who had pioneered RAAM (Race Across America) into being a four-person team for this race. There were special commemorative t-shirts and everything. I hadn't heard of these guys, of course. (Okay, I'd heard of Michael Shermer but only because he founded The Skeptics Society.) But I got a little mini-lesson in the history of ultra-cycling, which was much appreciated.

Then it was off for the pre-race meal at Olive Garden (a tradition of my friends) and then bed. We had to get up pretty early the next day in order to get on the road by 6:45 am. The solo racers start at 7:00 am but their support crews have to be out on the road by then. We drive to about the 25 mile mark and wait for our racer to come by. After that, we leap frog them until 6:00 pm when it's dark enough that we are required to drive behind them. We do that until about 7:00 am when we have the choice to shadowing or leap frogging. Then at 6:00 pm again, we are back to shadowing. This is all done for safety reasons and it all works quite well.

One of the first thing I learned was the proper leap-frogging technique. What you do is wait for your guy to go by and then wait another 10 minutes. Then you drive until you see him (which is generally another 3-5 minutes) and then you drive enough past him that you can still see him but you have time to get out of the car and get the nutrition ready. Then you wait another 10 minutes after the hand-off to do it all again. This way, you never get so far ahead of your rider that they are back there stranded (say with a flat) while you are ahead wondering where they heck they are and have to go back to check on them.

We leap-frogged during the mandatory leap-frogging part of the race but during the optional direct-follow part we almost always direct followed. The exceptions were at two of the time stations where we stopped to get gas and food and other supplies.

Another thing I learned was that you are supposed to log every piece of food you give your racer. That, and preparing the food/bottles was my main job. I enjoyed it as I love crunching numbers and dealing with logistics.

The main problem I had was lack of sleep. During the time when I was "off-duty" I just couldn't sleep. I ended up resting my eyes for about 20 minutes while I was technically on-duty, which helped a lot. I also slept when our racer slept. That was only another 20 minutes of actually sleep but it kept me going for a large number of hours. I later tried to sleep in the front seat but the movement and talking of the people on-duty just distracted me too much. So it was another 45 min or so of resting without sleeping.

I managed to get to the end though. Our racer finished, which was very exciting and he did very well by my own standards. I was so impressed about how he just kept pedaling and knocking off the miles with only 30 minutes of sleep and with a lot of saddle-soreness and without a lot of external music.

Though we did feel he needed some music at one point and we figured out that if we cranked up the stereo really loud and opened all the windows and held the mike for the PA system up to one of the speakers, that it did broadcast over the speaker. So we did that for the last 1/3 of the race (well, except for the mandatory Quiet Zones, of course.) It was rather amusing.

We got back to the finish line with hours to spare, checked into a new hotel and I actually got about three hours of real sleep before it was time to go to the post-race breakfast. That was fun too. But I started to fall asleep during the video presentation and I slept for hours in the car going back. And also most of the day on Tuesday! I think I'm only just recovering from my lack of sleep today, four days after getting back!

I have to say that I had a blast being on the crew. I did learn a lot about doing an 'ultra' event too. Plus, I got to meet and interact with some great people. The Ultra cycling community is pretty small and so everyone knows everyone else. Everyone is very supportive too. It's just a completely different feel to that of the big ass triathlons such at the WTC-branded events and Wildflower. Those are more of a spectacle, which I also enjoy. These are more like family gatherings except all the weird-ass relatives who make you miserable stay home.

During the race, I became obsessed with the idea of dragging my friend Seht down and doing it as a two-person team. I was adamant that I wasn't going to do it solo. But I think I've been infected by the Ultra Bug and I am now seriously thinking about doing it next year even if I have to solo it. I'm going to start out doing Double Centuries and also the 200k - 600k Brevet series one of the clubs around here puts on and see what happens. If I get so I can do a 600k Brevet and I enjoy it, then I'm in! If I never get past the Double Century, then I'll try to put together a team and do it that way.

I'm not sure why these crazy distances appeal to me so much, but they do. They appeal to me much more than doing lots of Sprints and Olympics and getting fast enough to podium, which is something I think I can do, if I wanted to badly enough. But I don't seem to want it like I want to get on my bike and just go and go and go.

San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half - Race Report

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:47:00 +0000

First of all, nobody died this year during the race. So that's good. And I had a good time. I didn't think there were as many bands on the course as the last time I did this race, but I didn't count them or anything.

My plan going in was to walk the aide stations only and take Advil about 30 minutes before the race started, then as little during as I could get away with. I also brought some of this pain-relief cream they had at the Expo with me. The guy in the booth gave me 3 packets and they fit perfectly into my Spibelt, much better than the 4 oz. Rock Sauce that I normally carry.

For nutrition, I was going to drink the provided sports drink and water on the course but also bring some little snacks. I brought some Sports Beans that were being given out at the Expo and a Payday bar.

Yes, my plan for nutrition included getting calories from three new food sources.

I know normally that's not recommended but I've used all those items before on the bike and I have been experimenting with eating different things on the run and not having any issues as long as most of my nutrition was in solid form.

So I wasn't too worried.

The night before I had issues sleeping and I finally gave up at 1:00 am and took a sleeping pill. I really should have gone it sooner because I need to get 7-8 hours sleep after or I end up waking up groggy and that's exactly what happened.

I also got up too early and got there too early. I was ready to race by 7:00 am and the race didn't start until 8:00 am! On the other hand, I was able to use the port-a-potties two times with absolutely no lines and found parking on the street. I think people coming later had a lot more crowds to deal with.

I only did my DROM warm-up and then walked around the block. Normally I would have run for 10-15 minutes but I didn't want to waste any calf thumping on non-race activities. I did feel the walking loosening me up, but of course it didn't get my ATP production going like jogging would have.

When I registered for this race, I had no idea how long it would take me to finish it. I guessed 2:55. But by the time the race came around, I figured that it would be more like 2:45, but it could be anywhere from 2:30 to 3:00 depending on how my leg felt. I talked to the corral people and they suggested I go to the 2:30 corral. I think I've figured out that people put down their most optimistic finish times because that corral ended up being perfect for me and I saw quite a few of the people I started with all throughout the race.

My race plan went well. The Sports Beans, in particular, worked well and the Payday made a nice treat later on in the race. There were also people along the course offering all sorts of food. One house had beer and donuts. I didn't actually see any beer and a donut sounded pretty heavy, but later on a guy had an enormous box of donut holes and that sounded perfect so I veered over to him and grabbed one. They were bigger than I was expecting so I only ended up eating half of it, but it really hit the spot.

The Cytomax drink was just okay. I ended up drinking water and Cytomax as Cytomax alone was a bit much. It's not really my favorite sports drink anyway.

The weather was pretty good too. It was a bit muggy but it wasn't too cold or too hot. I was able to stick to my plan and hardly did any walking at all. I had to take one extra "medicine" break at mile 9 but I skipped the last aide station as it was so close to the finish so it evened out.

I made good time at first. I finished the first 5 miles in a about an hour. The second 5 miles took slightly longer and I did have one moment of panic when I started running again after stretching my calfing and smearing anti-pain goop on it when I saw the 2:45 pace group ahead of me. But I was able to catch up to them pretty easily and I never saw them again. Then, when I got to the point where there was only a 5K left, I just poured it on. I was able to make up some significant time and finished at 2:38:08. This was a bit longer than the 2:30 I had dreamed off, but I knew going in that wasn't all that realistic and it was enough faster than the 2:45 I was planning on.

So, in the end, I was happy. I was sore though. So I went home and put on my 110% Play Harder compression gear and laid in bed watching Buffy reruns until the ice was all melted. I don't seem to be suffering particularly for pushing myself in the race either. I can feel my calf more than I like but I think I'll be able to do my normal Tuesday or Wednesday run.

My results:

Age group: 187 / 400 - 47%

Female: 3332 / 5416 - 62%

Overall: 7068 / 9831 - 72%

Those are actually not that bad of results considering. I think I always do well on this course and also there are enough walkers that just running at all puts in the middle of the pack.

Santa Cruz AquaBike - my race report

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Sunday was the 29th annual Santa Cruz Triathlon. This year they had an AquaBike option which I jumped on because I didn't want the pressure of having to run a certain amount in a certain time. It turned out to be a good thing because I managed to set myself back on Monday running a 5K time trial and I was pretty sore and my one other run that weekend was a bit of a bust.

Packet pickup was the Saturday before and it reinforced my feeling that the AquaBike was a bit of an afterthought. I had a run number in my packet and there was no separate AquaBike wave. This meant that, as is often the case, I was in the last wave of the day with the other old ladies and the "leftovers" (which in this case was the Athenas/Clydesdales and the Relay teams).

I was supposed to be meeting friends in Santa Cruz for a day of fun but I barely had time to get my packet before the expo closed and then I had to immediately drive back over the mountain to finish up several errands.

I did get some time to enjoy my swag. SCT always has good swag and this year was no exception. I got chap stick, which I can always used, Gu Chomps and a SCT water bottle plus some other stuff I can't remember. This year's bottle was full size -- last year it was slightly smaller - and, for some reason, had a blue cap. I needed an extra blue cap for a blue bottle so I got to swap the clear cap I was using on it for a blue one and that made me happy.

I had trouble getting to sleep that night. I'm back into a pattern of staying up too late and sleeping in and you can't just go to bed at 10 pm and wake up at 4:30 am when you've been going to bed at 1 or 2 am and sleeping until 10 am or even noon. I guess I should have taken my sleeping pills but I don't like to take them if I'm not going to get eight hours of sleep as I wake up groggy.

I woke up groggy anyway and with my usual "why am I doing this? maybe I should just stay home" thoughts. I really am not a morning person!

I got to transition in reasonable time and was set up and visited the port-a-potties with way too much time to spare. I managed to kill some time visiting but I still ended up in my wet suit way too early. Then I had to use the facilities again. Awkward.

When I got down to the beach, I told myself I would NOT go in the ocean to warm up. I knew I'd be freezing by the time my wave went off. But not warming up makes me nervous and eventually I succumbed. There was a seal lion cavorting with some of the swimmers and you know how much that freaks me out. So between sea lion fear and freezing, I was not a happy camper.

But time passed and soon it was time to get in the corral for our wave. I ended up surrounded by Clydesdales. Man, those dudes were TALL. I was afraid they'd trample me so I started back farther than I normally do. The horn went off and we all ran into the water. There were more crashing waves than normal and I found myself being pushed back to shore twice instead of the usual once.

Then, I just wasn't feeling it. I had only swum one time since Ironman Canada and I guess I have lost some swim fitness. So that "what am I doing here?" feeling lasted a lot longer than normal. But eventually I got into the swing of things and started to enjoy my swim.

Unfortunately, I had a strong impression that I was the very last swimmer which did not make me happy. But my 15 minute buzz went off about where it should have for a decent, but not fast, swim and the 30 min. buzzer was also on time. I figured I was headed for a 40 minute swim, which is "eh" but not horrible for me.

I felt like I had done a good job sighting on the way out to the pier and I was able to cut the course as short as you can cut it and not cheat. I cut across the top much closer to the pier than I like and the sea lions were going mad, but I figured it was worth it to save the time.

On the way in, I saw a gal in a purple cap behind me. (So she started 4 waves ahead of me??) She seemed to be catching up to me so I used her as motivation to haul ass to the shore. I continued to do a good job with sighting, heading straight for the Dream Inn until I got to a point where a sail boat was between me and the inn. I had to pick a side to go around. The purple gal was to my right and there seemed to be lifeguards to my right, but not my left so I went right.

Looking at my Garmin track, I should have gone left. I think I would have saved a minute or two doing that. Plus, the helpers made me stand up much sooner than I would normally and then cautioned me about a wave breaking behind me. Um, yeah, that's why I normally keep swimming until my hands touch the sand, dudes. But I was able to dolphin dive with the wave and got a bit of body surfing help from it, if not as much as normal.

Purple cap actually stood up and got to shore before me, but, once I was out of the water, I took off and left her in my dust. I ran as fast as I could to transition. The pounding up the sidewalk was horrible on my bad calf but I gritted my teeth and ignored it. I did have a brief flashback to Big Kahuna and it reinforced both why DNFing there was a good idea and also how much worse my injury was back then.

In T1, there were hardly any bikes left, but there were some. So that's good. I figured there were 10 people still to get out on the bike course when I left -- several more than when I got there in spite of an extremely long T1 time due to the run up from the beach.

I never found the wading pools to wash my feet off and I'd forgotten my camping towel so I was swatting at my sandy feet with my socks and ended up just putting them on with my legs full of sand. I was so tempted to just not wear socks and will definitely stop wearing them on the bike after this.

The bike ride was okay. The wind had picked up a bit from when we first got there, which was disappointing, but it seemed to gradually die down as we got closer to the turn around. A few racers passed me on the bike early on so clearly I wasn't last out of the water in spite of what it seemed like. I passed a few too. In general, there were some slow people out there that I was able to gradually pick off and once the last couple of slow swimmers but fast bicyclists zoomed by early out, I didn't get passed any more.

At the turn around, I discovered why I thought the wind had died down. It had shifted and we had a headwind the entire way back to town! I knew I wasn't going to PR my bike with that wind but I also knew I had a lot more endurance than last year and so I just keep picking people off. One of them eventually caught up to me once we passed the bigger rollers, but the rest ate my dust.

Bwahahaha! Take that even-slower-than-me racers!

On the way back into town there is this odd out-and-back section and I saw someone from the wave before me who was also doing the AquaBike. They didn't seem to be that far ahead of me so I decided to try to catch them. I wasn't able to but I arrive back in transition properly thrashed and I was happy enough with my performance.

It wasn't awesome, but it wasn't terrible either.

At this point, it was not clear what to do to "end" my race. A bunch of us Aquabikers conferred and eventually we gave our timing chips to a volunteer and went up to the finish line to pig out and sweet talk a medal out of the volunteers.

The medal was okay. It was a key chain on a ribbon. This is the second time this year a race has done that. I guess it's a good idea since a lot of people don't care about medals and can use a key chain, but I love medals and the keychain thing looks lame when you put it on a ribbon. So I took the loop off that made it a key chain and now I have a medal and I'm happy.

When they posted the results, even though I never caught up to my friend, I finished ahead of him. He beat me in the swim and in the bike, but not by a lot and I whopped him in transition. See? Transitions count!

I ended up 2nd in my age group out of 3 and 23rd overall. (But it said 21 at the race - I like that finish better.) There were only 27 AquaBikers in total. I wonder if they'll do it again next year? I think AquaBikes are more popular for longer distances. But I know for a fact that three of us were battling running injuries so I think there will always be someone interested in this option even for shorter races.

Next year is the 30th anniversary so I am definitely going to sign up for that, but hopefully for the full race. If I am still injured next year, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe give up triathlon and take up knitting! (Okay, I'm not serious. I'm a crappy knitter.)

An auspicious day

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind album and also the three year anniversary of my surgery.

Last year I was kind of "eh" about the whole "surgiversary" thing. I was doing what I always did and having the results I always did. There really didn't seem to be anything to say. But I'm more excited this year for some reason. (Which very well be the whole Nirvana thing -- every where I got people are talking about it and the Nevermind album has good memories for me.)

There have been a lot of changes this year. I no longer log everything I eat. I still log all my exercise, but only to keep track of improvements and to adjust my training for big events. I just eat when I'm hungry, stop when I feel satisfied and try to eat healthy most of the time.

This has resulted in stable weight. I was 124 today which is a typical weight a few weeks into the off-season. I expect to lean out again as I get deeper into my training for the Goofy Challenge. (I'm not back to 2 hour runs yet.) My normal weight is 119-122 and has been for quite some time. I may put on more muscle this winter and go up again, but I suspect not.

I still plan to do heavy strength training but I think I'm at the point where I'll get stronger without getting more muscle tissue.

I did my measurements and reported on them a few weeks ago so I won't repeat that here. The only thing I have to add to that is that when I lay down and my loose skin falls to the side, I can see that I am thinner pretty much everywhere. My measurements don't all reflect that so I have to attribute that to loose skin. I definitely have more of it than I used to (based on my pictures) and I'm not happy about that.

As a result, I've decided to get plastic surgery when my car is paid off -- so about three years from now. I've been waffling about it since I got to goal but now I'm firm in my decision. I need this stuff cut off not just for psychological reasons, but also because it gets in the way when I bike.

I also am going to get my body fat percentage tested in the near future. I want to make sure I'm not fooling myself as to whether I have fat I can lose. It seems like I don't and I'm as thin as I want to be, but I still want some outside objective confirmation.

To "celebrate" my surgiversary, I did the "Cottage Cheese Test" this morning. I was able to get in 5.75 oz of cottage cheese before stuff started to hurt. I might have been able to get in 6 oz. if I pushed it, but I was not feeling it. I could tell as soon as I started that it was going to be a "tight sleeve" day. So it seems like my capacity is holding steady in the 5.5-6.5 oz range.

I also drove down to Santa Cruz to pick up my race packet for my last triathlon of the season. I'm only doing the AquaBike but it should be fun. Except for the "getting up at the crack of dawn to get to Santa Cruz on time" part.

The other big difference this year is that I really feel much more like a normal person than a bariatric patient. I had the experience back in May of going to a bariatric conference. It was fun to see my friends, but constantly all weekend I had this weird feeling of not belonging. My concerns didn't seem to be the concerns of the people there. I felt like a stranger in a strange land.

I feel much more at home with my triathlon peeps. I definitely feel like I've crossed over into the "this is my life" side of things. Everything isn't about the surgery any more. I know relapse is still possible, but I have a lot more trust in the process and in my body. I do think this surgery has fixed my homeostatic system (i.e,. I'm cured) rather than that I'm in remission from obesity and it could come back at any time.

I never thought I'd think that. I used to be so afraid of regain, and I swore I'd never forget where I came from or that it could still happen, but now I'm in a place where I realize it's possible, but I don't see it lurking around every corner stalking me.

When I said I liked Heavy Metal, this isn't what I meant

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:53:00 +0000

My grand experiment is over... I had read something that made me think my protein issues were related to endurance exercise-induced anemia. In other words, maybe I have low protein because I'm not getting enough iron.

Now, nothing in my labs screamed anemia. All my iron and anemia related labs were in range.

BUT

-My iron was trending down

-My hemoglobin was the lowest it's ever been and only average when before it had been excellent

-My hematocrit was still pretty good, but also lower than it used to be

-My ferritin was slightly trending down (only a few points a year, but still) and was near the bottom of the range

Maybe, I thought, I'm not getting enough iron for me and that for me these results are borderline anemic.

So I started supplementing with more iron. Instead of relying on the iron in my Centrum multivitamin, I switched to the Celebrate Multivitamin with no iron and I started taking a separate iron supplement that I was sure would be absorbed. (I had some doubts about the iron in the Centrum.)

As a result, the following happened:

-My hair stopped falling out if I had a few days of protein under 100 g (good)

-My hematocrit and hemoglobin are back where they used to be (good)

-My ferritin went up 10 points and is the highest it's ever been (good, still could be better)

-My iron is now over the high end of the range (not good)

-My protein is still low (not good?)

There goes my theory that my serum protein is low because I wasn't getting enough iron. I'm not sure what's up with the protein. Dr. PCP and Dr. Awesome have both said not to worry about it because I clearly don't have any signs or symptoms of any of the problem that low protein is associated with, but it bugs me.

I do have to supplement with less iron. It's a heavy metal and you can get heavy metal poisoning if you aren't careful. I'm only a few points above the upper range so I'm probably fine (the ranges often have some slop built into them), but I was taking Proferrin twice a day for a while there and then Proferrin in the AM and Celebrate's Iron+C in the PM and then the Celebrate Iron twice a day when I ran out of Proferrin.

So I think I'll cut back to an iron supplement 1x a day. (Right now I'm not taking anything since I ran out, but I have some more Proferrin on order.)

Oh and I had a couple of other lab results the last time that were H or L that Dr. Awesome said were most likely due to being a bit dehydrated when I got my test done. (Things like Neutrophil and Eosinophil.)

Normally, I do my tests first thing in the AM and I don't eat or drink anything beforehand. However, you are allowed to drink clear fluids and it's still considered a "fasting" test so this time I drank a bottle of Vitamin Water on the way to get my labs done and everyone of those items was right in range. So he was right!

Not that I thought he wasn't, but I decided I wanted to get rid of all the noise in my lab results so that I could get a true picture of what was going on with me.

I still have some results to get back such as Vitamin D, PTH and Zinc.

But these are the ones I cared the most about as these were the ones with issues.

Now if only I could figure out what was going on with my protein, I'd be completely happy with my labs.

Ironman Canada - My (Belated) Race Report

noreply@blogger.com (MacMadame) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:51:00 +0000

It's only been 2.5 weeks since I did Ironman Canada and three weeks since I wrote anything for the blog. So maybe I should get off my duff and write this race report, eh?

Ironman Canada was an interesting experience - fun, social, frustrating and triumphant at the same time. Since I have so much to say, I think I'll break it up into a series of posts:

Race Week

The Race

The Aftermath