Ridiculous Road Trip #1, Part 20 - Sun Lakes-Dry Falls, Eastern WA

Back to Part 19

June 10

We took our leave of Andrew and Anne and officially started east back towards home, we had less than three weeks left on the ridiculous road trip.

As soon as we got to the other side of the Cascade Mountains, things started to look drastically different.

We stopped for to stock up on groceries, for lunch, and for some odd sidewalk shopping in Ephrata, WA. 

We ended up finding a fantastic free wifi spot at the Pita Pit, so I hung out there after lunch and uploaded the last month of photos and videos for these blog posts!

We got back on the road, and ended the day at Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park near Coulee City, WA. 

The geology there was....odd. We took a hike, in part to embrace the weird rock formations, but also to calibrate our fancy new activity trackers. Slight tangent here--since the beginning of our ridiculous road trip, we have been hiking most days, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Actually, Doug was back on the running bandwagon, ramping up to mini-marathon training. And we were also making a conscious effort to eat better. When we checked the scale at Andrew's house, we were both pleased at the weight we'd lost. Anyway, back to the activity tracker. I tend to be motivated when I can see how my exercise is burning calories, and activity trackers have gotten smarter in the last few years. I did a bit of research and found a decent deal on refurbished Garmin VivoSmart HR+ wristbands. They do the pedometer thing, plus they are GPS enabled, and they can also track your hear rate at your wrist (no need for the extra chest strap ordeal). I had them shipped to Andrew's house, so they were there when we arrived in for our visit with them. So we took a little hike, enjoyed the weird rocks, and calibrated our fancy new activity trackers.

Up next, Part 21

Eeeek! Running from Zombies!

Let me state from the beginning of this post, that running is for crazy people. And as it turns out, I must be crazy.

I am pretty sure that I never really liked running very much. I have some rather vague memories from grade school gym class that I was never a particularly fast runner either. And in the few sports that I played back then--volleyball and softball--I could pretty much get away without doing much running at all. :) I do know that in gym in high school, we had to run a 12 minute mile, but I'm pretty sure that it was just a one time thing. And with some pretty half-hearted attempts to jog through Fairview Park with my college roomie Jenni, I'm pretty sure that my feeble attempts at any sort of distance running ended at age 18.

Two years ago, I started blogging a little about my forays into the weird world of running. In fact, about this time of year in 2007, I completed my first 5k race. While my plan had been to walk that race, I ended up being shamed into running a portion of it by an adorable little 74 year old lady named Edna, whose slow but steady running pace was kicking my butt! I finished that first race with pace that I was pretty shocked and happy with...37:56...pretty close to a 12 minute mile.

Back then, running as consistent form of exercise seemed like such an insurmountable task for me. I was still really overweight and still recovering from my (3rd) knee surgery. Oh, and I really hated running. It made my knees ache, and my legs hurt, and gave me blisters, and pretty much left me feeling like I wanted to die. And really, running is for crazy people.

But wow, running was SO much better and faster at burning calories than all the other cardio I was doing. And I was feeling so satisfied with the fact that I COULD actually run. And by working at it, I was increasing my mileage and speed. So all through that winter, I worked on adding to my distance, and in April of 2008 I ran a 5 mile trail run. Well, mostly ran. It was crazy hilly, so there was a fair amount of trudging uphills, and running the rest of it.

Today is the two year anniversary of my reintroduction to running. There's been a bunch of races (listed on the left side of the blog) since then. So I celebrated by running the Fort Ben 5k again, that same 5k that started all of this craziness. And since the results just posted, I am pretty

happy about my finish time, 30:54.6. Wahoo! That's a 9:57 pace! And this was despite the change in the 5k route this year, which included a really friggin' evil long uphill. So I'm pretty thrilled all around.

So it seems that I've turned into one of those people. Those people who run. Sigh.

Anyway, let me get to the explanation about the zombies in the title of the post. A few months ago, I decided to try out the Nike+ gizmo--a sensor that goes in your shoe and records your pace & distance on your iPod. I'm all about figuring our ways to motivate myself into exercising, and this seemed like a great tool for that. My friend Jill had used it last year and it intrigued me enough to try it out. And now I'm totally hooked on it. During your runs and after, you get feedback through your iPod about your distance & pace, best run times, and congratulations on finishing your workouts. And all of your run information uploads to the Nike+ site, so you can track your progress, set goals, and join challenges with other Nike+ weirdos.

Doug, as a rule, doesn't really need too much motivation to run. In fact, he's usually been my motivation for running most days, but I've also lured him into the Nike+ fold. And in turn, we've also pulled our great friends Valerie and Darren into our insanity by challenging them to join us-- in running away from zombies! Val had mentioned that she was looking for motivation to add some more exercise into her daily routine...so we decided to create a challenge that was fun and silly.

Doug has been coming up with a pretty elaborate story segments about zombie uprisings that force us to run so many miles to escape the zombies--like 20 miles in 2 weeks. When we finish one segment of the challenge, we can see the next zombie story line and start the next mileage challenge. Doug sends us out the stories by email, along with some great zombie photos (a bunch of our other friends are helping out by sending in photos of themselves as zombies).

So far, this has been REALLY motivational. It turns out that we all might be just a wee bit competitive. The first week, my weekly mileage jumped from 10 miles to 20 miles, mostly because Valerie and Doug were catching up with me, and I didn't want to be left behind to be eaten by zombies!

Anyway...it turns out that you can become a born-again-runner. But, I will state for the record, that I still hate running. :) I love that I can do it, but it still is totally a crazy activity.

Thanks to everybody, for all the love & encouragement that I keep hearing from you--especially as my annoying shoes keep posting on Facebook. And smooches to Doug for being a fabulous motivator and to Darren and Valerie for joining us in our foolish games!

Heart Racing Dips

Doug and I took our first class for the "Dips and Tricks" lessons last night with Naptown Stomp. Since I'm a little obsessed with calories & exercise these days, I've been trying to wear my heart rate monitor to all of our dance events, to see what kind of value they have as exercise. I'm still compiling a pool of data on these, but the early results show that real contra & swing dances, even with a few breaks keep my heart rate elevated enough to count as a pretty decent cardio workout. Classes, not so much for the real cardio work out, but they also burn more calories than just lolling about on the couch.

The results from last night's class were hysterically funny. Instructors talk, leaders figure out footwork...70-80 heart rate. Thirty seconds of twirling and dipping...heart rate rockets up to 130-160. It was awesome.

I love dips!

Wonderful Winter Weekend Update

Doug's fancy GPS watch told him that the fastest toboggan run was really 41 mph! Woohoo!

Here's our list of races for this spring:
3/21 Holliday Park 5 mile Trail Run - Indianapolis, IN
4/18 Hellbender Hustle 5k - O'Bannon Woods State Park, IN
4/25 Road Ends 5 mile Trail Run - Pinckney Recreational Area, MI
5/30 Brown County 5k Trail Run - Brown County State Park, IN

Wonderful Winter Weekend!

I started off this year reinspired to focus on improving my health. Hence restarting my running program. Blech. :)

I have figured out that if I want to run, I can find some extra motivation by training for races. Nope, not the Indy Mini--I still have NO desire to run 13 miles. But I have registered for a few 5Ks and 5 mile trail runs. In the past few years I've walk/run a few 5Ks (for a good giggle, read about how I started running at my first 5k) and one 5 mile trail run, but I haven't ever managed to keep a running pace through the whole of any of them. So I set myself a new goal for this first 5k of the year--I wanted to actually run the whole thing. In training on the treadmill or on the nice flat crushed limestone Indy Towpath, I have done okay running a full 3.1 or 5 miles. But during the races, I haven't been able to continue running where there's been significant uphills. So, the first 2 races of this year are in Indianapolis, a great wonderfully flat place where I can finally finish running a race. And Doug is being a wonderful guy in joining me for these races!

So, we started the weekend by running our first race of the year, the PolarBear 5k through downtown Indianapolis, starting at the Indiana World War Memorial. I was a bit worried about this race, since I had been having some trouble in my training running a full 5k at a pace to match or beat my previous 5k best, 37.56. But despite my worries, we started the race on Saturday morning, at the balmy temperature of 37 degrees, with the forecasted snow/rain mix still holding off. Depite stopping (TWICE!) to retie my shoelaces, we passed the first mile marker at 11:40ish. Woohoo! More or less keeping the same pace for the rest of the race, with a little bit of a sprint at very end of the race, I finished my first all-running 5k race!

"Your overall finish place was 216 and your age group finish place was 12. Your time of 36:26.0 gave you a 11:43 pace per mile."

Immediately after the race, we celebrated by picking up coffee and a tasty chocolate croissant from the Indy Winter Farmer's Market. Yum.

Then we started a three hour drive up to Pokagon State Park to meet our friends, Juliet and Frank, for some toboganning! Yep, there's a toboggan run up in northeast Indiana, about an hour north of Fort Wayne. And we had a fabulous time. It was just about perfect winter weather, a few inches of snow. We ran the toboggan runs a half dozen times, and the winners of the top speed of the day (for us) were Juliet, Frank and Doug at 37 mph. Woohoo!



We finished off Saturday evening by heading back towards Fort Wayne, to a little town called Roanoke, to have dinner a wonderful restaurant called Joseph Decuis. Doug & I had gotten some gift certificates for this place when we bought some amazing soup at the Farmers Market. And the soup from the Market was a great indicator of the fabulous meal that we had. Yum, again!

This morning, we rounded off our wonderful winter weekend by cross country skiing before we left the state park. It's the first time I've skied since high school, and I was pleasantly surprised by finding it way easier than I remembered. Not that there wasn't shrieking and falling, but it was way fun.

Yoga at the office

For a few years, I've been going to a studio about a half mile from my office that offers vinyasa (flow) yoga. It was one of the first fitness routines that I actually enjoyed--when I wasn't in the midst of cursing it or my aching body--and looked forward to on a regular basis. Since then I've been trying to entice some of my co-workers to join me at the noon sessions that they offer. With one person, who already knew some yoga, she loved the classes and joins me regularly. With a completely new to yoga person, it failed miserably. Recently another yoga novice showed some interest in joining us, and I didn't want her to hate yoga too...so....

I sent around an email at work, trying to gauge the interest in having a few beginners group yoga classes during lunch. Fantastically, about 10 folks were interested, so I was able to book a few classes with my favorite yoga instructor, Eric, at a fairly reasonably per person price.

Yesterday was our first class, and it went pretty well. I think a lot of people were pretty shocked at how hard we worked--especially when I reported the calories burned from my heart rate monitor at 400 cal/hour. Which is pretty fun, since what we did in an hour for this class compares with the first 15 minutes of Eric's regular class. (Sadly, the calories burned won't multiply by 4...but even so I usually burn about 500 in an hour in the advanced class, and most of it is in the aerobic range. Not bad for yoga. Vinyasa rocks!)

Taking a yoga basics class was also great encouragement for me. In addition to reminding me of the proper way to do poses, it also really reminded me of how far I've gotten in my own practice over the last few years. I vividly remember my first classes and how crazy hard it was to hold those deceptively easy looking strength poses. Maybe it will also remind me not to be so despondent when I have a hard time holding the crazy poses that I'm trying now. I must remind myself to remember this lesson during the intense 2 hour hot yoga class I'll be taking on Saturday. :)

CSA + Bike

Earlier this year, my wonderful friend Tara gave me a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I loved this great book about a family eating only local food for a year. It reminded me of things I wanted to do myself, like finally joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and growing & canning more of my own food.

After driving Doug a little crazy talking about it for weeks, I found a CSA called Homestead Growers that delivers produce to our Wednesday Farmer's Market outside the City Market in downtown Indianapolis. We signed up for a full share that we are splitting with our friends Debra & Harry. So far we've been pretty pleased with all the fresh veggies, and I've had some fun finding ways to prepare some vegetables I've never really cooked with before. And getting to the Farmer's Market on a weekly basis is a lot of fun as well, since I never seem to escape before I buy quite a bit more after picking up the CSA box. In fact, I found out that the City Market also has a butcher shop called Moody Meats that provides very tasty meat from a local farm (free-range chickens, pesticide-free, sustainable farming methods, all sorts of good stuff going on there.) So, barring a few items from the regular grocery store (and from my well-stocked pantry), Doug & I have mostly been buying and eating local foods for the past few weeks. Yay! It makes me very happy!

And shamed by Doug's recent bike mileage goals, I've been trying to do more bike commuting myself. My office is only a bit more than 3 miles from my house, so I can't really compete with his mileage. But I have been pretty good at biking to & from work, including some errands around town just about every day for the past two weeks. In fact, I even managed to attach the CSA box onto my bike rack yesterday! I got a real kick out of all the weird looks, giggles and cheers I got from the farmer's market folks as I tried to stash a week's groceries onto my bike. And I managed to make it home with only one minor mishap. Bumping over a particularly nasty pothole, the little bag with my chocolate croissant (from Rene's at the market "You deserve a cookie today!") escaped from my saddle bag. When I stopped to rescue it, I realized that the bump had also popped the clip of the saddle bag off the rack and with it, the bungee cord on the CSA box! Luckily, they slid off the rack slowly & I reattached everything without bruising the precious cargo. And the croissant was only slightly mushed. :)

I'm hoping to continue this local food habit (and infect all my friends too!) There are some great books & blogs out there if you're interested in finding out more about eating local foods or being mindful about the food you choose to consume. Here's a just a few, including some sites for local Indy food: Going Local, Plenty & the 100 mile diet, Slow Food USA, Market on Morris, Goose the Market, Ominvore's Dilemma, and Indiana Market Maker.

It was also in the plans to expand the veggie garden this year. The expansion didn't happen, but I did plant the exisitng beds. Which the weeds are trying to take over. :) Hopefully I'll take control back soon, at least in time to get the tomatoes staked up. The plan is to do a little more canning this year and to make some crabapple jelly!

Recumbent bike

So, last year I decided that I liked biking, but didn't like the associated pain (or the numbness, which made me worry). I had tried a "boy-friendly" bike seat, but no dice. So, I got a Recumbent bike: expensive, but I figured it'd pay for itself in gas money. Being analytical, I decided to chart my money saved verses bike cost in a progress bar -- starting at black, and slowly revealing the bike.

Well, I'm happy to say that I'm 20% paid off. I'm trying to increase my mileage to 90 miles/week (60 miles this week so far), which'll make the whole thing become visible way faster.

2007.9.20 -- First week of the bike: 2007.11.9 -- Last bike ride of the season
2008.5.30 -- Last bike ride before Switzerland

2008.7.10 -- Today, after 60 miles of riding this week

So, Fiona has gotten used to getting emails saying "I CAN SEE THE PEDAL", or "I CAN SEE THE WHOLE GEAR"

Trail Run and Camping

Fiona and I went up to Pickney State Park. It's a pretty area, and we learned from last year to reserve camp sites far from the hustle and bustle of weekend partiers. We had a nice fire, hung out on a beautiful friday, and then the next day, did the 5 mile trail run!

My GPS says it looked like this:

The rolling green is the elevation -- the trails were on hils, and the 30 minute mark felt like a mountain.

But, the day was beautiful, and we rested afterwards, staring at the lake and hearing the bullfrogs. Fiona is too polite to mention it, but she beat me by 1 second!

(In retrospect, running 13.1 miles the next day turned out to be a mistake)

Successful yogis

We did it! Doug and I successfully completed that 30 day Resolution Revolution Yoga Challenge. He has become positively bendy and I have become...well...bendier. And stronger!

It turns out that 30 days of yoga or pilates was pretty challenging. I definitely questioned the sanity of training for runs at the same time--5k & 5 mile trail run for me and a few mini-marathons for Doug. And we shouldn't forget about dance classes that we took in the last month. The weekend with yoga/pilates, running, Fountain Square Swing dance Friday night and a Saturday Blues dance workshop and nighttime dance just about killed me. But in a good way! It was totally worth it when we also managed to trick Valerie and Darren into joining us for an early morning yoga that Sunday morning.

While I'm glad the challenge is finally done, I did celebrate my second yoga-free day by doing yoga! Chances are that I'll continue with my yoga practice more often, but probably not 7 days a week. Doug claims that he'll still be doing yoga in the future as well.

And for a little plug, we were doing our yoga craziness at Invoke Studio just north of downtown Indy. One of the perks of doing yoga everyday was getting a chance to take classes from just about all of the instructors at the studio. They are all fabulous folks!

Oh, and the training is going well! My longest run yet was 4 miles last Friday, and Doug ran 10 miles tonight. (He's such a show off!)

25 days

We completed day 25 yesterday. 1 more restorative yoga, 2 more pilates, and 2 more yogas. What could go wrong?

30 Day Yoga Challenge!

Bring it!

(Update: Fiona and I are on our 15th day. We're both fully recovered, and enjoying it immensely. Fiona has been taking additional yoga so that she'll never have to take another pilates class. We'll see if she succeeds in her goal.)

(Update: As expected, being healthy has made getting to the 21st day easy. Only 1 more restorative yoga left. :( )

15 minutes of fame....err...maybe 30 seconds?

Yesterday, my co-worker Ellen and I went to our usual lunchtime yoga session. We were surprised to find a news crew there. Our yoga studio has a promotion running right now called"Resolution Revolution", which is essentially a challenge to attend a yoga or pilates class every day for 30 days. The news crew was there to interview a woman who is on her 25th day in the program.

And Ellen and I got our 30 seconds of fame doing yoga on the news. :)

I've finally figured out that I could actually be in Indianapolis for 30 days if I were crazy enough to start the program next week. I may have even convinced Doug to join me. Mwhahahahaha.

On a sad note, while I was anxiously awaiting my yoga debut on the news last night, I caught the breaking news on the shooting at Northern Illinois University. Since my niece, Tiernen, goes to NIU, I started the phone tree to make sure she was okay. No answer from Tiernen, no one home at Siobhan's (my sister, her mom), no answer from Siobhan's cell...and I was dialing her dad, I was immensely relieved to see a call coming in from Siobhan. She had already talked to Tiernen, and she was alright.

I'm relieved that my funny, wonderful niece is safe, but I'm so sorry for the poor victims, and their families and friends.

The fitness bug has bitten

For the past year, I've been seriously into getting healthier. Primarily this has just meant losing weight, but also getting more fit. I started walking a lot last fall. Then I finally bit the bullet a few months later and started really dieting. Then I REALLY starting to exercise at a gym. Sigh. Believe it or not, I actually started keeping a food (a total pain) diary and an exercise (way more fun) diary. I've been using the selfdietclub.com site, which has some nifty online tools. Even though the tools are a little buggy, they're fairly easy to use & have these nifty graphs like this one--weight over time. This graph makes me VERY happy. Besides, I like Self.com because they gave me a little bit of (dubious) internet fame.

Anyway, it's been a good, but frustrating and rewarding year with this fitness insanity. I'm back down to the weight I was at at age 21. Just need to subtract a few more years and then I'll be happy to be finished!

Oh, and with my happy new knee, I'm back at yoga again. Yay! Yoga generally makes me very happy--and being fifty pounds lighter makes it WAY easier. Today, however, I was completely stymied by The Crane (Bakasana) and The Tree (Vriksha-asana). I totally hate balancing poses! Bah!

Running is for crazy people

So, Saturday I ran in my first 5k ever! I wasn't planning on running it, I swear. For the past year or so, I've been working up a very nice brisk walking pace as part of my fitness routine. This summer, I was pretty consistently walking about 4 miles at a 15 minute mile or so. That was the plan for the 5k.

Then the race started and everyone started by running. Which seemed reasonable. So I ran the first quarter/half mile-ish. And then I walked for a while. Then these 2 ladies who had been walking just behind me started to jog again. So I jogged. And passed them when they started to walk again, went a little further, then slowed to a walk again. And so on...

But, at mile 1.5ish, a tiny little old grey-haired lady passed me. Huh. So I started running again. Made it to that big tree, and then a little further to the other big tree. Then I walked. A few minutes later, the tiny little ol'lady passed me again. She had to be at least in her mid-seventies and a foot shorter than me. Sigh. So I was, of course, forced to run again and further. This lasted until the end of the race, where I managed to beat 77 year-old Edna by 1.5 seconds. I'm surprised she didn't trip me at some point to make me quit it. Who knew I was so competitive? Anyway, here are the results:
FIONA SOLKOWSKI, Placed 280 Overall, Placed 14 in Age Group, Pace 12:12, Finish Time 37:56.0

Doug was also at this event running his first full marathon! Woohoo! Go Doug!

And sadly, I've decided that running is WAY more effective at burning calories. Sigh. So, I ran again with support and encouragement from Doug last night. I'm actually pretty thrilled (in that sore & grumpy sort of way) about the running. It means my knees are way better than they have been for years.

Shiny New Bike

Wow. For the first time in my life, I have a brand new *nice* bicycle. It's a Schwinn Voyageur Hybrid. And is SHINY! The other bike in the photo is Doug's weird recumbent bike--he's totally in love with his bike too, even if it's goofy looking.

In the first 10 days of owning this bike, I pedaled away over 100 miles. Probably not a huge deal for the avid bikers out there, but a way big deal for me. :)

For Indy folks, there's a great new bike shop in Fountain Square--Joe's Cycles on Virginia Avenue just north of the fountain. Joe is great & that's where I bought my shiny new bike!