Three Year Anniversary (of Running), Bokum Bop (Korean Fried Rice), and the Home Improvement Marathon (Automated Sprinkler Edition)

Here comes a trip down memory lane. So be prepared for a story...

On April 4, 2007, Kevin started keeping track of my exercise to try and see why I kept getting headaches after working out. We started noting that I couldn’t do any high-impact aerobic exercise (elliptical workout, etc) for more than about 17-18 minutes without getting a headache afterwards. I couldn’t run at all (not event a minute or two) without getting a headache.

On May 9, 2007 after Kevin’s pestering finally sunk in, I decided to take myself off of my daily dose of decongestant. I’d been taking Claritin D every day for about 13 years, so I thought, why not see if the decongestant (which is also a known ingredient for creating illegal/home-brewed speed, by the way) might be the problem. Then I increased my time on the elliptical by a few more minutes to compensate. I started getting less headaches.

And then I took my first baby step…

Three years ago, on May 15, 2007, I put on my first pair of true running shoes (they were a pair of green and white New Balance shoes that I bought at Academy with Kevin and his two sisters) and went for my first run, ever. Here’s what my log said for the day:

__________________________

• Miles: 1.5
• Time: 24 minutes
• Heart Rate: Maximum was 161
• Notes: FIRST RUN! Ran at XXX Park along the middle stretch. Ran at 1:00 pm. Warm approximately 75-80. Ran in new shoes.

__________________________

Did you notice I didn’t say anything about a headache! Crazy!!!! Obviously people can walk faster than 24 minutes per mile, but man I was just happy to be showing any type of running form! Not too long after (after we went back home to Lubbock) Kevin suggested that maybe we should do a triathlon. Ha! I told him he was crazy. But I told him I’d train and if I thought I could do it without extreme pain, I’d try it.

So here are the highlights since then:

• Second Run: 5/17/2007, 1.5 miles, 21.16 minutes, max heart rate 163, “Second run. Ran at Concho Park along middle stretch with Mom. No walking. Felt good. Fourth workout in four days.”
• Landmark Run: 6/2/2007, 2 mile, 33 minutes
• Landmark Run: 6/11/2007, 1 mile, 12:15 minutes
• Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech: 9/2007, 1:26:3 (11:30 400 yard swim, 45:35 mile ride, 29:21 2.3 mile run)
• Got off Claritin completely in May 2008!
• First Road Race, Lunar Lope at TTU: 6/18/2008, 31:30, 3.1 miles, “Ran FIRST ROAD RACE!!!! Luner Lope 5K at Texas Tech's campus. Beat 52 people on her first race. The exact time is still unknown because she started her watch when the gun went off instead of at the starting line”
• Sprint Triathlon at Texas Tech (second try, same distance as first): 9/2008, 1:22:2
• Habitat for Humanity 5K: 9/19/2009, 3.1 miles, 29:15 minutes “Habitat for Humanity 5K. Finished 51/83 people.”
• Turkey Trot: 11/21/2009, 3 mile, 28:53 minutes , “Finished 69/102. Beat Kayla by .6 of a second thanks to a woman with a baby. Got a pie and water bottle. Got 3rd out of ASU employee.”
• Resolution Half Marathon: 1/2/2010, 13.1 miles, 2 hours 23 minutes, “First half marathon!!!!”
• 3 Mile Race: 4/10/2010, 3 miles, 27 minutes

I hurt. I hurt a lot during this process. But I hurt less as time went on. I started adding more carbs back into my diet that previously didn’t like me. I stopped having frequent headaches. No rashes.

And now I can eat thing like this.

And I can work for 12 hours for two straight days with mis padres and hubby on things like this (that's the hubby by the way).

Life is good. Thank you Lord for showing me the way!

Coconut in What?

Another Southern staple food besides fried chicken is mashed potatoes. Their mmm mmm good! But when I was still staying away from rice milk, soy milk, and I hadn't discovered almond milk yet, it was really hard to make creamy mashed potatoes!

In comes the miracle ingredient (dah dah dah dah!) coconut milk:

Coconut in mashed potatoes? How can that be?

It's pretty good actually. It gives the potatoes a sweetish (no sugar), rich taste, much like butter and if you add just a little salt and pepper, you've got yourself a rockin' side dish! I've even found reduced fat coconut milk at some health food or Asian grocery stores. Now that I've started using the other alternative milk products, I still prefer the coconut milk.

Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free, Nut Free Mashed Potatoes

6-8 small to medium Russet Potatoes (or potatoes of your choice)

1/2 can coconut milk (your choice of reduced fat or regular)

1/2 tsp of salt or to taste

1/4 tsp of salt or to taste

1-1 1/2 cup of water

Chop up the potatoes (pealed or un-pealed) into a large pot. Boil until you can easily cut with a fork. Drain water (if you've got the "skills" you can try to leave in some of the water from boiling instead of adding more--will leave more nutrients in the mash). Add the milk, water, salt, and pepper and mash until your a fan of the consistency.

This recipe's great with gluten free fried chicken! I'll have to post my recipe some time soon. Oh, and next week I'll remember to have my camera with me so I can upload photos from this past weekend's cooking-fried-rice-while-fixing-our-automated-sprinkler-system-with-my-parents extravaganza!

Allergy Free Business Trips

So last week I didn't blog because I was out of town at a conference for most of the time, and the other part of the week I was scrambling to do the things I would normally do if I had the whole week in the office. The conference was fun, but I got to thinking about the effort I was putting into making sure I was eating and exercising while on my trip.

For example, my meals were paid for, but I can't just eat out at every restaurant that's conveniently located near my hotel. So my first thought when I heard I'd be traveling by car was "Yes! I can take an ice chest!" You might, as a passerby, think me and my husband odd looking as we strolled through the elegant Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas with an ice chest, but frankly I could care less. In fact, I'm sure that the vallet parking dudes (yes, we had to vallet park in order to not get charged $10 each time I left the hotel and came back) gave us a few interesting looks. That wonderfully large, blue ice chest made it possible for me to purchase and store milk free, dairy free, apple free, and banana free foods in our hotel room. Not only was it convenient so that I didn't have to leave the hotel very often to go out to eat, but it also added some variety to my diet (i.e. so I wouldn't have to eat 400 salads from Subway).

Also, because I knew we'd get tired of cold food, I had to do some serious Internet research about local restaurants and their ingredients. It's amazing to me how much information a place like subway provides about their ingredients, but a place like Chipolte (horribly annoying Web site by the way), who prides itself on fresh Tex-Mex ingredients, fails to mention that they add butter to their rice (fortunately I asked before I added rice to my tacos).

I even made a point of discussing my food allergies with the travel office where I work so that, when they saw I went to several grocery stores (Walmart, Whole Foods, HEB), they wouldn't think I was trying to pay for a month's worth of groceries, but I was in fact paying the excessive amount of moola on allergen-free foods. The travel office ladies were very nice about it, thank the Lord!

In our hotel room, my husband turned the cabinet next to our television into a pantry of snacks and Katherine-friendly, non-refrigerated foods. It looked quite appetizing actually. At the end of the conference day, I'd come back to the hotel, watch TV commercials about pizza, and snack on pico de gio flavored rice chips. Quite yummy!

I even had a backup plan in case I had forgotten our large ice chest. Normally, these fancy hotels have little containers to store ice or chill wine... Yeah, that's right! I've done it before while in San Francisco! They're a great place to at least store some sandwich meat, bag of salad, and some carrots. But thankfully we had a little more room than that in our ice chest.

The only thing I could have done better was stay in a hotel with a kitchenette so we could heat up food. But that was pretty much out of the question for this trip considering the conference was held in downtown Dallas, where only the rich, and obviously, non-kitchenetty people like to stay when in town. I have to say, though, the peeps who cater to the rich really know how to put together an in-hotel fitness center! Lots of treadmills, elliptical, bikes, weight lifting machines, fitness balls, and free weights. It was awesome! Used it every day I was there! And getting a good allergy butt-kicking session in was quite easy.

In a nutshell, that's how I survived my trip last week and didn't once come down with a headache! It may seem like a lot of work and not as much fun as just going out to eat at like where ever, but I enjoyed the trip as a real healthy human being and my husband enjoyed it too.

End of Spring for San Angelo

It's getting hot here. Today's high is expected to be 92. Not fun running weather. But Texas still has some pretty flowers in bloom! Kevin and I have been enjoying the ones on the highways. San Angelo seems to have a lot of yellow flowers. A few bluebonnets, but many more yellow flowers of all kinds.

Great picture, Dad! That's not San Angelo, but it's sure pretty. Ya darn tootin'!

Speaking of pretty, salmon patties are one of the ugliest but tastiest "corn day" foods that Kevin and I like to cook. They end up looking like pink/yellow burgers, but they melt in your mouth like butter, without the butter! They're super easy to make and take only about 15-20 minutes to prepare and cook.

Gluten Free, Milk Free, Soy Free Salmon Patties
14 3/4 oz. can of pink salmon (doesn't need to be fancy-shmancey)

1 egg (or egg substitute, or no egg if you don't mind the crumble)

2-3 c. of corn flake cereal

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

pinch of cayenne powder

Oil for the pan (your choice, but I tend to use corn)

Open up the can of salmon and drain the excess liquid. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Add oil to pan. Create hamburger-sized patties (palm sized) but don't make them too thin (especially if you're not using egg). Hee hee, almost typed hambuger. Good think I didn't. Those aren't tasty unless your five years old and watching TV. Put them in a pan about a quarter inch a part (the salmon patties, that is) and fry them for 10-15 minutes on Medium High, flipping once half way when side turns golden brown. I don't add any salt, since canned foods tend to have quite a bit, but if you need to add more, please do.

So my belt broke yesterday.

No, no, no, no! Not because I’ve gained weight, but because I was using the cheapest composite, genuine simulated pleather belt I own in order to experience hands-free running with little Kent. A friend of Kevin and me showed us a fancy hands-free leash several months ago and he seemed to really like running a lot more that way with his dog. So, I broke out an old belt that’s been collecting dust and looped Kent's leash around the belt. It seemed pretty comfortable, so Kevin and I went on a Burma Road run a few weekends back and I really liked it! Kent pulled me up the hills and I pulled him down at a blinding 10 min per mile pace for 4 miles. Lots of fun!

So yesterday I was planning on a neighborhood-three miles after work and thought it’d be a good opportunity to run Kent down a bit. We started off at a pretty fast pace as usual. Kent’s got his nose so far to the ground that all I can see is his back, his hind legs, and his floppy ears going up and down and up and down. We reach the end of the street to take a right and are moseying past our communal mail boxes when all of a sudden I lose all power. All thrusters shut down. And when I look down, Kent’s leash is trailing on the ground behind him and getting further and further ahead of me. And the worst part is that we’re both pointed in the direction of a major highway that’s about two blocks away.

“Kent! Kent!” I yell.

“Come! Kent!”

He finally slows his pace turns around and notices that I’m about 5 yards behind him, then he looks at his leash like he was just as disappointed as I was and starts trotting back over to me. Thank the Lord he came back!

N-E-Ways, Kevin and I will probably be investing in an actual hands free leash sometime soon (found an article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/fashion/14physical.html?_r=1). Can’t be soon enough for me! I miss going extra fast!

The “Token” Allergy Guy

I’m an avid movie watcher and I must say that there’s a lot of stereotyping of people with allergies in not only just movies, but pop culture in general. People are always talking about how “such and such” groups are under-represented in the movies, video games, television, books, etc. Well, that’s not our (“Allergy people”) problem at all. We’re represented. We’re miss-represented, and quite often. Here’s short list of the characteristics of allergy people in popular culture based on a random sampling of books and movies and such.

Allergy people are:

• Overly intelligent or “dorky” in appearance and conversation
• Small and/or sickly looking
• Sneeze-prone with runny noses galore and other various snot and phlegm issues ALL THE TIME
• Annoying
• Boring
• Comical

Let’s take a look at a few examples

(WARNING: I may give away a few spoilers, so read at your own risk)

The TV Show “The Cosby Show”

Bill Cosby (aka Heathcliff Huxtable) takes Rudy and a group of her elementary-aged friends during an episode called “Planning Parenthood” (on YouTube, it’s part 2, about 1:15 into it. After they eat the first course (salad), one of the little girls informs Cliff that she’s allergic to something she just ate. It’s quite funny. You have to see it. She’s so cute.

The Movie “Pure Luck”

A comedy that stars Martin Short as Eugene Proctor. He wears lots of button down shirts, looks goofy in any casual clothing, and get’s bit by some bug and blows up like a balloon at the end, literally. Sorry to ruin it for you. It’s such an intellectually stimulating slap-stick comedy. Wink wink.

The Video Game “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”

On the first “island” location, your avatar bumps into a little neighborhood boy that likes to follow you around, sucking on this glob of snot that’s hanging out his nose. He doesn’t provide any clues for your main quest in the game and, for the most part, he’s awfully funny and cute.

The Movie “The Diary of Anne Frank”

A Movie based on the book with actress Shelly Winters who plays Mrs. Van Daan. It’s been quite a while since I’ve read the book, and I’m a much more visual person so I tend to remember scenes in movies, so I can’t say that the comments that follow are comments on the “real” Anne Frank’s experiences. So please don’t take offense. Mrs. Van Daan is allergic to cats and her sneeze almost gives the two families away while in hiding. She also happens to be one, if not the most annoying characters in the movie, next to her husband that is.

The Movie “Signs”

Rory Culkin plays Morgan Hess, who has asthma (often related to allergies in the movies). Morgan’s pretty small, takes to reading books quite a bit, wears tin foil on his head to keep the aliens from reading his mind, and has an extreme asthma attack which almost kills him.

The Movie “My Girl”

Co-star Macaulay Culkin (real life brother of Rory Culkin). He’s small, wears glasses, annoys Vada a bit because he likes her, and he doesn’t always like to do adventurous things with Vada, if I can recall. He also gets stung by bees at the end and dies. It’s quite sad.

The Movie “Sleepless in Seattle”

Walter, played by actor Bill Pullman, is allergic to white bread and not wheat, sleeps with a humidifier every night, blows his nose before bed (Kleenex everywhere), has no personality and is evidently boring (i.e. the picking of plates) enough to run off Meg Ryan.

The Book “Pride and Prejudice”

Now I believe that allergies weren’t discovered scientifically until 1902, so Jane Austen probably had no knowledge of the subject. However, I would argue that the hanky toten,’ sad lookin’ face of Miss Anne de Bourgh, the “intended” for Mr. Darcy, has quite a bit of the same stereotypical characteristics of all the other characters I’ve mentioned above. This one might be a reach, I fully understand that. Maybe I just wanted to type Miss Anne de Bourgh in an English accent. What? Didn’t you notice the accent?!?

I’m sure if you can find more examples, so I’ll stop here.

Now, I’m not suggesting a revolution here or a call for political change. This is just a pause for reflection. I totally agree that if you were to take the allergies out of some of these books and movies, they might be just a little less funny or interesting. Some movies obviously portray elements of allergy truths. I get runny noses sometimes and there are obviously people who have extreme life-threatening allergies that require extreme measures.

What’s important here is that allergies aren’t cool, they aren’t sexy according to pop culture, and that gives people with allergies a bad rap. How many of you with food, pollen, or asthma problems have told people that you “just can’t tolerate something” or that you’re “trying to stay away from something” rather than state that you’re “allergic.” I know I’ve done it a few times. And this was just an exercise in understanding one possible reason why.

On the lighter side of things, I want to say that do know that I should never feel guilty about having allergies. This is just how God made me, and to think of all of the cool things that I’ve learned from the experience is pretty amazing. Too bad Hollywood can’t portray the beauty beyond the joke. I wonder what it would look like if they tried.

So Busy, I Forgot to Blog!

For those of y'all who are sitting on pins and needles, there's no need to fear. I'm still here. I'll add a blog this afternoon. I've had so many requests that the phone's been ringing off the hook and I can't access my email it's so full (actually my husband just mentioned it once yesterday after work, but I was so distressed!). I'll blog later this afternoon. Wait...I am blogging. I'm blogging on a tangent............................................................................................................................................

I guess I should say that I'll blog with semi-substance later this afternoon. There. That sounds reasonable to me. Pleasing the peoples, that's me.