Training Log Archive: Yukon King

went around the neighborhood and over the freeway and down a typical soggy pacific northwest ravine for fresh air and exercise & a bit of gossip about last year's holiday misbehavior. Felt good, feet hurt a little. As relief from yesterday's Tamalada, we made an eastern-european feast consisting of two sorts of black bread, borscht from a recipe recited as a song, six kinds of piroshki/peroghi/whatever - two boiled and the others baked (mushroom, pork, potato, chicken, sweet cheese, and sumthin else), poppyseed cake, & sundry drinks containing vodka. As mentioned previously, no hydration to speak of.

As relief from previous day's Pumpkin Overdose, we organized a tamalada and made enough tamales for 30 to 40 people. Our tamales turn out utterly delicious but they are not O-food - anything that fearlessly calls for 2.5 cups of corn oil (or lard in original recipe) is not O-food. As alternative to hydration I am working on preserving myself using mixture of sips of single malts, ice wine, port, and some astonishing thing from Sylvan ...Ridge? a muscat? Will think about AP log analysis soon.

To celebrate the economic impact of Black Friday, half of us marched around downtown Olympia looking in toy shops etc and drinking hot chocolate (actually I was turning out to be the runt of the shopping pack by performing a surreptitiously exhausted straggle, then D retrieved me for hot chocolate while others reviewed yarns and prohibition-era dress patterns) It felt like a long way so I'm logging it.

Down to Bellingham for first leg of Trek Towards Turkey, departure time 6:28am, vehicle dark green '98 Jeep Cherokee. Second leg "Business Class" on Amtrak worth it for laugh factor. Turkey feast excellent and as expected. Pumpkin pie overdose, also encountered Evil Invention - chocolate-mace silk pie. Don't remember any hydration, O-food, or walking other than from diningroom to sofa.

Sleep very light & broken, but I feel OK. After talking smart about science downtown, walked home thru the woods for a change, looking at the stream - running fast & clear. Experimented with heart-rate as per D's suggestion - walking, uh, "fast", to try for Intensity 2, hmmmm. heart-rate only got up to about 74, I suspect that cardio fitness is not a primary issue for arthritics - when I looked at their website it is all range of motion stuff, no mention of cardio or weight-loss. Book does cheerfully blast right thru to "aerobic" w/ generic discussion of target heart rates but does NOT address how to finesse thru the zone of "ooh you overdid it, NOW look at how inflamed your knees/whatever are for X weeks..." resulting in inactivity. But there has to be a path thru this to my goal. I will review AP log N think on it. Thanksgiving w/ college buddies dowm in Olympia coming up, yay, & this evening's O-food will be malaysian curry w/ tofu & a fridge-cleansing organic melange of colorful and beautiful vegies. slightly under-ripe canteloupe for dessert. No word on water consumption, still working on lunch bagel.

Marched around downtown. O-food was great - vegan spicey vietnamese tofu and noodles with pretty broccoli/red pepper/carrot additions, and baby tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, and carrot beside, along with a fruit salad of mango and black grapes. YUM. Three glasses water... Alfie is in Bangkok, Dennis is downstairs running up a sweat, and I appear to have lost a large piece of cheese in the bed. Hmmm, I wonder how this is gonna pan out...

went downtown for the file, trotted off to library afterwards. It was fun. O-food is organic shortgrain brown rice topped with yummy smelling french-styled beef stew outa the crockpot-red wine, organic tomatoes, onions & 'shrooms, and a soupcon of minced ham to make it crazy... canteloupe/black grape/mango salad, and a side of baby tomatoes & fresh green beans that look so good! Boil-water is still on, still feel kinda off-N-on skanky from last week - is it a cold or not, maybe we'll never know! Four glasses water...gonna ice shoulder after dinner, mmmm so interesting how the joints that need it learn to look forward to it - just plonking ice on a random body-part makes me screech & wiggle, but on a wrecked-up joint, & I'm lovin' it ! Water is so healing in its various forms. isnt there a poem about that?

wow, someone needed some sleep. Excellent dreams about walking thru sunlit open forest & then meeting cajun magic-badgers who offered me plum brandy in their secret bayou-castle - I could tell there was dancing coming up too...woke up, did laundry, went out for lunch. Now I'll work on spagetti sauce, dinner, & hydration.

walked over to Choices thru the woods - lotsa knock-downs from the recent storms - the creek is running high but clear. Dinner is vegan tonight with optional parmesan cheese - we are gentle on the planet tonight. Full-on vegie spagetti sauce, fun organic pasta shapes in all different colors, Ecco il Pane home-bake "di Grano" bread as an experiment to eat with balsamic dip, colorful raw veg for more digestive goodness & a finale of black grapes that look JUST like huge black olives! Totally O-food. I am getting the hang of this boil-water directive - like living in Haiti, but not so hot, & fewer truly amazing smells...