Decadethlon – What Goes Down Must Come Up

Preface: As I said before, I’m a pencil-and-paper kind of person, still, and, for me, figuring out how to import excel charts into the blogosphere and make them look right is like sculpting ice with a feather. Will work on this. Maybe a better feather?

After an all-time annual low in numbers of workouts in 2002, my track record, so to speak, improved by 2004 to workout rate of about two out of three days. In fact, to date, it has been my “most fit year” in number of days worked out, despite a move from Paris back to Washington, DC, and bunion surgery to both feet (that’s what commuting in dress shoes in the Paris metro will do to you!) Thanks to the foot surgery, I discovered the magic of pilates: you can be flat on your back and still get a workout in! I let the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong (obviously pre-drug admission) inspire me during the weeks after my surgery. With still sore feet, I moved with my husband to Moscow in September. US Embassy Moscow had a more extensive gym, indoor pool and indoor basketball court. Indoor is the key word here, as it seems most of the year it’s winter in Moscow. I made use of the indoor facilities and agreed (only once or twice) to run with my husband outside during good weather. Days Worked Out: 231 out of 366 (a leap year) or 63%. Best month: September, 29 out of 30 days, or a whopping 97%! And that only 6 weeks after bunion surgery. (When you can’t walk, then watching and mimicking pilates videos is pretty much all you can do besides eat all day, anyway.) Thank you, Pilates! Worst months: May and December, tying the score at 14 out of 31 days, or 45%. Not so bad.

The year 2005 saw 217 out of 365 days of workouts, my third best year in terms of days worked out, despite the fact that I spent most of that year pregnant.  Conclusion: Pregnancy is good for staying fit! I also worked, a lot. I billed myself out as a photographer, shooting portraits and events and hit the elliptical machine, good for no-impact workouts. A “Yoga for Pregnancy” video was my new best friend. I had my husband film me – the 45 extra pounds of protruding belly, double chin, and all - on the elliptical machine the December night before my scheduled c-section, so there’s proof! I was more in fear of the IV going into my hand than the c-section into my abdomen. The last few exhausting days of that year were spent learning how to nurse a wonderful, wrinkly, squawking chicken-legged newborn. Days Worked Out: 217 out of 365, or 59%. Best month: July, 26 out of 31 days, or 59%. Worst month: December. 6 out of 31 days, or 19%.

2006 was another once-in-three-or-four-days years. I even recorded five and seven workouts for the months of January and February, respectively, despite healing from the fresh c-section slice and going on virtually no sleep, while also entertaining loads of visiting friends and relatives who wanted to see the baby. At six weeks old our newborn flew with us to wintery Moscow, where we returned to a freezing apartment, all three of us wearing ski caps indoors.  Unbelievably, neither the nights of little sleep nor the whistling Moscow winds kept me from dragging myself to the gym every few days, in between breastfeedings and naps. Instead, a workout meant a bit of freedom and independence for me, both rare commodities for mothers with newborns. In the summer, we moved back to Washington, DC to take a 6-week fast-track Japanese course in preparation for our impending move to Tokyo. Now I juggled nursing with Japanese flash cards. My “45% days worked out” in July dropped to the 20% range for the rest of the year as we moved to Tokyo with our 8 month old and got used to our surroundings in this exotic and exciting East Asian city. Days Worked Out: 116 out of 365, or 32%. Best month: December, 18 out of 31 days, or 58%. Worst month: January, 5 out of 31 days, or 16%.

The year 2007 in Tokyo I recorded an annual average of 47% of days worked out (171 out of 365 days), which translates to about an average year for the decade, not great, not bad. I finished up nursing after the first half of the year, took up soccer in the summer and became resonably fit for a glorious but brief six months before becoming pregnant again. Best month: September. 19 out of 30 days, or 63%. Worst month: August, 9 out of 31 days, or 29%.

Next up: The Year’s Five-Second Stretch, no, I mean The Second Five-Year Stretch, and the decade’s table (if I can figure out how to do it!)

Decadethlon – I Do vs. Just Say No

In my last blog entry I confessed to having used the pencil to record my workouts. I also used many an excuse to explain 2001 as being my second lowest workout year during the recorded decade. Below is an account of the very lowest (worst) year in terms of numbers of workouts recorded to date, as well as the impact of planning a wedding, joining the ranks of Foreign Service spouses, breaking a bone, and learning a lesson about staying on track, especially if it’s while running in the Bois de Boulogne.

2002: Planning a wedding happens to be a good way to lose poundage without going to the gym, especially if the wedding reception invlolves a lot of DIY elements. I designed, printed, hole-punched, be-ribboned, folded and organized over one hundred each of menus, invitations, table cards, programs and name cards, forgoing trips to the gym for weeks on end, and by the day of the wedding I was thinner than ever from lack of sleep and too much cutting and pasting. I fit (a little too) easily into my wedding dress and had no muscle tone to my name, except for my hole-punching forearm. Our legal wedding in January, at which I wore a maroon pants suit with matching lip gloss, was held in a small underground room in Arlington, Virginia, with a neon sign hanging in the window pledging, “I MARRY U.” This ceremony was followed by our February white-dress-and-big-party wedding in Washington, DC, which was followed two weeks later by our move to Paris, where we lived in temporary housing in the banlieue for 3 weeks, which also kept me from the gym, partly because of the 1-hour commute into town. I made the excuse that walking was enough of a workout, who needs to run! It wasn’t until the second half of the year rolled around that I began regular workouts again. We got into a routine of using the gym at US Embassy Paris, even on weekends, when most people were out on the Champ de Mars or touring the Louvre. (Do I regret this now? Of course I do! Are you kidding?) At the time, going to the gym relieved the eternal pressure one feels in a grand city like Paris to always be out and about seeing sights and touring museums or God forbid sitting in a café and enjoying oneself. By early September, just a few days before our delayed honeymoon, I (un)smartly broke my wrist and sprained the other from falling backwards from a chair in my kitchen. Luckily, I had already gotten my workout in that day. The furthest thing from romantic, especially since my mother had to come help me, bless her soul, to take off shirts or pull up my pants, etc., and the honeymoon had to be both delayed and cut short by several days. Needless to say, having two hurt paws slowed down the fitness program, though we did some mild hiking between villages in Italy's lovely Cinque Terra! Days Worked Out: only 52 out of 365 or 14%, by far my worst fitness year. Best months: July and August. 14 out of 31 days, or 45%. Worst months: January through May: again, Null Set!

Luckily, from a 14% rate in workouts in one year, there is almost no way but up. In 2003 we had the good fortune to tour around France occasionally on long weekends and entertained a revolving door of guests. I continued to use the windowless Embassy gym, about once every three or four days. Sometimes on the weekends, while my husband jogged around the park, I took photos of ducks and boats in the Parc de Vincennes, making that my excuse to not have to run. I worked temprorarily as a State Deparment wonk in a great but tough job at the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and later as an editor for the OECD Secretariat, where I actually worked in a château (yes!). My boss at the Secretariat was a runner, so I’d try in vain to keep up with her sometimes, jogging (slogging) in the famed Parc de Boulogne. One time, on my own, I got lost while running and ended up asking someone I only later realized was a very friendly and helpful Parc de Boulogne prostitute the way back to my section of town. I stuck with my boss’ route after that. Days Worked Out: 157 out of 365 or 43%. Best month: October - 21 out of 31 days, or 68%. Worst month: March - 9 out of 31 days or 29%. Here’s afun statistic: Average Days Worked Out per month for 2001: 9, 2002: 4 (!), 2003: 13. Below is a couple of  three-year charts of DWO (Days Worked Out, not to be confused with DWI), just for some color and to demonstrate that the low years were really low, with months when I just said No to Sports. 

 

Total # of Days Worked Out Per Year
	2001 DWO	2002 DWO	2003 DWO
January	12	0	12
February	8	0	9
March	14	0	9
April	15	0	15
May	15	0	11
June	3	4	10
July	17	14	14
August	6	14	19
September	4	6	12
October	10	4	21
November	0	3	18
December	0	7	7
Total DWO	104	52	157
Average DWO	9	4	13

Never fear, however, as next week’s installment demonstrates that despite foot surgery and a move to Moscow, I saw my best year in workouts in a decade!

(PS - Looks like my charts didn't translate from Excel. Looks like I might need another decade to figure out the digital side of things. In the meantime, a boring chart, above.)

Decadethlon – Origins of the Decadethlon

In my last blog entry I introduced my habit of recording my workouts and how tracking can motivate you to keep tracking (ie – continue going to the gym, while eating chocolate, rather than just eating chocolate). Below is more about how I began the record keeping.

Let’s begin at the beginning, before the recording began: 1999, end of the millenium, when I received my first Franklin Covey planner while working at World Wildlife Fund, first in Washington, DC and later in Frankfurt, Germany. This was important because I graduated from my usual Garfield comics calendar to an actual planner, and began using it to schedule things and record my expenses. Here I might add that back then, as now, I manually recorded everything. I mean using a pencil. Remember those? My kids use an iPad, I don’t know how to turn one on. But that’s next year’s goal, I digress.

Last year, when the idea came to me to chart all my previous recorded workouts as far back as I could go, I noticed, flipping through a decade of calendar pages, to my dismay, that I had not begun recording my workouts until 2001. This is not to say that I had not been working out prior to 2001 – I’ve been jogging since the age of 8 (I began in those 70s Nike sneakers that now some Japanese consumers apparently would pay good money to have - too bad I don’t still have them. But I do have my t-shirt from a Bay to Breakers fun from 1981 which I never ran because I came down with bronchitis, still in new condition, not for sale), I’ve been swimming since the age of 5 (not without almost drowing first), and skiing since the age of 3 (wedged between my Dad’s skis on my own little wooden ones.)

So, the year 2000 – that January my boyfriend of 5 years and I had moved from a small cowtown outside (literally called “Stierstadt”) of Frankfurt to New York City, and had our suitcases stolen from our otherwise empty apartment on the first day we moved in. Our jetlagged cats slept through it all. (The Manhattan police officers came in and said in their finest Brooklyn accents, “What’d they do? Steal all ya fahnitcha?” At the time, it was not funny.) Serendipity, my boss’ generosity, and a previous internship got me a job at Scholastic in swanky Soho, and I enrolled in a “passport membership” at the then already omnipresent New York Sports Club one block away. In September, I ran my first Race for the Cure in Manhattan, and I actually still remember how out of shape I was, gasping for breath after the first mile, as women of every age bounded past me like gazelles in Reeboks. I consoled myself with chocolate afterwards. That fall I also bought myself a decent case to house my planner, which now served as my life notebook. I got to the gym to take classes with my cublicle-mates two or three times a week, as I remember.

By 2001, I had begun recording my workouts. It turns out, that in my decade of recording, this year ranks as the second lowest in number of days I worked out in one year. That year, I had two scar revisions on my abdomen from an appendix scar from five years prior, had lasik performed on my eyes by, in my opinion, the world’s best lasik sugeon and patentor, Dr. Robert Spector, got engaged, moved to DC out of Manhattan three days before 9/11 happened, became a Foreign Service MOS (Member of Household) the day before 9/11, heard a rumor on 9/11 that a bomb had gone off outside the State Department where my fiance was on his second day of work, while I was a mile from the Pentagon. As I watched  - on a television in a non-descript conference room, surrounded by people with almost no connection to NYC -  the second tower fall, I cried tears of grief and disbelief for the city and people we had just left behind. After the panic run to fill up the gas tank, buy extra water, tuna and toilet paper, the hours in front of the TV reliving the horror of 9/11, we returned weeks later to NYC to visit and tried to make sense of the tragedy, having lived across the street from the front door of the Armory in Midtown Manhattan, which had become the hub for reporting missing persons. But that’s another story. That fall we found out we were posted to Paris and began planning our wedding, to be held in four months’ time. So I got down to the cheerier business of florists, photographers and wedding cakes. Both the lasik and the scar revisions gave me good excuses not to work out, but the most effective exercize deterrent that year turned out to be wedding planning. Who has time for treadmills when there are wedding cake frostings to be sampled? Days Worked Out: 104 out of 365 or 28%. Best month: July. 17 out of 31 days, or 55%. Worst months: November and December: Null Set!

The table below proves that I have been able to convert some of my record-keeping from pencil to digital. It also shows the rise and fall of my 2^nd lowest year in terms of workouts. I guess having a job, a few surgeries, getting engaged, moving, and experiencing 9/11 from afar, had an overall impact on my gym attendance.

2001	Days worked out	Days in Month
January	12	31	39%
February	8	28	29%
March	14	31	45%
April	15	30	50%
May	15	31	48%
June	3	30	10%
July	17	31	55%
August	6	31	19%
September	4	30	13%
October	10	31	32%
November	0	30	0%
December	0	31	0%
Total	104	365	28%

Tune in next week for the next installment: The impact that becoming a Foreign Service Spouse, or EFM – “Eligible Family Member” in State Department parlance, moving to France, and breaking a wrist had on the frequency of my workouts.

Decadethlon – Just Track It!

I bet you don’t know anyone who has recorded their every workout for the past decade. Well, now you do. And watch out, this might take you a decade to read. (Which is why I’ve divided “Decadethlon” into a series of digestable chapters, like a good, small chocolate before before a workout.)

My German engineering genes have kept me on task for 10+ years in a row, recording my workouts on a daily basis. Let us not call this “Anally Retentive Behavior.” Let us call it “Discipline and Dedication” (that makes me feel better). I may have skipped weeks at a time and certainly days at a time, but the reasons for either skipping workouts or doing them have turned out to be interesting to track, and here’s why:

I learned that if you record it, you want to record more, hence you do more, whether it’s in the realm of workouts, chocolate consumption, or social scheduling. My husband says, if you record it, you get better at it. He is referring, of course, to recording expenses and watching the budget. After 15 years of recording our every US Dollar, Deutsche Mark, French Franc, Swiss Franc, Croatian Kuna, European Euro, English Pound, Singaporean Dollar, Russian Ruble and Japanese Yen spent, I can say with confidence, that, at least in this case, he was right. Looking back, we can even learn a bit about our history and the world, and a bit about ourselves, for better or for worse, when we keep track of ourselves.

Over the past decade, I have tried various workout styles and sports, in order of appearance, more or less, they are: outdoor and treadmill jogging, indoor cylcling, frisbee, weight lifting, swimming, aerobics, yoga, pilates, spinning, ellyptical machining, American football-throwing, soccer and Tae Kwon Do. I have Yoga, swimming and some good German chocolate to thank for my recovery from two major surgeries to my abdomen after a ruptured appendix in 1996.

My workouts - consisting of a minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of 2 hours of some activity  - have ebbed and flowed during the course of any given year, depending on what was happening in my life. It’s very telling to look back and see to what extent events such as moving, pregnancies, surgeries and giving birth had on my workout routine, and, if I can remember or have it recorded in my calendar, how my health and productivity were affected (income, social life, expenditures.) It also helps to have a significant other who shares one’s interest in working out and makes as much or more of an effort to stay in shape and battle the bulge.

Below is a table showing this year’s data thus far, as an example of how I’ve kept track of  workouts and percentages:

  

2012	Days worked out	Days in Month
January	21	31	68%
February	13	29	45%
March	18	31	58%
April	11	30	37%
May	11	31	35%
June	16	30	53%
July	13	31	42%
August	25	31	81%
September	25	30	83%
October	25	31	81%
November	0	30	0%
December	0	31	0%
Total	178	366	49%

Tune in next week for the next installment, “The Origins of the Decadethlon”!

The “No Belt” Prize for Piece

I began martial arts with preschool children - at age 39.  After a year and a half, we have tumbled, kicked, punched together, and we have groaned through push-ups and sit-ups together. We try to listen and hold still and bow at the appropriate times. I am 5’8” and they are 3 feet, more or less.

 This school year, at the honorable invitation of our Jhoon Rhee Tae Kwon Do Master, I decided, at the age of 40, to try something unusual - train with adults.

Our Master, trainer of both children and adults, is a 4^th Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, among other things. Her students are aged 18 months to, well, 40 years.

 This fall, she invited the adults in our group (all 7 of us) to compete in the year-end tournament. After injuries, children’s illnesses and general parental duties called, only two of us were able to attend the tournament, and at that, only for two hours.

Nevertheless, when my teammate and I stepped into the gymnasium at a boxing center in Moscow, we both gasped with intimidation at seeing about two hundred children equipped with white Tae Kwon Do uniforms, ready to compete, and their parents, equipped with cameras. The children wore belts of every color, not the least of which was black.

The youngest to compete were the beginners – the “White Belt” three year olds. They demonstrated punches and kicks in sparring competitions in one of three rings. This was, however, no three-ring circus. This was serious business, with judges, scores and medals (and light-up wands for the little tykes).

 You already know who the oldest to compete was. And I am what’s considered a “No Belt;” I wear a white belt, but only because it came with the uniform I ordered on Amazon, not because I have earned it. To earn it, I will need to demonstrate in my upcoming “belt test” that I know some basic forms – certain kicks, punches and movements.

I had agreed to photograph at the tournament and was busily doing so when my name was called to Ring 1. The organizers said to each other questioningly, “Only one competing in this round?” and then they looked at me, “Are you ready?” After my moment of hesitation, during which I was thinking, Go ahead, just skip me, I’m fine, really!, one of them said, “You’re ready.”

 Thus, I, in my no-belt white belt, timidly performed one piece, or form, that of “Appreciation.” I faced my three judges, all black belts, aged 20 to 30 years younger than me, and spent roughly 40 seconds performing in front of lots of on-looking parents and even more kids with colorful belts.

My judges mercifully gave me scores of 6, 7 and 7 out of 10 and graciously bestowed upon me a diploma and a medal of first place in my category, since I was the only one comepting and there was no one else to give it to. I accepted my prize, bowed, and left the ring, humbled.

Industrial Landscapes Photography Exhibition

"Industrial Landscapes" Exhibition at Novotel City Centre in Moscow

During the past two years in Russia, I have explored the ideas of abandonment, isolation, nostalgia and renewal as a result of the transition from Soviet Union to Modern Russia.  First arriving as a Student in Moscow in 1991, just after the August Coup, I have since carried with me a sense of nostalgia about that time and place. 

Moscow is made up of fascinating industrial landscapes.  To me, an Industrial Landscape is really any urban horizon, in which so many elements come into play: Geography, Topography, Urban Planning (or lack thereof), Geometry, History, Perception (which is a reflection of our nostalgia, memory, reality).

I have been exploring these elements, and how we live amidst Industrial Landscapes, and even how we spend our leisure time in and around them.  they are inescapable to the modern urban dweller.  Once I began noticing these in Russia, I noticed them everywhere.  (some examples exhibited here are from Kazakhstan and the United States).

Intriguing to me is the contrast between what is new, unfettered by nostalgia, and what is, old, original, abandoned, half-finished or unfinished.  A traditional location of leisure, such as Moscow’s Serebryanny Bor is contrasted with recently-built buildings in the background.  an old industrial site, such as Seattle’s Gasworks, is turned into a park, filled with bike riders, sun bathers and walking paths.

In some of these Industrial Landscapes we see that the useful life of certain abandoned objects has come to an end, but, in their after-life, they have transformed into symbols which echo a nostalgia, a past, and sometimes, a hope for renewal:  Used tires by the roadside, or an abandoned power line tower lying on its side, not yet removed but replaced by another tower.  In others we see how difficult it is to escape anything industrial, even in our leisure time. 

In cases such as the railroad, an icon of the industrial age, we use it to travel, escape.  And for many, the train and even the Particular station itself evokes a sense of adventure and the unknown coupled with separation and good-byes, and therefore, memories and an inescapable Nostalgia. 

My 9/11 Story (to be written)