Sambal

Went running this morning. I almost didn’t, because my exercise partner cancelled at the last minute (actually, 7:40 this morning). So I wasted some time and read my blogs until I decided that I really did want to go running today. Especially since I blew off Thursday (being sick) and didn’t catch up on Friday (still being sick).

So I went out on my own. My knee is feeling better these days. I think I have the pain traced to running on the outside of the sidewalk: this means that I spend some time running on the horizontal inclines of driveways. My partner runs on the insides and therefore on the flatter parts of the driveways.

There was snow left over from the last two days, but it’ll probably be gone by this afternoon. It stuck pretty well, especially on north lawns and in the shade of evergreens, but today is bright and clear, and the sun is already warming the roads. There’s a little bit of black ice; that is, very thin but hard patches of ice. Black ice is slippery and very hard to see. I managed to avoid most of it; I didn’t take any spills, anyway.

I had a chance to time myself today. I would characterize my running pace as ‘a slow jog’, and that is in fact what it is. I am making 7′ 20″ to the kilometer. That’s not suitable for a marathon; to complete a marathon in under five hours, you need to maintain an average pace of 7′ 8″ per kilometer or faster. I didn’t expect to be very fast this early in the training, but it’s disappointing nonetheless. I once ran a mile in the time it now takes me to run a kilometer.

More later, I hope. I’ve taken the last two days off for my cold, but I hope to catch up on everything (house cleaning, work, blogging — maybe even brewing?) this holiday weekend. (It’s Canadian Thanksgiving.)

Tonight saw a significant amount of bandwagon-disembarkation. Sushi was bought. Sushi was eaten. (Sushi contains refined sugar; mayonnaise which contains egg; and is eaten with soy sauce which contains wheat protein.)

I’m still stubbornly off caffeine, though one coke each was pounded by my housemate and my wife.

I don’t know why, since there’s no rational purpose anymore. The whole scheme was pretty much in support of our housemate’s attempt to determine whether she has a milk protein allergy, and if there are any other allergies which contribute to that. Since it’s easy to test for a milk protein allergy (Doctor’s advice: “Go to the store and get some lactaid. If you don’t react to that, you’re just lactose-intolerant. If you do react, you have a milk protein allergy.”), it’s not clear how a multiple-food-elimination diet would help.
And dropping caffeine cold turkey has got to be one of the world’s worst ideas.

But I continue in my caffeine-free state. It doesn’t make any sense, since I really do like coffee.

In the meantime, I’ve been drinking lots of double-strength generic mint tea (IGA brand). My wife claimes this makes my breath smell like cheap pot, annoying her terribly. So I guess there is a minor bonus in it for me.

Suppose someone offered you a drink of a pleasantly hot beverage and said, “Here, drink this. It will give you a feeling of increased energy. For the next two days you will have a splitting headache. You will wantonly try eating and drinking anything you see, just on the off chance that it contains the substance you need to cure your headache.” You’d be a fool to drink it, wouldn’t you?

Perhaps it is obvious that I am suffering through caffeine withdrawal. This was an expected consequence of the multiple food elimination diet that we began on Tuesday. What’s unexpected is the unusual severity of the symptoms. I had been under the impression that I’d cut out caffeine before, and the symptoms were never this bad. The inescapable conclusion is that in the past, I’ve cheated. That really pisses me off.

I distinctly remember the first time I decided to cut out caffeine; it was at a summer job (my first ever) for Evil Health Care Corporation. One of my cow-orkers dared me to cut out caffeine, so I did with little difficulty. Until I realized that there was an enormous and ever-growing mound of Twix wrappers on my desk, and the light bulb flashed on — chocolate contains caffeine. So attempt one was a failure.

Since then I’ve cut back several times, but in retrospect I’ve never cut it out before. I did a substance-free year (easy) but somehow caffeine wasn’t a “substance”. Hey, I was in school — how could I expect to live without caffeine?

Every other time I’ve cut down on caffeine or cut out caffeine entirely, I must have reintroduced coffee at a low level sometime during day 2 or 3. Last time I cut out caffeine was only a few weeks ago, but a lot of work needed to be done in the run-up for the conference, so it was a bad time for me to spend twelve hours a day in the fetal position. So I started up again.

This time it’s all three of us: me, my wife, our housemate. On Tuesday afternoon we literally sat around the kitchen for two hours complaining about our headaches and sarcastically offering each other Coke (them) and coffee (me). Sounds like a real party, I know. This is the morning of day 3. Mild headache.

The funniest effect is the “tasting” impulse. Here’s a banana — try it, it might have caffeine in it. No. Yuck. Anyone want a banana with just one bite out of it? Perhaps (though I don’t know anything about this), this is an additional reason people quitting smoking tend to gain weight. Not only have they stopped ingesting nicotine, an appetite suppressant; not only have they stopped their major oral fixation; but their body is manipulating them to eat food on the off chance that a dietary source of nicotine will be found.

For the next two weeks, our household will be going on a Multiple Food Elimination (MFE) Diet. That’s jargon from Doris Rapp’s book Is This Your Child, a book about “Discovering and Treating Unrecognized Allergies in Children and Adults”.

Bleah.

In order to follow this diet, you must spend seven days not eating any common allergens. A long list is provided, along with a more useful and significantly shorter list of allowed foods. Then, one class of allergen is gradually introduced each day over the next eight days. It’s not a weight-loss diet, but I don’t see how I could gain any weight on it.

The real problem is that adults are supposed to eliminate all nicotine (no problem), alcohol, and caffeine for the whole period. If my blog entries seem more dazed, sleepy, or (God forbid) sober than usual, you’ll know what’s to blame.

I fully expect to find no unrecognized allergies and food sensitivities. I might be wrong, though, and the only sensible-seeming way to find out is to run the experiment.

Bleah.

Doris Rapp (M.D., did I mention?) appears to be a bit of a crank. Yeah Doris, watch out for them chemicals — they’re poisoning our children. Sheesh.

Frost on the car windshields and plants this morning at 6:45 while running. Air was quite cold, too. Discussed doing the run first, then walking, with my exercise partner. Maybe — but breathable fabric, icy winds, and cooling-off sweat seems like a bad idea. Stage I running injury, runner’s knee, right leg.

One bonus to work eating my brain for the last two weeks is that we were helping our client run a conference/training session for their out of town clients, and as a result, we got conference swag. It’s a thermos that looks like a section of a Titan IV missile. It’s so badass that it has its own shoulder strap and snap-out carrying handle. I may post a picture if I can figure out how to redact out the client’s name, so my blog life doesn’t mix with my real life…

Gotta go — Frederick the attack cat is going to the vet. Colby: relax, I’m taking aim at Steven den Beste today. (;

This Noakes exercise plan is extremely boring: walk 20 minutes every other day for the first 6 weeks. The rationale is sensible, so I must try to talk myself into it.

Ultimately, the whole thing can be summed up in one tired proverb: You must walk before you can run.

I like things with few ingredients. Notably, beer: hops, barley, yeast; coffee: ground roasted coffee beans, water. Here’s another one: Sunny Boy Cereal: wheat, rye, flax.

The correct way to cook Sunny Boy in my microwave is as follows: boil 1 cup of water. Mix 1/3 cup cereal with 1 c. water in a standard cereal bowl and stir. Place on saucer in microwave and cover with small plate (e.g., luncheon plate). Cook for 6 minutes on 40%, interrupting once to stir.

Prairie Sun Grains, makers of Sunny Boy, also sell barley. I wonder if they do retail.

So I’m working on running, with the ultimate aim of running a marathon before I hit thirty and get too smart to inflict serious joint damage on myself. I’m using a book, The Lore of Running, by Timothy Noakes, M.D. (Leisure Press: 1991), which includes a starting program for novice runners in addition to detailed discussions of running physiology. And it includes a stretching program.

I never realized this before, but stretching has to be tailored to each individual. Another brilliant flash of the obvious.

It sounds stupid to say it that way, because of course all exercise should be tailored to your goals, muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance, and stretching is part of exercise, right? But in fact, stretching is usually done en masse at the beginning of group exercise — as a warm-up, and also to kill a little time to absorb latecomers.

Of course experienced amateur athletes do their own stretches beforehand, stretching the muscles they find important — but then they participate in the group stretching program too.

Anyway, this stretching program in Lore of Running is good because it lists two to three stretches for each muscle, and recommends that you try various exercises until you find ones which stretch the appropriate muscles.

And it says you can expect results “after weeks or months.”