Eastern Mediterranean Breakfast Salad

Feta cheese and (pita) bread, served alongside olives, pickles, and whatever raw veggies are available, makes a common breakfast in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rather than the traditional sandwich, or mezza (small dishes), this morning I combined my veggies (cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, and arugula) and chunks of feta into a salad, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, served alongside a bit of bread and feta. This helps my wheat allergy by reducing the ratio of bread in my meal.

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Staying the Path

Sooner or later, every exercise plan stumbles upon obstacles, such as work demands, travel, weather, or injury. Following are the ones I encountered over the past five years. I will address each in turn in later posts, along with my response to each challenge. Finding the time to exercise. Schedule disruptions such as illness, travel or extended work commitments. Monotony: Boredom from doing the same routines and running over the same trails. Being a single-parent: I have shared custody of my daughter, which imposes the added challenge of integrating my exercise with my parenting. Weather: a significant factor for exercising outdoors. Trail conditions: ice, rain, mud, potholes, construction closures, etc., can interfere with our planned activities. Injuries. Specific adaptations because of lifestyle. For example, I live in a townhouse, so end up doing stairs twice as often as usual, while my work involves sitting in front of the computer for long hours. These ha...

Rowing with my Daughter

With the weather cooling down yesterday, I took my daughter out on a rowboat. It was a beautiful day. Not too hot, not too cold, not to cloudy, not too sunny, a few sprinkles of rain, ... Since my daughter is only 8 years old, I ended up doing all the rowing. I don't row much so found it much harder to move and control the rowboat compared to a paddle boat. My left arm was hurting until I realized that the oars had slipped through their rings and thus weren't of equal length. After correcting their alignment, the rowing became easier. I ended up rowing steadily for 2 hours, with only two short breaks. That's the same length of time it takes me to run a half-marathon. I fully expected my back, chest, and upper arm muscles to be sore and hurting. Thankfully, that hasn't materialized (yet). After getting back home I was exhausted, energy-drained, and starving. Practiced yoga at night to ease the tension in my neck, accentuated by the need to constantly turn my head...

Varying It Up: Measuring Distance

I wrote about the importance of planning new and different routes to break the monotony of outdoor exercise. Especially when following a running program that assigns runs of certain distances, it's useful to know the length of each possible route. There are a number of ways to do that. First is past experience. If you travel this path once, with the aid of a pedometer, gps watch, fitbit, or smartphone you can tell or estimate its length. When I first started walking, I only had my Omron pedometer. It was nice because it counted my steps all the time, not only when I worked out. To estimate distance, I measured how many steps it took for me to walk or run a known distance. After repeating on several occasions, I'd have an idea of how many steps it took me to cover a mile, and use that to measure future walks / runs. It's not so accurate, but it works and is relatively inexpensive. After losing my pedometer, my girlfriend got me a Fitbit. The Fitbit has the featu...

My Health Journey

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