They Might Be Giants make particularly pernicious earworms. Anyone who has read Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge books (the ones with Tannim the mage) may recall why they are particularly dangerous (or useful, depending on your perspective).
The weekend in San Diego was all right. Rudder's team came in fourth in their heat, which put them in the Petit Finals where they came in fourth again. Not too bad for a scratch team with two experienced very rowers, a few other Masters rowers, three ASU guys and two juniors. The weather was pleasant and so were the people I got to hang out with. (None of the ones I was glad to avoid when I left their respective programs was there, except the coaches. Coach DI is perfectly pleasant as long as he's not my coach anyway, and in fact I think he has mellowed a bit. He still can't organize worth a crap, but the parents in his juniors program generally take care of that and I think he's gotten a lot better at dealing with his rowers since his early coaching days. Yosemite Sam, on the other hand, was nice enough but appears to have morphed into the I-ching of rowing. Before each event he would given his rowers vague oracular pronouncements that made little or no sense and weren't particularly inspiring. At one point he told an outgoing cox to "paint a good picture". I knew what he meant - he claims a coxswain's job is to "paint a picture" for her rowers of where they are in relation to the course and the competitors - but I'm not at all sure she did.
Anyway, it was a pleasant weekend. It's odd to just show up to row with boats and everything all taken care of instead of having to do it all ourselves. I finished knitting the bag I was working on. We got home relatively early, so I took a stab at hand-felting it. It's nowhere near as dense as I'd like so I'll throw it in the washer next. I also started on some socks with actual sock yarn and size 2 needles, aka string and toothpicks. Tonight it will be time for laundry and all of the other minutiae of daily life, including the good bits about life with Rudder and the less good bits about stepping up my workouts.
Posted by dichroic at April 4, 2005 01:28 PMAm I reading something into today's title?
Posted by: l-empress at April 4, 2005 03:12 PMString and toothpicks become addictive after a while. I am eyeing the 'paisley shawl' in the current Interweave Knits with something like covetousness.
Posted by: Nora at April 5, 2005 06:35 AMThanks for the pointer towards hypertrophy workouts. I have been thinking about experimenting with them and asked my trainer Tracy to look into it.
After I whined about muscle loss I got an interesting e-mail from a sports nutritionist in Austria, of all places. She mentioned that there is little research on women's protein needs and muscle retention but felt I wouldn't go far wrong if I ate 1 gram of protein per kg of lean body mass daily to maintain my current muscle. She puts male weight lifters on 1.6 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass to build muscle but felt that would be excessive for a woman.
She said because I'm doing intense cardio and weight training together I need to make sure I do a good carb load within 30 minutes of the end of my workout to raise my blood insulin level so my body grabs my protein supplement efficiently--this will preserve current muscle and help build new muscle. I haven't been doing this. I've been taking a protein drink, but no carbs.
She recommended two parts carbs to one part protein because of my age and gender. Men can go as high as four parts carbs to one part protein, but then they have more muscle mass and can take a higher caloric load without gaining weight. I want to add muscle mass, not fat.
There's all sorts of restrictions on the fresh fruits and veggies I can bring into the U.S. so I've decided to grab the carbs with breakfast cereal. I started Monday, using Kellogg's Vector--my soy protein drink gives me 26 grams of protein, one recommended serving of Vector comes very close to 50 grams of carbs.
I'll try this for a month and see what happens. If you decide to experiment with hypertrophy let me know how it works out for you--I'm always looking for the most efficient way to keep myself fit and build strength.
I think I speak for us all when I say a woman can never have too many pretty gym muscles.
Posted by: Marn, eh at April 5, 2005 11:45 AM