Thursday November 1, 2012: Autumn edition

Daily stuff:
I have become a member of the Dutch Athletic Federation: Dutch Runners. This is for recreational runners only. Besides the fact that you can ask questions at qualified trainers or get tips about running. There are several schedules available to for 5K, 10K, 15K and a half marathon. Also schedules for maintaining a 5K, 10K or 15K and a schedule how you can use these schedules if you want to go from a 5K to a half marathon.

All the schedules are written by Gerard Nijboer, a famous Dutch marathon runner. He has won a Silver medal at the Olympics of 1980 at the marathon. So this guy knows what he’s talking about. I have studied the schedules and they look very good and doable and every program follows perfectly onto the next program. There are even podcasts to download so you can have instructions and music on your phone or Ipod. I’m not using that, instead I’m using the interval function on my Garmin and use my own music.

Every schedule exists of 3 runs a week which is perfect for me. What I don’t like about most running schedules is that most of them have 4 or 5 or more runs a week. Three works perfect for me.

I’m going to use these schedules and start with a 6-week 5K schedule, followed by a 4-week 5K maintenance schedule. After that I’ll start with the 10K schedule but maybe not right away. I might extend the maintance weeks. I will try to plan at least 1 5K during the maintenance period.

What else is happening this side of the world?
Not much, weather has been weird from warm to freezing to lots of rain but hey, it’s Autumn, it’s all part of the deal.

We have a new government. Hopefully this will last the full 4 years. There will be a lot of economy retrenchements. The biggest one will be for health insurance. Every Dutch adult is obligated to have health insurance. We already pay a lot the past couple of years but as I understand it this will be doubled in 2014. But the higher incomes will pay more. As we have a double income it could be we will have to pay a lot more but I can’t figure out (yet) what we can expect. Nobody really knows, annoying. And the worst thing: I voted for one of the parties that’s in the government LOL.

My week in Autumn:

 

Workouts:

Tuesday morning I did P90X Plyometrics. Because of the time I only did half the workout which was also enough because it was a tough workout. A fun one but hard.
Total time: 33 minutes.

I took a short run Wednesday morning. Main goal was to get out there at 5.30 am in the dark which I did.

This morning I did a core workout followed by a 10 minute stretch. I didn’t know I still had muscles at my core but apparently I have because I sure felt them. Great workout.
Total time: 33 minutes.

 

Workout review October

Total time that I did something in October (exercise or walking): 26 hours and 25 minutes. This makes October my best exercise month of this year.  I did 19 workouts (13 last month).
Total km’s/miles this month: 27.2 K /16.8 miles. Not much but still more than last month.

I feel I’m back on the right track and will work on the same or better results for November.

Tuesday dinner

About two weeks ago I was watching a Jamie Oliver show on TV where he was making this recipe and it looked so good on TV, I had to try it. And it was good: Trapani Rigatoni with a rocket salad with Parmesan cheese and a simple dressing of olive oil and lemon.

You can find the recipe here: http://hotcooking.co.uk/recipes/61/jamie-oliver-trapani-style-rigatoni

Sunday October 28, 2012: Anniversary

Daily stuff:
My car is fixed again, they called at 10.15 am Wednesday that I could pick it up again. It wasn’t cheap but at least it’s safe to drive again.

We’re still working on the fleas problem on Bella. I disinfected the entire house but she still has some fleas. I brush her everyday to get them out. The anti fleas medication I have been using so far doesn’t seem to work anymore and I bought a new and stronger brand at the vet that I applied on her today and hopefully that helps.

Yesterday morning I cleaned up the garden for the last time this season. I won’t be doing anything in it till next Spring. While I was working in it, I suddenly noticed that R. was standing there with a camera. Not my best shot and definitely not my best outfit (these are my cleaning clothes). As you can see, Bella is not much of a help either, all she does is inspect if I am doing it right.

 

Tomorrow is our anniversary. Since we’re not married we celebrate the day that we moved in together: October 29^th, 1994. Usually we go out for dinner on the day itself but because it’s on a Monday and the restaurant we wanted to go to in our village is closed on Sunday, we celebrated Saturday night.

 

Dinner was delicious: we started with a salad with mushrooms and bacon and a fantastic dressing. After that we had pork tenderloin with brie cheese. And for dessert R. choose pannacotta and I have chocolate pie.

 

Weekly workout review:
Not a very good week. I’ve noticed that after every 2 great weeks, I have 2 louse workout weeks. Time to change the pattern.

Bella and Fran’s Autumn challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day:

Days till the end of Autumn (Thursday December 20): 90 days
Success: 33 days
Fail: 4 days

SUCCES!

Wednesday October 24, 2012: Car troubles

Daily stuff:

I’m writing this post a 8.30 am at home while I should have been at work by now. When I left for work this morning and I took the first turn, I heard a loud noise and it sounded like something broke. My heartbeat was sky high because it scared the you know what out of me.
I immediately turned around home. The garage wasn’t open yet and I waited a while before I drove there very slowly. They looked what happened and a spring was broken at the front of my left tire. Fortunately they can fix it right away and my car will be ready at 11 am and I’ll go to work then. It’s going to cost me money but driving safely is more important.

Poor Bella has fleas. She has been scratching herself a lot the past couple of days and at the doggy day care yesterday they said that a lot of dogs had fleas at the moment. So I bought a flea comb after work and checked her and she had them too. I washed her after dinner and treated her with an anti flea medication, changed all her blankets for clean ones and hopefully this helps. For the next couple of weeks I will be vacuuming the house more often. It is weird though that she got them though because I give her anti flea medication every month.

Workouts:

Good old Shred on the menu for Tuesday morning, level 1. I love this workout, it’s hard but short.
Total time: 27 minutes.

I have so much trouble to get up and go out for a run on work days. It’s the dark that’s holding me back and so far I have been skipping the weekday runs. I just don’t seem to get over this, last year I didn’t have this much trouble to go out for early dark morning runs but this year I do. I’m glad I do 2 of the 3 runs on the weekend when it’s light but I have to get over this and start doing that weekday run too.

Sunday dinner

 

I had rolled chicken meat in the freezer for a while now and I baked that on Sunday. We ate it with a pepper sauce and baked potatoes. I also made roasted carrots with a little honey.

Monday dinner

Noodles with pak-choi cabbage and beef tenderloin.

 

TV shows I watched last week
True Blood, Parenthood, Rizzoli & Isles, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy.

Sunday October 21, 2012: I’m back!

Daily stuff:
Well I’m back online. Huge thanks to my web host who has helped me a lot with fixing my problems. The guy that helped me even worked overtime Saturday to fix my website again. I spend most of the afternoon on Saturday fixing my website. TodayI installed a new virusscanner, did a complete scan on my computer and made backups of my database for my website. Not my favorite way to spend a weekend but it had to be done.

I think the reason I was attacked was because I have been lazy updating WordPress when a new version was available. Not going to do that anymore, as soon as a new version is available, I’ll be the first to install it.

Last week I was at my Mom’s house. There was this magazine that the people that live in the village I grew up, receive 3 times a year. They have an old school photo in it everytime. This one was taken in 1952 and my Mom is in it. She was 10 years old when this was taken. She’s on the second row from the top exactly in the middle (5^th from the left or from the right, white blouse). This was so fun to see because there aren’t many photos of my parents as a child.

Workouts:

After not running for 1.5 week, I went out for a run Sunday morning. It wasn’t easy, especially the breathing part but it felt good to be running again.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3 (20 minutes running, 12  minutes walking)
Weather:almost dry, windy,13C(55 degrees)
Distance: 4.4 K / 2.7 miles
Time: 00:32:01
Last song on Ipod before finish: The Beegees – Too much heaven.

Weekly workout review:

I skipped a few workouts last week because I have been very tired for a couple of days. R. and I still have a nasy cough that we both don’t seem to get rid off so I did the best I could do last week.

Bella and Fran’s Autumn challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day:

Days till the end of Autumn (Thursday December 20): 90 days
Success: 27 days
Fail: 3 days

We’re still going strong, we have missed 1 day a week so far mostly due to bad weather and 1 day because I was too tired to do anything (last Thursday).

Wednesday October 17, 2012: Will this show in your reader?

Daily stuff:
New try, hopefully this post will show up in Google Reader and Blogrolls. My post last Monday failed to show up but I can’t find any errors. Not at my web host and not at WordPress that I use for blogging.

The concert Saturday was great, brought back all 80’s music memories. There were 4 guests artists who were all big here inHollandin the 80’s and they rewrote a song to a rap song and had a rap artist that’s very popular these days to sing it with them.  I did make some photos but when I looked at them on my computer they were all failures.

There was a bummer however. We followed directions to a parking lot when we entered the city, which meant we were in traffic jam for an hour and a half. By the time we finally got to the parking lot it was full and we were directed back to the stadium where the concert was. When we arrived there, suddenly we could park on the parking lot there which meant we had to walk only a minute or 2 to get in. But by that time it was almost 9 pm and the concert started at 8 and we missed some of it. This was really badly organized and a lot of people were late for the concert because of that. Everytime we got to a concert in this stadium we have troubles getting there and we decided we won’t go to a concert there anymore. It’s not worth the irritation and the little loss of money because you missed a bit.

I complained at the stadium where the concert was held and today I received an email that I could get 2 new tickets for the concert next Saturday with a VIP parking ticket. We’re not going to use them but I was surprised that they took the time to reply to me and offer me 2 new tickets. Very good service!

I took a vacation day today. I had to do some deep cleaning upstairs, something I postponed and postponed. I cleaned the bathroom, our bedroom, both our studies and the addict. It took me over 5 hours to complete it. I worked very hard and the result is worth it but I’m very tired right now.

This photo I posted Monday too of Bella: the little diva wants to lay on the couch no matter what …

Book I’m reading

George R.R. Martin
A Song of Fire and Ice – Book 4 AFeast for Crows

TV shows I watched last week

The Mentalist, Mad Men, Dallas, Private Practice, Rookie Blue, Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy.

First episode of the new season of Grey’s. And although I already knew what was going to happen: WTF Mark Sloan dead? I cried a lot this episode.

 

 

Friday October 12, 2012: Animals edition

Daily stuff:

My cold is much better, except for a running nose and some sneezing and coughing I’m much much better.

Tomorrow we’re going to a concert. It’s a Dutch band called “Doe Maar” who were extremely popular in the eighties. They quit after a couple of years because their popularity was too much for them. They wanted rest and no more yelling fans everywhere they went. You were either a Henny Vrienten fan (2^nd left in the photos) or Ernst Jansz fan (at the right in the photos). I was into Ernst Jansz when I was about 16 years old. They sing in Dutch and I loved (and still love) their music too. A couple of years ago they had a reunion concert where R. and I went too.

Doe Maar in the 80's

Doe Maar in 2012

The concert tomorrow has a theme: Symphonica in Rosso. It’s with a big symphonic orchestra and most guests will be wearing red (I’m wearing red pants). They also have a lot of guests, most of them all other popular Dutch bands from the eighties.

Looking forward to this concert very much.

My week in animals:

Saturday

Bella said: No, I don't want to play with you!

Sunday

Monday

Wednesday

 

Thursday

Workouts:

Yesterday morning a cardio session of Turbofire. Turbofire is one of the Beachbody programs I bought and I love these programs. They are intense and have lots of variety in the workouts which I like.
Total time: 44 minutes.

Another run in the rain this morning, it was even raining harder than last Saturday. But I live inHollandand it rains sometimes (a lot) here and rain runs are part of the deal, especially in Autumn. So I sucked it up and went and felt like a totally wet but awesome badass for doing the run.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3 (20 minutes running, 12 minutes walking)
Weather: rain, wind,9C(48 degrees)
Distance: 4.5 K / 2.8 miles
Time: 00:32:00
Last song on Ipod before finish: Train –Fifty Ways to Say Goodbye

Knitting update:

 

Wednesday October 10, 2012: Catched a cold

Daily stuff:
Well I’ve catched that cold that R. had (still has a bit) too. Tuesday morning when I got up it was worse. I slept well which was nice because the meeting I had to take notes at from 9 am till 5 pm didn’t help. I was exhausted by the time I got home. I took a short walk with Bella, the fresh air helped and went to bed early.

But yesterday was the first and it appeared to be the worst day too. Today I’m already feeling much better except for a light headache. Just one more day of work and my weekend can begin.

Workouts:

Yesterday morning I did Rhythmica Latin Dance Mix. Second workout I did of this DVD and the workouts are boring and not challenging. I don’t even sweat doing them. I won’t be doing these workouts again.
Total time: 20 minutes.

Despite my cold I decided to go out this morning and do my run and see how far I would come. But I did the whole training because it went actually pretty well to my surprise. Glad I did get up and go instead of thinking I couldn’t because of my cold.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 5-3-5-3-5-3-5-3 (20 minutes running, 12 minutes walking)
Weather:dry, not much wind,4C(39 degrees)
Distance: 4.4 K / 2.7 miles
Time: 00:32:40
Last song on Ipod before finish: Mutya Buena – Real Girl

Book I’m reading

George R.R. Martin
A Song of Fire and Ice – Book 4 A Feast for Crows

I’m not really making progress in this book. I don’t read that much at all at the moment.

Movies I’ve seen last week

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (US version)

I loved the Milennium Triology books and we have seen the Swedish movies of the books too but I hadn’t seen the USv ersion yet. It was good but I find that Lisbeth Salander was better casted in the Swedish movie. The girl that played in this movie didn’t live up to my expectations that I had of Lisbeth after reading the books, the Swedish girl did. But other than that, it was a good movie.

TV shows I watched last week
Private Practice, Rookie Blue, Dallas, True Blood, Game of Thrones, Parenthood.

Monday October 8, 2012: Easy weekend

Daily stuff:
We had an easy weekend. R. catched a nasty cold at the end of last week and I’m afraid I’ve got it too since today. Am getting a nasty cough but so far that’s all and I can live with that.

R. also bought himself a new “toy” last Saturday at a motor exhibition: a mini bike. He’s going to restore it till it’s as good as new.

 

Have not much more to say, as said, it’s been a quiet weekend.

Workouts:
Saturday morning when I got up it was raining cats and dogs, and I mean raining hard! I got up, put on my running clothes, had a coffee and watched the rain radar. It wasn’t going to be dry all morning but it would rain less hard in a while and I waited for that. I finally went and was soaking wet within minutes, after 5 minutes I couldn’t avoid a puddle of water and had wet shoes and socks. And although it’s been a while since I ran in this kind of rain, it wasn’t bad at all. Once you’re wet, you’re wet and it doesn’t really matter anymore.

After the run however, I was walking on the sidewalk when a car passed me and drove full speed through a puddle of water and gave me a full shower. You know the scene from movies LOL. As if I wasn’t wet enough already. But all of it was nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix and I was glad I went afterwards.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 3-2-3-2-4-3-4-3-3-2 (17 minutes running, 12  minutes walking)
Weather:rain, not much wind,11C(51 degrees)
Distance: 3.9 K / 2.4 miles
Time: 00:29:06
Last song on Ipod before finish: New Radicals – You get what you give.

The weather was completely different Sunday morning: dry, sunshine with a bit of fog, not much wind. In fact it was beautiful and gorgeous:

My 3 runs this week all went very well and I enjoyed every one of them, even the wet one on Saturday. Off to week 2.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 3-2 3-2 4-3 4-3 3-2 (17 minutes running, 12 minutes walking)
Weather:dry, sunny, not much wind,7C(44 degrees)
Distance: 4 K / 2.5 miles
Time: 00:29:24
Last song on Ipod before finish: Lady Gaga – Born this Way

Weekly workout review:
Fantastic workout week, not the longest workouts but I did 6 of them.

Bella and Fran’s Autumn challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day:

Days till the end of Autumn (Thursday December 20): 90 days
Success: 16 days
Fail: 1 day

So far we are rocking the Autumn challenge. We missed only 1 walk so far and that was on Thursday when I was at the Tennis Classics till late in the evening.

Sunday dinner

Pork tenderloin with mushroom sauce, baked potatoes and grilled vegetables: zucchini, garlic, cherry tomatoes and capers.

Monday dinner 

Dish is called: green bean fantasy. Made with green beans, sweet potatoes, yellow pepper, mushrooms, bacon, pumpkin seeds and a little bit of cinnamon.

Friday October 5, 2012: Tennis groupie of retired tennis players

Daily stuff:

Yesterday was a big success, it was such a fun day. We started with a lunch followed by a presentation by Jacco Eltingh, former multiple grand slam winner in the doubles. He spoke about top sport related to work. It was very interesting. I admire everyone who is a professional sports men or woman, no matter what sports they do. They have to have so much self discipline to perform at such a high level. It was so interesting when he told about his professional career as a tennis player. Right now he’s a very succesful business man who owns 4 companies.

Did you know that an average top tennis player, plays about 3 matches a year without injuries? Every other match they have some kind of injury of pain but they don’t give in to that and keep going. It reminded me of Shelley and Helen, both have (or had) foot injuries but both didn’t give up. To me, they are top sporters too.

After that it was time for the first tennis match between Richard Kraijcek (Dutch tennis player, wonWimbledononce) and Carlos Moya (in 1990 he was in People’s list of 50 most beautiful men of the world and he still was handsome). Even though they are both retired, they still could play tennis at a high level. Kraijcek won the game.

After dinner I watch a double between Ramon Sluiter and Goran Ivanisevic (he’s funny and still hits the aces he’s famous for) and Mansour Bahrami and Paul Haarhuis (former partner of Jacco Eltingh). They had some jokes during the match which made it very fun to watch.

The last game between Ivan Lendl and Andrei Medvedev I passed and stayed in the hospitality unit.

During dinner Jacco Eltingh came to our hospitality unit with Richard Kraijcek and chatted with our guests for a while. One of the men kept saying I should ask them both if I could let my photo taken by him and they didn’t mind doing that when I asked them. Just before that I was walking around and saw Ramon Sluiter and asked him if I could get a photo. So as of yesterday I’m a retired tennis player groupie LOL.

With Jacco Eltingh

With Ramon Sluiter

With Richard Kraijcek. I said to him “you are so tall”. He answered “well, you’re pretty tall yourself too” 🙂 but I felt quite short next to him.

This is not a tennis player but one of my favorite managers I work for and with

 

My week in skies:

Tuesday October 2nd

Wednesday October 3rd

Friday October 5th

Workouts:

Yesterday morning I did a workout of The Firm Express. The workouts are short but intense, this one had cardio and sculpt excercises.
Total time: 20 minutes.

 

This morning I did yogalates. I did 2 workouts of 15 minutes of the DVD: one for the upper body and one for the lower body.
Total time: 31 minutes.

Knitting update:

I started on my sweater. Knitting goes fast because of the bigger needles and the fact that I use 2 or 3 yarns at the same time. I had bought 1 yarn of every color but after knitting this, I already had to buy new yarns of the light grey color.

Wednesday October 3, 2012: My second running career

Daily stuff:

Today marks the start of my second running career.

Running hasn’t been going well almost for a year now and I started the 7 weeks to 5K program again today, I had some thoughts about it during that run this morning. I know I can run a 5K, a 10K, a 10 miler, I even trained for a half marathon. I can do that once running is going well. But it’s not good for me to keep looking back to what has been. It’s better to look forward and first work towards a 5K without walk breaks and in a faster time. Once I’ve done that, it’s time to look at what’s next. One step at a time, one run at a time. There will still be bad runs but my goal is that from this point on my running will go better than the past year.

Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. My manager and I have organized an afternoon/evening for our franchisees. We’re going to the Tennis Classics. The Tennis Classics is a tournament played by retired tennis stars. We start with a lunch followed by a presentation by Jacco Eltingh (multiple grand slam winner at the doubles). After that we will watch the first tennis match between Richard Krajicek (Dutch tennis player who wonWimbledononce) and Carlos Moya. Then it’s dinner time and after dinner there’s a double between Mansour Bahrami/Paul Haarhuis and Goran Ivanisevic/Raymond Sluiter followed by a match between Andrei Medvedev and Ivan Lendl.

Unfortunate Pat Cash (who I found so cute when I was young) is injured and replaced by Andrei Medvedev whom I don’t know that well.

After the last match we will have drinks and then it’s time to go home. It’s going to be a long day (first I have a meeting in the morning) but I think it will be fun too. I will try to make as many photos as I can.

Workouts:

I’m a lousy stretcher. When I do a DVD I do the stretching after the workout but I hardly stretch after a run. One of the workouts of X-TrainFit is stretching that I did yesterday morning and I have to say it felt very good to do nothing more than stretching for a while.
Total time: 26 minutes.

As said, this morning I started 7 weeks to 5K again and it went very well.

I do find something very annoying of running in the dark. I wear a yellow safety jacket over my running jacket, I wear lights and in a few weeks I’m going to use my head lamp again. I make sure cars and bikers see me. But I see a lot of bikers in the morning that don’t use the lights on their bike and that’s annoying, not to mention dangerous. There’s nothing I would love to do more than yell at them that they need to put their lights on but it’s dark and early and you never know if someone gets angry and I don’t want to take the risk of getting attacked. But it sure is annoying.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 3-2-3-2-4-3-4-3-3-2 (17 minutes running, 12 minutes walking)
Weather:rain, windy,11C(51 degrees)
Distance: 3.9 K / 2.5 miles
Time: 00:30:25
Last song on Ipod before finish: TheJacksons – Can you feel it

Tuesday Dinner 

I made a recipe from my Light Cooking magazine: steak tartare with the sides rolled through crushed nuts, potatoes with herbs and red onion out of the oven and stir-fried spinach with garlic and pine nuts. It was delicious.

Book I’m reading

George R.R. Martin
A Song of Fire and Ice – Book 4 A Feast for Crows

TV shows I watched last week
Game of Thrones,Dallas, Parenthood, The Mentalist, True Blood, Mad Men, Necessary Roughness.