Puddle Jumping in DC

An Auspicious Plan

Friday, I quit my job.

Sunday, I decided I needed a little structure to contain and energize my personal yoga practice. I also feel my knee is telling me to take a break from my spotty and therefore guilt-inducing running plans while I focus on personal practice.

Baron Baptise, one of this country's more renowned vinyasa yogis, authored a book called 40 Days to Personal Revolution in which he lays out a progressively longer yoga and mediation practice. He recommends eschewing other exercise in the process, to be reintroduced later if desired.

Baptiste also developed a program he calls his "Yoga Bootcamp," a very western title for a weekend intensive yoga and mediation retreat. Since Mac and Maya are staying a few days with his parents in August while I pursue Itsy Bitsy Baby Yoga certification, I thought that would be a good weekend to do the intensive meditation and vinyasa practice and journaling exercises Baptiste recommends (though not on quite the same schedule because of the training).

I didn't consider how the two fit together until this morning when I plugged the 40 days into my Google Calendar (yep, I'm that kind of yogi) and discovered that the 40th day will be the day before the Itsy Bitsy weekend.

It's just a huge confidence boost

to be able to do ardha chandrasana at 7 + months pregnant.

Just so ya know.

Resolutions 2006

Find a new physical event goal. After the marathon, I briefly considered doing the Chesapeake Bay swim until I read that entry required either proof of completing another open water swim or a 3 hour pool swim. I don't doubt i could swim for that long but, man, I just don't want to. That put the length of the Bay swim in perspective for me though. I missed the registration for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. I tried to register but the server was too busy to handle it and then it filled up 24 hours after registration opened. I'm tentatively planning to do the Frederick Half-Marathon in April but I'm floundering a bit with event goals . . . so I should focus on my goal to

Do more yoga. I suspect my lack of yoga routine in 2005 to be closely related to my hip discomfort during the MCM. I haven't had a solid yoga routine since before going back to school. It's high time I focused on it again.

Loose 12.5 more pounds - or so. I didn't quite loose 30 pounds in 2005 but I did loose 27.5. Now, faced with meeting the goal, I think should raise the bar (I can do chin-ups now, by the way - tee, hee. Wasn't really a resolution but I've been working on them since Paul hung a chin up bar in the hall between the kitchen and the front door.) and add 10 pounds (lost) to the original goal. By my very geeky body fat to lean mass calculations, that should put me solidly in the healthy zone. I'm not really sure what my natural lean body weight should be but 12.5 more pounds seems like a good next step. Unfortunately, I already need new pants. The clothing situation is getting desperate but I hate clothes shopping . . . I picked up a pair of jeans and a pair of corduroys (and a pretty new suit for $1) at my mom's favorite thrift shop over the holidays so maybe I can manage to avoid a full scale wardrobe shopping event for a while still.

Bake more. You might question the wisdom of this given the previous goal. The 4th quarter of 2005 was definitely marked by more cooking than the previous 10 or 12 quarters. But still, I did very little baking. Then, during the last three weeks of 2005, I made >400 cookies, 7 loaves of pumpkin or zucchini bread, and a peach cobbler (and I helped make an apple crumble). I believe that may have followed 48 weeks of no baking at all. They were all tasty (though some textures left a bit to be desired) and many were low fat and sweetened with fruit juice. Baking is not very South Beach but I'm allowed 3 starches a day - may as well really enjoy them.

That seems like a pretty good list . . . I still would like to teach the bird to come on command or do other tricks. Since trick training is transferable and we could teach her some basic manner commands too, it would really help whoever takes care of her while we're in China for 5-6 weeks next summer (contact me to get on the list of wannabe bird sitters) but I need to consider my commitment to this for a few more days first.

This evening was all about heat.

I took a yoga class and the instructor pumped up the heat. After about a half hour, my legs, more or less, melted. Good for flexibility but makes for a very wobblypose.

Every instructor is has his/her own style and I haven't taken too many classes with this one. It took me a couple of tries to figure out what, from here: , "place your hands on the earth, pivot your rear foot in, and swing your front foot high in the air" means. It looks basically like this: (only with the arm attached).

After that, I took a soak in the hot tub.
Then I took a cool shower.
Then I walked home in the cold.