Labor Day Weekend is for Hiking!

Usually for me, Labor Day weekend is very boring and mundane because most years, the semester is in full swing and I have way too much to do.  This year, the fall semester doesn't start until after Labor Day (tomorrow...yikes!) so I was able to go out and play a little!  My mom came down to visit and we decided that yesterday would be a great day for hiking!  The weather has finally cooled off enough that you can go hiking without finding yourself in a pool of sweat or being completely enclosed by mosquitos.  For some reason, I carried my camera in my backpack the entire hike but did not take any pictures!  This is bizarre to me as I usually take too many pictures!  I'm not sure what happened!  To keep this post from being way too boring, I'll add some pictures from previous hikes.  The photo of me to the right (my profile) is from coring trees at Devil's Lake last spring.

Mom and I started the day a little late.  We noshed on coffee, eggs, pumpkin yogurt (plain Greek yogurt, pumpkin, spices, agave syrup; original recipe is here, my new favorite blog to follow!), and a banana to fuel up for our big hike.  Then, we packed up my hiking backpack, loaded up the car, and were off!  We headed to Devil's Lake State Park, which was expectantly packed as the weather was cool and it's Labor Day weekend.  If you are heading into the South entrance of Devil's Lake, you see the SkiHi apple orchard, which was open for the season!  Fresh caramel apples and cheese curds were the star for us before our hike!

If you've been to Devil's Lake, you know the trek up East Bluff is a good workout but we both climbed up the bluff with no issues.  I go on a field trip to Devil's Lake with my students every semester and the first time I went, I had such a hard time getting up the bluff!  This time, no problem!  I guess this working out stuff is paying off.

View of South Shore from the top of West Bluff.  This is where I typically start hiking.

View of East Bluff from the top of West Bluff.  This is what we climbed yesterday.

After completing the East Bluff Trail, we sat down for a snack of grapes, carrots, & peanut butter on the North Shore.  Then, rambled our way along Tumbled Rocks Trail to get back to our car.  Of course, about 1/4 mile from our car, it started pouring, go figure!

After some Subway salads and Culver's ice cream, we decided to end our day by running the stairs at the M in Platteville.   If you do not know anything about the area, here's a little background.  The Platte Mound is an area of resistant cap rock, part of the Niagara Escarpment, that has not eroded away yet, so it looks like a big, random hill in the middle of no where.  There is a giant "M" formed in white painted rocks on the hillside with a tall staircase on the right side where you can climb to the top of the mound.  The "M" stands for the School of Mine, which was the big deal in Platteville, WI back in the day and, as far as I know, is the largest "M" on a hillside in the US.  That area of the mound is owned by the local university so anyone can climb whenever they want for free.

Platteville M.  Stairs to get to the top are on the right of the M.

View of Platteville, WI (distant area) from the top of the Platte Mound.

My mom was hilarious there!  We pulled up and she immediately said, "oh!  That's it?"  Like all those stairs were nothing!  It looks benign, but I guarantee your heart will be racing by the time you reach the top!  We ran the stairs twice in hopes of working off the ice cream and caramel apples and let's just say that after climbing East Bluff at Devil's Lake and running the M twice, our legs were jelly!  It felt so good to workout outside though.  The weather was beautiful and my sinus infection is just starting to clear up.  It was a great day and a nice way to get back into working out after 2 full days off.

It took me a few minutes to work out the stiffness in my joints and muscles this morning but now I'm ready for a little Ripped in 30(gym is closed today!) before I start cooking meals for the week.  The semester starts tomorrow so I'll be starting weekly meal planning and cooking today!  Getting ready for the craziness!  I hope to post on my meal plans from here on out, as well as my ongoing saga on attempting to eat some sort of veggies with breakfast every morning.

Sweating it out

I'm currently battling a cold/sinus infection/thing, which got me thinking.  Is it better to workout when you're sick (sweat it out) or just to lay low.  I always battle with myself over this.  I mean, I may be sick, but am I so sick that I need to go lay in bed all day?  Today that answer was no.  I have been lucky this time around because I've had time to sleep and rest, work (though not super productively), and workout. 

My theory is this:  If whatever illness I happen to have does not involve my lungs, stomach (flu), or a fever, I usually will try to workout, even if it's just for a 1/2 hour and isn't very intense.  Activity during a cold or sinus infection (though it can be a huge issue to breathe through) seems to lessen the symptoms, even if only for a few hours.  I've also read that working out can boost your immune system, so it's a double whammy!

Whenever I accidently ingest something gluten-containing and I get symptoms, exercise is really the only thing that will help me feel better for a little while.  Trust me, if you know what it's like to have Celiac-like issues, you know that working out is the last thing you want to do!  But, if I can get my butt off the couch and go for a walk longer than 30 minutes (no matter how slow), it really seems to help.

So with cold and flu season on the horizon, I have been considering carrying a can of Lysol (or rather Method Antibac spray) with me where ever I go.  If this is a cold, I think I got it from the gym I recently joined.  If it's a sinus issue, then I blame the season.  Soon, however, I will be in close contact with 170 undergraduates.  If I don't get sick again, it will be a miracle!

On a different note, I had a kid (estimated age of 16) congratulate me for working out today at the gym.  When she asked when I started coming to the gym, I told her I joined last week.  She then proceeded to look all smug and say that she's been coming to the gym since she's been 12 and that some people just make a habit out of it.  I, of course, kept my mouth shut, as per my personaility, but I couldn't help but think that I've been a regular exerciser for longer than she's been alive!  Aparently since I hadn't joined that gym years ago, I have never worked out in my life, according to her mind.  Oh to be so naive again! 

Oh well, I'll go on with my life knowing that even if I had just joined a gym and started working out for the first time in my life, you have to start somewhere and whenever you make the decision to make your life healthier in any form, it's a good thing.

Stay healthy!

President's Adult Fitness Challenge

Remember the fitness tests in phy ed from way back in grade, middle, and high school?  I do...in fact...I think I remember it way too much!  It was such a source of stress for a chubby little kid like me.  When I say stress, I mean from the moment that I heard that the fitness tests were coming, I would think about it all the time and wonder how horrible I would do that time around.  1-mile run?  Yeah, it was more a walk.  Shuttle run?  Not too horrific.  Curl ups?  Always semi-okay here.  But, flex arm hang?  HA!  I still can't do that even with working on my upper body strength all summer.  I was always so jealous of the kids who could do well and always felt horrible when I didn't get a medal. 

So I was thinking about this tonight (I can honestly admit that I have no clue what triggered this), I started wondering if there was an adult fitness test similar to what we were subjected to as kids.  Sure enough...there is!  And, oh it is so much easier!  Well, I mean, at least they don't expect me to do the flexed arm hang anymore!

So, I was pretty bored tonight as the semester has not yet started and I am out of books to read.  I figured I might as well give this a go.  Now, I kind of cheated a little here.  I used my average mile walk time and heart rate after one mile from the gym yesterday when I walked 4 miles on the treadmill.  Otherwise, the other components are the sit and reach (ugh...), 1/2 sit ups, and pushups.  Here's my results:

The results here are kind of funny as they are so similar to where I remember being as a chubby kid.  I probably could walk faster but I thought my heart rate wasn't too bad.  Aparently, I'm not up to par with the rest of my age group though!  BUT!  Heck yeah!  I crushed the sit-ups and push-ups!  Oh yes, my strong exercises as a kid are still strong as an adult (and I would argue they are much stronger than when I was a kid).  Flexibility was so-so.  I know I'm not the most flexible at the moment, I didn't need the President's Challenge to tell me that!

Final thoughts on this?  Basically, I am only 1/2 way to my weight loss goal and my overall score is in the 57th percentile.  I'm good with that right now, especially since I'm fighting a cold right now.

On another note, I was finally getting used to the cooler weather and getting super in the mood for fall and...wham.  Hot weather!  I'm not looking forward to baking in my extremely sunny, non-air conditioned office tomorrow, especially since I'm pretty congested with this cold/sinus infection/thingy.  I've decided to try to think of it as a free sauna!  Two more days of hot and then cool fall weather will be upon us.  I even saw some low temperatures in the 40's for next week!  Perfect weather for the start of September!