Detox

 
I read an article in Vegetarian Times magazine about a 3 day detox and decided to give it a try. It wasn't one of those crazy detoxes where you only drink lemon water and eat grapes, you got to eat real food the whole time. It focused on 7 main foods:

1. Beets
2. Broccoli
3. Lentils
4. Almonds
5. Avocado
6. Spinach
7. Blueberries

I really like 5 of them, can tolerate one and am not a big fan of one (I'll leave you to figure out which is which) so I thought it was worth a try. The recipes focused on these 7 foods with a few extra vegetables, olive oil and raw honey. No dairy, wheat or added sugar in sight.

It consisted of 3 meals a day plus snacks. Breakfast was beet and blueberry smoothies which actually turned out nice once I got the amount of honey figured out. Lunch and dinner were a broccoli and lentil salad, broccoli stir fry with ginger-avocado sauce and a lentil borscht (i.e. beet soup). Snacks included almonds, apples and a beet and lentil hummus which was quite delicious.

It was quite easy to do this for 3 days. I was never really hungry (well no hungrier than normal anyway) but I think I did up my water intake as well.

Are my liver and kidneys detoxified - I have no idea! But do I feel better after doing it - yes! Is this feeling real or a placebo - who knows! I somehow lost 3 pounds during the 3 days, which was not what I expected.

Yesterday was the first day after the detox and I had some Greek yoghurt and Fiber One for breakfast (dairy and carbs!) and salads for dinner. I feel more bloated today so perhaps I do need to pay more attention to what I eat and how it makes me feel.

I think I eat pretty healthy most of the time, but this detox did open my eyes to trying new things and incorporating more variety into my diet (more lentils for sure, yum). Still not convinced about beets though.

Quick Catch Up

A few adventures from the past month. Lots of pictures, few words!

1) Trip to Pittsfield, MA and Balance Rock

Yep, the rock was balanced. And graffitied.

There were several huge trees that were down like this. Not sure which storm it was from though

 2) Appalachian/Long Trial in Bennington, VT

A nice quiet hike. Only saw one other guy with his dog

No, he didn't fall in!

3) Tulips in Washington Park

A beautiful Spring day in Albany

How pretty!

I don't know what this is, but I like it.

Lots of lovely tulips

4) Minnie's Favourite Activity

She loves to climb the tree outside our apartment

Time for a swim

A few weeks ago I did my first swim meet in 8 years. This was inspired my by former swimming coach  Mr Thain who passed away in January this year. For those of you who didn't know him you can read the many tributes to him here as they really say it all.

I had looked for a club to swim with in Albany when I first arrived here but wasn't very successful but I did remember the Adirondack District Masters Swimming website that is the organisation for masters swimming in this area and runs all the local swim meets. So I found a local meet about 20 minutes away, reactivated my United States Masters Swimming membership (I was a member back in CO) and entered 4 events for the April meet.

Since I moved first came to Oklahoma in 2004 I've done 2 swimming events. One was for Worcester in the summer I was home in 2005 and one was a 2.4 mile open water swim in Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins, CO in 2007. Ok, I'd played a lot of polo but I was definitely race rusty!

I swim in the UAlbany pool by myself, which is fine but it's not that easy to stay motivated for regular swimming or long practices. I've been swimming there twice a week before work and averaging about 2000 yards at a time - not a whole lot of swimming really.

So back to the meet.... I really enjoyed it!! It was pretty small (only about 30 swimmers) but it was in a nice new pool and ran very smoothly. My first swim was my longest (200 backstroke) and probably the one I was most nervous about - how do I pace a 200, it's been a long time!! I then did a 50 Fly, 100 Back and 50 back. Based on my sprint times I probably should have pushed my 100 and 200 a bit harder, but I have a better idea of what I can do now.

Were my times super fast, no. Were they as fast as I used to swim, no. But I did go faster than I expected/predicted on my entry times so that was nice. Did I win, surprisingly yes! Not only in my age group (thank goodness for age on day as I was in the 25-29 age group) but also overall in 3 of the 4 events. The 100 Back was the only one I didn't win but it was probably my favourite race as I was head to head with the winning guy for most of the race. That really helped get my racing juices flowing!

I'm not going to tell you my times, you can find them online if you are really interested but I will tell you my national 25-29 year age group rankings from the USMS website...

50 BK      #36
100 BK    #38
200 BK    #30
50 FLY    #81

Not too bad for someone who's only raced each event once this year and only swims 4000 yards a week! I can't make the next local meet but maybe I can do some other events over the summer and really start upping my racing for next season. I'm looking forward to racing again and it really isn't about winning, just doing the best I can :-)