• Going off sugar

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    “Go off sugar for a week.” I don’t know when the idea entered my head, but it’s on my list of things to do this year, so I’ve been researching in preparation. I decided early on that by “going off sugar” I meant that I would be “going off all foods that contain added sugar.” Naturally occurring sugar is fair game, and I’m not going to deprive myself of good nutrients. So, yes, fresh fruit is allowed. I already don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, so this is a way to consume more of them.

    Another decision I made from the beginning was to go cold turkey, especially since I’m only committed to a week. No “tapering” for me — though it helped that I only drink soda once or twice a month these days (after a four-hour exercise block, nothing tastes better to me than a cold diet, caffeine-free Coke). If you drink soda regularly, go off that first, because I have friends who’ve cut it out and that’s a tough detox all on its own.

    Before I go further, why did I want to go off sugar? After all, I’m not the type to think “X food is BAD!” I’m not a vegetarian, I’m not opposed to preservative-filled pepperoni on pizza, and I buy whichever produce is cheaper and looks good. I buy groceries at Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Target, Safeway and Whole Foods. (Yes, Walmart and Whole Foods were just included in the same sentence.) I wanted to go off sugar because I think I’m somewhat addicted to it, and I hate being addicted to or depending on things. I find myself with cookies and holiday candy and ice cream in my shopping basket. When I get home, they don’t last long because I don’t eat one or two cookies; I eat half the container in one sitting. I can’t help myself, and that is a problem I really don’t like. Additionally, I restrain myself when other people are around, which means that I know the difference between moderation and excess, but I ignore it when alone. I also want to lose weight, and we all know that sugar consumption doesn’t help.

    In preparation, I started looking at labels. I usually glance at them anyway, but this time I started looking for sugar. Do you know how many foods contain added sugar?! Mayonnaise does — every single kind in Safeway contains sugar (and there is a large mayo section at that store). Pasta sauce does. Even many taco seasonings do! Most bread does, but wonder of all wonders, delicious sourdough did not. There was hope!

    I thought through meals, beginning with breakfast. Coffee and tea are fine, since I am just fine with milk or nothing in my coffee and I never add anything to tea. Bagels from my favorite shop, however, are iffy because a lot of bread contains sugar. I tolerate plain oatmeal if it has a giant tablespoon of peanut butter mixed in (I’m perfectly happy with peanut butter that is merely ground-up peanuts, so that’s good because all of the Skippy/Jiffy/store brands have sugar added). And there is the delicious idea of half an avocado mashed on sourdough toast with a little salt sprinkled on top.

    Lunch varies for me. I occasionally make things like lasagna or enchiladas en masse, then freeze them into meal-sized portions that I can take to work. The sauces seem to all contain sugar, though, so those won’t work. I sometimes walk down the street to Costco for a slice of pizza or a chicken salad; the pizza was out (sauce and bread dough), but if I didn’t use the dressing (Caesar dressing) or croutons, the salad was fine since the chicken isn’t marinated or breaded. Subway is a mile away but that was out — I can taste the sweetness of their bread. However, we have a blender at work, so plain Greek yogurt with fruit will work for part of lunch.

    My snacks, or partial meals if I didn’t eat enough breakfast or lunch, are usually a Luna bar, an apple, a piece of cheese — or more often just too many crackers, chips, trail mix, dried fruit… In other words, not ideal. If I’m at home, popcorn is fine because I bought an air popper about a year ago and now I don’t even like the taste of microwaved popcorn (look at the ingredients on that stuff sometime). Fruit in moderation is good; dried fruit is out because most of it contains preservatives/sugar. Veggies and hard-boiled eggs would be better substitutes.

    I asked the google machine about alcohol, and it said what I suspected: except for dessert/sweet wines, alcohol itself does not contain added sugar. (Mixers used with hard liquor, including “healthy” juice, are loaded with sugar.) In fact, there’s an eight-week sugar detox program that allows one glass of wine with dinner up to five nights a week. That certainly seemed doable for me. I like alcohol, but unlike sweets, it can sit in my house untouched for months. I’m perfectly fine not having alcohol, so an occasional drink could serve as a “treat” instead of sugar. However, a week without alcohol won’t kill me, so I should probably just abstain to avoid using it as a substitute for my sugar fix.

    Funny enough, two days after I started drafting this post (while at Panera eating a bagel with “low fat New York cheesecake cream cheese” that I guarantee contains sugar), I learned that I was in great company: pro runner Kara Goucher blogged that she had gone off sugar for 67 days.

    And that leads me to a final note before I click “publish” on this post. I am only going completely off sugar for one week; I hope it kick-starts something more permanent, but I’m not committed beyond the week. Why only one week? Because I’m training for endurance events and need the sports drink and gels that contain sugar. I really can’t eat much solid food while riding my bike for hours, because I get woozy and light-headed, so I need to get calories through fluid and gel. My conclusion (based on personal experience and talking to cyclists), is that it’s due to my slow circulation: If blood is busy digesting food in my stomach, there isn’t enough time for it to also keep flowing to my head. While it’s a bummer because I have the world’s most solid stomach that can eat anything, it’s also nice to have finally figured out why some runs, rides and athletic endeavors go sideways on me.

    Bottom line: I’m going off sugar as a personal experiment, not as an indictment against sugar itself. Like with most things in life, I do not think sugar itself is bad; it just should not be used in excess.

    I’ll report back once my week is done. Maybe I’ll magically drop 15 pounds while I’m at at it?! Oh wait, this is real life, as opposed to my dreams…


    This entry was posted in 36 Things

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: Trapper Keepers

    Posted on by Layla 4 Comments

    Raise your hand if you had a Trapper Keeper. Raise your hand if you remember the design on it. And shake your hands in the air like you just don’t care (preferably while wearing acid-washed jeans and your bangs in a 3-inch-high poof) if you can find a picture of that Trapper Keeper via Google’s image search. Oh yes, my friends, I found my old Trapper Keeper.

    Yep, my Trapper Keeper looked exactly like the one above (and it looks like vintage ones are still floating around on Etsy)). I used it in school for quite a while. At some point I stopped using it, I think maybe when we needed bigger binders. But the Trapper Keeper stuck around my house for years, because it was a nice-sized binder to hold sheet music on the piano without being too bulky.

    I think my classmates and I switched to big canvas-covered binders, which were cool because we could write and draw all over them with multi-colored ballpoint pens. I don’t remember what was written on mine, but I do remember a pink binder and a turquoise one, both of them completely covered with writing and doodles by the end of the school year.

    Anyway, here’s some interesting history on the Trapper Keeper.

    And, after all these years, the Trapper Keeper is still going strong.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Biking, take two

    Posted on by Layla 2 Comments

    Last fall, I was planning to attempt a century (100-mile) bike ride. It was a way of distracting myself from all the unhappiness in my life: I’d been unable to run pain-free for a year, I’d had my heart broken, I’d failed at multiple things, and I was just generally feeling that life was a bummer. Two weeks before that planned century ride, I wrote here about a demoralizing “last long ride” and how much doubt I had. I got a lot of encouraging responses (many of them on Facebook, unfortunately, so they’re not preserved on that post).

    Well, I never wrote a follow-up post, but I didn’t do the century ride. I couldn’t face the idea of failing yet another thing. I know that sounds so negative, and it is, but when the day of the ride came and I wasn’t out there, I felt fine with my decision. Yes, I probably would have finished the ride through sheer determination. But if I hadn’t been able to finish, nobody would have been there to pick me up off the ground and tell me it was OK. I’ve only ever dropped out of one running race, which was the right decision but I hated it so much and was so very upset at myself. Fortunately, I had my friend Katie there to pick me up off the ground. This time, I didn’t know anybody at the century ride, and it wasn’t near where any friends live.

    So, yeah, I didn’t do the ride. But wait! This is not actually a negative blog post! Since I have a million photos, here are a few to hint at what’s to come (if you don’t already know, which you probably already do, since my readership is not exactly vast).

    Let's make some tweaks.
    Skinny road tires.
    Many hills await...

    You see, I did keep bicycling — certainly less than when I was trying to cram for a century ride on a hybrid bike, but I didn’t stop riding. Somewhere along the way, I’d discovered that I could eventually reach that mind-calming feeling I get when I run. Granted, it takes 30 miles on wheels instead of a few miles on foot, but it’s such a relief when I do reach that point.

    Last fall, I’d also been road bike shopping but hadn’t found a bike in my price range that made me want to hand over my precious dollars. Meanwhile, do you have any idea how much there is to learn about bikes?! I knew more than the average bike newbie because I am surrounded by triathletes, and because I have ridden for fun since childhood, but I didn’t know how to shift gears on road handlebars. (I’m still not entirely sure that a “cassette” is anything more than the device by which I used to listen to Amy Grant. Oh wait, the device in this example would be the Sony Walkman, so the cassette would be, hmmm, yeah, I’ll stop there.) I remember being intimidated by running stores when I first took up running, but let me tell you, they are NOTHING compared to bike shops. Also, the shoes are funnier looking.

    I won’t go into detail about all the shops I went to between September and December, or all the web articles I read more than once because they didn’t make sense until I started test riding bikes. Craig’s List and I became close pals, as I checked several times a week for bikes in my size. (If you’re bike shopping, factor in the cost of a tune-up and maybe having to replace tires, etc.) I reached a point where I was tired of shopping, and I concluded that I wouldn’t get everything I wanted in a bike. I wanted good components but I also wanted carbon, and the ideal combo was out of my price range.

    Then the new year arrived. I did my taxes and saw that I’d be getting money back, and learned that I’d get a bonus, and I had gotten some money for Christmas and my birthday. I was thinking about the things I wanted out of the year, and bigger bicycle adventures were still on my wish list. So I went back to the bike stores and the internet research, looking a bit beyond my price range. If a few additional hundred dollars could make the difference, I knew it would be the smart choice. Like a car, once you buy a bike, you won’t be able to resell it for the same price, so it’s best to get something you’ll be happy with for a while. I went back to one bike shop and began thinking seriously about a bike in the higher price range, even though it wasn’t a women’s bike so the reach was kind of long. And then, while pondering, I went to another shop.

    At that shop, I found The Bike.

    The funny and possibly absurd thing is that I’m pretty sure I test rode that same bike last summer, in my second outing to a bike store. I vaguely remember them putting me on a couple bikes to test and then, “just to see the difference,” they put me on this full carbon bike with mostly Ultegra components. The ride was so smooth, and the shifting was so much better, and the angle of the hoods (the handlebar-things) fit my hands so much better. And it was out of my price range. So, if my memory is correct and it’s the same bike, those sneaky salespeople and this very bike are responsible for making me find fault with every other bike I tested for the next umpteen months.

    Before the new helmet, new cages and new saddlebag. And when everything was still green.

    Maybe because it’s not fully Ultegra components (brakes are Shimano 105, which is actually what I had decided to settle on for the whole bike), the bike dropped in price from last summer. It’s also a 2013 model, so by January 2015, the shop owners really needed to get that bike off the sales floor. The price drop plus my increased price range combined to make it within range. They dropped the price a bit more, I got them to put new handlebar tape on it, and we had a deal.

    On February 20, my new bike came home. It was my most expensive purchase since I bought my car nearly 11 years ago, but I’m very glad I waited until I could increase my budget a little bit to get (almost) everything I wanted. I’ve since put almost 400 miles on the bike, I’ve gotten matching bottle cages, I bought a very-overdue new (yes, matching) helmet, and I finally bought new sunglasses that have lighter lenses (my $17 4-year-old ones were fine in bright sunlight, but they were downright risky in lower light because I couldn’t see — hooray for REI dividends and coupons).

    I’ve also had my first-ever flat tire, despite putting 2,100 miles on my other bike’s original tires and tubes. I was by myself, at mile 48, five miles from home in a bad cell phone area where I couldn’t google “how to change a bike tube.” Remarkably, a failed tire-changing lesson from three years ago apparently sank into my subconsciousness, and I successfully changed my own tube without help. That was quite empowering, I must say.

    Cruising around my old college campus on a visit. That building is where I spent most of my waking (and sleeping) hours. Ah, journalism life.
    Sadly, I never biked when I was at school there.

    This last weekend, six months after the ride I talked about at the beginning of this long-winded blog post, I rode 76.5 miles. Once again, I was gearing up for an attempt at a century ride. The ride got long, the weather got hot, and at one point I felt pretty low. But I was able to rally, and I finished the ride with a feeling of “I did that!” rather than “I don’t know if I can do it.”

    The century ride is in 10 days and is harder than the one I’d planned to do last October. But I’ll have friends there. I’ll have a bike that weighs 17ish pounds instead of 28 pounds (though I have not lost the weight I was supposed to lose, so that kind of negates it). Since January 1, I’ve cycled 944 miles and I’ll cross the 1,000-mile point before the century ride. It’s not much compared to all the triathletes I know and I won’t be setting any speed records, but it’s more than I’ve ever done.

    Plus, I want to go out and face scary things, which is a much different mental place than I was in last fall. That is probably the biggest difference, bike included.

    The next time I mention my bike here, I hope it’s because we rode 100 miles in one day.


    This entry was posted in Bicycling Goals

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: Boston dreams

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    Yesterday was the 119th Boston Marathon. I watched the marathon’s live stream worked while friends did amazing things in less-than-ideal weather.  It’s been two years since bombs went off at the finish line, destroying lives and permanently changing many others. Earlier this month, the surviving bomber was found guilty of all charges against him; today the penalty phase starts, when the jury will be tasked with determining whether he dies or spends life in prison.

    There is no real “closure” in tragedy. When someone is brought to justice, it doesn’t bring back the victims and remove their loved ones’ pain. I tend to think the only thing to do is to keep living in honor of the ones who died too early. Two years ago, hours after the Boston bombing, I wrote, “Life should be lived, and dreams should come true.” I still believe that, and I just re-read that post of mine. Every bit of it resonates with me just as much, perhaps even more today.

    Maybe it’s ego-centric, but that piece about Boston is today’s Tuesday time-waster. I wrote it when I had one of those magical urges to write — when they come, if I have the opportunity to sit down and write, magic happens. The words come from somewhere deep inside, from a place I only wish I could tap into at will.


    This entry was posted in Running Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: Virtual LA Marathon (and Boston links)

    Posted on by Layla 1 Comment

    The Boston Marathon is next Monday, and I’ll be tracking diligently working all morning. A few friends and my uncle are running it, and I’m looking forward to all the coverage.

    But I’ll have more about Boston in a couple paragraphs, because today’s Tuesday Time-Waster is about another large marathon. In the spirit of racing, the LA Times in March created a fun interactive LA Marathon graphic. You enter your marathon time (I had to enter a pace, too, to get it to work correctly), pick your opponents, and then click “Run!” to see how fast you are in comparison.

    The good news: I beat chef Gordon Ramsey by 45 seconds (though we won’t talk about who would win in a cooking contest). The bad news: If I ever have to out-run a California grizzly bear, I’m doomed. It turns out, those lumbering beasts can run about 20 minutes faster than world record.

    I'm the turquoise dot, running neck and neck with Gordon Ramsay's red dot. We left Freddie Prinze Jr. behind, but a bear as well as a bus beat us...

    Getting back to the Boston Marathon, here’s a list of the starting times. If you’re speedy and your name is Norman, then you start at 10 a.m. Eastern time, which means I won’t even be at work yet. If you’re my uncle Pete who recently dominated a 5k, you start at 10:50 a.m. To find a runner’s bib number and wave, go here. To track up to 10 athletes and get alerts on their progress, there are free iPhone and Android apps that you can get in the app store by searching for “Boston Marathon” or via this link. Live online coverage will be shown here — and that’s when I’ll be saying, “I need a third monitor!” (Yes, I have first-world problems.)

    To those of you running Boston, have a wonderful race. To those of you, like me, who dream of qualifying, do not give up. After all, at least we don’t have to run from a California grizzly.


    This entry was posted in Running Tuesday Time-Waster

  • My attempt at swimming lessons

    Posted on by Layla 11 Comments

    Many months ago, when I got the wild idea to do 36 things in one year, “take a swimming lesson” was one of the first things that popped into my brain. After all, I’m surrounded by triathletes to the point that I find myself giving them tips and regularly spouting triathlon trivia. I’ve also been to Hawaii a number of times over the years, I have a couple pools in my apartment complex, and I have gym access to several “real” pools. Oh, and I’ve proven to myself time and time again that the only way I can run is if I also cross train. Clearly, I should swim.

    There is the small matter of how I almost drowned once as a completely sober adult… And how it took me years of childhood lessons before I allegedly passed the test… And how a boy once tried teaching me to dive but instead I belly flopped repeatedly until it hurt and then I lost an earring and he couldn’t find it at the bottom of the pool, though he kept valiantly trying…

    I had a feeling I would put off the swimming lesson thing, but then an Amazon Local deal appeared in my inbox shortly after I launched my 36 Things project. I called to see if they had adult lesson times available (they did), and if they had evenings so I wouldn’t have to take time off work (they did), and I looked online to see if they had good reviews (they did). $36 later, I was signed up for four 30-minute lessons.

    On a mid-March evening, I stayed late at work until it was time to change. I put on the one-piece Speedo swimsuit I’d purchased for $19 a year earlier at Costco (and had never worn). I had goggles ready (which I’d worn once), along with a swim cap (never worn). I drove a few miles to American Swim Academy, walked inside and surveyed what I describe as a cute pool.

    I impressed myself by getting the untested swim cap onto my big head on the first try — good sign. I looked at the seating area and saw one woman in a swimsuit; I went over and said hi, and yes, she was there for the swim lesson and was very nice — good sign. It was just the two of us, instead of the maximum of four students I’d known about when signing up — good sign. The teacher was a cool guy who didn’t put on any airs or make me feel stupid — good sign.

    You’d think all those good signs would lead to a good time. Well, I had forgotten about the swimming lessons when I’d given blood for the first time four days earlier. I’ve since learned that I am basically useless for about 10-14 days after giving blood; half an hour is my max for exercise before I really cannot see anything and am utterly exhausted. That first swim lesson had me breathless after two laps in the small pool.

    The second lesson rolled around, and I was now 11 days post-blood-donation. This time we had a third student. The other woman was a beginner, but this new woman didn’t let go of the wall — in four feet of water. I was mainly there to learn how to breathe to the side during the crawl stroke, so I can actually get a workout. The other two woman were there to learn how to avoid drowning and conquer their fear of water. I felt like the showoff I never want to be — I was basically an intimidating asshole who didn’t need to learn how to stay alive in water. To be clear, our teacher never made me feel that way, but I felt so guilty. I was mostly on my own, though other teachers tried to give me pointers and were all very nice.

    The third lesson rolled around, with the same three of us students. Did I mention how much goggles hurt? I mean, I prefer them to the burning eyes and risk of infection from lord knows how many kids peed in that pool all day before I showed up at 6:30 p.m. But they hurt, and the raccoon eye marks are definitely attractive when wandering around Trader Joe’s after 30 minutes in the pool. The other two women were still trying not to drown,  The teacher and I still hadn’t figured out which side I should be breathing on (when asked which felt easier, my answer was a quick “neither?”). I couldn’t count three strokes before I’d be gasping for air, but maybe I was actually supposed to be counting four, or possibly two?

    Tonight was supposed to be my fourth and last lesson. As I sat there at work at 5:15 p.m., thinking about how I’d be hanging out for another hour and then going to a place I was dreading, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I locked up and went home. As soon as I got on the freeway in the wrong direction from the swimming pool, I felt so relieved. The relief was worth the $9 I had pre-paid and wouldn’t get back.

    And thus ends my swimming lesson experiment. I’d still like to be able to swim without getting exhausted immediately — even when I’ve been in fast marathon shape, I can’t swim more than two laps without needing a break, and by four laps I can’t see (for perspective, when I’m in shape, I manage not to reach that point until the end of a marathon when I’ve just raced the last three miles). The other day I got a brochure about all the programs my city offers, and they did have adult swimming lessons in it for a good price. But I don’t want to pay any amount of money to hang out in a pool feeling guilty because I know the basics of swimming and am thus taking time away from those who do not know how. I also don’t want to be the idiot taking up space in a gym pool where real swimmers are trying to train for an Ironman.

    I guess I’ll just keep doing other cross-training activities and envying those people who mysteriously enjoy swimming. At least I got a couple sunset drives out of the swimming lessons.


    This entry was posted in 36 Things

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: incorrect phrases

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    A minor pet peeve of mine is when people say they “could care less” about something when they actually mean they couldn’t care less. If you could care less, it means you do actually care. For instance, I really could NOT care any less about ultimate fighters. I don’t watch them, I can’t stand their cauliflower ears (I’m shuddering as I type this), and I would rather turn the TV off than watch it.

    Hm, I’m not really sure how I ventured into the topic of ultimate fighters. Anyway, today’s Tuesday Time-Waster read is about that phrase, along with 19 others that people commonly confuse. “20 Embarrassing Phrases Even Smart People Misuse” is really worth the read, and maybe the bookmark. And the title is correct: I think most of us weren’t sure about at least a couple of these phrases, and the explanations are useful.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: PacMan

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    Google has done something fun again: You can play PacMan on Google maps!

    It’s pretty simple. Go to Google maps, preferably to your own neighborhood for extra fun. Look at the lower left corner; see the PacMan game square? Click that.

    You may have to move the map around if Google tells you it won’t work in that area. It needs enough connecting roads in order to play the game.

    But then you should get the start screen. (This is not my neighborhood, in case you’re a nutcase that wants to hunt me down — like the Canada geese have been doing to me lately.)

    Use the keyboard arrows to move PacMan around. If you’re like me and are too busy taking screenshots, you might not last too long:

    So, there you go. I have a feeling Google timed this for tomorrow’s April Fools Day, so I don’t know if it will work for very long.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: 50-state road trip

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    I like road trips, and I’ve long wanted to do one that hits every one of the continental U.S. states. I never actually sat down and mapped it out (though I did do most of the mapping on this road trip from San Francisco to Chicago). Well, now I don’t have to, because a Michigan State nerd/awesome person/student did it for me!

    Yes, that’s right: This map has a stop in every one of the lower 48 states, for a total of 13,699 miles. Bonus: Every stop is a landmark. (However, Carhenge in Nebraska is worth a stop, if you ask me.) Here’s the link to just the map, and you can click on each location.

    And, last but not least, here’s the original blog post, with all of the nerdy details. He even released the Python code if you a) know how to use it, and b) aren’t satisfied with Google maps.

    Hat tip to Lorelei for the link.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: St. Patrick’s Day

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    Since St. Patrick’s Day happens to fall on a Tuesday, I’m subjecting you to some greenaplooza. (That’s a word, I’m sure.)

    First, there was this fantastic text this morning from Michaela:

    Then there was Google, which was cute and linked to this street view collection of Ireland:

    And then there is my own Instagram post, showing off my earrings, sweater, toenails and emoji usage skills:

    You can go here for all of my Instagram posts. Maybe that’s my official Tuesday Time-Waster 11:11 a.m. link for the day?

    And here is one more bonus photo, as proof that I’m always ridiculous on March 17 (and every day, for that matter). When one is in Portland with a friend’s kid, one does this:


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster