• 2014 goal check-in: October

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    October was uneventful and unsuccessful. I already know I’m only going to meet a couple of my goals for the year, so maybe I’m just already moving on to new things? I am actually cooking up something different for next year, and it will have its own section on this little website. That’s a few months away, though, so I hope to successfully update some things behind the scenes first. But here’s one part: I’m going to change the 4-year-old header up there. Okay, enough rambling about vague things; time to move on to the month’s goal progress.

    1-3, and 5: Running-related goals. I’ve climbed back onto on yet ANOTHER IT band rehab wagon. And when my deductible resets in January, I’m going to try a different medical professional. There was, however, a fun hike with some girlfriends including Kristen and her baby girl:

    Ramage Park (though one sign spelled it "Rampage," which sounds like a fun place to trail run)

    4: Do a century bike ride: Nope. I had a confidence-killer of a ride. And I had some medication issues that made me fatigued. So the ride didn’t happen.

    I did ride to the top of a hill.

    5: Bike at least 700 1,500 miles (increased the goal since I met it in July): I only biked 99.72 miles in October. The year’s total: 1,792.04 miles.

    "I'm scared to touch this bike that isn't mine and which retails for close to $10,000."

    7. Go to the gym at least 150 times this year: Oh wow, I went to the gym once in October?! That means I’ve only gone 68 times all year. Oooops.

    8. Read at least one book a month: I read “Sycamore Row” by John Grisham, which actually got back to the “good” Grisham genre (unlike “The Litigators” and some of his recent books). It helped that this book returned to the “A Time to Kill” setting, and focused again on small town lawyer Jake Brigance. It was fun to read a sequel, and this also meant that the characters were more developed than Grisham’s recent ones.

    9. Cook dinner more often: There were a few more meals in here. I don’t think “throw random stuff into an omelette” counts, but hey, at least I cooked that stuff occasionally. Here are a few times that I remembered to take pictures:

    Enchilada pasta stuff
    Tacos
    Beer bread

    10. Go to bed at 10 p.m.: I did this most of the time. Hooray for medication fatigue? Well, except that I still couldn’t wake up early enough the next morning to go to the gym… (November spoiler alert: That situation has gotten better.)

    11. Get down to XXX amount of pounds: Nope. I blame the trick-or-treaters who didn’t come to my door so I’ve had to eat all the Halloween candy I bought for them. Where did the kids go?!

    12. Blog an average of twice a week: No. But that’s OK.

    13. Find a cheaper place to live: No, and I’m not going to bother linking to the “a one-bedroom apartment costs $3,000 in San Francisco” articles I had considered.

    That’s it, but now let’s have an unrelated random photo: the backpack this guy wore to a San Francisco Giants playoff game. (Did I mention that the Giants won the World Series?! YES THEY DID!! Hooray SPORTS!)

    Turtle power?!

    Oh, and one more…

    The Bay Bridge

    This entry was posted in Goals

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: MadBum and the Giants

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    Baseball playoffs have been in full swing (see what I did there?), and the San Francisco Giants are one win away from winning the World Series! To say that tonight’s game will be exciting is a bit of an understatement.

    Today’s fun thing is this piece in the New Yorker about star pitcher Madison Bumgarner and his Giants. Bumgarner earned two World Series rings by the age of 23 and now, at age 25, he’s trying for his third. He’s pitched amazingly well this post-season, and on Sunday night he shut out the Kansas City Royals.

    But here’s the interesting footnote: That link is not a glowing story from a San Francisco writer who’s reveling in his local team’s third World Series appearance in five years. No, it’s written by a guy who’s been contributing to the New Yorker since 1944 — as in, 70 years! The Giants won the World Series in 1954, when they were in New York. This writer, Roger Angell, had already been contributing to the magazine for 10 years at that point. And then another 56 years went by until the Giants won the World Series again, in 2010. Angell has seen it all. And he loves it. That says a lot.

    And, since I was able to go to my first-ever playoff games this season, here are a few photos from post-season at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

    Beautiful pre-game ceremony
    Play ball!
    Blimp
    Winning is fun

    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Untrained and unsure

    Posted on by Layla 2 Comments

    Last weekend, I set out on a bike ride. The weather at that point was lovely, and I even wore arm warmers in the crisp early fall air. I felt good, I took in the various scenery, and the miles rolled by. I had planned out an 85-mile route, which would beat my previous longest distance of 75 miles. I had planned to ride a couple new-to-me roads, see new things, and complete the final ride before I attempted a century (100 mile) ride.

    I even started writing a blog post in my head. It would have gone something like this: “I haven’t mentioned it a lot, but in two weeks I will attempt to do a century ride. I don’t have a road bike and I’m nervous about riding with a lot of people, but today I rode 86 miles. I crawled up big hills and careened back down them. I passed windmills and cows and uptight drivers. I burnt a bunch of calories, tried not to get sunburnt, and barely conquered my stairs when I got home.”

    That blog post vanished at mile 41, when I reached the top of a hill (which wasn’t even the beginning of a five-mile climb). I managed to unclip, stop, plant both feet on the ground and get my head down before everything went completely dark. I knew what was happening, because I’d had it happen to me in races a couple years ago: my heart rate got so high that the blood just didn’t get to my head anymore. It happens when I push harder than I’m trained, and dehydration is a contributing factor (something I battle a lot).

    According to my text message timestamps, I spent 19 minutes on the side of the road. My mental repetitions of “don’t pass out, don’t pass out” worked, as did hanging upside down while holding onto my bike for dear life. From my upside-down viewpoint, I could see down the hill when other cyclists were approaching, so I was able to lift my head up in time and say, “Yep!” when they asked if I was okay (as cyclists always ask any rider who is stopped).

    But my 86-mile day was done. At that point, I was 26 miles from home and the day was warming up quickly. I consulted my phone for the shortest way home, and then had to keep stopping every few miles because my brain couldn’t remember anything. At one point, a guy asked me for directions to the train station, and I realized later that my wrong directions mean he is probably still lost…

    Anyway, I made it home, crawled up the stairs in what was by then 91-degree weather, and collapsed inside my front door. I peeled off clothes right there on the tile floor, not caring about the sweat like I normally do. I was defeated.

    Today, the last weekend before that century ride, was another “blah” ride. I’ve had a week to sit myself down and clean up my diet, but I have not. I’d had a week to do a bunch of solid cardio workouts, but I did, um, one. While I do suspect a different medical issue is affecting me a little, it’s not enough to be a valid excuse. Simply put, I’ve failed to train properly.

    So now I sit here on my couch on a Sunday evening while the San Francisco Giants give everything they have in the National League Championship Series. I’m struggling with whether I should attempt the century ride, because I do not have the strength to deal with yet another failure right now. Exactly one year ago today, my IT band gave out. Since then, my life has been a string of one failure after another, one bad decision after another. I trusted my leg, I trusted people, and I trusted my gut — and they all rejected me fully and completely.  I still want to do the century ride, but I know that’s probably my gut talking, which also means that I should probably make the opposite decision.

    I went back and read this post full of good advice about facing the fear of failure. One line jumped out at me: “You only regret the things you didn’t do.” That makes me want to do the century ride, and I know I will probably attempt it next weekend. But I can’t stop thinking: “If I hadn’t run those races on my injured leg, maybe I could run now. If I hadn’t followed what I mistakenly thought was happiness, maybe I wouldn’t feel so unhappy now.” So I wonder: Should I NOT do this century ride, so I don’t risk failure? I don’t know, but I guess I’ll have an answer by Saturday morning.


    This entry was posted in Bicycling Other

  • 2014 goal check-in: September

    Posted on by Layla 1 Comment

    September came and went, but it was 97 degrees yesterday. In October. San Francisco, where homes don’t have air conditioning, was 90 — and people there wear tank tops when it reaches 65 degrees… Anyway, here’s how September shaped up in the year’s goals department.

    1-3, and 5: Running-related goals. My IT band was behaving. And then it was not. I did log 31.91 miles on foot in September.

    4: Do a century bike ride: I’m registered for one. More on that later.

    6. Bike at least 700 1,500 miles (increased the goal since I met it in July): I rode 488.09 miles in September, which beat my previous monthly record (384) by 104 miles! Wow! That puts me at 1,692.32 miles of cycling for the year, so that goal is definitely met.

    The best ride of the month was when I took a day off work and hung out in Sacramento with Michaela, who was in town to visit her family. We rode 50 miles (flattest route I’ve ridden in four years), and it was so nice to have company. It was an out-and-back route so there was no way to get lost, right? Wrong! After all, this is Layla we are talking about. Mile 47 found us in a sketchy part of the city that Michaela summed up best as the “crack parade.” We survived, of course. Good times.

    Good view on a Friday
    We are great at selfies.

    Near the end of the month, I rode 75 miles, which was another big milestone.  I ate this afterward, because I am that awesome.

    7. Go to the gym at least 150 times this year: I went to the gym 12 times in September, which puts me at 67 trips to go for the year. Yeah, that won’t happen in the next three months.

    8. Read at least one book a month: I read “The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon, and it was just “OK.” It’s been sitting on my bookshelves for awhile; I found it on sale somewhere around the time the movie came out, so I figured I would read it first. Well, it turns out that the movie has nothing to do with the book — and I never did see the movie. The book had a cool plot idea, about an immigrant in the early 1900s who is shot by the Chicago police chief, and decades later a writer sets out to find out what really happened. I slogged through it and at the end thought, “Um, nothing happened.”

    9. Cook dinner more often: I tried a recipe that involved a cheese sauce and avocado, so it should be amazing, right? Well, I can’t for the life of me make a cheese sauce and had to throw out the entire gloppy mess. That was extremely frustrating and demoralizing. At the end of the month, though, I decided to try “real” stir fry with a sauce, rather than my years-old method of just just cooking everything and adding soy sauce at the end. I used corn starch, and it actually dissolved and thickened (though the beef was slightly overcooked, though that has nothing to do with the sauce)!! So, why can’t I just use corn starch in cheese sauce, since I can never get it to work with flour? I assume there is a reason, and I don’t feel like wasting more cheese and TWO avocados on such an experiment.

    10. Go to bed at 10 p.m.: I did this most of the time, but I’ve had some sleep issues lately. I toss and turn, get up and walk around, get back in bed, and then I can’t get up the next morning. And then I don’t go to the gym before work, which I like doing. Argh, bad cycle.

    11. Get down to XXX amount of pounds: I’m still down overall, but not to where I need to be. More argh.

    12. Blog an average of twice a week: Nope!

    13. Find a cheaper place to live: Nope! Honestly, I don’t see this one happening. Here’s a fun/sad article about San Francisco rent compared to elsewhere, told in terms of food.

    And, just for fun, here’s a photo taken in the Oakland hills. Not surprisingly, Berkeley is nearby.

    Volvo overshadowing a Smart Car

    This entry was posted in Bicycling Goals

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: What not to say to people battling depression

    Posted on by Layla 2 Comments

    This doesn’t fit the “time-waster” category, since you never know if it could save someone. Rather, it’s something more than worth a few minutes of your time on a Tuesday morning.

    After Robin Williams died, suicide was all the talk on the news and in social media. As always happens, the talk has faded while the fact remains — the depression battle continues for many thousands of people. For those of us fortunate enough to not battle depression, it’s sometimes hard to know what to say or do. How, we ask, can we help if we don’t truly understand what it’s like? We don’t know how to avoid sounding like a hypocrite, so we often just say nothing. But we all know people who battle depression, so we should at least try to help, or let them know that we don’t think any less of them because they have this battle.

    With that said, this article was posted by a friend of mine who DOES battle depression. I figured that if she agreed with it, that would be a good place to start. Here’s what you shouldn’t say — and alternatives that will make you understand a bit more. It’s a lot to take in, so I’ve read it a couple times in the past month. I think it’s the least we can do for our friends and loved ones.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • 2014 goal check-in: August

    Posted on by Layla 1 Comment

    It’s September?! How did that happen?? Well, September 1 was 95 degrees, so the summer certainly isn’t gone. Okay, let’s move along to a progress report on the year’s goals.

    1-3, and 5: Running-related goals. Someday, my IT band will behave.

    4: Do a century bike ride: I went on some ridiculous rides in August, so this goal might be doable. First there was the 42-miler that had more than 2,500 feet of climbing, much to my surprise — I had NO idea that was going to happen! One week later, I rode 56 miles. And one week after that, I rode 62 miles to meet the 100k milestone — that was a big confidence boost toward the “ride 100 miles” goal. I finished off August with a 57-mile ride that had 3,280 feet of climbing, which is about the same elevation gain as the century ride I’m considering. So, I’m cautiously optimistic.

    On the technical side, the opinion of most people is that I should not attempt a century ride on my hybrid bike, though random cyclists actually compliment me on my hill-climbing “on that bike” EVERY SINGLE TIME I’m out riding. (Determination is a funny thing, I guess.) However, there’s the cost factor. I’ve test-ridden some road bikes and determined that, because my current bike is quite good, there is no point in buying anything less than a carbon bike. They’re expensive, and of course my small hands require better/more expensive shifters. (Shimano Tiagras sent me zipping back to the bike store, cutting the test ride short because they actually hurt — of course the more expensive Shimano Ultegras were just fine…) So, I’m kind of inclined to just keep riding my hybrid, though of course now it needs $100 of maintenance within the next month. Sigh.

    In addition to griping about the price of bikes, I wear 3-year-old $17 non-cycling sunglasses from Target.

    6. Bike at least 700 miles: Last month I met and thus increased this goal to 1,500 miles. I rode 384.05 miles in August, which is definitely a new record for me! That puts me at 1,204.23 miles for the year.

    I've been riding these brown, aka "golden," hills of California. (Great riding, actually. Few cars or stoplights.)

    7. Go to the gym at least 150 times this year: I went 15 times in August, which would put me way over my goal if I did that every month. Alas, I did not. I need 79 more gym trips to meet the goal, and that won’t happen, especially with trying to get outside miles on the bike. But at least I’m trending the right direction!

    8. Read at least one book a month: I read “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” which was a fun book with a creative plot. It’s about a guy in San Francisco (which helped me picture the setting) who gets a job at a very strange bookstore, and he sets out to find out why it’s full of strange books that are only borrowed by strange people. Bonus fun thing: The blurb on the inside back jacket says the author “splits his time between San Francisco and the internet.” I would love to describe myself that way on a book jacket!

    9. Cook dinner more often: I mostly failed at this one.

    Stir-fry with instant quinoa.

    But can I show you a couple other food pictures instead? Michaela, Himanshu and I had the full tasting paired with beer meal, and the next day we had original Irish coffees. If you want to find food, Michaela is your girl.

    10. Go to bed at 10 p.m.: I nailed this most nights. I also managed to get to the gym before 5 a.m. sometimes. Note: The weight machine crowds at 5 a.m. are non-existent; the 5 p.m. crowds are definitely alive and well.

    11. Get down to XXX amount of pounds: I gained back one of the pounds I lost in July, which really isn’t much at all, percentage-wise. But that took me a pound in the opposite direction of goal weight (she says while eating pretzel M&Ms…)

    12. Blog an average of twice a week: Nope. But I’ve already decided I’m fine with missing this goal.

    13. Find a cheaper place to live: No progress at all. I’m still completely lost. Just for oh-so-much-cheer, here’s an August article about the median cost of homes in the Bay Area. I didn’t renew my Pandora subscription, thus saving $36 for the year, so now I hear occasional ads. They recently had one for homes in my area “starting in the low $800’s!” and I just laughed and thought, “If I won’t pay $36 to get rid of ads for a year, what makes you think I have $800,000 for a home?!”

    I guess the trick is to just keep looking for the rays of light.

    No Instagram filters needed for this sunrise.

    This entry was posted in Bicycling Goals

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: A hermit’s 27-year tale

    Posted on by Layla 1 Comment

    Today’s “time-waster” will actually take some time if you read the whole article. But it’s a really fascinating account of a man who lived alone in New England woods for 27 years. The “hermit,” spent his time reading, stealing food and propane from homes when the residents were gone and listening to music (he didn’t like Bach, which got him a point in my book because I never liked playing Bach on the piano — too boring for me, or “pristine,” as the hermit said). The story came about because of a writer who decided to contact the man in jail, and did so via handwritten mail; on that level, the story is fascinating from the writer’s view, too.

    While the story is intriguing, it’s also sad to know that this man lived from age 20 to age 47 without anybody to care for him or without having anybody to care for. I’ve been realizing lately that most of us are better, kinder, nicer people if we have other people to care for and let other people care for us. Like this hermit, I’ve lost some perspective of the world because I’m so independent and distrusting. It’s definitely something for all of us to think about.

    (Hat tip for this article goes to my friend Sam.)

    Oh, and a postscript of sorts about the hermit’s punishment for committing more than 1,000 burglaries over the years: The man is out of jail but must check in weekly with a judge.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • Tuesday Time-Waster: Messing with Facebook

    Posted on by Layla 1 Comment

    If you use Facebook, you’ve probably noticed that some people appear more frequently in your news feed. You may have also noticed that if you seek out someone you haven’t interacted with in ages and “like” something they posted, they’ll suddenly start appearing in your feed, too. It’s not a coincidence; it’s an algorithm. I wrote about this phenomenon almost two years ago, after I deactivated my Facebook account for a week. That post still gets a lot of hits (most from spammers, I suspect), and I myself sometimes still wonder if I should back off from Facebook.

    This post is not about Facebook/online privacy, which is a whole other matter, but about an experiment done by Wired.com writer Mat Honan. It was interesting enough that I thought it would be worth spending a few minutes of your Tuesday morning. Honan spent 48 hours “liking” everything on Facebook, and soon he had lost most of his news feed to brands and links, which buried any updates from friends and family. It’s an interesting experiment, and is the main reason I rarely “like” anything from a company’s Facebook page. As I decided two years ago in my own experiment, my main purpose for using Facebook is to stay in touch with friends and family. Sure, I’ll tolerate and even thoroughly enjoy some business posts and ads, but I still want the “real life” news from people I know.


    This entry was posted in Tuesday Time-Waster

  • 2014 goal check-in: July

    Posted on by Layla Comment

    Well. July, for lack of better words, was terrible. But that’s not the point of this blog post, so let’s move along and see how those goals for the year are going.

    1-3, and 5: Running-related goals. You can’t really meet lofty goals if you’ve spent the year injured.

    4: Do a century bike ride: I had figured this goal was also elusive, but biking no longer hurts my leg so this may actually happen. I did my first 50-mile bike ride in July, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. (It probably helps that the plan was 40 miles, so I didn’t have the daunting “new longest distance” thing hanging over my head until I missed a turn and decided to go for it.) I’d like to go road bike shopping, but my hybrid works, so I might just save my pennies for now. Thoughts? Here’s my current bike, which is certainly the best bike I’ve ever had so I don’t really know what I’m missing…

    6. Bike at least 700 miles: I met this goal on July 19. Hooray, one goal out of 13! I think, since one of my other goals was to run 1,500 miles this year, I’m going to see if I can get to 1,500 biking miles instead. July’s total cycling mileage was 146, putting me at 820.18 miles for the year.

    I took no bicycling photos, but here is one with Michaela who took 43 minutes off her previous best half-Ironman time.

    7. Go to the gym at least 150 times this year: Um, yeah. I still have 94 gym trips remaining this year to meet that goal, which would mean 19 times per month. It’s a lot nicer outside…

    8. Read at least one book a month: I escaped into two books in July. I really enjoyed “A Fierce Radiance” by Lauren Belfer, and it was a perfect book I could crawl into and temporarily hide from my unpleasant world. Set in WWII, it’s a fictionalized account of the discovery of penicillin, and it involves some romance, some drama and some history. It’s also a good reminder that we live in times where medicine exists to cure us — less than 100 years ago, that wasn’t the case. I also plowed through a John Grisham book I hadn’t read, “The Litigators.” I always like a good Grisham novel or movie, but this one was just meh. The characters were only so-so, and the plot was the same old “underdog lawyer fights to survive” thing.

    9. Cook dinner more often: I didn’t do a lot of cooking in July, partly because I didn’t do a lot of eating in July. But I did attempt to make pizza for the first time. Conclusions: Trader Joe’s pre-made pizza dough makes a LOT of pizza, and it’s super sticky so maybe I should try rolling it out with oil instead of flour next time, as a Twitter friend suggested. The dough was kind of thick, but recipe was unique: Taco pizza. Nope, you didn’t misread that.

    Terrible picture of actually tasty taco pizza. The "sauce" is refried-bean-based.

    10. Go to bed at 10 p.m.: I nailed this at least 25 of the 31 days. I discovered that if you can’t eat, your body hibernates. (It also gets really cold, which saved me some air conditioning costs.)

    11. Get down to XXX amount of pounds: Related to number 10, by mid-July I was back down to my pre-injury weight, and this was proven both by my own “off by several pounds” scale as well as at the doctor’s office last week. Now to keep those pounds off and shed a bit more weight, and I’ll be at “goal race weight” (whenever I can race again).

    12. Blog an average of twice a week: Haha, it’s pretty clear that this won’t happen in 2014. I’m okay with that, because I’d rather have a few posts that get a lot of great public and private feedback (like this one from July) than a bunch of “I wrote this to meet a quota” posts.

    13. Find a cheaper place to live: I actually thought I had this figured out, but that plan was pulled out from under me. I need a new plan, but in the meantime I’m thinking of canceling my expensive cable and getting a Netflix membership. However, there goes live TV, including sports. Any thoughts on that, as well?

    And, since this post is a bit mundane, here’s a lesson from July: No matter what happens, the sun will keep rising and setting.


    This entry was posted in Bicycling Goals