Morning motivation

Here's a dose of motivation to start the week off on the right foot.

Quote: attributed to Jim Watkins
Photo: Author's photo from Yosemite National Park

Happy Monday!

Meet your (100 year old) US Olympic Team

This photo, from the Library of Congress archives, represents US athletes who competed in the fifth Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden... in 1912!

The black and white photo... athletes wearing suits and hats... lack of females in the picture... all made me wonder what the Games were like 100 years ago.

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Facts about the 1912 Olympics:

• The 1912 games in Stockholm were the first Olympics to include representatives from five continents, and Japan participated in the Games for the first time.
• The course for the cycling road race was the longest (at 199 miles) of any kind at any Olympic Games before or since.
• Olympic officials allowed women to compete in swimming and diving competitions for the first time.
• While women were making progress through sports like gymnastics and swimming, participation was far from even. Out of 2,547 athletes, only 57 women competed in 1912.
• Women were not allowed to participate in most track and field events.
• The photo finish, so newsworthy for its role in the 100 meter dead heat at this year's US Olympic Track and Field trials, was implemented for the first time at the Stockholm Olympics.
• Team USA competed against 28 other nations to win 25 gold, 18 silver, and 19 bronze medals at the 1912 summer games.
• Those gold medals were the last Olympic medals to be made of solid gold.

What Olympic event would you want to medal in (if you could choose any event)?

Good old fashioned exercise

Circa 1890s?
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Circa 1890s?
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circa 1910
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Circa 1912
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Circa 1914
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Circa 1939
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Circa 1990
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What's the most unusual fitness routine or device you've ever tried?
What popular exercise today will people find "odd" in 2100?

Post run sweatpocalypse

You might call it Sweatmageddon.
Sweatpocalypse.
A Sweat Tsunami.

Summer has arrived on the Gulf Coast and my evening 12-miler was a sweaty affair to say the least. Thankfully Hubby was around to document the damage.

Post run: The cold floor tiles feel sooooo good!
Just ignore the puddle of sweat...

Don't judge.

After 2 slow, slogging hours in the sun, I wanted nothing more than to cool off and put my feet up. The floor tiles just happened to be the coldest thing in the house. If I could have taken a nap in the refrigerator, I probably would have.

What I didn't count on was condensation. 2 minutes after laying down, I realized I was making a sweat puddle.

Sexy, I know.

But I'm proud of it.

Today tried really hard to be a no good, very bad day. (I did my fair share of cussing, whining, and complaining, to be sure.)

This morning's thunder and lightning tried to sideline me. My mid-day was steamrolled by project deadlines at work (yes, working on Saturday. Ugh.) and California non-resident tax forms. (Hello California, could you make the forms any more confusing?)

When I went out the door this evening, I was already in a pissy mood. The temperature could have turned me around for home. The heat was just another straw on the bad-day camel's back.

But, knowing I needed a little extra motivation, I packed my mp3 player (rare event unless I'm on a treadmill). I played some of my favorite running songs and just kept putting one foot in front of the other for 120 minutes.

I admit that I wussed out a little and turned down streets for their shadiness or lack-of-hills, rather than tackling a tougher route. I won't claim this was my "best run ever." In fact, there were times when it was downright ugly. (Photo above is an excellent case-in-point...)

I did, truth be told, stop back at home at the 100-minute mark, grab a glass of ice water (my water bottle was bone dry) and ask/beg Hubby to come trot with me for the last 20 minutes.

He obliged.

And then took the photo.

..but it will be harder for him to use it as blackmail now that I've posted it on the interwebs. Heh.

What's your strategy for coping with a bad day?

Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung in Pensacola.
For the past two weeks, my runs have looked like this:

(Well, to be honest, one of my runs looked like this...)

St. Patrick's block party posing as a 5k

But you get my point... Running in Pensacola lately has been warm and sunny, with birds singing and cool breezes blowing. And all of my runs have been very, very green. Even my legs feel like they have an extra bounce... an extra spring. (Sorry - bad pun. I just couldn't resist.)

Now, if only we could hold off mosquito season just a little longer...

Do you mourn the ending of winter, or look forward to the warmer weather?

Racing pretty

Each semester in the course I teach, I cover a segment on gender roles. We review the ways in which women's images are photoshopped beyond all reasonableness to make them appear flawless.

Not a pore or blemish to be found!

Beyonce's skin color varies depending on which magazine she's in:

A few of Beyonce's most famous photoshopped images.

Katie Couric drops two dress sizes with the click of a mouse.

Such an amazing weight loss seems almost impossible!
Oh wait. It is impossible. (Image source)

And the most famous Kardashian is touched up to remove all traces of cellulite.

To put the blame where it belongs, I should be clear that these photo edits are often made without the model's knowledge. (PS - Bravo to Kim. When the media started a feeding frenzy over the un-edited photo, Ms. Kardashian replied with: "So what: I have a little cellulite. What curvy girl doesn’t!?")

There are so many examples of photo-editing gone awry that Jezebel.com has a whole "photoshop of horrors" documenting the most egregious cases. Models' waists are trimmed to the point that - if they were real - they'd snap in half in a strong wind storm. Legs are slimmed so that they are thinner than arms (or in some cases, removed completely). Wrinkles vanish. Blemishes are zapped.

And it's not just women. On men, muscles are added. Skin tone is enhanced... Even Brad Pitt is not immune:

Pitt's legs are narrower than his neck in this denim ad!

All of these practices set up an unrealistic ideal that people are supposed to be impossibly thin, tanned (but not too tan), and freckle-free. Certainly we can't be seen with a splotchy red face or sweat-matted hair.

The media is full of these impossible images, so I am never at a loss for fresh content for class.

And just as I was putting together material for this semester, I read The Boring Runner's blog post on his favorite glamour-shot race photos.

So I decided to post one of my most realistic race photos.
Just to set the record straight. This is NOT what I look like after a run:

Source: google.com via Laurie on Pinterest

This IS what I look like at mile 12 of a half marathon:

Not a glamorous photo, to be sure.
In fact, my comment to Hubby was "no way THAT one is going on the blog!"

But it makes me smile. Because I know how hard I worked to get there.
And now that photo is also my electronic middle finger to the photo-editors of the world who think people are "prettier" when they're fake.

Have you seen photoshop horrors?
Do you have any others to share?
Are you proud or embarrassed of your "worst" race photos?

Photo journal - and the last installment on Barcelona

As you know by now, Hubby and I spent 5 days in Barcelona. While there, I finished up my 42-day holiday running streak, which included running with local runners and spectating at the Cursa dels Nassos (a New Year's Eve 10k).

But running only took up a small portion of each action-packed day! So here's the photo-journal (read: short with pretty pictures) wrap-up of the trip!

We ate copious amounts of jamon, pan amb tomaquet (aka "pan con tomate" aka "bread with tomato"), and "copas de cava."

Browsed the markets.

Wandered narrow alleys.

Toured centuries-old churches.

Appreciated the street art.

(for more street art photos, click here)

Tried to understand Gaudi.

Finally started to understand Gaudi.

(for more photos of the Sagrada Familia, click here)

Took an aerial tram ride in 20mph winds...

(...and would not recommend trying this at home!)

Ate LOTS of food, especially mariscos (seafood)...

And drank every vermouth drink I could get my hands on.*

Dark vermouth, slice of orange, and a spash (each) of
campari, soda, and some other, clear liquor.* 

*If anyone knows the name of this mystery vermouth concoction, please do tell! I'll forever be grateful! I'd never had it before. The waiter called it "vermouth c_____" but i don't recall what the second word was!

On this day: Anniversary of a major life change. Or the road less traveled.

One year ago today I boarded a plane in San Diego, flew to Seattle, hopped in a car, and began the cross-country road trip that was the first step in a very scary bold move from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast.

Hubby (then: fee-ahn-sey') had just wrapped up graduate school in Seattle, and we were about to spend a week driving, running, and eating our way across the vast United States from the top left corner of the map to the bottom right en route to our new home.

We plotted our trip to get as much sight-seeing and family-visiting in as we could. At the end of the trip, I'd have enough time for a one-day glimpse of the place I'd spend the next 2 or 3 years. Then I'd return to San Diego for a couple of months to tie up loose ends. I'd repeat the cross-country trek again in November, and by December I'd turn in my old apartment keys and have a Florida driver's license.

What was I thinking?!? I was about to spend 10 days in a car with only one other person. Cross country road trips have been known to kill even the strongest relationships. And then I was going to uproot my very comfortable (if a bit predictable) life to move to a place I had never seen before.
Cue panic attack!

Over 10 days we covered 2,900 miles on four wheels and about 20 miles on our two feet. We ran almost every morning before hitting the road. We ran in Missoula, MT, Yellowstone National Park, Fort Collins, CO, Fort Worth, TX, and eventually at our new home in Pensacola, FL.

The running helped to stave off the inevitable butt-numbness that comes with long-haul road trips. It also gave us a chance to really see some of the places we might have missed if we had only been looking out a car window. We dove in beyond the parking lots in Yellowstone and saw amazing geothermal pyrotechnics - not to mention bison and bears. We startled a deer eating her breakfast in Colorado. We got rained on in Pensacola. (Note to my future self: This will happen. Often.)

After each morning's run, we'd shower, change, and hit the road. We counted state license plates. (Never did see Hawaii.) We counted antelope. (My revelation of the trip: Antelope really do roam in Wyoming!) We counted miles. (Miles traveled. Miles run. Miles left to go.)

This photo from Missoula sums up how I felt about the whole trip: My back turned on the familiar. Running headlong down a trail I've never been on. Having no idea where I'm going. Loving the rush of a new adventure. Being just a little bit totally terrified that I have no idea what I'm doing here.

But life, like running, is measured in the miles we travel. Not the ones we don't.

Found on the web: before and after photos of (ahem) joggers

Ok, I'll leave aside my angst at the title of Miss Alice's post (We are not JOGGERS. We are RUNNERS.) and share with you some clever photography recently posted to My Modern Met, and shared with me by my wonderfully art-minded friend R.

The photographer is Sacha Goldberger, who photographed "joggers" (the artist's and Met blogger's term, not mine) after a run near Paris. (Side note: Sacha's website is an amusing diversion, definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it.)

The photography is beautiful, if clearly staged. (I've never seen a runner with one shoulder of a jacket dangling provocatively halfway down an arm. That would be annoying. The zipper would chafe. A runner would be more likely to stash the ill-fitting jacket on a tree limb than run with it flopping around.)

But photo-staging aside, the images are beautiful, and telling. Bedraggled-looking runners are polished and transformed with glamorous day- and evening-attire. And from a purely aesthetic perspective, I find the monochromatic palette to be visually appealing.

Hmm... Makes me wonder what I really look like after a long run?

Have you ever taken before/after photos from your races or training runs?

And, for my own curiosity, do you get annoyed when people say you're a "jogger?" To me, "jogging" implies 1980s track-suit-and-leg-warmer-clad people who pretend to run, but who never actually break a sweat. Am I alone in this pet peeve?

For full, original post, please see:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/before-and-after-shots-of-jogg

Fabulous photo of 1800s running couture.

In surfing for photos to illustrate another blog post, I came across this gem and just had to share.

This photo made me smile because even in the days when doctors warned women that their (supposedly) frail little bodies couldn't handle running - women still ran!

I can barely keep my hair in a ponytail while running... I can't imagine trying to keep a bonnet on straight. Oh, and those shoes! My feet ache just thinking about running in those pointy, heeled torture traps!

Thankfully today's fashion trends more toward t-shirts and shorts, not skirts with petticoats. (Unless, of course, it's a red dress run.)

Photographer: Eadweard J. Muybridge (1830-1904)
Photo date: circa 1884-1887
Source: George Easton House Collection
URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/3333249917/