(via papertissue) that is all.
MOTIVATION: stepping away from the desk.
After weeks of crazy working, and NOT training for this, and not even running for like, weeks… not bad for a 4 mile race. The leaves were gorgeous and fall was in full effect in Central Park. Now just the Turkey Trot stands between me and Thanksgiving dinner!
MOTIVATION: 4 mile race!
Congrats to MEL and everyone who completed the God’s Love We Deliver race in Central Park today! It’s not every Sunday you can muster up the strength to wake up at the crack of dawn and schlep over to the park to run 4 miles. Way to go!
MOTIVATION: first race ever.
The Kid’s Race today in Central Park was adorable and hilarious. Some kids were weeping to the finish line, their eager parents dragging them along. Other front-runners ran all the way to the finish and stopped prematurely, thinking they weren’t allowed to cross the finish line—the entire race behind them stopped short as well, following suite. As young as 2 there were kids all over making the mad dash to the finish with parents pushing and shoving in an attempt to get that perfect picture. Ella, above, came in a rocking 4th overall for the girls 5 year olds division. But with a 4-time marathoning mother, who’s surprised? Not bad for her first race, ever!
MOTIVATION: my almost 2 year old cousin Thelma…
…who is running SO incredibly fast that you can’t even see her here! Pictured here with me at the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn on Sunday playing a game where she runs up the hill, runs back down and falls, gets picked back up (airplane style) and then shouts AGY! AGY! (translation: again! again!).
Best. Game. Ever.
From www.thekindlife.com:
Here is a short video showcasing my book launch event last month at the Stella McCartney store in West Hollywood. I want to thank the following people and vendors for making this such an amazing experience:
Stella McCartney - thank you for being so generous and for helping make the event unforgettable. You are amazing.
A Fine Frenzy - you guys are amazing!
via theKINDlife.
Naked or Not, Famous Vegetarians Are a Passionate Bunch | PopEater.com
What could inspire Alicia Silverstone to strip naked in an ad, Natalie Portman to blog passionately and Morrissey to walk off stage at a festival? The answer might surprise you: vegetarianism. Countless actors, rock stars and folks from all walks of life have decided to take meat off the menu and go veggie for an array of reasons as colorful as their personalities.
Most of us know that Paul McCartney hasn’t eaten meat for years (and his late wife, Linda, launched her own brand of meat-free products), but did you know that Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis was voted the world’s sexiest vegetarian by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), ‘30 Rock’ star Alec Baldwin is a long-time veggie who campaigns for animal rights, and Woody Harrelson convinced director Ruben Fleischer to eat vegan while shooting ‘Zombieland’?
One of the most outspoken vegetarians in recent weeks has been Silverstone, who’s promoting her new book ‘The Kind Diet.’ The ‘Clueless’ star writes that eating a meat-and-dairy-free, plant-based diet can improve your health and appearance, increase energy levels and even help cure diseases. She also offers up scrumptious vegan recipes including healthy “chorizo” tacos, crispy rice squares and chocolate peanut butter cups.
“There’s nothing in the world that’s changed me as much as this,” Silverstone says. “I know deep in my heart that when you eat this way you’ll feel better than you ever have in your life. You get younger and stronger. When I went vegan, people thought I was glowing…I lost weight and felt like I was walking around the world a little lighter. You can heal yourself through eating this way. The cure is in the food.”
Putting her money where her mouth is, the vegan actress took off her clothes for a sexy PETA ad promoting vegetarianism.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, ‘Eating Animals,’ takes an entirely different approach. The hot young author zeroes in on the questionable practices of the meat industry, writing about the deplorable and shocking conditions animals live (and die) in at factory farms after spending a year and a half visiting farms around the country. He argues that we are defined not just by what we do, but also by what we are willing to do without.
The non-fiction book made such an impression on Natalie Portman that it caused the Hollywood star to go from being a vegetarian to a vegan, eliminating all animal products from her diet such as milk and cheese in addition to meat and fish. “Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling,” the star wrote in her Huffington Post blog.
Meanwhile, famed vegetarian Morrissey told thousands of fans at California’s Coachella Festival this year that meat makes him sick. “I can smell burning flesh and I hope to God it’s human,” he said dramatically as the scent of barbecued meat from nearby food stands wafted through the air during his performance.
Celebrities including Casey Affleck, Joan Jett, Bryan Adams, McCartney, James Cromwell, Kevin Nealon, and Forest Whitaker have all participated in PETA’s ongoing “I Am a Vegetarian” campaign in which they passionately express their personal motivations for eliminating meat from their diet. “Life is full of choices,” Whitaker says, “and many years ago I chose to become a vegetarian. It was one of the best choices I ever made.”
Silverstone adds that you don’t necessarily need to become a vegan for the rest of your life, you can simply “flirt” with a plant-based diet and see how it makes you feel. “The flirting plan I created for people who say, ‘OK, I’ve read all this information and I really want to do this. I really want these results, but I feel a little shy that I wont be able to do it all the way,’” she told the Wall Street Journal. “Then do it slowly. Flirting means you keep an open heart, an open mind. You’re sort of dating a healthier lifestyle, and you’re slowly adding new concepts and new foods to your life.”
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce - Telephone
Bananimals.
MOTIVATION: freezing your a$$ off…literally.
From the NYTimes (thanks Karen!)
IN late summer, Sharon Henderson, the manager of the Lululemon athletic clothing store in my town, started organizing Saturday morning group runs. People had two options: three miles at a slower pace or six miles at a faster one.
There was a good turnout at first — more than two dozen people, most of them slower runners, showed up.
Then they stopped coming. Was it the string of gray, rainy Saturdays?
Granted, it is difficult to get up and be at Lululemon by 8:30 a.m. when the temperature is dropping and a steady rain is falling. But, still. One recent Saturday, it was just me and my friend Claire Brown running on the slick streets in the rain.
Very few studies have asked whether people exercise less in inclement weather and, if so, which ones are more likely to slack off or forge ahead. Maybe that’s because the results of the studies are not exactly surprising.
“Why do people work out more in San Diego than in Michigan?” asked James Pivarnik, an exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan. “Gee, I can’t imagine.”
His study of Michigan residents found that people expended 15 to 20 percent more calories a week exercising in the spring and summer than they did in the fall and winter.
Something similar seems to happen in Columbus, Ohio, said Janet Buckworth, an exercise physiologist at Ohio State University.
She found that college students lost cardiovascular fitness in winter but maintained their strength, indicating that while some of them did not want to go outside and run, at least they may have been going to the gym.
“Columbus is incredibly dreary in the winter,” Dr. Buckworth said. “It is wet and cold, and we get snow.”
So maybe the question is not, “Why do people stay home in dreary weather?” as much as, “Why do some go out and exercise anyway?”
Dr. Buckworth said that, in her experience, it was the people who were new to exercise who gave up in bad weather.
“If you are beyond the point that you are learning how to exercise, you can’t imagine not running in bad weather,” she said. Her advice to people who want to keep exercising all year: find something you can do indoors, plan to exercise with a friend or do something — like update your playlist — that can make your workout more fun.
Dr. Pivarnik tells people they need to make up their minds that they will have a regular exercise routine, no matter what. “If you are one of those people who are going to back off, you are just going to have to find something to make you do it,” Dr. Pivarnik said. “It has to be a behavioral thing in your head. It’s not going to happen just because the weather is nice, you have to think about it.”
My friend Jen Davis, a physical chemist, uses a term from chemistry: Running on dreary days requires high activation energy, she says. In chemistry, activation energy is what must be added to start a reaction.
But those of us who exercise in all sorts of weather will attest that there is a certain thrill that can come from terrible conditions. “It makes us tough,” Ms. Davis said. She calls our runs in horrendous conditions “epic runs.” And she’s right. They are truly memorable, ones we actually recall fondly.
There also are epic bike rides, as Richard Armington will attest. Mr. Armington, a software engineer in Montgomery, N.J., rode 200 miles over two days in a cold rain recently. It was a fund-raising trip for Battle Against Hunger, and his group had been training all summer.
Last year, the group rode in a hurricane, but that proved too much — the bikers had to stop at lunchtime on the second day, three quarters of the way through the trip.
“Why do I do this?” he said. “For me, it’s two challenges: the athletic challenge and the challenge of getting others to sponsor and give to the cause.”
Glenn Swan, a cyclist in Ithaca, N.Y., says his area has some of the worst weather in the country, but he does not let a little rain or snow stop him. Mr. Swan, a research technician at Cornell and owner of a bike shop called Swan’s Cycles, said, “Our phrase is, ‘We ride even if the sun shines.’ ”
His epic ride took place with friends in Virginia. They started at the bottom of a mountain on a sunny morning. Soon it started to drizzle. “We said, ‘At least it’s not raining,’ ” Mr. Swan said. Then, as they ascended, it started to rain.
“We said, ‘At least it’s not snowing.’ ” Then it started to snow.
“We said, ‘At least the snow is not sticking.’ ” Then it started to stick.
By the time they got to the top of the mountain, they were in a blizzard. They eventually made it to a lodge, 20 miles away, where they spent the night. And they have been talking about the trip every since.
But the problem with epic runs or rides is that each one ups the ante. A day with just ordinary bad weather simply is not memorable after a while.
Ms. Davis and I noticed that recently on a dark, rainy, windy night. We had planned to run after work but — just this once — we thought that maybe we could do one of those mind-numbingly dull treadmill runs in the gym.
I called my coach, Tom Fleming, and told him our plans. He hates treadmills, thinking that that if you want to train for road races, you have to run on roads. Treadmills, he says, are “propelling you over the running surface.” When you run, he adds, “you propel yourself over the surface,” which can include hills, flat areas, and places where the surface is uneven. “That’s a harder effort for sure,” Tom said.
So, Tom told me: Don’t go to the gym. Run outside.
So we did, and it was fine. Fun, actually.
But epic? No. We have had much tougher runs than that.
