NEWSLETTERS
For a full sequential listing of the Penguin Winter Carnival Newsletters
to date, with all the great Reasons To Come to Tampa, please click
here to go to our blog: https://www.angelfire.com/ult/pwc2005/blog/
On the Road with Ellie Hamilton
Here we'll be
keeping in touch with our friend Ellie as she begins a new life over the
several months leading up to the Penguin Winter Carnival. Please stop in
from time to time to see what's new with her here!
Ellie Hamilton and her new home
On the Road #4: Ellie's Evolution Continues with the Imminent
Eruption of Yet Another Running Incarnation
by Ellie Hamilton
Watching for my next evolution to manifest itself is a little like
watching Mt. St. Helens, listening to the rumbles, wondering whether
it is really going to flare or just blow steam.
Am I really going to do what I think I am going to do?
This started over the controversy of whether Steve and I would be
in Chicago for the Chicago Marathon. You see, last winter when we were
planning our imminent retirement into nomadism, I had asked whether we
could be in Chicago the second weekend in October. Steve answered
blithely, "We can be wherever we want whenever we want!" So
I registered for the Chicago Marathon and had dreams of our following
marathons and triathlons around the country as I ran one, or more, in
every state.
Wrong. Early in our travels Steve began making noises about not
wanting to be tied down to Chicago in October, wanting to be able to
be where we wanted "whenever," rather than having to be in a
certain place at a certain time. We settled it by extending our time
in the West and going farther than we'd planned, to delay our return
East, so we'd be in the right place at the right time for my marathon.
It was a wonderful trip and we're both glad we did it that way, but it
was a concession on his part. He wanted to go back to Maryland. We
were both anxious to see our family but I'd put a lot of eggs into my
Chicago basket.
I'd made a startling discovery: I won't be able to go wherever I
want to run whatever event I want because that will limit us. I am
hemmed in by our freedom.
I was depressed for a while. I thought and thought, and cried for a
whole day as I decided that after a final show at Tampa I'd give up
marathoning and triathloning, and just do fitness running and touring
biking. I felt something close to despair, a feeling that there was
something I desperately wanted in life that I'd just learned I could
never have. I told Steve my decision and he was quiet. After a day or
so he came up with the first rumblings that became the heralding
tremors of the evolution. He said:
"Well, you're going to be in marathon condition for Chicago.
Why not keep up your conditioning and then you'll be able to run
anything that's going on wherever we are?"
The seismograph in my brain started to scribble and I sent my
internal researchers to investigate. Why not? This is doable. We're
easily in a different state every month or two. After Thanksgiving
we'll be following the path of warm climate, staying in Tampa for
January and February, enabling winter running without ice and slush,
winter biking --an advantage I've never had, that relatively few
athletes have. For several years I have had a personal travel policy
for races: However long the event will take me to complete, is a
reasonable length of travel time. For example, an hour's travel time
for a 10K; a couple hours for a half-marathon; 4 or 5 for a marathon.
Surely, wherever we park for a month or so, there will be something to
enter within those travel parameters, something that I can still
register for. Most 10K's and even a lot of marathons and triathlons
have day-before registration.
This could work. There's no reason why it shouldn't. I've run a
jillion marathons, sometimes 3 a year... why not one every month or
so, functioning as that month's long run and the training run for the
next marathon? I think we are onto something here.
There's one in Huntington, WV, this weekend, November 14, a month
after Chicago and about a 4-hour drive from "home" in
Maryland where we are for November. Chicago hopefully prepared me for
Huntington; Huntington for whatever I find around the Charleston, SC
area in December, which, along with whatever I find in January around
Tampa, will train me for the Challenge of PWC weekend.
This could work. The rumbles and tremors are starting to shake my
whole spirit with excitement. This could be the beginning of the
eruption of a whole new lifestyle as a runner. It will be my third
running incarnation. My first was my competitive era where I had to
set a PR not only at every race but on every training run. My second
came after a 4-year lag during nursing school, and took the form of
the go-as-you-feel, no-pressure Penguin runner, thanks to my newfound
friends of the same species. This will be my "aging runner"
retirement incarnation: the regular long-distance endurance athlete
who trains for everything in general rather than something in
particular.
I won't be aiming for distant events which close registration
months in advance. I'll be blooming where I'm planted.
Ellie
On The Road #3
by Ellie Hamilton
August 21, 2004
This is my new philosophy. It started with adopting the practice of eating only until I'd had enough.... the rest going either into a doggie bag, or into the dog's dish directly, or into the garbage.
I have lost about 20 pounds since sometime late this winter or early this spring. I didn't have a specific decision-day or event (joining Weight Watchers or something) that was the Start Day... I just gradually stopped eating so much, along with downsizing the number of personal possessions I considered essential when we went on the road, and found my clothes getting loose. I weighed myself at a YMCA a month or so ago when I went there to swim, somewhere in North Dakota, and was down 19.5. I think I gained back a little, but I think I've lost it again. I haven't weighed myself since then... no scales.
The doggie-bag system came about thus: When I sense that I'm getting full, I look at what's left on my plate and ask myself: If my plate were empty now, would I want more, enough that I'd order (or cook) a serving the size of what I have left? If the answer is "yes," I eat. If "no," doggie-bag time.
This has spread into the rest of my life. When we first retired, I thought, finally I have time to run all I want, train for marathons and ultras; bike all I want, swim whenever I can find a
place, train for an Ironman; take all the pictures I want, print, mat, frame and sell them all I want, get famous; train my dog all I want, have an Agility Dog or a Companion Dog; read all I want, crochet all I want, write/journal/e-mail all I want, watch TV all I want; learn to play the violin; get practiced back up on the guitar; then after we got a piano keyboard, learn all the classical music I want and fill our space with accomplishment and culture out the wazoo, plus doing everything with my husband, including hiking, sightseeing, going out to dinner and movies, visiting with campground neighbors.....
I got really bogged down doing all I wanted of all this stuff. I had more than I could swallow.
I was out for a 14-mile run one day in July and felt crappy. It was hot and I was lost in an unfamiliar area and when I got directions and found my way back I had done about 10, and thought, no way am I going another 4 miles. Can I have a doggie bag and save the rest for tomorrow?
So I put the dangling ends of the unfinished planned run into a metaphorical doggie bag, and saw its aptness for my life.
I started getting real about taking so many pictures even though I have no current venue for displaying or marketing them and thought, geez, if I'm taking snaps for our travel albums, as I go to all these national landmarks etc. with my husband, do need to edit them and re-do them and make every single one a work of art at the expense of running and biking and crocheting and reading and training the dog and playing the piano etc. etc. etc.? Maybe I don't have room on my plate right now to switch from being an advanced hobbyist to being a pro photographer. Can I have a doggie bag please?
And if I'm playing the piano, which I haven't done in 5 years because I haven't had time, do I also have to be playing the guitar and learning the violin, especially since I'm training for a marathon and also a Triple Challenge Marathon Weekend? Can I put some of the music in a doggie bag?
And if I'm running a lot more, late in marathon training, and preparing for these other running events, do I have to bike and swim as much, since I don't have any triathlons coming up now? Sometimes, when I have a meal, I don't want dessert; sometimes I want dessert but if I eat the meal I won't have room for the dessert but I'll eat it anyway and then have eaten twice what I should have, twice what I really wanted -- so I don't have a meal, I just have dessert. Or I get one to go. Can I put some of my biking and swimming in a doggie bag?
And although I've been cutting back on all these things, I've still been gone a lot or busy inside a lot and my dog has been cooped up in the trailer or tied outside and has gotten uptight and fidgety instead of well-trained. So I'm including her in everything I can from a trip to the store to a walk to the campground laundromat to check the dryer, and I've been running with her just about every day in place of some more of the biking and swimming.... definitely a doggie bag there.
I saw the parallel, this spring, between downsizing my food and body, and downsizing my possessions. Put the food in a doggie bag, sell the possessions at a yard sale. Now I find I need to pare down my activities as well. Funny to realize I need to downsize my life because now that we're retired I don't have time to do everything I want to do and have to put some of it in a doggie bag for another time.
The Chicago Marathon is October 10. I'm on for about a 16-miler sometime this weekend. Doing the math, if I had done 14 the day I planned back in July, I'd have peaked much too soon. I'm glad I put it in the doggie bag. I've been trying to make my life peak too soon, too.... as a marathoner I should realize the value of pacing myself, of saving some for later.
After Chicago, there are 4 months till Tampa and the Triple Challenge. During that time I plan to become able, somehow, to run a moderately long run one day and a "real" long run the next. I'm toying with doing this 50K in December too, maybe as part of all that. Maybe. In any case, I will need not only more miles on my calendar but more food on my plate, I suspect. That means less of my food, but more of my life, in the doggie bag.
Maybe I can go by "Years:" There can maybe be the Year of the Ultramarathon, the Year of the Ironman, Year of the Piano, Year of the Cross-Continent Bike Ride, Year of the Violin, Year of Getting My Photos Published....
I guess this year is The Year Of Getting Used To It. My mother-in-law said we'd soon become sooooo bored, retiring in our early 50's.
I think not.
Ellie on the road, this month in South Dakota
"If I am at these vines picking these berries, I can't be at those vines picking those. If my basket is full, does it matter?"
On the Road #2
by Ellie Hamilton
June 30, 2004
Gypsies, sojourners now in our "5th-wheel log cabin" (I've
decorated it all rustic inside), we're venturing farther and farther north
into Michigan and the countryside is actually starting to look more like
"home," that is, western Maryland. I'm not supposed to refer to
"back home...." home is wherever we are. Well, back where we came
from, the terrain and vegetation look a lot like they do here. Northern,
cool-climate trees, birch, aspen, heavy on the maples, lots of conifers.
Steve and I are getting to know each other in a way that we never have
before. We married young -- 20 and 21 -- and within 4 months I was
pregnant. A baby after a year of marriage and then 25 years of at least one
child at home, officially 3, plus their friends.... I often had 8 or 10
people of various sizes and ages at the dinner table. I still haven't
learned to cook for 2. After the kids embarked on their own lives and there
were just the 2 of us for 5 years, we had different work schedules and
usually ate separately and, figuratively and somewhat literally, actually
lived separately. Now we have no schedule except our own, day and night are
the same for both of us, our living space is 31 (29 if you don't count the
closet), we spend 3 or 4 hours together in the cab of a 3/4 ton truck
looking at maps and making plans.... who is this man? I like him! I wonder
if he's available? Oh.... he's married --- to ME!!!
I feel a bit as though I left my marathon training somewhere in Ohio....
with a triathlon 3 out of the last 4 weekends, I haven't concentrated on
increasing my running distance. I did reach 10 miles the week before last;
the next week I did a 6-miler; so after resting from yesterday's tri I
should be able to inch it up to an 11- or 12-miler in the coming week. We
have nothing planned except a travel day, and then we'll be living near
Mackinaw Island for a while.
I like thinking of inching my training distance up a little more and a
little more as we slowly move north a little more and a little more.
My update essay in May was full of decisions and dilemmas, what to take,
what to store, what to abandon. I likened it to my personal change in
eating habits, the same choices (take, store, abandon) applicable to what
goes into my body. As with our "things," with my food I have
learned to live with less and not really miss it. We can't carry around 10#
bags of potatoes, 5# bags of sugar and flour, 4 boxes of cereal,
his-and-her peanut butter (crunchy and creamy),12-packs of beer his-and her
beer (light and regular, his being the light!), half a dozen assorted
bottles of "spirits." We don't have the room and we have a weight
limit. Just like me. So if we want potatoes, I buy 2 potatoes. Before, if I
cooked potatoes, I'd cook 2 extra in case we wanted seconds, and of course
we ate them. Deferring to my man, we have one jar of peanut butter, and if
I want PB, I eat crunchy, or I eat something else. I haven't eaten spoonful
after spoonful, as I would in the house, since we went on the road. The
fridge holds a limited amount and one six-pack of beer looks pretty small,
so I ration it (at the house it was more like "rationalizing"
it.) I rarely eat cold cereal.... at the house I'd eat 3 bowls of it in the
evening. Less clutter in general in our home encompasses less food in the
cupboards, and, like the clutter, I don't really miss it. I haven't missed
a single thing we didn't bring, except our darling youngest granddaughter
Abbie, whose picture I will post in my album at the group homepage next
time I can connect. And my beautiful shaggy German Shepherd, I do miss her;
our son has her.
I have lost weight but I don't know how much. Clothes that had form-fit me
are loose and easy now. Bike shorts that were snug don't stay in place now
when I ride... they twist all around my legs and hips (etc.) so that I'm
miserable in the saddle. The bike saddle. You clowns stop that..... They're
nice shorts. Maybe I'll sell them on e-Bay. Or... does anyone want to buy a
nice pair of hardly-used women's bike shorts, size large? Geez, am I going
to have to have another garage sale, only this time a "camper"
sale, a "closet sale," as I downsize my clothes again?
I was going to do a long run today (Wednesday, July 30) but our daughter
brought her 2 kids to our new campsite on Lake Huron, so I guess I'll do a
short run today and move my long one to Saturday after they go back to
Ohio. I'll post them on the homepage, too. I'm going to try for 11 or 12 on
Saturday. Now watch it rain. I have counted ahead and at my current level,
if I add 2 miles every 2 weeks, I will still make a 20-miler a couple weeks
before the Chicago Marathon, which is my usual pattern and which I have
found works for me. But there's no way I'm going to run a 4:05 Boston
qualifier this year. This is my re-entry year, after a year of alternating
injuries and illnesses. I think the illnesses were brought on by the
injuries.... I get sick whenever I suddenly stop training for more than a
week or two. Maybe my body gets hooked on that regular couple-degree
raising of body temperature to ward off marauding microbes. OTOH, now that
I don't work with sick people every day, I might not need that regular
anti-whatever boost. I better keep running just in case!
Ellie in Mackinaw City, Michigan
On the Road #1
by Ellie Hamilton
May 19, 2004
As I head toward February's "Weekend Marathon Challenge" in Tampa
and the Penguin Winter Carnival, a phase of my life is over and a new one
has begun.
As of the last two weeks, I am no longer working as a nurse. I am no longer
in the work force at all. My husband has retired, so I guess I have too,
returning to my former status as a "non-working" wife, except
that now I am going to work harder -- at being an athlete, and also a
photographer, which could put me back into the work force, at least to an
extent of my own choosing. And as we move from a regular house into a small
RV home on wheels, I am moving from my "regular" body into a
smaller, more compact, more mobile one. Downsizing has taken over my life.
Downsizing the physical artifacts of a 31-year marriage to fit into a
31-foot trailer. Downsizing the physical effects of self-indulgence to fit
into my outgrown wetsuit. But "upsizing" my training and fitness
to emerge from nearly a year of relative laid-back-ness resulting from
nagging injuries and bouts of bronchitis, walking pneumonia, and other
transient pesky ailments, including lack of motivation.
I am not sick now, not exposed daily to sick people, my injuries have
dissipated, and although I am not running as far as I wish or in a much
smaller body yet, I am at least moving. We are not in our house now, we're
actually living in the trailer in a campground, and although we're not
traveling yet, we're still moving our stuff. Our "Things."
I have embarked on a mission to assess my actual physical needs, both the
food I need to eat for my body size and activity and the things I need for
my living-area space and for conducting my life.
I consider whether I am hungry, and if I am, I eat a conservative amount of
food even though I have room for more, and then wait to see if that is
enough. It takes a while to decide.
I consider whether I need this or that in the trailer, and if I do, I move
it in and wait to see if it is enough. It takes a while to decide.
As I have eaten according to my body signals and increased my running,
biking, and swimming distance, I have watched the numbers on the scale go
down 5, then 6, then 7 pounds. My weekly long run has increased to 5, then
6, then 7 miles. When I am running 20 miles in marathon training, will I
have lost 20 pounds? When I do the 39.6 miles of the Tampa challenge, will
I have lost 39 pounds? If I did that I would still not be underweight. But
I won't know because we're not taking the scales -- they "weigh"
too much. A tape measure weighs less, takes up less space, and tells more.
I am finding that when I eat a small amount and let it go at that, after
awhile I'm satisfied with what I ate and not wishing for what I left on my
plate. And as I live with a small amount of clothing, athletic and
photographic equipment and daily-living items, I find that I'm satisfied
with what I have and not wishing for things still left in the house. I've
even thought that if the house burned down with our remaining possessions
still in it, I would not miss them or even know what they were.
But as I continue to sort through things left in the house, I find
forgotten things, and when I see them, I want them. Pictures, sentimental
personal things, gifts I was given long ago.... if I throw them out, it
feels like throwing out parts of my life, or throwing out the giver. There
is still space in the trailer, so into the trailer they go. The spaces are
filling up. We are going to have to re-assess. Steve says we are going to
be overweight.... harder for the truck to pull, more likely to have some
kind of accident the farther we go.
And as I continue to eat according to my appetite, I find I have room for
more food than I have been taking, and when I see it, I want it. Too much
food is available -- picnics, parties in honor of Steve's retirement and
our setting out, "consumable" gifts of cakes, batches of cookies,
bottles of wine. Throwing them out feels like..... throwing them out. There
is more room in my clothes than there was, and into my mouth go the gifts.
The spaces in my clothes are filling up again. I am going to have to
re-assess. No one has said I am overweight but I know that I am and that
the extra weight is harder for my legs to carry, that I'm more likely to
have some kind of injury the farther I run.
We have only one more party coming up and we are distributing most of our
furniture to our children. Our son has bought our house. We are having a
huge yard-and-garage sale this weekend. What is left is going to our
church's yard sale next week. And then the house will be empty. And on the
first of June we hitch up and head out.
If only disposing of the extra furnishings on my body were as concrete, and
the end so nearly in sight. But I have definitely begun. This week's long
run will increase to 8 miles. I will start out on foot back to the house,
and have my husband pick me up 8 miles along the road and we'll go the rest
of the way together to sort and clean some more.
I could probably make some kind of metaphor out of that but I am out of
words. When I write again next month, we will be somewhere in Michigan, on
the way to our "turnaround" in South Dakota. We'll get back to
Maryland sometime in October, after the Chicago Marathon. And after
Christmas with our family we'll mosey down to Florida. "Penguins"
that we are, we don't travel very fast, and what we do along the way is as
important as reaching the finish line, wherever it turns out to be.
Ellie in Western Maryland
"If I am at these vines picking these berries, I can't be at those
vines picking those. Who cares, if the bucket is full?"
* * * * * * * * * *
Ellie's beloved granddaughter Abbie
(click to enlarge)
