Tag: Quiet Time

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Weight Loss Exercise

What is a Street Strider?

I was on a bike ride with my family a couple of days ago and got passed by a guy riding this thing called a Street Strider. The thing was bright yellow and really stood out but I was really intrigued even though you may look crazy riding one.

The really great thing is that it looked to move along really smoothly and the guy riding it seemed to really love his machine!

Here is a video on how to use one and what they look like

Riding a bike gives you some quiet time to think and after seeing this street strider contraption it made me think about the kind of exercise you would get. This is basically an outdoor version of an elliptical trainer except this is outdoors and has brakes (good thing). I can imagine that it would be a nice way to exercise and with the size of the wheels I suspect it would work even on a fairly flat trail.

Would a Street Strider be a Good Workout?

I would love to actually try one of these things but I can tell you from what I saw that they seem to move pretty quick and they would likely give you a great hip, leg, and upper body workout. You would feel great and tired after an hour on one of these I suspect and it would not be boring like an indoor elliptical trainer at all.

street_striderThe trouble is that these street striders are a bit expensive. The price ranges from about $1,000 – $2,000 which is a bit steep for me but I am sure would be affordable for lots of people that live in an area where they can exercise outdoors all year round (it snows here 5 months a year).

What do you think? Would you try one of these streetstrider things? Have you tried one in the past? I would love to hear opinions on this.

 


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Weight Loss Exercise

Ride the Divide Movie

Late on Friday and Saturday nights I will lie in bed and watch a movie on my iPad on Netflix. It is a nice quiet time for me and I tend to watch stuff that no one else in the house would care about. Last night I watched the documentary Ride the Divide.

Ride the Divide is just about an hour and a half long and it follows closely three people out of 16 people in total that do a bicycle race from Banff Canada to the US-Mexico border. The ride is purely individual although everyone is tracking each other and supporting each other as much as they can. There are no teams, or team support like you see in the Tour De France.

I won’t spoil the result but the winner takes about three weeks and the last take about five weeks to complete this race. Not only is the distance absolutely ridiculous but since the race goes down the continental divide they have to deal with mountains, snow, rain, and crazy elevation changes all the time while trying to ride as far as they can every day. Oh, and lots of wildlife as lots of the riding is not on highways but trails instead.

The riders ride as long as they want everyday and they tend to stop where they can in hotel or tent and eat from gas stations, restaurants, or grocery stores. Early on you would see four or five people riding together and stopping at a gas station to get some snacks to get them going, there was a vegan that was struggling to find food but all the riders are very concious of how many calories and type of food they need to keep themselves going.

As the race goes on the riders definitely get spread out and there are all kinds of emotions going through the ride the divide riders, loneliness, fear,  boredom, exhaustion.

And how about the physical toll that these guys go through? One of the riders, Mary Metcalf-Collier goes from strong, to swollen knees and ankles, to better, to worse and back again. I could feel for her everyday of the race as she kept persevering. Another racer Mike Dion left his family for a few weeks to race and had terrible knee problems as well that went away and then came back, while the third racer being followed seemed to have no physical problems at all.

The music in Ride the Divide is great. The scenery is spectacular and the music used compliments it perfectly. for a late night movie Ride the Divide was a fantastic way to spend and hour and a half to see a crazy race with real people competing against themselves and the elements. I know that the maker of the movie has a follow up movie and am looking forward to seeing that one as well.

 


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Weight Loss Exercise

Measured and Sustained Action

One of the things that I have really learned with my daughter and her Kidney disease is that we have up times and down times and we need to really take advantage of both.

Kidney Disease But Still Super Active

taylorOur daughter Taylor, when she is feeling good likes to go on long bike rides and hikes and has lots of energy for that but then she does need to have her downtime and will be quiet and read or watch TV for the next day or so. Taylor has a far more balanced life than most people and it is because she wants to always do stuff but knows that the downtime has to happen and that sleeping and eating are critical for her health.

I learn a lot from Taylor, and you can too

I find that once I start moving I don’t want to stop. I like to be active with my hockey, weightlifting, training for my Kidney March, and anything else we can find to do. The trouble is that there is no urgency, I don’t schedule a lot of outings with the kids we just run with it so if I miss a day of exercise then it is no big deal. But it should be.

Really we need to schedule our exercise and activities or they probably won’t get done. There is a finite number of hours in the day and some things just always get in the way. Work, eating, sleeping, household and family chores, lots of stuff. If we don’t plan our fun, active stuff then it will not happen.

Downtime – Very Important

On the other side is our quiet time. I am worse for this and feel bad about it but we all need that time just to relax and recharge. Sitting in the backyard listening to the neighbourhood and sipping some kind of drink, meditative times just reflecting on where we have been and where we are going, and less active activities where we just get to hang with the family and friends and be truly present instead of thinking about the next thing that we are going to do (A whole blog post is sitting in that statement).

And sleep. I wish I was the guy that could thrive on 5 hours sleep a night but certainly I am not. I need my sleep and I count this as really the majority of my downtime. I listen to a quiet podcast, maybe read, and then fall asleep for hopefully 8 hours so that I am fully rested and tackle another great and fantastic day.

These are the things that my daughter Taylor really does well and mostly far better than me. She does all the active things, and then bakes, reads, sleeps, hangs out with friends and even talking to the dogs. All the things a kid should do but it is all measured.

Taylor’s Balanced Schedule

We were talking to a newspaper reporter a few months ago and she was asking what kind of difficulties that we have with Taylor and her Kidney Disease and I told her that it was not a big deal. My wife looked at me like I was crazy and then started listing off all the things we need to do; hospital visits, vitamins, shots, blood work. When I heard it that way it sounded like a very tough lifestyle. But realistically I think that our of everyone in the house my daughter really has everything together much better than any of the rest of us do.

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