Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Healthy Living 101: How to avoid getting H1N1 in Wichita

H1N1: It's one of the official top words of 2009. The swine flu is all over the news and has touched the collective nerve of communities across America, including Wichita. Many rumors and falsehoods are associated with the illness. A few facts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should help to calm fears and direct the appropriate attention to preventing H1N1 or easing symptoms.
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Healthy living: Meredith Baxter comes out and teaches a few lessons

Perhaps known best as the 1980s quintessential mom from "Family Ties," Meredith Baxter went on national television Dec. 2, 2009, to announce that she is a lesbian. Although not an expected topic for healthy living, Baxter’s outing is, indeed, an exercise in living life as it should be: uninhibited by social norms and stereotypes.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Still running

My last post was about how I was getting back to running. That was back in October. Surprise of surprises, I'm still running, although I took a break around the holidays, as many folks did. So this will be a short entry but still one about running, since that's what's on my mind.

I finally did get new shoes, although in my last post I had mentioned that I would be going back to New Balance. Nothing against NB, but I bought, instead, a pair of ASICS Gel Cumulus 10 and they are orange and they are FAB. These shoes are lightweight, offer plenty of cushion and are good for my relatively nonpronating feet. And did I mention that they are orange? ORANGE! I flippin' love 'em.

I'm still at the point where, on the off chance that I do some yard work, I make sure to take my running shoes off and change into my old grubbies. Funny thing is, my old grubbies are my very first pair of running shoes (as an adult runner). They are Addidas and they are circa 1998. They slip on like the proverbial pair of old gloves, they are that comfy. But comfy only for goofy stuff like yard work. They'd be crap for running. They were crap for running when they were brand new, as well — at least for my feet. They would rub and give me blisters. I figured I would just have to break them in and then the blisters would stop coming. Nope. They were simply too wide for my feet. I think I mentioned this in a previous post so I won't digress any further. But they do make great icky-grass shoes.

So I went running today, in the Kansas morning heat. But it hadn't gotten blistering hot yet, so the run was decent. I ran through our neighborhood. I am tracking my mileage (mainly for my shoes) at Map My Run, a Web site that allows the user to map a route (thus the moniker, duh). Since variety is the spice of my life, I like to take a mapped route and alter it slightly to improve my mileage and/or time. So I ran yesterday's route, but I added another loop to lengthen my run. It only added a minute, which surprised me, but I guess that means I was running just a little faster today, as well, and that's a good thing.

That's about it for today's post. I'll try to write more often and I'll also try to NOT write about running all the time, as I know that's not everyone's passion. Till then, happy trails to you!

SAK