Getting My Bounce Back. Carolee Belkin Walker

my stomach? If you can visualize that, let me know.

      We got on the subject of the super set tonight because we were talking about endurance and how to boost it. For my morning workouts, Adorable suggested I try ramping up my speed on the treadmill for 30 seconds, and then taking it back down, and to do this throughout my three miles.

      ***

      The millennial on the treadmill next to me was furiously texting while running a nine-minute mile. I was worried she might step over the edge, but she was completely in control.

      Later that evening in my kitchen, I was having difficulty texting Mia, who was on a quiet bus from Boston back to New York, while eating a piece of matzah.

      ***

      Yesterday morning I had to take my car in for service because it had two flat tires. Both tires were punctured with nails, so I assumed I must have driven into a construction zone. Later, in the shower, I winced when I put my foot down at a certain angle and thought maybe I had bruised something. I took a look and saw I had a splinter deep in the sole of my right foot.

      As a girl from the beaches of Long Island who has had a lot of experience with splinters, I typically leave them and let them rise to the surface on their own. But this morning I thought I’d try to get it out so I wouldn’t have any problems running. I took out my tweezer kit (everyone has one, right?) and used the sharpest tool to pry out the small piece of wood. After some time, I pulled it out in one piece and took a look at it. It was sharp, like a nail.

      Is it just me, or is someone using a voodoo doll to cast a spell on me?

      Before-work Cardio

      (3 miles total/ 2 miles at 4.2 MPH / 5 minutes on the arm bike maintaining 70 RPM / arm stretches)

      

Playlist Highlights

      Mellow this morning as I was fairly sleep-deprived.

      What a Piece of Work Is Man – From the soundtrack of the Broadway musical Hair

      After Party – Keith Milgaten and Keith Stanfield

      Hey Baby – Pitbull

      When a Man Loves a Woman – Aaron Neville

      Count on Me – Bruno Mars

      Paperweight – Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk

      Waiting on the World to Change – John Mayer

      Mad World – from Donnie Darko

      Clocks – Coldplay

      Tiny Dancer – Ben Folds cover (Such an amazing pianist.)

      The Luckiest – Ben Folds

      Day 29, April 27, 2014

      “Then I realized I was swimming.”

      —Florence + the Machine, “Swimming”

      You have to be smart about your addictions.

      I warmed up for 30 minutes on the treadmill, including a 1-mile run, early on Friday before my morning training session and followed Adorable’s suggestion to include a minute of sprinting sprinkled in two or three times during my run.

      During training, I had a lot of discomfort in my calves and my left shin, and by the end of the hour, Adorable suggested I take the weekend off from running, or even walking, on the treadmill.

      “Okay.”

      But okay was not what I was thinking. I doubted I could get through the next two days without this.

      I told Adorable I’d swim.

      “Nice.”

      Nearly everyone I knew growing up on Long Island was a swimmer. Even as adults, my father, Len, and my sisters Sherry, Phyllis, and Ilene, swim regularly, and I swam in the Johns Hopkins University pool when I was in graduate school. Once I started dying my hair, though, getting my head soaked in a tank of chlorine lost its appeal for me. I hadn’t even glanced at the Equinox pool, which by the way was salt water, so I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up on Saturday morning.

      But before I could swim in the pool, I needed to stop at a sporting goods store to pick up a silicone swim cap, goggles from this decade, and a racing suit, because I was sure my Karla Colletto was never meant to get wet. City Sports fit me in a cap that would work for my head and hair and goggles with the correct “orbit” for my face. I picked the cheapest suit on the rack that didn’t look too much like I knew what I was doing. They had “swim paddles” for your hands that added resistance to your work out, but I knew enough to talk to Adorable first before investing in a pair of lobster claws.

      I put the suit on in the locker room and worked carefully to tuck each strand of hair into the cap. Since City Sports had already sized the goggles for me, all I needed to do was set them on my face, walk into the pool area, and get into the water. But as I was about to step onto the ladder, a trainer working with a client in the pool (the client was in the pool; the trainer was walking on the deck as she swam) greeted me in that very sincere friendly way that made me want to lift the cap off my ears so I could return the pleasantry. I settled everything back into the cap and onto my face and got in the water, sharing a lane with Mark Spitz.