Mission Inn Run ~ Race Report

Place overall 400 (out of 744 runners)
Place in age division 32 (out of 70 women ages 30-34)
Out of all women 188 (out of 451 women)
Total time 1:07:21 minutes
Pace 10:50 minutes per mile



Satisfaction!  So if I can't write about everything now, forgive me. I hope to have more time soon. I had a great time running this course and I'm proud of myself for training and enjoying it.

Airborne

I have been taking this since Saturday because I felt stressed and under the weather.  I had planned to get a flu shot on Monday, so I wanted to give my immune system a boost.  Here are the contents of this *Effervescent Health Formula*
Vitamin A (retinyl palmitate)
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
Vitamin E (dl-alpha-tocopheryl acetate)
Magnesium (as oxide & sulfate)
Zinc (sulfate)
Selenium (chelate)
Manganese (gluconate)
Sodium (bicarbonate)
Potassium (bicarbonate)
Maltodextrin
Lonicera (flower)
Forsythia (fruit)
Schizoenpeta (aboveground parts)
Ginger (dried rhizome)
Chinese Vitex (fruit)
Isatis (root)
Echinacea (above ground parts)
Glutmine
Lysine

Then yesterday my colleague says to me "I was part of a settlement... We sued the company because the product doesn't work... But I've never even taken it... I got $15."

I've taken supplements like this all through college.  I tried MANY non-FDA regulated supplements which were later part of litigation.  How can we expect to transition to plant-based remedies, where people can grow their own medicines and promote more sustainable health care, if people do not trust plant blends to supply them with nutrients?  People take pills easily, without question, but why are such nutraceutical blends attacked?  Maybe we just need more data...

The Formula

Recently I attended a friend's wedding in Wisconsin.  She complimented me on my skin tone and appearance and asked me (indirectly) about my skin care regimen and am ashamed to admit that I was a bit dismissive.  It wasn't because I didn't want to share my "skin care secrets" with her, it was perhaps because I am embarassed about its expense and complexity.

Daily
Clinique Redness Solutions Soothing Cleanser (US$21.50, 5 oz)
Elizabeth Arden Visible Difference Refining Moisture Cream Complex (US$54.50, 2.5 oz)
Erno Lazlo Total Skin Revitalizer (US$80, 1 oz)
Erno Lazlo Intensive Decollete Cream SPF 20 (US$95, 2.1 oz)
Clinique Sun SPF 50 Face Cream (US$18, 1.7 oz)
Clinique All About Eyes (US$29, 0.5 oz)

Weekly?
Alba Botanical Deep Sea Facial Mask (US$9.99, 4 oz)
Dr. Mercola's Organic Acai Night Moisturizer (US$37.80, 1.7 oz)
Clinique Repairwear Intensive Eye Cream (US$40, 0.5 oz)

These are my current go-to items for skin care.  Many of them were recommended (or gifted) to me.  Those items that are mainstays are the Elizabeth Arden Moisturizing Cream and Clinique SPF 50 Face Cream.  If I forget (or run out) of either of these, my skin quality deteriorates rapidly.  I get rosacea on my forehead, cheeks, and chin (commonly called the T-zone) from sun exposure and air pollution.  A product that forms a barrier between your skin and the atmosphere is a must in Southern California.



Gardner and Garbo



The weekly (pampering) treatment is administered to soothe my skin when it's become overworked.  This may come from many hours in front of the computer, holding my head in my hands, sitting in front of a bonfire, or any other activity that doesn't involve excessive sun or wind exposure.  When my skin is already stressed, I don't do extra beauty treatments like masks.  When it's just run down through routine, I find I notice a difference after a night treatment of Acai Night Moisturizer combined with Repairware Eye Cream.  I use the Botanical Deep Sea Mask to unclog pores and give the appearance of smaller pores, it seems to have an astringent effect.  Always good to have is a freezer-stored eye mask, to reduce swelling around the eye area.  Cold cucumber slices covering the eyes also work well.



Living now so near Hollywood, it's fun to think of the celebrities (pictured above are two starlets who were treated by Erno Lazlo before his death in 1973) who have used skin care regimens formulated by chemists.  Lazlo also treated Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn, among others.  Erno Laszlo was a Hungarian-born medical doctor, who earned a reputation in skin quality improvement after treating the Princess of Belgium



Elizabeth Arden





Florence Nightingale Graham (died in 1966), who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian-American businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire started by a collaboration with A. Fabian Swanson, a chemist, to create a "fluffy" face cream, bringing a scientific approach to formulations.



Josephine Esther Mentzer (died in 2004), who went by the business name Estée Lauder, became more interested in her uncle's business (chemistry) than her father's (hardware). She agreed to help her uncle, Dr. John Schotz, a chemist. He owned a company called New Way Laboratories, which produced numerous beauty products (creams, lotions, rouge, and fragrances). She called one of his creams Super Rich All-Purpose Cream and began her business by selling beauty products to her friends.  Evelyn Lauder, daughter of Josephine, paired with dermatologist Dr. Norman Orentreich to create the Clinique line for Estée Lauder.  The same company also owns Aveda, incorporating the healing properties of Ayurveda (the Hindu science of longevity) and aroma, while producing products that are as organic as possible and produced with greater environmental responsibility as a guiding principal.





Estée Lauder with a customer



I definitely understand that appearance isn't everything, but the face is key to making a good first impression.  I am happy to be teaching at the Claremont Colleges and I do so without wearing cosmetics (foundation, concealer, shadow, rouge, lipstick).  But I still engage in skin care.  And I appreciate the efforts of pioneering businessmen and businesswomen who combined an interest in sales with improving the appearance of our facial skin and for formulating protective creams that allow us to enjoy the atmosphere regardless of how polluted it is and how many DNA-damaging free-radicals and UVA and UVB rays encounter our faces each day.  Even 10 minutes in the sun without these creams and I notice a decline in my skin quality. 

Hurrah for chemistry and for those willing to work at the interface between medicine, chemistry, art and fashion!  Do I spend too much on these products?  Is it worth every penny?  What would my skin look like if I washed it with Dove soap?  I can't tell you that, but I can say that since beginning the Erno Lazlo products (August), I have received more compliments than before when I was using only the E. Arden and Clinique regimen.  The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

I want to also articulate that the ingredients in such creams and lotions often have botanical origin.  I believe that as issues of sustainability and biodiversity become more widely appreciated, the cosmetic and cosmaceutical industries will continue to offer improved formulations of bioactive creams from natural sources.  A friend I met at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany works toward the characterization of molecules isolated from plants used in traditional medicine in French Polynesia.  She holds a patent on a natural product with antioxidant properties that is currently formulated into a skin cream.  Chemistry is beautiful!

Want more?
Chemists' Corner: Organic Cosmetic Standards Podcast (39 min) with Gay Timmons , who owns and operates Oh, Oh Organic, Inc., a company committed to the development and delivery of sustainable agricultural ingredients for the cosmetic and personal care industries.
Cosmetics Design: Formulators Need Green Ingredients Podcast (2 min 39 sec) with Dr. Liliana George, Executive Director of Strategic Developments, Research & Development, Estée Lauder.
Potions and Lotions: Lessons in Cosmetic Chemistry Activity Learn more about solids, liquids, solutions, mixtures and solvents, oils, waxes, emulsifiers, emollients, surfactants, stabilizers, antioxidants and how they apply to cosmetic chemistry.  Hosted by ScienceBuddies.com

Swimming upstream, or, Finding the current

Reflecting, for a brief moment, on the changes that have come my way in recent weeks.

• My wardrobe has been pared down to business dress.  And workout clothes.
• My schedule has been unpredictable and hectic.  I feel disorganized 99% of the time. (OK this is not different than usual.)
• I am smiling constantly.  A whole new range of body language has begun to express itself.
• I am starting to talk to myself.  Nicely.
• The shoes on my feet are for style and safety.  And have been bought in the last week.
• I see more of my husband.  And less (he is killing me in a weight-loss battle).
• I feel closer to (and farther away) from my fierce female friends.  Go Scripps!
• I hold my head up high.  People actually listen to the words coming out of my mouth.
• I haven't been for a run since moving to our new house in August.

Goldenseal: friend or foe?

Hydrastis canadensis

In periods of stress, a person could be written a prescription for the newest anti-anxiety medication (see prev post) or a person of botanical pursuasion such as myself may tend to look to Gaia (Mother Earth) for treatment.  My dear sister, who for the moment shall remain nameless, recommended to me a while back the tincture of Goldenseal root.

I looked at a small bottle of Goldenseal root extract in a store in Riverside and didn't buy any.  Or if I did buy it, I didn't take it and now it's lost.  I forgot why.  Recently while celebrating the Ph.D. defense of a good friend, who shall also remain nameless, we ran into a herbal store to see what kind of stress-mitigating substances they might be carrying.  With my first paycheck in the bank, I decided to splurge on the stuff I had been prescribed by my sister years ago.

Berberine 

Hydrastine

The "Supplement Facts" certify that 1 serving of this product (1 mL) contains a minimum of 5 mg Hydrastine and 10 mg Berberine, both isoquinoline alkaloids (can you spot the structural similarity?).  A single serving of this extract is said to have been prepared using 500 mg of plant root.

 The root is the active part of the plant, it is harvested in the autumn after the plant has died down and is dried for later use. It is said to be antiperiodic, antiseptic, astringent, cholagogue, diuretic, laxative, stomachic, tonic. It is used mainly in the treatment of disorders affecting the ears, eyes, throat, nose, stomach, intestines and vagina.  I am intrigued and have taken 3 doses so far.

1) Friday before a Red Eye flight to the East coast - in green tea - 1 mL ( too strong )
2) Sunday/Monday after whirlwind weekend trip - in green tea with milk/honey 0.5 mL (still too strong)
3) Tuesday afternoon - 0.5 mL in decaf coffee with milk/honey (EXCELLENT)

So I'll keep you up to date on my personal experiment.  It is recommended not to exceed 10 days of this treatment.  Hoping to cut carbs from my diet and banish anxiety.  Hit the RESET button on my metabolism.
Also note on previous post RE: vitamins, I think they accelerated some of my cavities.  When I entered graduate school I was accused of not being a serious chemist because I didn't have bad teeth.  The things we go through in the Ph. D. process to prove we are serious...

file > new > blank document

So I have a week left until I need to start showing my face around the new campus.  I am not terrified, but for some reason I am having trouble with the transition.  My husband says from his perspective it's like I am "sitting down right before crossing the finish line."  I've never done that in a race, so why am I doing it in real life?

I remember in the LA County Half, I was sooooo frustrated with myself for having to walk almost the entirety of Mile 10.  I knew I was closing in on the home stretch, but my legs simply wouldn't work.  I guess that's what this feels like.  After an incredibly productive week last week, I am sitting down right before the finish line.

my baby-doggie, Edna Jo

What's wrong?  I feel like there's soooo much to do, it's hard to start.  I am starting to feel grounded here at the new house.  Thank goodness.  After a year-and-a-half of feeling like the rug was snatched out from under me, because of living apart from my husband and baby-doggie, it didn't seem right.  So at least we're under one roof again and I think that is definitely helping me find my center.

Everything is working out as well or better than we had hoped.  Yet, I can't seem to find the motivation to finish the dissertation.  Spending 8+ hours per day in front of a screen, watching the blinking cursor, combing through notes and files accumulated over 5+ years of study, trying to synthesize all this knowledge into a coherent summary with references, it is maddening!  It's so much easier to turn my energy towards a task that can be completed in an afternoon, or even a week.  This project (the dissertation) you could say has spanned 5 years, focusing on the write-it-up part for the past 6 months.

So with that I will conclude with a quote I found on twitter:
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." ~Mario Andretti

Dorkin' Out with Team Garmin-Cervelo

Forerunner 110

So I have a bit of a crush on Thor Hushvod and I am happy to finally have given myself a moment to blog about it.  Watching Le Tour this year has been inspiring me to "take the high road" i.e. do some climbing on my morning commute.  It also encouraged me to set goals and develop a winning team, so I was stoked when team Garmin-Cervelo won the team competition in Le Tour.  At my bicycle club Winter Holiday Party last year, we did a white elephant gift exchange and I got a DVD called Beyond the Peloton.  That's how I got the crush.

Anyway, I got a Garmin Forerunner 110 as a gift from my husband last month and so far it is pretty cool.  I can easily see the route if I upload the data to MapMyRide, which I had been doing before manually and sometimes it would take quite a bit of time to remember where I had gone.  The Garmin works for both running and biking (that I have tested) but all my workouts seem to upload with a "run" default setting and I have not yet figured out how to change that.  Other than that it beeps at me at each mile.  That's kind of encouraging.  I track my workouts under the username fb.KayK.679.  Then I can see if I'm overtraining in one area or another (biking/running/aerobics).  Also I can track my weight and mood and how that corresponds to what I've been doing.  At least that's what I use it for.  I used to post my workout stats to a Leaderboard with another club member, to compare things like distance, calories, pace and weight, which was also pretty motivating.  Supposedly you can swim with the Forerunner 110 too, as long as you don't dive.

So should I retire the Nike+ device (see prev posts RE: elation, frustration, realization, and commiseration)...  Well the watch/USB fob logged 89 miles, the shoes have 231 miles.  So it worked about 38% of the time, give or take my accuracy in uploading workouts manually.  The Nike+ system seems in retrospect more geared to Apple users and I am not one of those.  No iTunes for me, but for those who do, it has the potential to coordinate your playlist with your run.  So I guess I may give in to my Garmin.  Especially since the Nike+ was not compatible with cycling.  MapMyFitness has all kinds of features besides cycling, so overall I am happy with that platform, even though most of my profile is cycling-related and I access it through MapMyRide.  I know they have a good iPhone app, but I use my Sanyo SCP-2700, which is just as good for me.  Speaking of triathlons, I dropped my phone in the jacuzzi in La Jolla, took it apart, let it dry out for 3 days, put it back together and it is still working fine.  The Nike+ wristband has been a handy watch even when it didn't work for uploading run data.  I don't think I'll trash it just yet.

While I'm doing a technology review, [ahem, avoiding writing my dissertation] I might as well tell you about my Shell Eee PC. "Easy to learn, easy to work, easy to play" (Eee) is the company motto and I think they did a good job.  I've had it since before I went overseas (over a year).  It has been my video phone for Skype (low-cost international) calling and videoconferencing.  I've written my dissertation on it, thanks to a large hard drive (250GB).  I am addicted to multitasking and the Intel Atom processor has yet to overheat like my previous Tablet PC.  Which my dad and I tried to fix like this, and then had to take it in for service to get a new mother board put in.  I installed Google chrome for browsing and use pretty much the entire Google suite of cloud computing solutions.  And just now, I had forgotten to save the entire above writing and it restored itself.  It weighs less than 4 pounds with AC adapter and I can take it everywhere on my bike.  Obviously I use it to track my wellness activities.  Also I use it to back up photos taken with my phone.  All this technology supported my husband and I while living apart for the past year and a half.  I tagged this post "green" because the Eee PC's annual electrical consumption is less than $3.

I tagged this post "weight loss" because I am back in a size 8 for wedding season.  Hurrah!