Race Report: Riverside Raincross 5K

Official results (3.1 mi) Place: 239 Div: 21 No: 667 Name: KAYLA KAISER Age: 28 S: F Div: F2529 Town: RIVERSIDE St: CA Time: 34:05 Pace: 11'00"

Unofficial results (3.37 mi) from my

Nike+ device Place: 106 Div: No: Name: Kayla Kaiser Age: 30 S: F Div: F3034 Town: RIVERSIDE St: CA Time: 26:46 Pace: 7'56"

Then check this out: From Official Results Place: 104 Div:3 No: 723 Name: XOCHITL HURD Age: 31 S: F Div: F3034 Town: RIVERSIDE St:CA Time: 26:35 Pace: 8:35

So maybe if I had started right at the front and registered in the right division, I would have finished 10 seconds behind this girl.

So much for my ambitions to place in this race. Looks like last year I got a time of 26:29 with a pace of 08:31 minutes per mile, so I actually beat her last year but didn't post a personal best for this race. Oh well, it's all luck who shows up and who turns it out anyway. I got in a super-brick workout, biking to and from the race and I got to see my friend Matt who won first place overall.

Who cares anyway, right? It's all just numbers. I had mixed feelings about this race. Pro: it was short, there were men in uniform running with us, it didn't rain and the air was perfectly cool and clear. Con: the mistakes on my entry form, dodging puddles and people from the back of the pack to finish somewhere in the middle, and the official timing not starting when the chip crosses the starting line. Unfortunately, although my Nike+ device does not keep proper distance because my stride is shorter than average, it keeps good time and I started and stopped it right at the starting and finish lines. So I am happy with my performance.

Who am I kidding, do I claim to be a runner? Well, really what motivated me to run in this race this was my personal desire to make my body the best it can be. I'm choosing to call it "sculpting" now. My body had become "like a mozzarella" as my amica Italiana Claudia says. So it doesn't matter if I came in first, third, or thirtieth, the important thing is that I enjoyed myself. It was fun to see the kiddos run in the 1K race and to see families outdoors interacting in a beautiful park. I was actually running so fast, I didn't enjoy the scenery much. Except along the ridge overlooking the Santa Ana river basin, that part was bomb.

What I'm thinking now is how wonderful my husband is to drive up and see me. I had considered taking the Amtrak train from Riverside to Oceanside. It's leaving right now actually and would have taken me 3 hours, costing $34. If we take the car it's about $12 for gas each way but I am thinking we are going to have to save up some money for new tires. At least the insurance is paid through August so we hope the car will last at least that long.

So many wonderful things are coming up in the next few months, I'm almost beside myself with joy. I am trying to keep my body moving and stress-free, as much as it is possible to do so when I am trying to make progress on so many fronts continuously and simultaneously. I am putting myself in some serious pain, but isn't why they invented antinflammatories (see prev post)? I just noticed I put a bunch of tags on this post and I don't have time to write on all those topics. So I'll just stick with the blog post title: Race Report. This race was AWESOME.

To soy or not to soy... part II

Flavonoids are thought to affect their anticancer properties by a variety of mechanisms. One route is by inhibiting cytochrome P450 (CYPs) from activating procarcinogens. Another route is by inducing phase II enzymes, facilitating carcinogen elimination from the body. Some flavonoids can even affect promotion and progression of carcinogenesis by interfering directly with cell cycle, angiogenesis, invasion and apoptosis. Of course, these properties have been investigated in vitro and the bioavailability and speciation of flavonoids (and their glycosylated relatives) needs further study.

As for me, I guess I will continue to eat soy in moderation. I am not convinced it is harmful. Nor do I believe that genes from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) will spring into my DNA. FYI, 93% of the soy raised in the US has been genetically modified to confer herbicide tolerance, compared to 77% globally. That's all the science I have to share with you today.

It's two weeks until my next race and I am feeling fatter and lazier than ever. Looking for that motivation... where's it gone?

To soy or not to soy...

Today I was craving my old standby for days spent writing a thesis -- the soy latte. I started drinking these upon the advice of a personal trainer. She was concerned that if I started burning calories with workouts, my body would utilize my own muscle mass as an energy source if I didn't incorporate more protein into my diet. She suggested substituting dairy milk with soymilk in my coffee for starters. That was waaaay back in the early 2000's when I lived in Arizona, worked out at 24 Hour Fitness, and was a size 16 at 175 pounds.

My diet right now is all messed up. I am super stressed and craving carbs galore. I am spending days and days in front of the computer and not spending time outdoors taking exercise. I am

anxious that I will look down at my belly one day and not be able to see my feet on the scale which reads 180 pounds again. When I felt healthier, I craved milk so why am I all of a sudden reaching for soy?

Clif bars have become a staple of my diet, which contain soy protein and a ton of ready-for-action carbs. I like them because they are easily digestible and allow me about 2 more hours of productivity from the time I eat them to when I start to feel hungry again. Easy to eat on the run. The company uses soy protein because it provides amino acids in a vegetarian-friendly form. The other pillar in my diet right now is Premier Nutrition shakes (chocolate and vanilla) which are fortified with milk isolate protein & whey concentrate. So I am getting a non-soy source of protein too! These are also individually packaged as well for on-the-go days.

I have heard repeatedly that Clif bars are essentially junk food. Just because these items are marketed as "healthy" they may in fact be harmful to me. So I decided to investigate for myself whether soy is harmful or helpful. It seems the literature is full of contradictions. Some claim to have shown that soy is harmful and the studies that tout its benefits can only demonstrate a marginal difference from a placebo.

Isoflavones are part of a class of molecules called FLAVONOIDS. Isoflavones are molecules made by plants which are thought to (1) have harmful estrogenic effects in the animals that eat them and (2) have helpful health-promoting effects on the animals that eat them such as preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease and (3) are used by the plant for recruitment of rhizobacteria and pollinator animals. These studies were of particular interest in light of the molecules I have been studying in my research.

I have been looking at flavonols in the model plant Arabidopsis, while another colleague in my lab has been looking at anthocyanins in pomegranate. The structural similarity between isoflavones (phytoestrogens) and the estrogen made by animals (17-b-estradiol) is pretty low to my eyes. This entire class of molecules has low toxicity in animals, which is why we enjoy so many foods that contain these molecules.

Levels of isoflavones in soy are high, which I found in the USDA 2008 report on the isoflavone content of 557 food items (I have pulled out only a few of these for the purposes of this blog). Clif bars contain even more isoflavones per 100 grams than soybeans. For some reason blogger isn't letting me use more than 3 images per post, so this topic will be continued shortly...