Year: 2014

Bodyworlds

On Thursday eve the Bubby and me visited Gunther von Hagens’ Bodyworlds.
exhibition
http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html

I wasn’t sure how I would react to looking at dead bodies but it turned out to be very informative and fascinating. One woman fainted, twice! I think (I hope) they carried her out after the second time, she fainted in the very beginning.

It started with the embryo – from 1 week old, 4 weeks old … up to 7, 8, 9 months old babies. It’s amazing how much a baby still grows in the last two months!

Then we looked at a real skeleton, followed by different bones and body parts. The lung is huge, the brain small, the female body parts are tiny. The human heart is not red 😉 It’s the “year of the lung” so a lot of sick lungs like smoker’s lung, lung cancer, tuberculosis were shown.

The liver is very prone to metastases because of its strong blood circulation.

We saw the heart after a heart attack, the brain after a stroke, dark skin cancer (it’s so dangerous because it goes through your skin into the body and nets up with all the organs), arthrosis, artificial body parts (artificial hip joint, artificial heart valves, femoral fracture…), the digestive tract with a gastric ulcer, the muscles, veins and arteries… everything actually.

Last but not least a huge brown bear (which was actually only a medium sized bear) showing its muscles.

Very fascinating, it’s amazing how some people just take their body, the body that keeps them alive for decades, for granted and ruin it with terrible eating habits, drugs and too much alcohol. It’s also amazing how so many people just don’t care about their body and what it achieves, how it’s its own universe – unbelievable!

It’s not “gross” to go to that exhibition, it is the human body you are seeing. Although I did have an unpleasant feeling in my tummy in the beginning, wasn’t sure if it was just me being hungry or me knowing I’m looking at someone who was alive once.

Shop Girl

Today I went shopping, for clothes, which happens maybe once every two years. For regular clothes – not (only) sport clothes.
I did make the mistake of going to the sports department today, so I spent quite some $$ on sport clothes, which, of course, I really really need. Hey – Under Armour came out with new colors!
shopping
My closet has too many black t-shirts which annoyed me and got me all depressed. For spring I need colorful t-shirts so I went out to go hunting for colorful shirts. I bought a lot of colorful (well, one grey one but the cut was so nice – it’s a bit wider) t-shirts, some white ones because I’m just a jeans & white shirt girl. One Under Armour T-shirt in blue which I will wear not for sport.

I bought two sport tops, new running socks, a “tiny bag to put on your shoe” and that’s it in the sports department. I actually only wanted to buy the socks, but oh well, while searching for them I came across all the other pretty things.

I also bought a pair of skinny jeans – I don’t like skinny jeans but it’s pretty much the only style you find around. And I bought grey skinny jeans, I like grey skinny jeans, I think they look good with chucks or ballerinas or flip flops. I wanted grey pants in a long time.

After my big shopping tour (in only one store) I took the train to the east center station of the city and stopped by the newly opened Dunkin’ Donuts.
shopping2
I was a bit swamped by the selection so I took a medium milk coffee (16 oz – wow, that’s almost half a litre!!) and a blueberry-crunch and apple-cinnamon doughnut. I was too scared to take one of their very colorful doughnuts.

Not that I ever went there while living in Austin, Texas, but I still wanted to check it out any eat something American :). While living in Texas I went to Baskin Robbins, Amy’s Ice-Cream, Starbucks, Dairy Queen sometimes… ah… the good American food, I miss it. But then again, if I’d have it here, I’d be fat. So it’s good that it’s far far away.

Wonderful Public Holiday

Today is a public holiday here which means no work *yay* 🙂
After the Boyfriend and I slept in we sat on the couch, surfed and had coffee. Then we cleaned the apartment (good teamwork) and after that we went biking with a stop at a Biergarten to have beer and Obatzter.
biken1mai
It was a lovely tour, the weather was great, not too warm and not too cold.

We got home at around 4pm, had a cup of coffee again on the balcony and at around 6pm I went for a short run of 5km.
joggen1mai
I stretched and showered after, we had a lovely dinner and now we’re watching a chick-movie – “the proposal” with Sandra Bullock while it’s getting darker and darker outside seeing a big storm is coming.

Ah how I love awesome days like this 🙂

Books read in April 2014

readinapril
This month I didn’t read as much as usual. I didn’t ride to work by train as often this month (where I can read) and in the evening on the couch I preferred surfing the web.
At the moment I’m reading Remember me? by Sophie Kinsella. I’m in the mood for a funny chick-lit, so I started it yesterday.

Happy May 1st 🙂

Run #5 – 10km #2

10km Got a little lost in the forest but at least I got the 10km complete. I tried to run at a good heartrate which made my run 1h 12min long. Took the route next to the highway and was surprised to see no fence nor trees between the highway and the path I was running.
I couldn’t quite manage to keep the heartrate I wanted. It was higher. Maybe I’ll run 5km next time again or get a trainingplan from the internet on how to run 10km.
There are so many websites on jogging, but now the weather is rainy and cold again and I’m a sunny-warm-weather jogger 🙂

Fitness Check #2

Half year after my Fitness check #1

Yesterday I had my second fitness-check, which means:

  1. resting ECG (Cardio Scan)
  2. body fat measuring
  3. BMI measuring
  4. biking until a heart rate of 150

It all took about one hour. Here my results

  1. resting ECG

    My heart beat was at 63, which is good.
    My fit level with that rate was at 3, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. I went one point up from last time!

  2. body fat measuring
    Body fat: 21,0% It went up 3,2% – 2kg… I also gained 2kg of body weight, hmm, maybe I’m not building muslce but fat ;). Last time it was 16,8% which I thought was a little too less and I didn’t really believe in the fat-measuring machine. 21% sounds better for a woman my age 😀

  3. BMI measuring
    19,5

  4. biking until a heart rate of 150 – pwc-test
    I was in the area between “very good” and “good”. I warmed up five minutes, then had to bike at the same speed for one or two minutes with increasing inclination until I reached a heart rate of 150. Then cool down and my trainer wrote down my heart rate after one minute, after three and after five. Then some calculations followed and my result was 1,71 watt/kg.

My First 10 K

10k
I actually wanted to run 7,5km at first. Then I decided to run only 5km… and THEN it went so well and the forest was so nice and I thought “I cannot stop at 7,5km now” so I just ran until I hit 10km.
10k
My first 10 kilometer. Ever. Running. No walking. It’s a premiere for me. I run 9km in one hour. My next goal is to run 10km in one hour.

It’s the first time I ran up hills. Where I normally run it’s pretty even, but this time, spending the easter-holidays at my parents (and having my running clothing with me) it was more challenging, my watch kept telling me “heartrate too high” when I ran up the hill so I had to run even slower and slower. But then – it went down on the other side 🙂
Which was challenging too though, I caught myself getting faster and faster and faster… almost couldn’t keep up with my feet 🙂

This run was very necessary after all the easter eating.

Happy Easter!

Run #3 – 7,5km & new Running Shoes

new Lunarglide 5 I got my new running shoes delivered by UPS on Friday afternoon, right when I came back from run #2.
I was jogging towards my home, came out of the woods and saw the big brown truck in my street. I then saw the UPS driver with a package before the house and squealed with glee.
I speeded up, right towards him and called out my last name. He said “yes” and I squealed with glee once more. I love coincidences like this – perfect timing! (A lot of sentences starting with “I” in this passage)

I grabbed the package, ran upstairs to our apartment and unpacked my new running shoes. So nice and pink and cheaper than all the others of the Lunarglide 5 series.

I had to try them the next day so I ran my first 7,5km
7-5km
pace The weather was lovely, the forest was filled with life – I met more people (and dogs) yesterday than any other time. Normally I never meet anybody.

I have planned a 10km round which I plan to run maybe in two to four weeks. My big goal – to run 10km wihout falling over half dead. And that goal is so close. I don’t care about the time, I’m not a runner, I run about 3-5 times a YEAR. I ran 3 times a week just last week because this year I want to improve my running. And – running in the forest over roots, through gravel and over grass with birds singing is sooo relaxing.

So here’s my 10km plan
10km
I hope I’ll remember it, all the zig-zags… (plan made with www.komoot.de)

Books read in March 2014

books read in march I know, March isn’t over yet but I won’t finish a book I’ll start reading today by tomorrow, so here are the books I read in March 2014.

I must say, I really enjoy the Thrillers by Sebastian Fitzek. His chapters are very short, which I enjoy, yet it tends to go like “the next chapter is short, just one more chapter…”

All the others are chick-lits and I thought “can you keep a secret” by Sophie Kinsella was very amusing. I started another book by her just today 🙂

Yesterday I made my first mountainbike tour this season, a short tour with my dad and it was very nice. I’m a little out of MTB-shape but I hope I’ll be ok after I made three or four tours.