Recovery Doesn’t Have to Keep You Down
Courtesy 2milliondogsblog.wordpress.com
It’s been 3 years since I’ve run San Antonio Rock n Roll half marathon, and now I remember why. The weather in San Antonio is fickle. Last Sunday, race day, saw a record high of 89°F. This Sunday, we’re expecting a high of 42. Go figure. Nevertheless, it was a fun race with a great route. I’ve spent this week recovering, including not running but doing some stretching, strength training, and core work instead. I’d forgotten how much Pilates hurts.
Because of the heat on race day, it was a hard recovery. But following these tips helped ease the pain.
Ice, ice, baby
I know. I can’t believe I said that either. But an ice bath is the way to go. Get in the tub, run a couple of inches of warm water, switch the warm to cold until your legs are covered, then pour in the ice. Bags of it, to the tune of 30 lbs. You may need to wear your cold-weather running shirt in the tub with you. And you probably need to be clutching a very large cup of very hot liquid, but ice will ultimately make your legs happy. By the next day, they’ll be thanking you.
Hydrate
This was the first race where I hit every single water stop. With all that heat, I needed it. Drinking the day before and during the race, however, is not enough. I drink all day long after a race ends. I don’t mean beer, although there’s nothing like an ice-cold beer after a hard, sweaty run; I mean water and electrolyte-replacing liquids. You won’t wake up Monday morning feeling hung over if you keep the liquids coming.
Feed your body well
My body always feels weird the entire day after a hard race. I feel depleted and want to eat, but nothing sounds good. I’m often tempted to eat pizza or Cheetos. Racing is a nice excuse to offer myself that kind of reward, but there’s something about a greasy, cheesy slab of dough that just doesn’t sit right with me. Then again, neither does a steak. I can never decide. I find that I have to practically force myself to eat something, and I have to rationally choose the foods best suited to recovery, the right combination of healthy carbs and protein.
Fortunately, I survived the race—and the ice bath. When’s the next race?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Newton’s Laws of Motion
Liar liar pants on fire.
That’s what I said to myself the moment I hit Send on an email a couple of days ago. I was explaining to someone that I wasn’t too concerned about this Sunday’s half marathon. Since my training was interrupted, my intention was simply to go and have fun, run comfortably, not worry about time.
The truth is, however, that once I get there—heck, once I pick up my race packet on Saturday—I go into competition mode. In fact, I believe it’s already begun. The mental focus that blocks out nearly everything else. The tightening in my stomach, not nerves (yet), but a physical focus that starts at the core and radiates energy to my arms and legs. (It’s better than coffee by far.) The sudden urge for only healthy food, fuel. No slip-ups with ice-cream or the stash of bite-size Milky Ways in my freezer.
I can’t seem to help it—it happens automatically. And I’m not sure I want to.
I like competing. I love pushing my body so far that even I am amazed at what it can do. Racing is one of the few times when I am so attuned to my body that I can step outside of it, get out of its way and let it do what it knows how to do. It’s one of the few times I can be one and apart, alone and with others simultaneously. It’s a joy I cannot describe.
But I don’t have to. Talking’s not a part of it. I just need to run.
Where did I put those matches?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )May I Have a Word?
It’s noon on a Monday and I’m standing in my kitchen wearing the same t-shirt I slept in (one of the perks of working from home). I’ve just hung up the phone with Carrie and my head hangs in shame. I’ve been listening to myself explain to her that I can’t seem to find the motivation to run. I can’t do it. It’s just too hard.
It’s been 5 weeks since I’ve run. Carrie and I are only weeks out from the San Antonio Rock n Roll half marathon, her first. I promised I would run it with her, train for it with her, because your first half is a big deal. Every half is a big deal. But smack dab in the middle of a 10-mile run, I landed wrong on my foot. I tried to go on a little farther, but couldn’t. Carrie walked the 5 miles back to the car with me while I hobbled along feeling terrible about ruining her run. She’s done awesome with her training since then. I’ve done none.
I think about my mom. Her words ring in my head: “Because I said I would.” This was her reply to me in junior high when I asked why she was going to do something she was clearly too overwhelmed to do. Because she said she would. Because your word is that significant. It’s what you are.
Although it’s noon on Monday and I’ve never run at noon, I lace up my shoes and go. I run 4 miles. Just like that. On Wednesday, I run 6. Friday, 8. This week, a repeat, with a 10-miler on Friday. I am astonished I can pick up almost where I left off. Bodies are amazing. Minds more so. I am especially astonished at what I’ve talked myself out of. I wonder how many of those weeks spent telling myself that I can’t do it, it’s just too hard, were to protect something other than my foot.
So now I give my word to myself: It’s not too hard. I can do it after all.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )I Need a Sign
Life would be much nicer if we all carried signs. Not road signs, but the kind spectators do in races: “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Or “I’m proud of you, Perfect Stranger.”
My friend Jill manages the blog Best Race Signs. People send her pics of race signs from all around the country. Some are inspirational; most are simply funny. I read all of them because no matter what else is going on in my day, these signs make me smile. They also make me wish life really were more like a race.
They say you can tell a lot about a person by the metaphor they choose for life. Is life really a race? What if it’s a test or simply one big party? My metaphor changes from time to time. Lately, I see life as an endurance race. However, there’s one thing missing: The signs.
Can you imagine walking down the sidewalk, driving in your car, or sitting on the subway and glancing up from your reverie to see a complete stranger holding up a sign: “You’re the sh*t,” for instance. Who wouldn’t be motivated by that and think, Well, heck, maybe I am. Maybe I can <fill in the blank> after all?
And wouldn’t it be nice if during our darkest hour we could lift our eyes from the road ahead, just for a moment, to find a sign of encouragement: “..let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,” let’s say, or “The voice in your head that says you can’t do this is a liar.”
I can see how carrying signs might be inconvenient. Nevertheless, I think it would make for a much happier world. It might make people achieve more or go for their dreams. At the very least, it would make people smile. And on those days when someone feels like they’re running up a steep hill in the dark, what would be wrong with that?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )No Sweat
I’ve always associated endurance and perseverance with sweat. Atlas holding up the heavens with his shoulders. Sisyphus forever pushing a boulder up a mountain.
As runners, we know perseverance, endurance. We train to keep going, to run a little farther, a little faster, a little longer, to see if we can’t improve our form, our distance, our time. We persist through heat, rain, humidity, cold, snow, up big hills and across wide expanses of open terrain, under stars and moon and sun. A sweaty endeavor indeed. When we reach our goal, we have physical proof that we have persevered. We have endured.
Running develops these traits in us, as many runners will tell you, and they extend into so many areas of our lives. The past couple of weeks I’ve learned a new application of perseverance, one that is not so sweaty.
Stillness. To wait and do what at first seems like nothing. And nothing is a difficult thing to do. For all that running teaches us to endure, it should also teach us to endure not-running, not taking time but giving it, to accomplish those things that can only be achieved in stillness.
For me, the not-running started with a sprained ankle two weeks ago, but the lesson in persevering through stillness didn’t occur to me until much later. Runners lament not-running while non-runners look on quizzically. They don’t quite understand the stomach-churning anxiety that accompanies it. I don’t always either, to be honest. It’s just running, after all, and although I am a runner, I am so much more. Still. When a part of my identity is suspended indefinitely, it’s disquieting, to say the least.
But, I have found, if I’m quiet and let it be, if I can persevere through the stillness and simply wait, I improve in a different way: I develop an internal patience and peace. And, given time, I can say, no sweat.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Journey Up
The Angel Moroni stands erect, head high and horn to lips at the tallest point on Stone Oak Parkway. I’ve marveled at this golden statue perched atop the San Antonio LDS temple for the past few years. The temple itself stands at the pinnacle of one of the highest hills in the area. You can see both the temple and the statue from quite far.
This hill has been my nemesis, my nightmare—my dream, my goal—for years. Each time I’ve driven it I’ve thought that maybe one day, maybe one, if I was lucky (or crazy), I would maybe give it a run. And, if a miracle happened, I would make it to the top.
Until now, I have trained for nearly every half marathon alone. My friend Carrie is training for her first half, and we are using the same plan, one that calls for hill repeats as one of its two days of speed/strength work. We are both trying something new: Carrie, a half marathon. Me, a running buddy. We don’t run together every day. Just the hard ones. The longest of the long runs. The hills.
The hills. We figured if we’re going to run hills, we might as well run Hills. So we chose temple mount.
Last week, our first hill week, we stood at the bottom of the mount and looked tentatively up. We couldn’t see the top from the bottom, could barely see a jutting temple corner and the Angel Moroni heralding the dawn. Four to five short hills is what our plan directed. Our goal was to get as far as we could, maybe half way, for each repeat.
For the first repeat, we counted five lampposts, about a third of the hill, and stopped, excited. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. For the second through fourth repeats, we counted eight lampposts, somewhere around half way. We struggled for breath, lungs searing, and made a fifth repeat, five lampposts.
We went home thrilled with ourselves (though we would barely be able to walk the next day), determined to come back and try again.
This week, we met at the bottom of the mount. Three to four long hills, our plan said. Long.
Let’s start where we left off, I suggested. The first repeat to lamppost eight. Then we can shoot for the top.
Carrie looked at me sideways, hands on her hips, looked up the hill. I think, she said confidently, that we should go all the way up the first time. Get it over with. Then if we feel like it, we can do it again.
So we took a deep breath and began. We started up the hill in complete silence, eyes dead center on the cement in front of us. At lamppost eight I was breathing hard, lungs tight but not searing, and we kept going, up and up. Before we knew it, we were at the top, over the last steep hump, the end in sight. I eyeballed a fire hydrant where the sidewalk leveled out, my stopping point. Carrie bounded past me by two cement squares and stopped at the crosswalk.
We smiled, barely, and looked out and around. Lights twinkled for miles in the distance, the sky predawn gray. We sucked in air, high-fived, and jogged back down the hill. It seemed to take much longer going down than coming up.
The thing about doing something hard once is that in having done it you have proof that you can. It doesn’t seem right after that to not do what you just did and what you know you can. It seems that if you do not put in your best effort and repeat your success, you are only cheating yourself. And if you have a buddy, you are cheating her too.
Eight lampposts thus seemed like a silly goal for the second repeat. It was all or nothing.
This time rather than keeping my eyes trained straight in front of me, I glanced up from time to time, looking for the angel with his horn. I could see him at the peak, gold and shiny, beckoning me. I ran and glanced and ran some more, and before long the sidewalk leveled out and the fire hydrant appeared. Carrie bounded two sidewalk squares past me again.
The third time, I didn’t count lampposts, nor did I seek out the angel. I paid attention, instead, to my legs that did not hurt, my lungs that worked hard but were not searing, and my arms and hands and head that felt light as we ascended, and I thought how strange, it’s almost as if our altitude is increasing, like in the mountains, but my ears did not pop. And I remembered the hill at mile 12 of the Austin half marathon, how I cursed the idiot course planner for the giant, steep hill right there, and how this part of temple mount felt like mile 12 then, but now I was not cursing and thinking, as I was then, who does this kind of thing? Who actually pays to torture their body and run like this when they could be in bed with coffee and the newspaper? No. Instead I was running up and up and again, nearing the top, across the last stretch, fire hydrant in sight. And then I bounded past it, with Carrie, to where the sidewalk ends.
On the way down, that again seemed so much longer than going up, I told Carrie that if it wasn’t for her I would never have made it all the way. I would have quit near the top, would not have pushed myself until my arms and hands and head went light as a feather and I flew the rest of the way.
This is a much better plan than all my previous ones. Hills are so much easier to ascend with a running buddy.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Rethinking Pink
I just bought a new pair of running shoes. Bright purple Asics. Very unlike me. I’ve always hated purple.
A year ago I would have balked at the purchase, told the salesperson to take them back, thank you very much, I’d rather have a pair of shoes that maybe didn’t fit quite so well but that weren’t so, well, purple.
But that was a year ago. Times have changed—at least since I bought a pair of bright pink reading glasses.
I’ve always hated pink even more.
When I say hate, I mean loathe. I mean face-squinching, stomach-churning abhorrence. Growing up, my sister and I inevitably received the exact same gift for birthdays and holidays. Exactly the same, that is, with one exception. Whatever the gift was, she got blue. I got pink.
No one ever asked me what my favorite color was. (Decidedly not pink.) No one bothered. They simply bought every article of clothing, bedding, bathing accessory in pink. And you know how it is. Pink begets pink. When one relative saw me with All Things Pink, others made wild assumptions and purchased even more pink. I was forced to live in a Box of Pink.
When I left home for college, I quickly and thoroughly cleansed my world of All Things Pink. I did not purchase one even remotely pink thing until I was well into my 30s: One sweater, a beautiful cardigan with pearlized buttons that the store did not have in black. It sat in my closet, tags dangling, for nearly a year before I wore it—and then, only because laundry was weeks overdue.
Yet just about a year ago when I decided it was time to quit fighting the fact that I need reading glasses, I found myself standing in front of a rack handling a pair of bright pink frames. Pink? I shuddered, yet turned them over in my hands, tried them on, tested them on a label I’d been struggling with in aisle 3. I replaced them on the rack and loitered in the antacids aisle.
Pink glasses. Pink? I paced the aisle, completely dismayed that I was considering buying them. Why, dear God, why would the thought even cross my mind? These glasses couldn’t sit in a drawer for a year. I would need them daily to help me see clearly the very intricacies of life, the things that were right in front of my face.
Then it struck me. Pink. A primary color of Girls on the Run.
Since becoming council director, I’ve faced some of the most challenging days of my life. There’s not a day that goes by where I have to do something I can’t do. Maybe I don’t know how to do it, I don’t have the skill set. Maybe I don’t enjoy doing it and I simply don’t want to. Maybe it’s not my strength. Or, maybe, I feel incapable. Inadequate. That if I do this thing, whatever it is, surely I will fail.
But then I do it anyway. Because it must be done.
And because, as it turns out, I can.
Girls on the Run may be about the girls—empowering them to live outside the Girl Box and to reach their full potential—but along the way, serving them has altered the way I see the world. Inevitably, what I see differently is me.
So I put back the Alka Seltzer, Rolaids, and Tums and walked out of the store with pink glasses, a daily reminder that there is another way to see.
Last year, pink glasses. This year, purple shoes. I figure a new vision won’t get me very far unless I’m willing to take it to the street, give it a good run.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Becoming Athena
Megan sat on the steps, fidgety and red with frustration. She blinked back tears, too proud or stubborn to cry in public.
“There’s got to be someone,” her teammates moaned. “Just pick a name already.” They, too, were frustrated. We’d been waiting 10 minutes after everyone else finished for Megan to come up with a name. Just one. Single. Name.
The goal of this Girls on the Run exercise was to identify the characteristics of a good role model. The girls were to come up with the names of women who had an impact on them. Megan couldn’t think of anyone.
Her mother? No.
Sister? Didn’t have one.
Cousin, aunt, family friend? Nope.
Surely there was a teacher or coach who had one good quality Megan wanted to emulate? Nada.
Lucy Stone, Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart…anyone public, famous, renowned? There was none.
Megan wasn’t the only one fighting tears. The other coach and I clenched our teeth against them too. How could a girl reach adolescence and have not one woman to look up to? We didn’t know how to feel. Frustrated and outraged for starters, but by the end of the day just plain sad.
The assistant coach—my sister—and I talked about this for weeks. We dissected our childhood to come up with the names of women who had an impact on us. We couldn’t think of many. Our mom, an extraordinary woman, topped the list, but there weren’t too many others. The fewer names we came up with, the more we felt the gravity of our role with this team of young girls. Whether we knew it or not, and whether we liked it or not, we were there to be role models. Our behavior and our words mattered in ways we would probably never know. They were watching (whether they knew it or not) to see how two ordinary women handled life.
Once I realized this, I wanted to vomit. If they only knew how many mistakes I had made, how often I still screwed up, they’d laugh me off the playground. But when my stomach stopped churning I recognized that this was part of what drew me to Girls on the Run to begin with. If I had only had someone to show me how to be, how to think for myself, how to choose, perhaps my life would have taken a different turn here and there. What I was looking for as a child was a mentor. I simply didn’t know it at the time.
Where did it come from, the idea of the mentor? Not from the world of business or education, but from a poem. Remember the story of Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey? Odysseus went off to fight a war, leaving behind his wife and son, and after years away wanted only to get back home. It took him nearly a lifetime to reach his destination. Along the way, he encountered peril after peril and was often unsure how to proceed. He needed advice and was fortunate to have someone watching over him, to help him through the rough spots: Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategy.
When Athena appears not only to Odysseus but also to his son, Telemachus, she does not come as herself. Rather, she takes on the guise of someone else: Mentor, Odysseus’s old and trusted friend. Her role is to whisper words of wisdom into Odysseus’s ear to guide him home. It is also to help Telemachus not simply adjust to his life circumstances, but to evolve. It is Athena’s guidance—the counsel of the goddess within the (hu)man—that sparks the courage already kindling within both men.
This is the role of the mentor: to set someone on the path of success, of living well. Mentoring requires we give all of our wisdom, our wits, and our hearts. It requires the mentor to reach deep inside to call on reserves she might not know she has.
I still run into Megan from time to time. She shouts me down, waves, smiles broadly, and calls me by the nickname she gave me: Miss What’s-Yer-Name. She never could pronounce my last name, refused to call me by my first. I don’t mind. I’m just glad she remembers me.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Observations for New Coaches
When I first heard about Girls on the Run three years ago, I knew I had to coach. I read everything I could find and cried the whole time. Why wasn’t there a program like this when I was a kid? It would have saved me infinite time and pain. The more I learned about the organization, the more I knew it was for me. Building confidence in young girls through running—could there be anything more perfect?
I now have the privilege of training our council’s coaches. There is so much to cover on training day, however, that there’s not time to tell them everything I wish I could. These are just a few things.
It’s ok to be afraid.
I (over)prepared for my first coaching season—6th-8th graders—but as day one approached, I was scared to death. It was the idea of Girls on the Run, I realized, that attracted me. I hadn’t really considered the fact that coaching meant I’d actually have to talk to girls. But the program is experiential. That means we have to do things together.
What did I know about kids, after all? I don’t have any. My nieces live halfway across the country. My foray into teaching kids lasted one morning in a preschool—3 hours of enough finger paint to shellac the entire school, more full and exploding training pants than I care to remember, and infinite Oreo cookie crumbs smeared in places that were never designed to see them. Not for me, thanks very much. I chose to stick with teaching adults instead.
So when week #1 rolled around and I found myself facing a dozen middle school girls, I was terrified. What if I said something stupid? Or, worse, what if one of them did and I didn’t know how to respond? What if someone came to me for help and I failed her? Would I even know they were asking—did we speak the same language? Not English or Spanish or anything you could pick up through Rosetta Stone. What I mean is, would we relate?
It took a couple of weeks, but I figured something out. Everything I felt and thought and feared—they did too. I may have had the words to express myself (or the wisdom to choose not to) where the girls were just learning. But the main thing they needed was to be heard, to know that not only did they have a voice, but that their voice mattered. They needed the space to take hold of their voice, and then to run with it.
As the season went on, my fear slowly subsided. I even added two words to my vocabulary: Awesome and joy.
Be real.
Being a coach can be tough. You’re not their mother (even if you are). You’re not their teacher (even if you are). And—don’t panic about this one—you’re not their friend. You are an amalgamation of all these roles and none of them. You are there to care for, guide, and mentor the girls on your team. You are there to serve.
Many organizations talk up “service,” a word so overused that we often take it for granted. Even McDonald’s serves. I’ve had to ask myself what it really means to serve, and I find a clue in the first part of our mission statement: “We inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident…” To inspire means that something external activates something internal. The internal piece is already there, whole and (im)perfect.
We are not there to fix anyone. To fix implies that something is broken. We are not there to help anyone. To help implies that they are somehow lesser, incomplete, unfinished. We are not there to save or rescue anyone. This implies that they are lost.
We are there to serve: The whole in you, with all your (im)perfections, to meet the whole in them—mind, body, and spirit. To do this, you must open your heart. You must be authentic and real. Kids are smart. They can sense when someone is posing. They will accept you and like you, no matter what, as long as you are you.
If you let it, it will change you.
Coaching for Girls on the Run appeals to people for a variety of reasons. Some coaches are parents or teachers who see the struggle of tweenhood first-hand and wish to somehow alleviate it. Others remember it, wouldn’t go back there in time for a bazillion dollars, and want to alter the trajectory of someone else’s life, to show them how to save time and pain. And then there are the runners. Those of you who know that running saves lives, because it’s saved yours.
If you embrace your fear and open your heart, your life will be different because of your team. They are wise without knowing it, and will say things that blow you away. You will see the look on their faces when they run, and it will stop you in your tracks. My hope is that you will come away from your experience with a new word added to your vocabulary too: Joy.
Someone asked me just yesterday, how do you tell a girl to be confident? You don’t. You show her. Not only that she can reach inside and pull out the beauty and greatness that’s already there. You demonstrate it yourself.
How incredibly fortunate we are to have such amazing coaches who can do just that.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Tri Dog
Nearly two weeks ago, the morning before the Tour de Jalapeno, my dog Queequeg went tearing out the door at 4:15 am after some small animal that’d been lurking in our backyard for weeks. She came back on 3 legs, dragging one behind her.
A torn ACL, it turns out, requiring extensive surgery to repair both it and her knee.
She spent more than a week laying around and staring at me with sad eyes, her leg swollen and bruised and ugly. She wasn’t at all interested in toys or food or playing with my other dog, Smaug, from whom she is usually inseparable.
But then one morning as Smaug and I were leaving the house for a walk, there she was, tottering on 3 legs in front of us, wagging her tail slowly, nudging my hand and sticking her nose in the door crack. She wanted to walk too.
I think I know how she felt. Habit and instinct and whatever sense of fun dogs have was kicking in. A morning walk is what we do, what we’ve done her whole life. No sooner had she started to feel even a bit better her first impulse was to be outside and run. A dog after my own heart.
Queequeg’s stitches came out yesterday, and the doctor gave her the all-clear. He suggested I take her to the pool for a few days, make her swim, rehab her leg. Looks like we’re going to have to drag ourselves out of bed earlier than usual for a while, sneak to the pool before the neighbors are up and about. Somehow I think they’d frown on a Chihuahua using the neighborhood pool, even on doctor’s orders.
I hope Queequeg likes swimming as much as I do. Soon enough, she can walk to her heart’s content. Maybe next week I’ll get her a bike. Before you know it, she’ll be a bona fide tri dog.
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