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 )The Price of One Bad Meal
I’ve been recovering most of the week. Not from a race or an injury or even an illness, but from a meal.
I talk a lot about my love for (not-so-healthy) food. Chocolate. The -ito family (Dorito, Frito, Cheeto). Nevertheless, for the most part I am a healthy eater and know enough to stay away from certain foods, or at least eat them in moderation.
I generally avoid dairy and gluten, limit sodium, and try not to eat refined sugar that often. I eat complex carbs and protein and enough produce to compost the entire neighborhood.
So I don’t know what I was thinking on Sunday night when my boyfriend and I sat down for dinner at the Alamo Café. We had just come from his grandmother’s 90th birthday party and I was pleased with myself for by-passing sandwiches and cake (yes, cake—the chocolate kind, with gobs of white, fluffy frosting) and munching instead on nuts and fruit. Too pleased, apparently.
And too hungry to by-pass chips and queso. Margaritas with salt. The smell of fresh flour tortillas. Before I could sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas” I was elbow deep in carne guisada. Too much carne guisada.
I didn’t even finish my plate. I left the rice and refried beans, opting for a side of boracho beans instead, and picked out the chunks of meat, leaving behind the glop of thick gravy they came covered in. Still, I left there waddling like a duck.
Sodium, gluten, enriched flour and lord knows what else bloated my body for days. On Monday morning, I couldn’t even run. (Is this what my pregnant friends feel like? How do they do it?)
On Tuesday, I managed a waddle/run—at my slowest pace in years. The rest of the week was a wash.
An entire week of fruitful exercise and six pounds of bloat were the price I paid for one bad meal. I don’t know how people eat like this on a regular basis, but I know many who do. I wish they could spend a week clean so they could experience natural energy, healthy-food style. From now on, I sure will.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )The Best Wurst 5 Mile Run
Last Saturday I ran the Wurst 5 Mile Run in New Braunfels, Texas. I shared the race with 994 other runners at beautiful Landa Park, home to Wurstfest, a week-long party celebrating German culture, food, and beer.
It was the first time I’ve entered this race, and the first time in a while I’ve participated in a 5 mile run. I have to say, it was the best race I’ve run in a long time. Here’s why:
- Wurst. What kind of race with “Wurst” in the title wouldn’t serve bratwurst? Not this one. There was plenty. I don’t usually eat bratwurst, and I’ve never eaten a wurst right after running, but after this race, I did. Surprisingly, it beats bananas hands-down.
- Beer. What’s bratwurst without beer? A half fulfilled promise. I couldn’t do one without the other, so immediately after crossing the finish line, I headed for the brat line, then the beer line. Another first for me: Drinking beer after a race. I have only one word for all those people who’ve told me over the years how nice a beer is after a run: Genius.
- Tuba. Yes, a tuba. You can’t really have a party celebrating all things German without a polka band. You can’t really have a polka band without a tuba. And I thought bagpipes were cool at a race, but a tuba? Spectacular.
- 5 Miles. For the past few years, I’ve run either 5Ks or half marathons and not a lot in between. A 5 mile race is an enjoyable distance to run. You’re out there long enough for the run to start feeling good, but not long enough for it to start feeling bad.
- Miranda. My friend. We ran the race together, blabbing the whole time. Except for the last mile, when we pushed ourselves hard to cross the finish line, running at a non-talking pace. This was the first race I’ve ever run with somebody. I’ve trained for and entered loads of races with people, but once the starting gun sounds, I’ve been on my own. I absolutely loved passing the miles and the time during the race itself with a friend by my side. So much so that it wasn’t hard for her to talk me into entering the Austin Half Marathon in February, so that we can run it together.
If you’re ever in central Texas in November, you might want to think about entering this run. In addition to the food and the tuba, there’s lots of great people out having a good time, sporting their lederhosen and knee socks. Next year, I will run with a camera.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )(It’s a good thing) Old Habits Die Hard
Last week I fell into the black hole of despair. My fitness routine fell in right after me. You may know how it is. First you skip a day or two of workouts to a lie in bed and think. Then you start eating all the wrong things. Which, of course, makes you feel terrible when you wake up in the morning, so you shut off your alarm and go back to bed for another hour. Or two. Before you know it, a week’s gone by and you haven’t done anything healthy for yourself.
But one morning you notice the empty family size bag of Julio’s in the trash (which would be fine, if you had a family). And, maybe worse, you notice something sparkly on your shoelaces when you accidentally kick a lone running shoe that got wedged under the couch—and the sparkle is not a diamond but the intricate web of a spider that’s taken over your shoe.
OK, you tell yourself. Crawl out of the hole. It’s time to run.
This week, I got back into the swing of things. My goals were small:
- Do NOT hit snooze. Get up at the usual time: 5 am.
- Do something strenuous every morning. Moving the party size vat of ice cream from one freezer shelf to another does not count as strenuous. Either run or strength train.
- Remind yourself why you make healthy choices in the first place. Because it feels good. I promise.
The hardest part about resuming a habit is in the mind. It takes more effort to convince myself to move than it does to actually move. Mentally, I have to argue with myself every morning, find the right argument to ignite the chain of events that become exercise. Physically, my body knows what to do. I just have to set it in motion, and it goes. The force of habit propels my joints, muscles, limbs to perform familiar actions.
Thank God for muscle memory, for the pattern of movement we build into our bodies. If my feet didn’t know their way down the road, I’d likely still be lying in bed.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Wonder Wall: or, I wonder why I hit that wall
There you are one early morning, in the pool swimming laps, on your bike cruising down country roads, or out for a long run through the backstreets. You had a plan, you set your distance, knew your route and were off. But half way through your workout, your arms stopped rotating like a windmill, your legs resembled the rubber chicken sitting on the corner of your desk, and your body slumped into something you liken to the compost pile in your backyard.
It’s happened. You’ve hit the wall.
This can be dismaying, to say the least, especially when you thought you were doing fine and felt like you were in great shape to be out there rolling.
What causes us to hit the wall and what can we do to prevent hitting it? It seems to me there are three important factors athletes—yes, even amateur athletes like most of us—need to consider before we hit the dawn running.
Nutrition
If your body was like Janet Jackson, it might sing you a song: What have you done for me lately? (And if your mind is like mine, you get a song stuck in your head whose words you either don’t like or can’t remember, but you sing it to yourself anyway, making up different words to suit your situation. Like what did you eat for me lately?)
The question is a serious one. What did you fuel your body with before your workout? Before, in my mind, is not only the 30 to 60 minutes before you head out the door, but the long stretch of hours that lead into your workout, the night before if you work out in the morning or the entire day if you work out in the afternoon or evening.
I work out first thing in the morning. I always eat a small meal 30 minutes or so before my workout, but I am also cognizant of what I eat the night before. If I am doing cardio in the morning, I make sure I eat complex carbs with dinner. And if I’m hungry before I go to bed, I eat. Your body needs the right balance of proteins, fats, and carbs, complex as well as simple, to function at its best. Don’t deny it what it needs.
Hydration
If you feel thirsty, it’s already too late. You’re dehydrated. What do you do? Drink, drink, drink! Drink before you go to bed, drink before and after your workout. Drink always, all day long.
Notice I didn’t include the middle of your workout as a time to drink. That depends on what you’re doing and how long you’re doing it. I always have water with me when I bike, swim, and weight train. I drink frequently during all of these activities. But I don’t take water with me when I run unless I plan to be out there more than 60 minutes. I know there are some people who would say, so what? Take water anyway! For me this is simply a personal preference. I don’t like holding things in my hands or feeling extra weight hanging on my hips when I run.
What do you drink? Water. Lots of it. Sports drinks are unnecessary for most people, unless you’re out there sweating profusely for long periods of time. If you’re training for a marathon or a triathlon, especially in summer in Texas, that’s a different story. Kind of. I prefer coconut water over sports drinks because sports drinks have a lot of sugar in them. Coconut water has none. It’s a great way to keep hydrated or to rehydrate.
Muscle fatigue
It could be that you hit a wall because your body is just plain tired. Have you slept enough? Have you over trained? Does your body need rest for a few days? Should you stop what you’re doing at the moment, or should you push through?
That depends.
The way you get to know your own strength, to find out what you’re made of, and to improve your endurance is to push yourself beyond what you think are your limitations. Sure, I can stop when my knees get wobbly or turn into lead pipes. I may even have to stop. But at what point do I make this determination?
Ask Socrates. He’d probably say Know Thyself. Part of training hard and pushing yourself to be better, stronger, faster than you were before (like the Six Million Dollar Man) is knowing your body well enough to understand what it’s trying to tell you and to respect it enough to listen. There’s a fine line between breaking through the wall and breaking your body. The first is exhilarating. The second excruciating. Unfortunately, sometimes we learn to recognize our body’s queues through trial and error. When we err, it hurts.
Inevitably, at some point in training, you’ll hit a wall. If you pay attention to your body, it will let you know why you hit it and what to do about it. Listen to it. Your body knows best. Almost like your mother.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Diet Is a 4-Letter Word
I had a run-in with my arch nemesis this week. Fritos. He won. What’s worse, he has a friend. Julio’s. If you’re from Texas, you’ve probably seen Julio there on the shelves between his rival corn chips, and if you’ve had him you understand his power of persuasion.
It seems I had a fiesta in my pantry this week. The timing figures—on the heels of my thoughts about garbage. Thankfully, the fiesta is over. Has it affected my training? Fortunately, no. My sprint tri is in two weeks (yay!), and my workouts have been going well. Has it affected the way I feel about myself? You bet. Disappointment is the first word that rolls to mind, like a thundercloud.
But the big question is this: Will my lapse in nutritional judgment this week cause me to change what I eat next week? That is, will I go on a diet? The big answer: Absolutely not. In my opinion, diet is a 4-letter word.
There are dozens of diets on the market, always have been, always will be. Each time a new study touts the superpowers of one kind of food or the evil powers of another, there’s bound to be a book, an infomercial, a talk show segment, or some other media blitz right on its heels. That’s not to say the studies aren’t important. They are. But information is only good when it’s used wisely.
A diet cannot last forever. A healthy lifestyle can. What’s the difference? A diet has a beginning and an end. Many diets require the dieter to eliminate entire food groups or to overindulge in others. They require an exorbitant amount of willpower, which always fails, partly because it is physiologically impossible and certainly unhealthy to eliminate or overindulge, and the dieter’s body will pressure her into balance—which means she eats what she “shouldn’t.” She gets frustrated and quits, or she meets her prescribed time limit and, inevitably, the diet ends.
Most diets also require the dieter to consume less calories than he expends. Makes sense, especially if weight loss is the goal. But often, the number of calories prescribed by the diet is far less than a body actually needs to function—which means the dieter loses energy, gets weak and lethargic. Cranky.
The body knows what it needs. It needs calories to pump the heart, run the brain and nervous system, move the muscles and the bones they’re attached to. If the body doesn’t get enough calories from all the food groups, it goes into starvation mode, slowing down metabolism to conserve energy—hoarding all that fat the dieter is trying to shed.
No diets for me, thank you. I prefer to live a healthy lifestyle. What this means to me is that there is no beginning and no end to proper nutrition. I eat all the food groups, every day. I don’t worry about what time I eat my last meal. My body doesn’t refuse carbs after 3:00. I don’t panic if Fritos wins for a couple of days.
Let me repeat that. Sometimes Fritos wins for a couple of days. But since I’m not on a diet, that’s ok. It’s my mind—my opinion of myself—that pays the bigger long-term price than my body. This is because I have chosen to live a healthy lifestyle rather than to be (forever) on a diet. I know what the effects of saturated fat are on my arteries when the Fritos win. That—and not the effect on the elastic in my pants—is why I’m disappointed in myself.
I do have some general rules of thumb I try to follow:
- If God didn’t make it, don’t put it in my mouth. This prompts me to eat more whole foods and far less processed foods. (Yes, I still try to argue with myself how God did, in fact, make Fritos since he made the people who invented, manufactured, packaged, shipped, and shelved Fritos, the corn that’s in the Fritos, the people who created and operated the machinery that made all the other gunk that’s in the Fritos. You see how it goes. It’s exhausting, really, this kind of logic. Still, sometimes I let it win…)
- Graze like a gazelle. If I eat small portions all day, I feel better. And who doesn’t want to eat all day? When I do, my metabolism runs fast and steady throughout the day. I have less of a desire to overindulge in anything because I’m always satisfied, never starving, and I don’t overeat to the point of discomfort. I know I’ll be eating again in just a few hours. It’s a beautiful arrangement.
- Don’t eat anything bigger than my head. Seems like a no-brainer when it comes to foods like watermelon. But this also means that if I choose to have pizza, I can’t actually eat the whole thing. I would. But I can’t.
These rules of thumb have come after years of learning to listen to my body when it tells me what it needs. They’ve come because I do read the reports about nutrition and exercise. They’ve come because my main goal for my body is disease prevention. If I focus on keeping my body healthy and disease-free, I gravitate to the foods that will do that and steer away from the foods that won’t. In the process, my weight corrects itself. My tastesbuds have more than adapted to whole foods—I actually look forward to them. And I have more energy, more clarity of mind, and feel better than I have in my life.
What are your thoughts about diets?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 7 so far )Garbage in, Garbage out
I love food. Always have. I love to eat it, cook it, smell it, look at it, think about it, and talk about it. Sometimes I even dream about it. But I can’t tell you how many food conversations I’ve had during which one of the participants holds up a hand dismissively and says, “Well, you’re a runner. You can eat anything.”
That sentiment, I’m afraid, I do not love.
Many people take up running because they want to drop a few pounds. They know they need to get some cardio work into their routines—or they need to start a routine—and running seems like a fit. Some lose weight, some do not. The difference? It’s not only the output. More than likely, it’s the input.
I took up running for a much different reason than weight loss. A nice by-product has been that I keep my weight in check. I don’t do this by eating “anything.” I do, however, eat what I want. And lots of it.
A funny thing has happened over the past several years. My wants have changed. I used to be the queen of canned ravioli and packaged macaroni and cheese. Now, you couldn’t hold me down and force feed me either.
Sometimes I think I crave, say, macaroni and cheese, and sometimes I even talk about it for days on end. What I crave is not the food itself, but what the food represents. I now know enough about my body to know that if I did break down and eat macaroni and cheese, 1) I would be immensely disappointed in the taste, and 2) I would feel sick for at least a day, probably more.
The more I’ve run (and biked and swam), the more efficient my body has become at metabolizing food—if it’s the right kind of food. For me, that includes oatmeal, fruit, sweet potatoes, kale, and just about any other vegetable I can get my mouth on. It’s not cake and crackers and pizza. Even if I think I want it to be.
When I eat “anything,” I cannot run. That is, my sleep patterns are interrupted and I feel lethargic the next day. I feel like I’m running with a boulder in my belly, and my legs feel like lead. Those factors do not make for an enjoyable run, at least not for me. And for the rest of the day, I’m not the most pleasant person to be around.
That doesn’t mean that I never eat “anything.” Sometimes I choose pizza or bananas foster over running. But I recognize in the moment that it is, in fact, a choice, the consequences of which I will have to live with the next morning.
You’ve heard people say that our bodies are like machines and need the proper fuel to keep them operating the way they’re intended to. I’m not going to say exactly that, because I believe our bodies are so much more than machines. But there’s something to it. Garbage in, garbage out. Just like our computers. Our eyes. Our thoughts. Our bodies are no different.
So you’re a runner but some mornings a sharp stick in the eye seems like it might feel better than even your 2 mile route? Take a hard look at what you’re eating. Are you serving what you want—and is what you want serving you?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 7 so far )
More Than Running... 