Tag Archives: running

I can’t even say I’m shaking in my boots, cause I’m wearing these weird Toe Shoes.

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I hate to jinx it, but I’ve been back on the running horse for a couple of weeks, and it seems to be sticking. Remember how I decided back in September to jump back on the Couch-to-5k bandwagon to help me figure out how far I should be running and how fast I should be increasing my distances? That plan is working*. (*I expected that it would. I always do much better whenever I have a schedule telling me what I should be doing. I suppose it’s my competitive side that kicks in, and forces me to complete the runs, lest I fail at something.)

My calf muscles were really my limiting factor when all of this barefoot mania started for me. Cardiovascularly speaking, I could handle running long(ish) distances in my regular running shoes, but the running was causing a lot of pain in my legs. When Zack and I switched to barefoot, I ditched the running shoes all together. I didn’t gradually move over to the toe shoes while still maintaining my distance/endurance capabilities by doing runs in my other shoes. Maybe not my smartest move ever.

Now that I’m looking Week #4-Run #3 in the face, I’m being forced to admit some things to myself that I really don’t want to admit. Mostly I’m in denial about the fact that my calves are no longer my limiting factor. I can easily run these C-2-5k runs without any soreness in my calves post-run. I cannot, however, easily run these runs without feeling like I’m maybe going to die from suffocation because OMG THE AIR, IT WON’T COME IN FAST ENOUGH, THE TIRED, IT IS WINNING.

My days of being a well-conditioned running-machine have passed. Instead of being confident in my ability to run 3 or 4 miles at the drop of a hat, I’m looking at Week #5′s runs and gawking at the fact that they think by the end of next week I’m going to be able to run for 20 minutes. Twenty! Who can run for 20 minutes? That’s an impossibly long time to run. No humans can do that. And if any humans can (doubtful), they are surely not humans who foolishly decided that they would magically retain their ability to do intense cardiovascular exercise despite the fact that they have done basically no running (relatively) for A LONG TIME.

On Barefoot Running

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Yesterday Zack told me that it was time. Time, that is, to start our barefoot running program.

These are my shoes. Don't be jealous.

Upon purchasing these goofy shoes, we decided that the way we’d force ourselves to ease into barefoot running is to run the Couch-to-5K program together in our barefoot shoes. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I started running two years ago by doing the Couch-to-5K program. It took me from being physically unable of running for 90+ seconds to being able to, well, run a 5K. The beauty of that program is that it takes all the guesswork out of how far or how fast you should be running. You just do whatever it says to do and then you’re done. I’m not trying to get all philosophical about this or anything, but there is a certain comfort that can be found in just mindlessly following a program that you know works. I like that comfort. It helps my mind rest.

Anyway. Back to today. Since Zack and I are both capable of running three miles (though he does it with ease and I do it with gritted teeth and sometimes tears), running for 60 seconds at a time is maybe the teeniest bit insulting. We prepared ourselves for that feeling, though. Every single thing that we read about barefoot running is bogged down with warnings to START SLOWLY. LIKE, REALLY, REALLY SLOWLY.

I thought they were exaggerating. I should have known better.

Today’s running assignment was to walk a 5-minute warm up, and then alternate 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes. That’s roughly 8 cycles of 60 seconds of running, or, 8 minutes of running. Eight minutes of running is not very many minutes, especially when it’s 8 minutes of running peppered into a span of 25 minutes.

These are Zack's shoes. They are cute, but mine are superior.

Never in my life have I been so glad for 8 minutes of running to be over. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. There have been times that I have been happier for 8 minutes of running to be over. Examples: 1.) The last 8 minutes of the half-marathon I ran last April [that's the one that tried to kill me]. 2.) The last 8 minutes of the 10K race that I ran last February when it was so cold I thought my hands were going to fall off. 3.) Any run when I drank any sort of alcohol the night before and then thought that I wasn’t dehydrated but HEY-O! I was super dehydrated and I wanted to diiiieeee.

Today wasn’t as bad as those times. It was just a normal amount of bad, I guess. The fact that the day’s assignment was so easy, though, just added insult to injury. When I was doing this program last time, I had no endurance. The biggest challenge was to be able to complete each day’s running assignment and still be breathing when it was all over. This time, the challenge has nothing to do with my lungs (!). The hard part is the fact that my calf muscles are weak weak weak and barefoot running is all calf calf calf. By the time Zack and I finished Round #6, I thought that my calf muscles had clenched into a boulder under my skin that would never release. I would have called it quits and walked it in from there, but my brain was all, “COME ON. IT IS SIXTY FLIPPIN’ SECONDS. YOU CAN’T RUN SIXTY FLIPPIN’ SECONDS?” And I had to be like, Shut up, Brain. But then I was like, FINE. I’LL DO IT. And I ran it in. And my calf muscles were like NEVER LISTEN TO THE GREY MATTER AGAIN, IT HAS NO IDEA WHAT IT’S TALKING ABOUT.

So all of that happened at about 11:00 this morning. Ask me what hurts me now. I’ll tell you. It’s my dang pinky toe. Apparently the top of my toe was touching something in my shoe in a way that it doesn’t usually touch things because I’ll be danged if I don’t have a freaking blister on the TOP of my pinky toe. Like, at the very tip of it, beyond the nail. It is the most bizarre place to get a blister, and I can’t stop feeling it with my fingers and then internally whining about it. My toe!

Thursday will be our next day to run. I think I’m going to toss a bandaid on the toe this time before I go for it. I am hoping, however, that maybe I can make it to at least minute 7 before my legs and brain start yelling at each other.

On Barefoot Technology

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So, I bought in.

Zack got a book last month called Born to Run. It’s about this crazy tribe down in Mexico. All of the people in this tribe are still partyin’ like it’s 1599, and that’s weird. Another thing that’s weird about these people is none of them are ever sick, like, ever. Also weird, they can (and routinely do) run 50, 75 miles at a time, no sweat. I might not be doing the story justice, because I haven’t read the book. I’ve only watched the TED lecture the author did about it. (Zack said that it basically sums up the book in 15 minutes, but without all the cool character development.)

After Zack read the book, he started saying really strange things. Things that supported eating salads for breakfast. Things that leaned towards interest in barefoot running. Things about how our bottoms are created to be an anatomical counter-balance for our massive heads as we lean forward and run around on the balls of our feet chasing gazelles. I know that you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but I’m not exaggerating any of these things. Not even the gazelle part.

It wouldn’t be strange if I was the one that had become interested in this. I am a buyer-inner. I love new things, I love to be adventerous. Eating salads for breakfast is adventerous and chasing down game on foot sans weapons is downright crazy! So OF COURSE I would be in, right? But Zack, Zack is much more level headed. Not the type to read a book and want to change his life. Zack has to weigh evidence. Zack is a big believer in things like “research” and “thinking about what you’re going to say before you say it” and other such responsible nonsense. So imagine my surprise when all of the sudden, Zack was standing in the kitchen talking to me about going to the farmer’s market and eating more vegetarian meals! It kind of blew my mind.

So that was a few weeks ago. Since then, I have eaten a few more vegetables, and I had a few fruit-and-spinach smoothies for breakfast. Other than that, not much has changed. Even eating the smoothies for breakfast is kind of hard for me. I like them, and I would eat them every day, but Zack and I are on very different sleep schedules. Running the blender full of frozen fruits at 6 o’clock in the morning is kind of cruel. Life gets in the way of doing the good and healthy things. Good and healthy things are almost never the easier things. I hate that. I thought that Zack had abandoned his newfound zeal for our Pseudo Mexican Tribe Lifestyle Changes. Little did I know, he was only gathering data. He was weighing the evidence.

Today, we went to Backwoods to try on some shoes. Merrell, having realized that the barefoot running phenomenon is catching on, (and that there is a [counter-balancing] butt-load of money to be made) created a shoe that incorporates all the principles of barefoot running, but doesn’t have the unsightly toe situation that the Vibram fivefingers has. Because the store was mostly empty while we were there, and because the sales staff there is outrageously friendly and cool, we hung out in the shoe department for the better part of an hour. We tried on all kinds of barefoot-technology (yes, that’s a real phrase, and a fantastic oxymoron) footwear. Neither Zack nor I was able to find a barefoot shoe that really suited us. The store was out of a few sizes, and those sizes happened to be the ones that we’d like to have tried. We were about to give up and move along when the sales rep, who had been jokingly pestering us to give up and give into the TOE SHOES, finally convinced me to try on a pair. The difference between the regular shoe and the toe shoe was noticeable to me. When the sales rep asked me how I liked them, I said, “I love them, as long as I don’t look down. What I need is one of those dog cones to put around my neck, that way I won’t have to look at the TOES. TOES TOES TOES.”

I love the way that they feel on my feet, and I don’t mind the feeling of my toes being separated into their own little toe-slots. What I had a hard time getting over was a combination of the way they look (kind of ape-ish?) and how incredibly nerdy I feel when I’m wearing them. So I decided, dog cone aside, that if the only problem that I had with these shoes was that they are asthetically unappealing, I need to just go ahead and get right the hell on over it. So I did. I totally bought in.

Zack and I are going to start up a round of Couch-to-5K with these bad boys. (He didn’t get the toe shoes, he’s waiting for the right size to come in on the regular barefoot-technology [I can't say that without laughing] shoes. Zack is twee OCD about his feet, and couldn’t get over the toe compartmentalization. I told him to never go get a pedicure, cause he’d probably hate that too.) The problem most people have when they get these goofy shoes is that they do too much, too quick, and then they want to die. I’m going to try to avoid that. I can see how people get into that predicament, thought because running in them is kind of fun. It feels something akin to the way I imagine Phoebe felt as she ran through Central Park. You have to just bounce along like you’re a care-free toddler whose heels never touch the ground; while you’re bouncing around, the fun, care-free attitude a toddler has kind of starts to creep up on you. Which is awesome. So wish me luck — and resilient calf muscles. It’s about to get crazy up in here.

I Can’t Believe I’m Posting These Pictures.

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A million years ago, Zack and I started the P90X workout system.  We made it to week 6 (halfway) before we abandoned ship for a handful of reasons including (but not limited to) vacations, deaths in the family, and the fact that I was having searing pain in my lower legs during the workouts due to some muscle problems/my inability to walk correctly*.  (*Honest to God, that’s what my physical therapist told me. I fail at walking. Too much toe lift.)

Anyway, the reason that we started the program in the first place was because I was at a point in my life where I was unhappy with the way that I looked.  I’ve always been a pretty thin person, and for the first time ever, I was really struggling with my weight.  I was putting on more and more pounds by the minute (it seemed).  Even my doctor told me that I needed to start some kind of program so that I could curb my weight gain.

I blamed it on a lot of things.  Drinking Cokes.  Taking birth control pills.  Getting married.  Moving stress.  But before P90X, I never thought to blame it on my a.) diet and b.) lack of exercise.

Even though we didn’t finish the program all the way, Tony Horton and The Gang taught me a very important handful of lessons.  #1: I was capable of more than I thought. #2: I ate too many carbs. #3: If you do any kind of workout activity for an hour-a-day, 6 days a week, you’re going to drop some pounds.

After proving myself incapable of sticking to the P90X schedule, (mostly because I hated a few of the videos and would skip the dreaded days,) I decided to take my new-found workout knowledge and create my own plan.  I called it the “Do Something You Don’t Hate For An Hour A Day” plan.  I wrote out a list of things that I liked to do.  Walk the dog.  Run the Couch-2-5K program.  Ride my bike.  Do yoga.  Anything at all that I was willing to do for any amount of time, I wrote it down.

I stuck to the Couch to 5K schedule, and filled in the non-run days with other activities so I didn’t get burned out.  I was shocked to find that, after much suffering, I started to enjoy running.  I stopped feeling like I was going to die after every workout session.  Exercising began to be a part of who I was.  And it was weird.  Weird and awesome.

I am a runner now. I have run races.  I’ve run 5ks, 10ks, 8 mile-ers and half-marathons. (Okay, I KIND OF ran a half-marathon.  Never-mind the fact that I had to go the hospital afterward.  I still finished.)  I’ve biked and swam and had thoughts like, “maybe I should try a triathlon.”  I am the kind of person who wears sporting event shirts because I participated, not because I was someone’s support crew.  And that, my friends, is crazy. CRAZY.

However, even as I started to feel more and more healthy, I didn’t see myself losing any weight.  I saw the numbers dropping on the scale, but when I looked in the mirror, all I saw was fat accumulation.  I saw this:

Hi, I'm Sarah and I don't own shorts that fit me.

That’s the picture we took right before we started P90X 18 months ago.  This picture isn’t me at my heaviest, but it’s within 5 pounds of it.  It’s enough to get the gist.  I had some love handles, a baby bump and a general softness about me.  It doesn’t help the situation that my eyes are squished together in this picture like I’m in the middle of a “HI, MY NAME IS CHUBBY” impression.

This summer, I’ve finally stopped being self-conscious of the way my stomach feels in a T-shirt.  After noticing that my “fat clothes” were a little loose, I worked up the courage to try on some of the clothes that I buried deep in the closet.  You know the place where you put things you never think you’ll wear again, so you don’t want to ever see them because it’s too depressing?  I dug my clothes out of that place, and I tried them on.

And they fit me.

It was the craziest thing.  Because when I was looking in the mirror, I was still seeing that girl above, the girl with 20 extra pounds packed all around her body.  It wasn’t until today that my perspective finally changed.  I asked Zack to take some new pictures of me.  I put the new ones and the old ones up side-by-side and studied them for a while.

So here I am.  Posting the new pictures on the internet to show you: it can be done.  Pounds go away, however slowly.  The hardest part (I think, especially for us girls), is to allow yourself to start to see the new you.  It’s hard to look at the big picture when your nose is pointed straight down at your belly.  Chin up.  Slow and steady wins the race, and apparently, slow and steady also wins back her favorite jeans.

I love to take pictures when I look really awesome with no make-up on.

Consider me re-motivated.  Let’s go do something fun.

The First Swim

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I swam laps today for the first time in my life.

I didn’t think I was capable of swimming laps.  I tend to have these teeny little panic attacks when I feel like I can’t breathe.  This tendency of mine has lead to many instances where Zack has been standing on the sidewalk while I can be found flailing around someone’s front yard.  If I’m in the middle of a run and suddenly feel like I can’t catch my breath, I freak the eff out.  It’s a problem.  I’ve been working on it.

So for that reason, I’ve never tried to swim for exercise.  After all, what’s the worst possible thing you can do to a girl who has a complex about the availability of oxygen?  Put her under water.

I’ve been working out after class.  I’ve also been wondering out loud to my newfound workout buddy, Navy Bryan, why in the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks we’ve been running laps like fools when we could have been swimming laps.  Fantastic fabulous laps.  In a POOL.  WITH WATER.  WHERE THE COLD IS.  We say this to each other every day.  And every day, I answer the question with the simple truth that, “We don’t swim because you’re not ready to handle me TOTALLY LOSING MY SHIT.”

Then I saw this article in Cosmo.  I’m not really a Cosmo girl, but my friend Cassie (The Runner) is a Cosmo kind of a girl, and I was lounging beside her pool while I was flipping through her magazine.  Cosmo had an article about How To Get A Swimmer’s Body.  I read the article.  The article said that in order to get A Swimmer’s Body, you had to, in fact, swim.

Turns out, Cassie swims.  Or at least she swam, past tense, in high school, and she misses swimming and she wants to swim again and HEY, WILL I SWIM WITH HER?

I have a really hard time saying no to Cassie, and I have an even harder time saying no to Cassie when she’s offering me Cosmo’s Swimmer’s Body. So I ripped a picture of A Swimmer’s Body out of the Cosmo, I told Cassie that I would go swimming with her (if she would teach me how to swim). I bought some goggles, I went to the pool.

Cassie told me that she likes to count her strokes.  Apparently swimming is all about counting.  And about 35 million other things too, but she chose to start with the counting.  1-2-3-Breathe.  That’s the pattern she always counts while she’s working her way down the lanes.  1-2-3-Breathe. Doesn’t seem that hard, I thought. I convinced myself to try.

This is me, trying to count: 1-2-OH MY GOD, I AM GOING TO DIE – GASP – KEEP INHALING WITH HEAD ABOVE WATER – oh, crap, my head isn’t supposed to do that – 2-3- GASP, OH MY GOD I ALMOST MISSED THAT BREATH, I AM GOING TO DIE – 1 – 2 -GASP! – HOLY CRAP I AM SO TIRED. 1 – BREATHE – 1 BREATHE – 1 – BACKSTROKE. Oh, I love you backstroke.  You know what’s better than the backstroke? Standing still.  AAAAAHHHH. Standing. I love standing.

1-2-3-Breathe isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be. And that sequence above, that doesn’t even include the moments when I got water inside my brain during flip turns.  Oh my God, don’t even get me started on FLIP TURNS.

Cassie and I stayed in the water, alternating swimming and wanting-to-die, for about 45 minutes.  By the time I got out, I had finally accomplished 1.) a few laps with a solid 1-2-Out-In pattern (look! I even personalized it!) and 2.) becoming very pruney from hanging out in the water for so long.  I never had a tried-and-true Freak Out with Capital Letters because I realized pretty early on that no matter how tired I was, I could always just put my feet down.  No reason to have an oxygen-related panic attack when you can just stand up.

My body is exhausted, but every other part of me feels totally exhilarated. I’m finding myself trying to figure out when I can get back to the pool.

I think I might really like swimming.

Boot Camp is a Miserable Sufferfest.

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I decided on Monday that I was going to get back into the swing of my normal workout schedule.  I haven’t done any serious workouts since the half-marathon. Something about the incredible pain (in addition to the doctor’s visits and the exams and the procedures and the embarrassing prescriptions) must have subconsciously deterred my running spirit.  And who can blame my running spirit for being deterred?  Not me, that’s for sure.  My running spirit is smart.

But I had to go to the doctor on Monday, and while I was there I confessed to her that I hadn’t really run at all since the fateful half-marathon.  She was the doctor who encouraged me to start exercising more consistently and I feel comfortable talking with her candidly about my running.  She, apparently, feels really comfortable being candid with me, too, because she simply said, “I don’t blame you!” Hmph. Let me just say: “I don’t blame you” is not a very comforting phrase to hear from your doctor.  It says to a person that their fears are valid and that they, being a health professional, would also feel the same way if they themselves were in the same situation that you (sucker!) are in.  The Doc and I talked a little more and she advised me to try to get back into the swing of things, but to start slowly.  Just do some light jogging, she said, and build from there.  If you ever feel like the cramping is starting again, just stop.  Don’t try to run through it.

So what did I do?  I immediately came home, got online, found out that my gym had a Boot Camp class scheduled for 7:00 that night and became determined that I was going to go to the Boot Camp.

Classes at my gym are typically not overly difficult.  I’ve been to a variety of yoga, pilates and weight lifting classes and I’ve never felt like I was going to die as a result of any of them.  Neither has Zack ever been truly impressed or surprised by my ability to handle the classes.  So when he came home for lunch on Monday and I told him that I was going to go to Boot Camp class, I should have paid more attention to his reaction.

Because he was like, “Woah, seriously?”  And I wondered, why did he act so surprised?  He went on to explain that some Boot Camp classes are pretty tough, and he was proud of me for jumping back into the workout world with such vigor!  Can you believe I didn’t take heed?  Zack was using verbal exclamation points and I didn’t catch the hint that I was about to die.  I can be dense.

So Zack’s verbal exclamation points were my first hint that perhaps Boot Camp wasn’t the best class to take for someone who was supposed to be easing back into the workout pool.  A complete list of hints was presented to me as follows:
1.) Zack flipping out upon my declaration of intent to attend a Boot Camp class.
2.) The Gym’s sign posted outside the Boot Camp class that said that the gym’s air conditioning was broken and that anyone who attempted to take a class would die a slow, sweaty and miserable death.
3.) Absolutely zero overweight people were in the classroom waiting for the class to start.  While that does usually mean that the class is effective, it can also mean that the class is to brutal and cold-hearted for anyone except the fittest of the fit.
4.) There were more boys than girls in the class.  This always means that the class is mean.  You know.  Because boys are stronger than girls and blah blah blah whatever, I don’t like it, but it’s true.  One of the boys even had an Israeli Defense Force shirt on.  And still, like an idiot with blinders, who has two thumbs and was waiting happily for the class to begin? This girl.
5.) A (hotter) Billy Blanks’ militaristic (evil) look-alike bounced (literally!) into the classroom and introduced himself as the instructor.  I’m talking about a shiny, bald headed man with muscles stacked on top of his very muscles.  He, if given some fatigues, could have been a drill sergeant.

I heeded none of these signs to mean what they should have meant to me, which is the following message:
“GET THE EFF OUT OF HERE, SOON. RIGHT NOW. FIVE MINUTES AGO.”

10 minutes into the workout, hot-evil-Billy had already taken us through about 10 of the exercises I’ve heard Zack’s friends talk about experiencing in Real Boot Camp.  Like, the kind that you go through when you’re going to be in the military.  We were jumping and jacking, planking, mountain climbing and doing burpies.  BURPIES, for Christ’s sake.  And while we were doing all these exercises, while I was wanting to die, he kept saying this one evil phrase over and over again.  He kept saying, “This is the warm up.”

And every time he said it, I thought, “Holy hell, if this’s the warm up, I’m so incredibly screwed.”

And I was.  I so was.

Immediately after the ‘warm up’, we broke down into our groups and started in on the circuit training for which Boot Camps have become famous.  I guess the theory is that anyone can do anything, as long as it’s a short enough amount of time.  And I guess what hot-evil-Billy doesn’t know is that 3 minutes, while you’re jumping up and down or running wind sprints across the gym, is not a short amount of time.  It’s a lifetime.  It’s an eternity.  It’s light years.  It’s enough time that I was able to work myself to my absolute maximum and then have 2 minutes and 30 seconds left to sit around and wonder what the hell kind of steroids everyone else must be on in order to still be doing whatever particular form of misery they’d been assigned to do for that 3 minute time period.

My first station was a combination jumping-and-squatting station that is known for working calf muscles, setting your butt muscles on fire and removing your will to live.  I must have looked like I was just about to fall over and die because my neighbor in Jump-and-Squatville looked over at me and said, “This is the hardest station.”  That made me feel better for about 12 seconds.  Then we went to the next station, suicide drills!, and I realized that she was lying.  Admittedly, she was lying in a nice way, the kind of lying that people do to other people when they are trying to lessen their pain, (and I appreciated her lie, really!) but it was a lie nevertheless.

I suffered through a complete round of the circuits, hitting all 5 stations once, and the soul-sucking jump-and-squat station twice, before I finally bowed out at minute 35.  Hot-evil-Billy was calling all of us back to the center of the room for another round of plank/mountain climber misery, it was 100 degrees in there, and I was swimming in the sweat of about 38+ other exhausted gym patrons.  I was dizzy and a little nauseated and seriously doubting my ability to walk back to my own car.  I thought that it’d be better for me to leave there upright with wounded pride than for me to stay, keep my pride, and have to have hot-evil-Billy give me a piggy back ride to my car because my limbs quit working.  So I grabbed my water, my bag and headed for the door.

Zack came home from work to find me laying on the couch, unable to move.  I admitted to him that I’d left early, feeling defeated.  He seemed excessively proud of me for having stuck it out for 35 minutes; he congratulated me on my victory and listened intently as I told him about every exercise that we did.

There’s another class tomorrow at 9:45, and I’m going to go.  Blame Zack and his blind encouragement.  Blame my wounded pride and my need to prove myself.  Hell, you could even blame my overt narcissism and desire for blog fodder if you’d like.  No matter who or what you blame for me knowingly throwing myself into a Boot Camp class again, I’m going.  Perhaps one or two more Boot Camp sufferfests will convince me that maybe running isn’t such a scary proposition after all.

On Half Marathons and Cliff Jumping

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Sarah completed her first half-marathon today. While some would consider that quite an accomplishment, and indeed she does as well,  she has made the appraisal that 13.1 miles can do a number of uncomfortable things to a persons body.

When articulating this most painful of ventures in relation to her overall running career this past year, she brought up a certain video of the former world record for skiing off a cliff into a bank of fresh powder.  The guy, Jamie Pierre, skis himself right off a 255′ precipice, just to say “I skied off the tallest cliff without a parachute.”  It’s amazing in a psychotic sort of way.

Now if you watched that incredible video, you heard Pierre state something along the lines of, “I just wanted to hold the record, even if only for a day.  Now I can go back to making powder turns.”

The point is that the Half is probably the culmination of her distance running career.  She did it once, suffering through and finishing like a champ, but from here on out its 5k’s all the way.

So give her a hearty congratulations and hoist a pint of stout ale for a job well done and a toast to future, albeit much much shorter, running endeavors.

-zack-

The New Workout Plan

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A Word of Forewarning: Contrary to popular belief, this post has nothing to do with Kanye West.

Last week I had an epiphany.  For two months now I’ve been trying to orchestrate a workout program around what I should be doing (but don’t want to do) rather than what I (kind of) like to do.  Trying to schedule a program around what you should be doing (100%!) but failing (0%!) is much less effective than scheduling a program around what you want to be doing (75%!) and will actually do (75%!).  See the math there?  I was, every week, planning a 100% work out.  And every week, I was beating myself up because I was talking myself out of my 100% work out because I HATED IT.  Whereas if my workout plan had more closely resembled something that I desired to do, I would have been a lot more successful.  And even though my desires are less calorie-effective than my ideal, it doesn’t really matter.  Because in the end, my desires are actually are MORE effective than my ideal because I actually DO my desired work out plan, whereas I only ignore and sulk about my ideal (but not fun at all) work out plan.

Why did it take me so long to figure this out?  75%>0%, every single time.

So what do I like, you ask?  Yoga. And running, as surprising as that is.  Also, I like meeting my friend Josie at the gym at 5:50 in the morning for cardio.  I like it so much, in fact, that I am willing to add an extra hour of cardio at 5:50 in the morning twice a week, ON TOP of my regular work out schedule.

So here’s my brand new work out plan:
Monday: Run
Tuesday AM: cardio with Josie, Tuesday PM: Yoga
Wednesday: Run again.
Thursday AM: cardio with Josie, Thursday PM: Yoga, again.
Friday: take a day off.
Saturday: Run some more.  Run really far, even, and usually with Cassie. Feeling crazy and ambitious?  Add a pilates class at 11.  Feeling less ambitious?  Add happy hour at 11.  Bellinis sound really good, don’t they?
Sunday: Rise and Shine Yoga.  Aaah.

And yeah, maybe there’s no weight lifting in that schedule.  And maybe there’s no specified day for ab work.  And you know what?  I think that’s okay with me.  Perhaps after working out every day becomes a habit (as opposed to a phenomenon worth bragging and posting about) I’ll think about adding weights and ab-centric workouts.  Until then, I’ll continue to pat myself on the back for aiming for, and mostly reaching, my about-an-hour-a-day goal.

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Today was my first day in my 4:30 yoga class. The gym I go to is a new gym and they’re just starting to work out their class schedule.  They just added the 4:30 Tues/Thurs yoga class, and I was thrilled to find it on the schedule.

I arrived 10 minutes early for the class today to find the instructor already in the class, stretching and preparing.  After 10 minutes of stretching and self-centering, I discovered that I was the only student in the class today.  We started the class, just her and me.  She performed her instruction as usual, while watching me, her only student, with an eagle’s eye.  Quick corrections in my postures left me in a world of hurt.  It’s amazing how one small adjustment of the hips can change the entire feeling of a yoga pose.  I was elated when another student showed up 15 minutes into the class.  Though the one-on-one instruction was really fantastic, I appreciated a.) having someone to compete against, (I’m a hopeless competitor) and b.) having someone else for the instructor to eyeball during the class.  Knowing that every single word out of her mouth was intended for my ears was a wee bit intense for my liking.  I appreciate being able to ignore about half of what any given yoga instructor says, assuming that they mean those words for weaker, lesser capable students than I.

By the end of today’s class, though, I was convinced that I’ve found my niche.  This instructor is young, hip, and cool.  And more importantly, she has a magical way of making me feel like I am a total Yoga Badass whilst simultaneously using clear instruction to correct some of the bad posture habits that I’ve picked up over the years.  She corrects my hips one minute, and makes me feel like a more flexible version of Gumby the next.  Could it possibly get any better than that?

Six Miles

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On Monday after I got home from work I pulled up Google Maps and plotted a six mile route around my neighborhood and the surrounding areas.  I laced up my running shoes, grabbed Scout and headed out the door.  I didn’t have great expectations for myself.  Though my last two runs had gone exceptionally well (in regards to their being free of panic attacks and have-to-walk-a-bit moments), I had been neglecting my workout program for 4 days.  I didn’t expect to be able to run the entire 6 miles.  I expected to get to 5, maybe, then to walk for a bit.  I expected to want to die around mile 3 like usual.  I expected that at the top of each and every one of the hills I would have to grit my teeth and work hard to talk myself into keeping my running pace.  Jogging pace.  Anything faster than walking pace.

Sometimes when I run, the first 10 minutes are the hardest.  But on Monday the “hard minutes” were over by minute 7.  Somewhere around mile 2.5, I found that I wasn’t hurting anymore.  I’m not sure if this sensation is what runners are talking about when they refer to “a runner’s high,” but I did appreciate the escape from the pain.  As I passed 4.6 miles, my previous farthest-run record, I laughed to myself and thought I could go on running like that forever.  When I got to 5.5 miles I started to feel pain in places where I’d never felt pain from running before.  Soon after that I saw my GPS/Run Timer include a “1″ before the minute counter.  I had been exercising–running–for over an hour.  Me.  A girl who less than 6 months ago had legitimate difficulty running for 3 minutes at a time.  I couldn’t believe it.  The sheer glee from seeing my run-timer turn the hour mark gave me enough energy to finish the last half-mile through the aches and pains I was feeling in my hips, knees and ankles.  I hobbled around for the rest of the night like a grandma, trying to gently stretch the tightness out of my calves and hamstrings.  And smiling the whole time.

Six freaking miles.  I can’t even believe it myself.  I am a person who can run six miles, in a row, no stopping.

The Vineyard Run

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As we were walking hand in hand towards the registration table, I was kind of freaking out a little bit.  I wondered out loud, while surrounded by swarms of people stretching out their quads and hams and doing warm up runs in the parking lot, if I was going to be the only person at the entire Vineyard Run who was running her first 5K.  No, no, Zack assured me.  There were a lot of people at this run that were doing their first 5K.  I was all, Are you sure?  Cause from the looks of this buzzing crowd, everyone is going to shoot off the starting line and sprint their way around the 3.1 miles.  I’m pretty damn sure of it.  Besides, I reasoned, there’s no other reason for that 80 year old man to be taking that warm-up lap around the Hobby Lobby’s property line.  But once again, Zack was correct.  Turns out that over half of the 900 some-odd people that showed up for Grapevine’s Vineyard Run were really just there for a good time.

Zack decided not to run the race with me.  Primarily he didn’t run with me because he didn’t feel like chunking down $25.00 to pay for something he could do for free.  I suggested that perhaps he just run with me anyway–to forego the tee-shirt and the free wine tasting at the end, and “bandit run” the 5K as my support system.  But the rule-follower in Zack won out; he decided to be the official “carrier of stuff” instead of running.  I suggested that he also be the official event photographer, too, but turns out we left the camera at home.  We were forced to use the camera phone to document my triumphant entry into The Runner’s Club.

Soon after arriving, Zack and I tracked down our friend Lindsay who also signed up for the race.  As we found our spot in the Start Line crowd, I was feeling totally buzzed on all the excitement.  I thought, “Oh my gosh! This is going to be a snap!  I am so pepped up on adrenaline I’m going to be able to break all kinds of personal records!! Exclamation Points all over the place!”  I expressed some of these sentiments to Lindsay.  She was all Exclamation Points too!

Then, the starting pistol!
Then, the palatable excitement of the crowd!
Then, the running.

And then, some more running.

Then it was minute 3, and I was all, MAN. THIS IS STILL JUST LIKE RUNNING.  THE THRILL IS GONE. ADRENALINE MY BUTT.

Not long after the start of the race, Lindsay had to fall into her own pace.  She’s in constant negotiations with a cyst (?) in her knee, and sometimes it requires her to stop running for bit to conference.  She warned me before we started that it might be the case that she would have to stop, and if that was the case I should go on without her.  Despite everything that I’ve learned from Band of Brothers, I did just that when she had to bail at about minute 5.  After that I was just on my own.  Running.  Wondering what I was supposed to do with my hands when I didn’t have Scout’s leash to occupy them.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details. (We ran. We ran up hill. We ran down hill, etc.) But I will say (for those of you who really care about running) that I was proud of myself for finding a couple of people that were right about my pace and keeping them in my sights for the rest of the race.  I would have been able to finish with them (instead of 20 seconds behind them) but they dropped me on one of the hills.  The only other slightly interesting part of the actual running of the race is that I almost choked to death twice.  They had two aid stations (seems a twee bit on the side of overkill, considering it was just a 3 mile run but WHATEVER), and both of them were right at the top of the two hills.  While I realize that it might make sense to have the aid stations at the top of the hills (i.e. a light at the end of a tunnel?) but in reality, it’s just about impossible for me to drink a gulp of water whilst I am gasping for air after just having run up a massive! impossibly steep! (short with moderate incline) MOUNTAIN! (hill).  Is there some black magic that I’m unaware of that makes it possible to drink a dixie cup of water while running?  Is this something I can’t do because I’m an embarrassingly under-trained novice?  I even paused at one of the stations to see if that would help me to get a little water down the hatch, but I was unsuccessful because of the breathlessness.  Mostly, I just rinsed out my mouth, then spit it all out.  I also made myself look like an earth-friendly nerd at the first aid station by using the Trash Can.  I had no idea that if you’re a COOL 5K runner, you toss your dixie cup on the side of the road.  LEARNED.

Here’s me coming across the finish line, looking unmistakably happy miserable:

Here’s Lindsay and me, 15 minutes later, with a dixie cups of wine that we were successfully ingested.  At 9:00 AM:

See that smile on my face?  That’s not the smile of a woman who has just completed her first 5K run.  That’s the smile of a girl who has a dixie cup of wine before most people have poured their morning Cheerios.

My name in print:  #42 in the 25-30 age group and #432 in the overall standings.

P.S.: Future race reports to expect:

October 31st, 2009 – The 3rd Annual H.A.N.K. Run in Fort Worth, TX (4 Miles)
Thanksgiving, 2009 – The Turkey Trot (8 Miles) in Dallas, TX
And then, if I’m feeling especially crazy, December 13th, 2009 – White Rock Half Marathon in Dallas, TX