See? I was right.

I just came across this article:

Rest Makes You Stronger

Excuse me while I go take a power nap.

Preparing for Race Day

Last call!

If you know what that means, then you know what I mean. If you’ve never actually experienced last call, let me school you here. Last call is that point in the evening when the bartender gives you fair warning to drink up, pay up and get out. You have officially run out of time to order another round or get a little something to eat.

Two to three weeks out from race day, you can consider that last call has been made. You have been working out your training plan. You (hopefully) have  been eating a little better, found some comfortable gear, and are getting excited about the big day.

You may be getting so excited that you start thinking, “Dang, I deserve a whole new outfit just for race day!” Or you may start obsessing over the perfect pre-race breakfast, which you have determined may or may not not be your usual bowl of  Cheerios.

Careful, sister. Now is NOT the time to make any changes – it’s too late. The bartender says, “If you don’t work here or sleep with someone who works here, you’re done.” That’s after-hours speak for: if you’re not an experienced runner that has tested that breakfast bar, sports drink or brand of socks in training, it will have to wait.

Stick to the plan. Stick to what you know, because on race day there will be enough new, different and anxiety provoking. You don’t need to pile on with a breakfast that might wreak havoc on your digestive system or new clothes that chafe in places you’ve never chafed before. You want to free yourself from every variable and worry that could distract you from giving your best effort. You’ve worked too hard and come too far to get derailed by something foolish now.

I met a woman at the start line of the Zooma Austin Half Marathon, who somehow managed to forget to pack her running bra. Now you know how passionate I am about the right bra, so you can imagine my dismay as she tells me she stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a new one. Not only was it a low-rent bra, but a new bra on race day.

Red alert, people!

When I saw her at the finish line, she was the embodiment of misery – her performance sadly hindered by painfully distracting chafing and blisters. Do not repeat her race experience.

You can’t control the weather, the crowds or your monthly cycle, but you can be reasonably sure that you know what feels good in your stomach and what feels good on your body when you run. That, and a little race day adrenaline, will give you freedom to fly.

Then you can think about treating yourself to something new – something pretty, pampering or decadent. You deserve it.

Does Length Matter?

Um, yes.

Here’s a video training tip from Runner’s World that addresses the hill/stride length connection.

 

Should Inclines Change My Stride?

Have you dedicated some time to your butt today?

We had the reknowned Dr. Bob Wilder, Director of the UVa Sports Rehab and Running  clinic speak last Saturday to the Women’s 4 Miler Training Program participants about running without injury or pain (well, a little pain may be OK).

He asked the very pointed question: “How many of you dedicate some time to your glutes every day?”

I only saw one hand in the sea of hundreds go up (that was my coach). No surprise there, but I’m here to tell ya’, he may be on to something.

I am proud to say, that as someone who started running while significantly overweight and out of shape, I have been mostly injury and pain free. I worried a lot about the impact and possible damage all that weight would have on my middle-aged joints. Maybe I’m lucky, but I think it’s because I obsessively researched and adopted a moderate training plan, and I stuck to the plan. (Remember? This was one of Dr. Wilder’s suggestions – the sticking to the plan part, not the obsessing over the plan part.)

I have had only one minor injury over the course of my training. I was doing some “speed” work and busted into an all-out “sprint” (yeah, I still giggle when I say “speed” or “sprint”). I felt a little something go “sproing!!” in my hip. Turned out that this was not something that hurt while I was running, but I looked like the grandma who forgot her walker in my off hours. Getting out of the car, going up steps – killed me! My hip was tender and very stiff. I gingerly maintained my training schedule and paid a little extra attention to stretching this area.

Eventually, it became more of a dull nuisance. I worried about whether this injury would rise up and disrupt my running long term or cause some more lasting damage, so I decided to seek professional assistance. I was referred to physical therapy, and I had visions in my head of massage and electro-stimulation and gels and aroma therapy . I just knew they were going to pamper my hip back to health.

Um, no.

In the initial assessment, my PT said I had exceptionally tight hips, which I, of course, took as high praise. NEVER had the words tight and hips ever been used concurrently with reference to MY body. Then he said I was pretty athletic.

Oh, the euphoria!

It  wasn’t long before the afterglow of all this sweet talking was replaced with the reality that my therapy was going to involve some pretty demanding strength training of my core and my glutes.

I commenced to whining right away. Abs?! My six-pack (having always been insulated with a generous layer of flesh) packed up and left three babies ago. Are you kidding me? And can we talk about the shame of not being able to isolate or even find the glute muscle in question?

Well, fast forward a bit, and I can tell you now that the core work has made me a better runner. It has improved my form which has in turn improved my endurance and kept me from any further hip pain – or any other nagging pains or injury for that matter.

So go ahead and give your glutes a little extra attention today. You will be glad for it.

And another thing about hills…

I’ve been on vacation, so the blog has been on hiatus, but now I’m back and ready to follow up my hill post.

First, I should clarify one point: I advised keeping “perpendicular” to the ground when it would have been more accurate to say “plumb”. Imagine you are a plumb-bob, hung on a string from heaven – you remain upright, neither crunching forward into the hill or leaning back to slow yourself down. I really did not intend that you should be defying all laws of gravity by maintaing right angles with the ground regardless of the grade of the hill. Make sense? Good.

Now, I’d like to share a little hill story from my vacation…

I was in Maine last week, staying in a little community called Bayside. It can be found mid-coast, between Camden and Belfast, situated on Shore Road which hugs the coastline for 5-6 miles. The terrain is ”gently rolling”, much like the Charlottesville area. It’s a pretty perfect route for me.

My first run was to be my “long” run for the week. I didn’t have mileage markers, so I decided to just go out 40 minutes and return for a relaxed 80 minute run. Since it was my first run on this route, I didn’t know quite what to expect. All was good and uneventful until I reached the 35 minute mark – almost at my turn around point.

I found myself at the top of a hill that goes down and curves around sharply to the left, so that I couldn’t see exactly how far or how steep. There was, however, one of those yellow road signs that warn truckers about steep grades and checking their brakes. That did not bode well.

I had a decision to make. I could turn around and head back at this point. That would still be a very respectable run, and only cutting myself short by 10 minutes. Maybe I could even make it up on the other end – but I know myself.  The reason I like an agressive out and back course is that I have no problem getting to the halfway point, and once there, I have no choice but to finish. If I were to cut it short here, there’s no way I would make it up on the other end.

As the angel and devil on each shoulder debated the point, I couldn’t help but think about all the advice I’d been smugly flinging around about hills, and what a loser I’d be to chicken out on this hill now, even if it was in the privacy of my own vacation run.

So I barreled down the steep grade and around the curve. It eventually bottomed out and I began ascending another, more modest hill. I reached my 40 minute mark and knew it was time to turn around and face THE hill from the other side. It wasn’t immediately in sight, but I came back around that curve and that hill rose up before me like the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan .

It had been lightly raining. The morning fog was burning off and steam was rising unearthly from the pavement. I half expected to see the hounds of Hell waiting for me as I crested the hill, snarling and slobbering and greedily eyeing me to determine if I was weak enough to pick off or too weak to be any fun. I employed my best hill running techniques (which now included visualizing vicious dogs in hot pursuit) and before I knew it, I was up and over. No dogs. No pain. No throbbing, bursting, bleeding. None of that.

So I’m glad I didn’t cheat myself. Maybe Sarge was right. It’s not a hill. The mountains to be moved are mostly in my head.

Tips for Running Up Hills

I had a certain coach last year (who became known as “Sarge”) who used to tell us that those lung-busting, leg-burning ascents we were so laboriously climbing were NOT hills. OK – so if it’s not a hill, what do you call it? The wrath of God?

If we lived any place else, I would counsel beginners not to worry about hill work outs. Your objective is to stay upright, on your feet, in motion, for a little bit longer each week, without hurting yourself too badly. There’s plenty of time for you to become deranged with need to punish yourself running hills and doing speed work.

But we live in this glorious place called the Piedmont, where the Blue Ridge mountains yield to the coastal plain, a landscape often descibed as gently rolling hills.

Ain’t nothin’ gentle about them if you are a new runner.

So here are a few tips to help you manage those – er – hills.

Running up hill requires something that may seem counter intuitive: Your legs do most of the work, right? Well, kind of…but when you go up a hill, you have to focus on shifting the work upstairs – from your legs to your core, arms and head.

1. Tweak your stride.
When you are going up, you are going to shorten your stride just a little. Going down, you can open it up a bit. Just make sure your body is aligned over the landing foot. In other words, don’t put on the brakes and jut that forward landing foot way out in front of you. This will hurt you. And you’ll look like that hippie “Keep-on-Truckin” dude.

2. Engage your core.
A strong core will help keep you upright. Safe and proper form on hills means that your body should stay perpendicular to the ground, regardless of the angle of said ground. If you watch a runner who is fatigued, often you will see them start to collapse in the middle. Been there, done that. Those crunches and planks that you curse today, will be your salvation on your next big hill.

3. Let your arms do the work for a change.
You may not realize how much you use your arms to run. To prove my point, go try and run without using them at all.

Go ahead…I’ll wait.

See what I mean? Not only do you look like a dork, it was waaaay harder, right? Your arms keep you balanced; they counterbalance the motion of your legs. You cannot run and swing your arms at different speeds, so when it’s time to climb that hill, tell your legs to relax and pump your arms a bit harder to propel you forward.

On the downhill, relax your arms and let gravity do the work. Run like you ran when you were a kid and you didn’t care how fast you ran down that hill; you were all floppy and relaxed. Just keep the hollering and arm flailing to a minimum. People will talk.

4. Listen to the CEO.
The very most important tactic for managing a hill comes straight from the woman upstairs, the Chief Encouragement Officer that has the corner office in your brain. The CEO’s job is to be the visonary and communicate that vision to the workers that will actually make it happen. In this case, those workers would be your arms and legs. Visualization is a very effective tool. Here are a few to try:

• Imagine a cable attached to your chest that is pulling you towards the top of the hill.
• Picture yourself lassoing a telephone pole or street sign up ahead. As you pump your arms, imagine you are reeling yourself in (like a big fish).
• Imagine you are tied to the person in front of you and they are pulling you up the hill. Imagine cracking a tiny whip – you know, if you are into that kind of thing.
• Have a mantra like “I think I can, I think I can” to help you focus.

How do you mentally climb those hills? Share you tricks in the comments section below.

I was built for comfort, not speed.

Yesterday’s scheduled work out on my training plan was speed intervals. I say this with as much dignity as I can muster, because saying I’m doing “speed” work actually makes me giggle a little bit.

I was not built for speed.

Here comes some runner’s jargon, so stick with me a minute. I started with a 1.5 mile warmup at an easy, conversational pace. Then I returned to the track to knock out some measured intervals at 5k race pace interspersed with some recovery laps. For me, 5k race pace is about 2 minutes per mile faster than my conversational pace.

Up until now, one of my primary objectives in running has been to run comfortably. I have taken great pains to camoflauge any evidence of real effort like panting, gasping, grunting, crying…I intend to look gazelle-like when I run, you know – graceful and effortless. But alas, I am not gazelle-like. Rather, I am more terrier-like, low to the ground and determined to root out my quarry, which is usually found at the end of a few miles of pavement. (Note: Terriers are known best for their short legs, disproportionately large heads and powerful jaws, perfectly suited for diving into holes and catching rodents.)

This workout required timing myself at certain intervals, working at specific and varying levels of effort, and what I discovered was interesting. I was right on pace at both the “easy” legs of my run as well as the “speed” portions. Pacing can be a challenge for both new and experienced runners, so it is nice to know that I am beginning to really understand what my effort is yielding.

I couldn’t help but think that this has broader life applications: knowing the boundaries of my comfort zone, when it starts to feel like work, when I’m giving it all I’ve got, and when it’s time for rest and recovery. I’ve been guilty of a reluctance to exert myself for fear I would fail in shame and disgrace. Now I’ve found that knowing my limits helps me push them gently, yet firmly until they yield to my desire for change.

Advice for Late Bloomers

I was frankly surprised to see a recent RunnersWorld poll asking how people got started running. Most began in school, probably high school, but certainly as kids. Not as many took up running “late in life”. I find myself again an outlier (maybe not quite of the Malcolm Gladwell sort).

I’ve had occasions to run throughout my life. Beyond the irrepressible urge to run as a child, I first tried deliberate running in high school. I had always been a cheerleader and was feeling the need to prove myself as “real” athlete. I went out for track, the only spring sport that didn’t involve a whole team relying on my expertise. I worked out with some gifted athletes. I was not one of them. But I did my wind sprints and hills and hurdles. In competition, I ended up throwing shot put and discus. Go ahead, laugh.

Then it was off to college. I was in Army ROTC, and PT (that’s physical training for you civilians)was a requirement that included running – and I hated it. I especially hated running in formation, as I was the shortest and slowest. I finally deliberately dropped a typewriter (oh yes children, those were the contraptions we used to write papers way back when I was in college) on my foot to get out of PT. A hairline fracture for a college student that spent a good deal of time hoofing it around grounds was actually preferable to forced running.

Random attempts to run in the name of getting in shape were short lived. I did successfully complete the W4MTP once 8 years ago and almost liked it, but I quit after the program ended. I wasn’t quite ready to commit. Now here I am, 44 years old, the most unlikely running enthusiast ever. While I could write volumes about what’s different now, suffice it to say, now is my time. So I have some tips for my fellow late bloomers out there:

Be patient. You will not be running marathons overnight – maybe never- but then again, maybe one day you will. Follow your training plan as precribed. You will not gain points for going do more than required. You will only increase your odds of injury and frustration. I remember thinking the first couple of weeks that I’d like to go faster, longer, do more. But guess what? It got challenging soon enough. I am happy to say that I completed the 4 miler training program and a half marathon training program and race without injury or even soreness.

Embrace rest as an important component of your training plan. Let’s face it, if you are a woman of a certain age, especially if you are not in your prime fighting form, your body is needs rest to recover. When you train, you push yourself just enough to create micro tears in your muscles. It is during recovery when your muscle repairs itself and adapts to the new workload. Rest is not slacker time, it is necessary time to grow in strength and endurance.

Be kind to yourself. This is the most important piece of advice of all, and the best that I myself received.You may be feeling self conscious about putting on shorts or anything stretchy or clingy, but let’s face it you are entitled to look the way you do. No matter whether you are 35, 43, 58 or 72, embrace the fact that your body is your lifelong companion and be kind to yourself. You deserve it.