March | 2011 | Run Luau Run

Archive for March, 2011

Fire

Posted in motivation, training, tagged Fire, motivation, running on March 11, 2011| 7 Comments »

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I love running.

I believe in running.

I preach running.

You know this. Anybody who spends more than 15 minutes with me knows this.

If there is a problem, running either IS or can lead you to the solution.

I definitely have a passion for running, a burning fire.

It is…consuming.

So I get a little frustrated when people don’t get it. It’s hard to me to understand how people do not understand that running (and when I say running I mean any sweat-producing exercise) can make them feel better, be better. I get even more frustrated when people get it, but don’t do anything about it.

How can you not be taking care of yourself? How can you do this to yourself?

Like I said, I get frustrated.

But then I remember – I didn’t start running until I was almost 39. It was just over two years ago that I started running regularly.

And I knew long before! I knew the benefits of regular exercise and what it could do for me. But I didn’t.

I didn’t.

And that is what I tell myself when I see friends and family placing health low on their priority lists.

The fire will come. Hopefully. Or maybe it won’t.

I hope it does.

I do.

I can stoke it for you temporarily, but in the end, the fuel must come from within. The fire has to burn from within.

Burn.

Why do you run?

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The Seed

Posted in motivation, training, tagged beginning running, running, the seed, training on March 10, 2011| 11 Comments »

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Being the parent of a child with autism has taught me that success breeds success.

One of the therapies many children like Brooke receive is called ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis). In the simplest layman’s terms, an instructor teaches a child how to do a task by breaking the task down to its most rudimentary components. What you and I take for granted as one, single task, is often a lot more complicated than you think. Even simple games like memory or putting toothpaste on a toothbrush have to be taught step by step, each step building on the previous one. The key is providing a child like Brooke an opportunity to succeed with each step before moving on to the next one. When done properly, children like Brooke can succeed, even thrive, in their environment. The downside is that if done improperly or without caution, a child like Brooke can fail miserably at the task and refuse to go forward or learn the wrong way to do the task, leading to further frustration down the line. Once something is learned for these very rule-based children, it is extremely difficult to un-learn it.

The same can be said about running.

Confidence and belief start small. At birth, just like us, they come in many different forms (loud, quiet), but early on, they are fragile, easily shattered. That confidence, that belief, has to be cultivated, nurtured, cared for.

I have seen many people declare that they are going to start running – it will be part of their new exercise regimen, and this time dammit they’re gonna stick to it.

Three weeks later they haven’t run in a week and a half. The excuses will be there (-oh, I’ve been crazy busy. -oh, I just haven’t been feeling well. -oh, I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately) and I will do my best not to roll my eyes.

Now you may think that I’m being a little harsh with the eye-rolling. Let’s get this straight right now before the comments start flying – I am NOT rolling my eyes at the person. I am rolling my eyes at the way the person went about this new regimen. I am rolling my eyes because I went through the exact same thing – I did not respect running.

I was an on again, off again runner for a long time. My “on’s” would last about a week. My “off’s” would last about a year. Every time I would start again, I would do the exact same thing as the time before. I would put on an old pair of sneakers, I would run 4 or 5 miles and then I would be in pain. The learned experience (the bad form, the lack of pacing) from the first time I went running as an adult (if you could call me that at 22) stuck with me, not as a learning experience, but as one that got repeated over an over again.

I thought I could just go out there and run. It’s just running, right? And to a degree that is true. However, if you aren’t athletically gifted (which despite what the wife says, I am not), your body can do some really weird things the first couple of times you go out there. Fortunately for me, out of complete dumb luck, this last time around I accidentally did things the right way. I started with low mileage (2-3 miles per run, 3 times per week) and built up from there. True, I probably built up too quickly over the course of the following few weeks, but the point is, I started slowly and let my body experience “success” at running before moving up to the next level.

Now some people may feel uncomfortable with this “babying” of oneself to breed success, but I draw a line of distinction from the “everybody wins-nobody loses” philosophy in that running is not primarily about competition. Yes, I run races. YES, I get competitive with those of equal ability. But running to me is about feeling good. It’s about that rush of blood coursing through my body, my focused energy, or chi as those who follow Chinese martial arts will know it. It’s about the endorphins carrying me through the day with a smile on my face. These are the fruits one harvests by taking care of the seed when one starts running.

That’s the thing though – you have to take care of the seed early. Pay attention and listen to your body. The best thing I did early on in my latest attempt at running was pay attention to my form. I am still a work-in-progress. My form is far from perfect. I still strike with my heel. I still bounce up and down when I run. However, I do both to a much lesser degree than I once did. As my form gets better and more efficient, the nagging aches and pains diminish. I haven’t had a serious injury in quite a while.

I find that I am enjoying my runs more and more, despite the fact that they are getting longer , harder and faster. Just when my body should be feeling like it’s taking a beating, it feels great…

…all because, I took care of the seed.

Why do you run?

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The Hazards of Running

Posted in diet, health, motivation, Odd Ball, other, tagged don't run, hazards of running, running, running is bad on March 7, 2011| 29 Comments »

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There is a down side to regular running. A dark side that people will try to paint over with white-wash and tell you it’s great. If you are considering the prospect of taking up running, I urge you to think about these things before you start.

•Your clothes will no longer fit you – the added cost of having to buy a new wardrobe, in addition to the new running gear you just bought a few months earlier, can weigh heavily on your wallet.

•Your sex-drive will increase dramatically – I didn’t think that was possible in my case, but it in fact did. The endorphins coursing through your body will keep your blood pumping long after your run is done. It can be rather distracting, you know?

•Your appetite will increase – with the added expenditure of calories will also come the added expenditure of dollars replacing many of those calories. You gotta eat, right?

•Related to your appetite, you will have to overhaul the contents of your cupboard and refrigerator – once you start fine-tuning the machine that is your body, you will become more aware of the fuel you are putting into it. Regular leaded will no longer do. A high performance engine craves the Super Unleaded.

•You will be happier – which sounds great on the surface, but it will annoy your friends to no end. They’ll ask you what are you so damned happy about (even though deep down they will know why).

•You won’t get sick as often – again, sounds great at first, but think about it; if you don’t get sick, you don’t get to call in sick and take a day off from work. That’s less time you get to lie in bed and watch crappy day-time television.

•You’ll make new friend – sounds good, but you know, I have a hard enough time keeping track of my high school and college buddies. Do I really need another whole group of friends to max out my address book?

The bottom line is, be careful what you wish for. This whole running thing may look good from the outside looking in, but once you’re in it, you realize that being in better shape, having a higher sex drive, being able to eat more and better food, being happier, rarely getting sick and making a bunch of new friends ain’t all what it’s cracked up to be!

You’ve been warned!

Why do you run?

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What are you eating?

Posted in diet, health, log, tagged diet, Eating, Food, health, present on March 4, 2011| 22 Comments »

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I’ve been thinking lately about diet, more specifically, about the fuel that we put in our engines to make them go.

I’ve always been pretty good about what goes into my body. The cravings I have, my wife tells me, aren’t normal. When I feel nudgy, I crave fruits, vegetables, maybe some nuts or left over salmon. I realize that for most people, these cravings aren’t normal, but I would like to challenge what should be defined as “normal”.

There’s a series of commercials on TV right for a car company that I can’t remember that keeps stressing that we’ve been brainwashed into accepting the status quo of what car companies are producing, but HEY! Look at us, we’re breaking that paradigm and bringing you what you REALLY need! I think that train of thought can be brought into the discussion of what we eat. There has been a certain amount of brainwashing that has been done to the population as a whole. We have been convinced that snacks have to be potato chips or candy bars or candy bars. What happened to the concept of an apple or an orange?

We all know the phrase, you are what you eat. I’d like to modify that phrase a little to say you feel like what you eat. That’s because, to a very large degree, if you put good things in your body, your body will feel good. If you put crap in your body, you’re gonna feel like crap. Plain and simple. It’s pretty straightforward.

But hold on. What qualifies as good? and what qualifies as crap? and what about the things that are in between?

That’s where things get hard. It’s easy to say to people, “eat right and you’ll be fine” or “don’t eat unhealthy food or you’re gonna get fat”. How does that help people? Most people have no idea what eating right really, truly means.

For a lot of people eating right means severely restricting calories. There’s a little bit of truth buried in that, but I’m pretty sure that’s not quite right. For others, it means eating fat-free, sugar-free foods from the “health & diet” section of the grocery store. I KNOW that’s not right. And yet for others it means eating only things that taste like cardboard and taking the joy out of eating. THAT is definitely NOT right.

So what’s a person to do?

Two words:

Be. Present.

That’s it. For a lot of people, eating has become either this orgiastic festival of gluttony or a mindless process of excess. Either way, there is a detachment that has happened that doesn’t allow your brain and your stomach to work together in concert. By being present, you pay attention to what you are eating and how you are eating it. Eventually, if you are aware of every bite you put in your mouth, you will realize that you are not hungry and will hopefully stop.

For those that can’t, there is then an extra step – the food log. It takes a lot less time than you actually think – literally 60 seconds after every meal or snack. You write down what you’ve eaten and note how you’ve felt since you last meal or snack. For those who say I don’t have the time I say, Are you frakking kidding me? Almost every adult I know has enough time to check their email, post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter after a meal. Guess what? You have 60 seconds to write down what you ate on your mobile device. There IS an app for that.

By keeping a log you will have the ability to go back and discover what IS good for you and what is not. Every person’s bio-chemistry is a little different. Yes, there are broad similarities that allow lifestyle diets like Paleo, South Beach and Blood Type to generally work for a lot of people, but in the final analysis, we are all individuals who don’t fit perfectly into that cookie cutter mold.

That is why by being present, you can customize your diet to fit the needs of your unique physiology.

I love spinach. A lot of people eat tons of it. Unfortunately for me, by being present I have come to realize that I can only eat it in smaller doses without it having an adverse effect on me. Unfortunate that I can’t eat it in large quantities – fortunate that I can avoid unnecessary unpleasantness.

So, are you aware of what you are eating?

Are you present?

Why do you run?

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Miserable

Posted in boston marathon, training, tagged miserable run, running, slush, snow, winter running on March 3, 2011| 14 Comments »

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I sat in my car, staring down the road in front of me. It was 6AM, the snow had been coming down for hours. The ground was covered in an inch or two of wet, wet snow.

Do I really want to do this?

I was staring down the starting end of a 20-mile run. 20 miles. 20 miles is a tough run under great conditions, much less snowy ones that were quickly turning worse.

Maybe the treadmill would have been a better idea.

The thing was, the treadmill wasn’t an option. I had made arrangements to meet my buddy Doug at mile 13 at 8AM. We were running a portion of the Boston Marathon course.

Why did I do that!?!?

My last 7 miles were going to be the first 7 miles of his own 16 mile run.

The minutes ticked by. 6:10 snuck up on me.

Sigh…

It was time to go. My plan was to run slowly. The weather and the road condition, snowy with the added bonus of slush, were not conducive for a quick paced trek. Traction was not high. I started in the high 8’s/low 9’s. At just about the mile marker, I stepped off a curb into about 3 or 4 inches of slush.

Great!!!

Water rushed into my shoe. I love my Kinvaras because they are so well ventilated. Great for hot, summer days; not so great for slushy conditions. I laughed. What else could I do? I trudged on, trying to keep my feet under me. As I hit my first hill, I could feel my feet slipping beneath me. Each stride was not only a battle of getting up the hill, but of making sure that I didn’t lose my feet and land on my face. Each step required renewed focus, moving from one foot to the other. I drew a deep sigh of relief as I crested the hill, only to realize that I would now be battling the slippage in a completely different way.

This is going to be miserable!!!

And so it went through this hilly section of the Boston Marathon course. Finally, I made the turn off of the hills and headed for the next town. As I tried to let my mind relax a little, a large truck drove by just a little too fast, a little too close for comfort. If that wasn’t scary enough, he went through a large puddle of slush just as he passed me. This sent sent a mini-tsunami of slush and ice splashing against my bare legs.

I’m awake!!! Holy Crap I’m AWAKE!!!

Holy cow that was cold! I gathered myself together. As I continued on through the growing layer of snow, I wondered why I had only worn little footie socks. Snow was beginning to accumulate on my bare ankles.

What the hell am I doing?

Just after entering the town of Wellesley, I was greeted by a hill that seemed to go on forever (though I think it only goes for about 2/3 of a mile). Ever-slickening conditions made the climb rather interesting. As I crested the hill I looked at my watch. I was now running low 8’s.

Too fast.

I tried to slow down, but the legs kept churning. Low 8’s turned into high 7’s. As I passed the 7 mile marker (where I was meeting Doug), I realized that I was about 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Despite telling myself that I needed to slow down, my legs were finally starting to feel strong. Passing Wellesley College, I was brought back to the Marathon last April and all of the screaming college girls offering kisses to the runners (no, I didn’t stop for any!). I checked my watch as I hit the next mile. 7:30!

7:30? Slow down, Dude!!!

No avail. Over the next five miles, as I made my way to Natick Centre and back, despite making a conscious effort to keep it under control, and being hyper-vigilant of both ice and traffic, I averaged just under 7:30/mile. I arrived at our meet up point 10 minutes ahead of schedule. 13 miles in 1:42. Not bad for such craptastic conditions!

Soon Doug arrived and we were on our merry way. Conditions were worsening, but it was great to have the company. As we made our way through Wellesley and back to the Newton Hills portion of the Boston Marathon Course, we chatted away. He reminded me about the heartbreaking story of why he ran Boston last year and why he is again running for the same charity. The story is —>HERE<—. We talked shoes, we talked running.

The falling snow was turning into sleet.

Lovely!

The intersections were ankle deep in slush now. Even if we were able to avoid the puddles (which I wasn’t), we were continually assaulted by the splashing of passing cars.

Finally on the Newton Hills, we were able avoid the flying slush, but of course, now we faced “the Newton Hills”. I was about 17 miles in at this point (which coincidentally is where they lie on the course), and the legs were heavy. We pushed our way through, yapping away the entire time.

Before I knew it, I saw my car in the distance. Arriving at mile 20, I gave Doug a quick hug and sent him on his way to finish his run.

Man! What a miserable frakkin’ day!

I hopped into my car and headed home, downing a couple of mix1’s to speed recovery.

I. Was. Exhausted.

When I got home, I trudged upstairs to kiss the wife and the kids. We chatted for a minute and then I went upstairs to shower. I was beat.

What a miserable, miserable outing.

Or was it?

A little later, I saw this on my wife’s Facebook page status:

my husband just ran 20 miles. in the snow. and is all sorts of cheerful. please tell me it’s ok to hate him. just a little.

The thing is, she was right. I was totally cheerful. I was beat. Yes. I was exhausted. Definitely. But I also felt great! Despite the conditions and the traffic (maybe because of the conditions and the traffic), I had a great time out there. Would I want to run that every week? Well, no. BUT, I gotta say, in retrospect, I had a great time.

Thanks Doug for keeping me company for the last 7 miles!

Why do you run?

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Capable

Posted in motivation, tagged capable, change on March 1, 2011| 5 Comments »

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I could never do that.

I only run when I’m being chased.

I can’t run more than a block.

I won’t ever run an 8:00 mile.

It’s too late for me.

What’s the point? I can’t change my body.

***

STOP!!!

***

You are capable.

You have it in you.

You CAN & WILL do it.

***

The most powerful asset you have to affect change is between your ears, and if you can mentally adjust what you see when you look in the mirror, then you can and will do it.

The key is patience and perseverance.

The marathon has taught me many things, but two critical things it has taught me is patience and perseverance. Change is coming if you work for it. And believe me, the change is worth the work.

See.

Believe.

Affect.

Yes, you are capable.

Why do you run?