Slowing Down

Last week I went to get my metabolism tested. My hope was that I can rev up my metabolism enough to stop taking my daily dose of thyroid medication and that I can get past my current running plateau.  There was good news, my metabolism is now actually slightly faster than most people (this is really good news for someone with hypothyroidism, generally people with low thyroid counts have really slow metabolic rates). There was very bad news as well: to get any faster, I am going to have to start lifting weights and I am going to have to increase my aerobic base.

This is now my most important training tool

First, the weight-training thing sucks. I thought that yoga was a convenient way to get mind-body exercise and avoid weight-training(unfortunately, the person doing my assessment is a vinyasa yoga instructor, and said, "not so much", I should really do both). I don't like lifting weights, I don't like looking at weights, heck I don't even like the smell of weights. It's boring.  The whole idea is to do the same movement several times and gradually do it with heavier pieces of metal.  Who even invented this torturous activity? I wonder if some fitness expert back in the day actually said to himself, "you know what would be awesome? lifting and squatting with heavy objects in a repetitive motion. This will make me strong and able to impress the ladies." I am NOT impressed, inventor of weight-training.

Increasing my aerobic base is just code for slowing down. The idea is that training my body to run at really slow heart rates will train my body to run for a really long period of time without wearing out. Great idea, in theory. However, I run because I love the feel of flying as my feet barely tough the ground passing by each other. I love going slow enough that I can breathe in the salty air by my house, see the boats go by on the ship canal and still run fast enough to enjoy the wind hitting my face as I glide towards Golden Gardens.  "Running" at 4 or so mph is unlikely to feel like gliding or flying.  It is more likely going to feel like clomping.

But I have to say, as a constant optimist, I did enjoy some things about my first "slow" workout. I was able to think the entire time I was running. I never ran out of breath and I always knew exactly how hard I was working.  I have had this constant heel pain in my right foot on my runs. Generally, I just run through it and call the pain a "character building experience"

 As I was running slowly, I figured out what I have been doing wrong to cause the pain. I hit midsole on the left foot, but heel strike on the right. And I hope it looks less weird than it sounds: I limp when I run. My right foot falls down heavier than my left every time. I was actually able to make adjustments to my form while I was slow running, and for the time being, the heel limp is gone.  

I will admit that this heel has made my running life miserable many times 

The slow base building training is supposed to last eight weeks and then I can speed up (and frankly ditch the weights). I am going to put my trust in the expert and hope this nonsense works as well as she described it. 

After a sick break

So, I wasn't really sick, I had pink eye. If you don't know what pink eye is, you were never a toddler and/or you never were the parent of a toddler. The point is, I had to take an entire week off yoga and running to prevent the spread of said disease. There are many things about this that stink for me and the rest of the universe.  (I will say I still walked a bunch, I did mange to log 16 miles over the week, but I didn't really run and I didn't do yoga at all)

 First and foremost, I have a lot of energy. A LOT of energy. I am like that 90's commercial for the energizer bunny, I keep going and going....  I can talk and jump around forever causing all sorts of havoc if I can't exercise. If I don't get my workout in, there is a slight chance that I will start doing push-ups or sit-ups on the floor off my office or, sorry Ryan, I may do them on the floor of some other poor colleague's office. Second, I am able to get out any anger, sadness and general neediness with a good session of yoga or a good run. Less exercise, more time spent talking about "my feelings" with anyone and everyone who will listen (trust me I talk about these things plenty even with my exercise outlet).

So, I was very excited when my antibiotics ran out and I felt safe conquering a short run and a yoga class. I was psyched to redo the beautiful backbend and head stand I had performed just a week and a half earlier. I desperately wanted to up the amount of time I spent at 6.5 miles per hour on the treadmill.

 I forgot the main rule of being sick and not exercising, my body was not the same at it was a week earlier and I didn't to do the things I wanted to do with it.  Before I started exercising, I forgot that I had eaten loads of cookies, chips and jimmy johns sandwiches while I was sick because I felt sorry for my self and could be bothered to go out. I was a couple pounds heavier than my last attempt at exercise greatness. I forgot that the abdominal muscles have a very short memory and that extra crunches from the week before do not carry over.

I managed to get into a back bend, but it looked more like a deflated balloon than a beautiful wheel. My body didn't even want to go into the headstand. My breathing sounded a wheezing dog than the sound of the ocean (the sound of the ocean is the goal for yogic breathing). As I ran, my body only wanted to go 6 miles per hour and it only wanted to do that for 15 or so minutes before I had to transition to the power walking mode on the treadmill.

This was the kind of workout day that would have sent me further down the spiral of inactivity until I was spending my time sitting on the couch watching Hair Battle Spectacular. That is until I found yoga. Okay, the entire city of Seattle and most of the rest of the country found it first, but I still had to find the studio. Okay, the studio was about 15 blocks away from my house, so I didn't even need to find the studio. Finding yoga was about an unlikely source telling me it was a good idea and deciding that my hamstrings needed some love after so many months of running.

The yoga people have this whole thing about being where you are with your body as it is, everyday. In yoga, you can have an awesome class where you do a headstand one day and be just as awesome sitting in child's pose(the rest pose) half the class, the next. There are no fat days, gross days, I suck at everything days in class. You just are where you are and go with it. And for the next few days, at least, I am going to be slower and less bendy, and I am going to try my yogic brains out to be perfectly okay with that.

Go Go Gadget Girl

My colleague is a barefoot runner and occassionally will wear a watch.  He is the ultimate minimalist runner.  He looks like he is running when he is out on the trail. I, on the other hand, look like I am auditioning for the next installment of the Inspector Gadget movie franchise. Inspector Gadget had to run as well, Right?






(Go to www.clifbar.com if you want the shotbloks, www.apple.com for the ipod, www.runningwarehouse.com for everything else except the iPod cover, www.belkin.com.

Running Warehouse and Clif Bar ROCK (and I hope they don't get mad at me for using their pictures))

I choose to bring the world with me when I run.  At the very minimum, I wear a GPS watch, a heart rate monitor, a foot pod (a device that calculates my mileage, if God forbid, the GPS watch fails) and my Ipod. At times, on my long runs, add a cell phone, my water bottle and a pink camoflauge fanny pack (Fanny Packs are back in, I swear.)  There are literally times when I am unable to go on my run because I cannot find part of my equipment.  I mean, what if the distance from my house to Golden Gardens suddenly changes? Or what if my GPS stops working for a milisecond and I don't have an alternative way of tracking the distance I have already memorized. And the worst case scenario, what if I don't have my Ipod and someone needs me to look up the lyrics to whatever I am singing out load as they pass me on the trail?

My colleague, the minimalist runner, thinks that all these devices add enough weight to my body that they are actually causing me to run slower. He has also noted that it is possible to run without a constant string of tunes playing in one's ear. I choose to not believe his overhyped rhetoric. So, if you see me on the trail, bob your head along to my awesome rendition of "Cheeseburger in Paradise" or "It's the end of the world" and I will be okay when you turn your head away and pretend you don't know the girl with the camo fanny pack.

Exercise

After a few difficult weeks in my personal and work life, I decided that what I really need is a few kick butt weeks of sweat and movement. My dad always used to say that exercise would cure everything.  He would suggest exercise as a cure for things that didn't always make sense, and we would often create even more ridiculous scenarios that exercise could cure. I remember once feeling awful, with a bad cold, and not being very interested in my dad's suggestion that getting out and training would somehow make my headache and runny nose go awayy. Got a broken leg, "just bike it off", need a new job, "take a run instead."  As long as I was willing to break a sweat and discuss philosophy at the dinner table, life was good in the Bennett household(okay, my childhood was good anyway, no .  My dad has calmed down as he has gotten older, he believes in rest days and taking care of one's self as a way to health.  But he has a point about exercise as a cure all.  I have found over the last year especially, that movement is key to emotional and physical health.

When I have a stressful day, I go to yoga and it helps me feel refreshed and meditative. 
When I am stuffed up, I run and my body feels less congested.
When I am hurt, I run and pretend that I am running away from the person who hurt me and I feel a sense of catharsis as I go.
When I feel weak, I move my body into a pose, like a headstand, that I was previously unable to achieve and I feel strong.
When I feel old, I run as fast as I can, smile as I go, and I feel young again.
When my mind is racing, I go to yoga, and it stops racing for an hour and a hald.

Exercise is not a cure all. It can't give money to the poor, fix a broken leg or the flu, but if you have never worked out issues in your physical and emotional life through sweat, I urge you to give exercise a try.

Weight-Loss...or why I stopped worrying and learned to run.

I discovered I had gotten fat somewhere around my 26th birthday. I looked at a picture of myself from a birthday party and did not see a waistline. Instead, I saw ill fitting jeans and a really lame t-shirt that did not cover up my increasingly  I had been fat for the three years prior to making this discovery, but the plus sized clothing and the wrenching pains in my knees really had no effect on me. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the cute, pain-in-the-ass 22 year-old who could drink anyone under the table and still not gain a pound.  Unfortunately, that 22 year-old had gotten older, developed hypothyroidism, and, had not stopped eating and drinking her friends under the table when her metabolism had stopped cooperating.

I really was mad at 22-year-old me, but decided that I would not deal with my issues because I was going to be an enlightened 21st century, don't mess with me "fat girl". I planned to embrace my weight, attempt to eat a little better and live with fat pride.I also wanted to buck the yo-yo dieting trend that seemed to make every woman in my parent's generation go back and forth between Kate Moss and Roseanne Arnold. I found the entire idea of moving back and forth between a life where I hated eating to one where I despised how I looked, nauseating.  This don't care attitude was great for the self esteem, but fracking horrible on the knees and the back. And it also sucked that I moved slower than my thin friends, and couldn't shop in normal clothing stores. My stay fat plan, lasted about 2 years.

Plan B was to find the most awesome fad diet ever, lose the weight in an entirely unhealthy way and then make the slow transition back to normal eating without regaining the weight. I LOVED, and still LOVE reading the diet books. Diet books are the cable news of nutrition.  They provide endless hours of edutainment, and don't bog down the material with factual information. I tried Atkins, Sonoma, South Beach, various "Detox Diets" (P.S. Detox just means "this diet will make you poop a lot") and even Slim Fast.  I lasted at least an hour on plan. Usually by the end of the day, I was getting bogged down in the reality that I what I was doing eating gross food and following ridiculous advice from a variety of experts whose main goal was to live the American Dream by making a lot of money selling diet books.

Then I tried Weight Watchers, it works and is not a fad diet. Mostly because it works on the basic principle that if you eat less and exercise more, you will lose weight.  The problem for me, on any diet, including the rational ones, is that I really ENJOY food and dessert and beer and all of those things that I had to eat less of to lose weight.

And this is when I discovered running. I had been walking, using the Wii and taking the stairs to get in my "30 minutes of movement on most days" But all of those things only provided me about 200 extra calories a day. That is ONE pint of beer or half a cookie at the awesome bakery down the street. Running gives me 750 calories an hour, I can do it anywhere and I can drink a beer after I am done(okay maybe after I have a glass of water).  I lost 30 pounds (but gained it all back plus 20 during pregnancy) with the diets. I have lost 60 pounds with running and get to eat what I want. I still write down all of my calories (because believe me, if I could eat 10,000 delicious calories a day without gaining weight, I probably would), but I now can focus on other aspects of what goes into my mouth rather than, "will this make me fatter".

And the awesome thing with running is that once you get over the back, knee and side pain, it gets into your blood. Jumping on the treadmill at the end of a hard day starts feeling almost as good as a chocolate bar or a dip in a hot tub.  There is something about making your body temporarily fly through the air as you move from step to step that provides a combination of energy, meditation and catharsis.

More to come on running and weight-loss later....

Post-Running

Pre Running