Mamamarathoner» August 2008

My Water Theory Worked: Drink, Mamas, Drink!

Kathy — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:35:22 +0000

So I talked last week about the fact that I was returning from my long run spent, hurting and weighing more than two pounds less than I had when I started.

Chris talked to me about being hydrated enough, something that I have really been bad about. For some reason, I have always thought I have been drinking plenty on my long runs. I also take a gel pack with my water, so that halfway through the run I can get some carbs into my system in order to make it back home.

Problem was, I wasn’t drinking enough.

This morning I took along two two-liter bottles. In one I put Gatorade and in the other plain water. I also took a power bar that had some carbs in case my stomach started to growl. I have a tendency to get famished on my long runs, probably because I start off with an empty (or mostly empty) tank. Since I get up and run quite early, I don’t have a lot of time to fuel up food-wise. I sometimes will eat half a bagel, or half of a half. This morning I shoved half a banana down my throat before taking off, and of course it wasn’t enough: I felt it around mile 5.

Anyway, the two liters of liquid were gone by the time I returned, and though my stomach felt bloated and I actually heard a few gurgles because I’m not used to consuming so much liquid for a ten mile run, I had not lost any weight. So, good sign! I was only down a few tenths of a pound, not the whopping two-plus pounds of last week.

Hydrated, yes. Full of liquid, super yes. I hope that once I get used to consuming that much drink it will get easier.

On another note, I hydrated with gatorade rather than a gel pack. I really don’t like Gatorade-way too much sugar for my taste-but in all honesty I think it may have worked better in sustaining my energy than the gel packs do. Since I take the gel packs only once during my long runs, and I drink the gatorade throughout, I figured that the drink, though sickeningly sweet and sticky as all get out, was keeping me fueled at a more even pace than the gel pack would.

Hope all of your runs were great ones this weekend!

Sit Up Straight, Dear, and Stretch!

Kathy — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:43:00 +0000

I type this as I am hunched over my computer finishing up the design on a blog job that I have been working on. My eyes are strained and my posture totally stinks.

As I was stretching my back I thought about something I read today in my personal trainer exam book about posture and the effects that bad posture can have on your body.

So did that make you sit up a bit straighter, my dear?!

Holding your body in a certain position for a long period of time can throw off your muscles and cause you pain. It can also inhibit the way that you breathe. Slumped shoulders are not only bad for your shoulder area but for your back as well. Is your body aligned? If not, make a conscious effort to get it that way.

One thing the book mentioned was the way that many people who work in an office over a computer (ME!) have a tendency to hold their bodies slumped over more because, well, that is the way we sit for hours upon hours. Is this you? If so, each time you catch yourself sitting a certain way, such as with your head bent down low or your shoulders hunched forward, pull yourself upright. Take a moment to stretch. You can actually feel the tension in your back when you have been hunched for a while and you straighten up.

I thought I’d share a few great stretches I have that can help keep you aware of your posture while alleviating any pain you are causing by being all bunched over.

Arms up. One arm at a time. Hold the seat of your chair with one hand, place the other in the air and stretch high. Then stretch over to the side while keeping your body in alignment. Not too far, you don’t want to pull anything or fall on the floor. You should feel this in your oblique area of the side you are stretching. Mmm, mmm, good!

Typing too much? Flex and extend your wrists. Up, down, up and down. Then roll them around slowly.

Fingers cramped from the keyboard? Extend and flex these as well. In, out, in out.

Neck stiff from sitting in one position? Tilt to the right, tilt to the left. Slowly. While breathing in and out. Tilt it back, then tilt it forward. Keep breathing. Who cares what the officemates think?!

Arms sore from one position? Do a tricep stretch by placing your left arm in the air over your head, bending it back so that it touches your shoulder blade, and gently pulling it inward with your opposite hand. Then switch sides.

Still feeling a little stiff in the shoulders? Roll them!

And possible my favorite, because it combines the stretching and the nice, quiet breathing. Hold onto the back of your chair with your hands. Open your chest. Push those girls out in front of you, close your eyes, and streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch.

Five to ten minutes of this a few times a day is certain to help not only your posture but your mental health as well!

Dehydration Report

Kathy — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:59:22 +0000

So I posted the other day about my theory that perhaps I’m slightly dehydrated. I had a horrible Saturday long run, which never happens, and I’ve been so tired every day that I’ve had a hard time functioning by nighttime. My body has felt like led on the pavement, and I’ve been wondering if perhaps something was really wrong. I even scheduled a doctor’s appointment to make sure I didn’t have some dreaded issue!

Then I read about dehydration, and how if you lose more than one pound of weight after an exercise session you are losing too much fluid. I weighed myself at my five mile run on Monday and bingo, I’d lost 2.4 pounds!

Okay, so I’ve made a huge effort to keep hydrated and I think that it has worked. I’m feeling more revived, and my runs have been great. I shaved 11 seconds off my miles today from Monday, and I am back to where I was several weeks ago time-wise. I didn’t feel as sluggish this morning, and I wasn’t putting out full effort, either.

I cut back on the coffee, and minus the afternoon headache as my body screams for a cup of java, everything else has been fine.

I can’t say it was all hydration, but I”m guessing a huge part of my sluggishness both on and off the pavement was due in part to not being hydrated enough. So drink up before and after those runs!

Exercising in the Heat? How to Know You are Taking in the Right Amount of Liquid

Kathy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:42:36 +0000

I see a lot of people posting about running or taking up a running program during the brutally hot days of summer. Many have questions regarding running and exercising in the heat. Since many marathon programs run for about five months, those embarking on this journey are now beginning to train for endurance, which means covering a lot of miles when the days are at their hottest.

I always run in the early morning hours, typically starting before the sun even peeks over the mountains. It’s nice and cool, traffic isn’t ridiculous and I can get some quiet time, alone, just to think.

Yet I do see people out running in midday, when temperatures to me are soaring. But then again, anything over 75 to me is hot!

If you are wondering how to tell whether or not you have lost too much liquid during a workout, here’s a good rule to follow:

Weigh yourself before you go out, and then again when you get back. If you lost more than a pound, you aren’t getting enough to drink.

How much should you be drinking?
7-10 ounces of liquid every ten to fifteen minutes during a longer endurance run. If you are going far, shoot for something with a mix (6%) of sugar to keep the energy levels up.

Afterwards, continue to drink, consuming up to 20 ounces of liquid for every pound you lost while you ran.

Seem like a lot? Possibly so, but your body needs to stay hydrated.

So here’s the thing: I began thinking about this over the weekend, when I had the horrid run on Saturday. I have been tired lately, more tired than usual. And yes, I’m a working mother of two daughters under the age of four, but I also get plenty of rest and I eat well. I take a multivitamin since I’ve been known to run low on iron. I do yoga every night to unwind and relax before bed. So, what the heck was going on, I wondered?

Then Chris of Fab, Fit and 40 commented about the dehydration aspect and I thought, bingo! Immediately I knew that this was probably the case. Why?

First of all, I drink too much coffee-about three cups a day. Two in the morning, one in the early afternoon. Sometimes I even have another half somewhere during the day. Coffee has been a staple of mine for a very long time. My family drank tons of it, putting on a pot in the morning and running one throughout the entire day. I love the smell and I love the taste. Ironically, I don’t like the effects when I have had too much. I’m pretty sensitive to caffeine.

Secondly, I’m not drinking enough when I run. I do drink, I make sure of it, and I generally pound a drink when I get home, a 16 ouncer after a run. But take this morning. I didn’t take a bottle of water along with me and I went five miles. I was really hot and sweaty and thirsty when I got back, so I am now pounding a 16 oz water as I type.

I weighed myself before I left the house this morning to see if I was right. I wanted to test out my theory. I was 140 when I left; I was 137.6 when I got back. So, I lost 2.4 pounds during my 5 mile run, which was definitely too much to lose.

I have to make this a better goal. I’ve decided to replace my afternoon cup of coffee with a cup of tea. I enjoy something warm while I’m working, so I don’t want to give that up completely, but a cup of decaf lemon would be good, hot and not caffeinated.

I’m also going to start wearing my belt when I run on those four to five milers during the week. I’ll take along a water so I know I get enough, and make a point to drink every 10 minutes.

On the weekends, I guess it means guzzling more fluids, and maybe switching from water to Gatorade for a while, until the heat dies down. I don’t really like the sugary fluids. I generally use gel packs, but maybe the heat calls for something more than plain water.

When I went out last weekend, the bad run that I had difficulty finishing (and that I only completed 8 miles of instead of 9), I didn’t weigh myself before, but when I got back I was at a very low 134.5. Now, I haven’t seen 134 in ages, so I knew something was up. I didn’t equate it to losing too much liquid, but I did spend the day drinking tons of water.

So that is my goal this week: Get in the fluids. Avoid the caffeine more. Cut back on the coffee, two mugs a day max. Drink more when running.

If you are concerned about your liquid loss during a session, check your weight before and after, and make sure you are getting enough to keep your body healthy! Signs of dehydration include thirst, dizziness, chills, loss of energy. And if you are at the point of feeling dizzy, sit down and rest and drink. If you are at the point of chills, get medical attention immediately.

Stay safe!

Happy Running Trails . . .

Out of Curiousity . . . How Long Were You a Runner Before Trying Your First Distance Race?

Kathy — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:52:26 +0000

I was thinking this morning about the fact that many of the fastest women in races are in my age category – over 30.

I was wondering about the readers here who are running longer distances – at least 10K races, if not halfs and fulls.

How long were you a runner before you began doing distances?

I started running about 12 years ago. I started off with 5Ks. I did some longer runs for a while, but when I started going too far too fast and got hurt I stopped, and I didn’t pick up longer distances until after the birth of my first daughter.

After her birth and before my second daughter blessed our lives I miscarried. Not only was it a bad emotional experience, but it was a bad physical one as well that left me in the hospital overnight and in bed for quite a few days. I almost required a blood transfusion. The fear on my husband’s face that first night stopped me cold, as he is so strong that I always rely on him to hold me up when I am scared.

A few weeks later, numb and recovering, I started running again.

Four months following the miscarriage, after having not run at all during the two month pregnancy, I finished my first half marathon.

The rest, as they say, is history.

It took about ten years for me to decide that my casual jogging was actually more than that.

How long did it take you to go from your first jog to your first endurance race?

And what do you think pushed you to do so?

In Lance Armstrongs book that i just read, It’s Not About the Bike, he talks about how endurance athletes generally have gone through something and are running (figuratively) from something.

Maybe this is how it starts. We have a bad experience and then we run, run, run. Or ride, ride, ride.

Do you know what propelled you forward? Was it a life changing event, or was it just the next gradual step from running a 5K?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and your reasonings. We all have those very long times on the pavement when we can think, and so I’m sure that these thoughts have, at some point in training, crossed your mind. If you’d like to share, we’d like to read!

Today’s Run: Partly Crappy with a Chance of Pain

Kathy — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:46:34 +0000

Oh! Today’s long run was horrid!

This rarely happens for me. I really love my distance runs. When I have a bad run, it’s typically mid week when I’m tired.

I think I might be fighting something. I have an ulcer on my lip, which is generally an indication that a virus has invaded my body. I never get sick-you know, puking, sneezing, coughing. It’ s a joke around here about how strong my immunity is to various things that my kids and husband pick up. Actually, my oldest daughter has an immune system like mine. But I do get ulcers.

I’ve also been dead tired these past two days. In fact, I didn’t train as hard this week, dropping my biking and swimming routine on Thursday and just keeping the twenty minutes, speed run with some ab work.

When I woke this morning after eight hours of sleep I knew it was going to be a dreaded run. In fact, I thought maybe I”d just do a few miles.

I did end up at eight, which was just one mile less than I wanted to run. My runs these past Saturdays have been:

9
9
11

Then today was 8.

Next week I hope to do 13, and then we will be traveling for a few weeks so I’ll do a shorter, maybe 8 miler again, and then maybe a 10 before my 15.

I actually hit a wall today, which never really happens for me. I put on my headphones right into the run, about a mile in, when normally that would come much, much later. I like to spend those first forty five minutes to an hour just thinking about things, and I can’t think when the music is blaring. But the music made the run more tolerable.

I turned around at four miles, just after stepping onto the beach, and headed home.

I have to figure out if I am fighting something or if I am not getting enough calories. So I’m going to start tracking my weight now, since I’m climbing up the mileage scale. I have a tendency to lose weight, to become over thin. I know that some people will read that and say, “Oh gees, let’s get out the violins,” but actually it is a problem. I don’t like to be too gaunt. I prefer a little meat on the bones. But when I get up in mileage, the meat sheds pretty quickly. I love to eat, so it’s not that I don’t put enough in, but perhaps i need to pick some higher fat choices this time around.

Today’s weight: 134.6 after breakfast. Now, yesterday’s weight was 135 pre-food, so I ate oatmeal with bananas and honey and a piece of toast for breakfast. Before my run, thinking I might go out and do the 13 today, I had half a bagel (well, half of a half) and then halfway into the run I had a gel pack.

I hate it that a long run turned crappy like that. I like to think back on those long runs and realize how much I enjoy getting out into the world, in the quiet of my mind, and just experiencing things.

Hopefully, next week’s thirteen will be much better!

Teaching Our Girls to Be Strong

Kathy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:07:19 +0000

This morning as I ate breakfast I read an interview with Alannis Morissette in this month’s Women’s Health magazine.

I have always liked her. Come on, I was in my early twenties going through a bad breakup during her angry phase. I remember seeing her in concert and thinking, “How does she know me so well?!” The lyrics to her bitter songs on that bitter album (we all know the one!) screamed through my speakers with such force that I’m surprised my windows didn’t break.

Alannis has come a long way, and I still love this girl. She rides her motorcycle up to Big Sur to take a dip into the ocean. If you’ve never been to Big Sur, the road is sickeningly curvy and the water in the Pacific is so bitter cold, even in the summer, that I don’t even stick my toes in most time, much less go for a dip.

In the article, Alannis said this after talking about the fact that she has participated in several triathlons and that she cross trains. And I quote:

If I have the blessing of being a mom to a daughter one day, I will encourage her to be really physical.

This is exactly my feeling, and something that I try to teach my daughter on a regular basis.

I want both of my daughters to grow up strong. I want them to understand what their bodies can do for them if they treat them right and push them hard.

I got some strange looks from friends when I told the friends that my four year old ran in a half mile road race. She wanted to do it; many kids did. It was a Kid’s Run, for heaven’s sake! Yet some of my friends, I’m sure, felt that I was pushing it because I run.

In reality, I want my daughter to have a variety of experiences when it comes to sports and physical endurance and then I want her to learn what it is she likes and pursue that, be it running, cycling, swimming, soccer, gymnastics, or another sport we haven’t yet tried.

We have made sure that our daughter is active, and we will do the same with our youngest. We’ve set her up in several classes. We talk about how important it is to care for our bodies by eating healthy and getting exercise. To us, this is simply a part of life, and we want our girls to understand how important this is.

My girls and my husband attend my races. They cheer for me at the finish line. My four year old talks about how mommy races and how she wants to race. As much as I would love to race with her one day, I just hope that she finds a sport that she can love as much as I love running. I hope that I can instill in her the power that a person has when they own something as wonderful as running, or cycling, or another sport.

So, hats off to Alannis! I still love this lady, even if she isn’t as angry as she once was. Of course, neither am I. I guess that shows we are getting older!

Listening to Your Body

Kathy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:38:45 +0000

It’s funny, but long distance running has taught me one thing: To listen to my body.

It’s not that I didn’t listen before. I did.

I just didn’t react.

Here’s a scenario. My knee hurt. I was running a few times a week a few miles at a time. I was addicted to running, having traded it in long ago for my one a day pack of cigarettes. I didn’t want to falter. So I didn’t slow down. Kept running. Hurt the knee. Out for quite some time.

Fast forward to when I began training for a marathon. My knee hurt. I cut back. Knee pain went away.

You see the difference?

I have always listened to my body. I have always heard what it had to say. However, now I finally have put two things together: If it hurts and I don’t take care of it, I don’t have it anymore. Or, at least, it doesn’t work as well as it did.

When training for a long run, I’ve become acutely aware of everything that is going on in my body. I can tell when I’m hungry long before the hunger pains strike. In fact, I eat now in advance. I eat when I wake up, before I get out of the door, on mornings when I’m running over an hour. If I’m going past one and a half hours I not only eat before I leave but I also take my preemptive slug of gel around forty five minutes so I won’t burn out at mile 13.

If my feet hurt when I am done with a run, I rest them. I put the tight shoes away and pull on the sneakers.

Now, when my body tells me something, I listen.

I’ve also gotten better at hearing what it has to say, which I think is because I am more in tune with my body when I’m out there going 12, 14, 16 miles at a time. I can feel my neck growing stiff from holding my arms at my sides, so I stretch them. I stop during a long run when my knee begins to twinge a bit and I stretch my legs out so it won’t hurt when I am done. I am so much more in tune to how I feel, to what my body feels, and to what will happen if I don’t care for myself, than I ever was.

Of course, this is mostly selfish on my part, I suppose. I don’t want to hurt myself so badly that I can’t get back out there and run again. If I hurt my knee, I won’t make the marathon. If I don’t eat, I’ll not have enough energy to kick it into high gear at the end of the race-whether I am racing others or just the clock.

How has long distance helped you relate to your body? Do you feel what it tells you more than you used to, and do you listen?

Vivid Sights on the Long Run

Kathy — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:28:53 +0000

I love long distance running.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this over and over again. I just love the days that I get up early, load up my pack and head out into the early dawn-sometimes pre-dawn-day.

Today I spent my time thinking about so many different things and I made some discoveries on this run.

First, I discovered, or rediscovered, the vividness of everything after a long run. Does this happen to you? The sky, when blue, is the bluest it has every been. The green of leaves on the tree outside are so bright green it’s almost unbelievable. I know these things are always these colors, right? But why does everything seem so much brighter, so much more alive, when you finish an 11 miler?

Secondly, the body is an amazing machine. Seriously. You can train it to do almost anything you want it to do. I mean, you can run 26.2 miles or more! You just have to train. I thought of my body today as I ran, the way that it met that last marathon challenge and the way that I hope it meets this one. How is it that my feet can pound the pavement that long and still carry me around the rest of the day? That my arms can remain in the same position for 2 hours and not remain sore after the run? It is so true, that if we treat our bodies well, they will treat us well, and since we have to live in this shell for (hopefully) a really long time, I think its in our best interest to be kind to our body!

Thirdly, our minds are even more amazing than our bodies. It is our mind that says, “Okay, I’ve been running now for an hour and a half. I’m hot. I’m sweaty. I want something to eat-like a side of beef and a dozen eggs-but I’m gonna keep on going for a bit longer. When we train our minds to think positive thoughts, positive thoughts will follow. Don’t believe me? Train for a marathon. You can’t run 26.2 if you spend the entire time getting down on yourself, thinking you can’t do it.

The beautiful thing is this: If you train your mind to run long distances, you can train your mind to do anything. If you can stand the silence of being alone for this long of a time, you can do whatever it is that you want to do. I have yet to meet a runner with a negative attitude about life. Have you? Most runners really appreciate everything around them. I think that we learn to do this through our running, particularly in the distances, because we spend so much time training ourselves to think positively. We can make the finish line. We can do that last four mile stint before we get home. We can climb that obnoxious hill that suddenly jumped out in front of us.

I made one other startling discovery on this run. As I ran down the beach I stopped at a line of public restrooms to use the bathroom (damn long runs-that is the ONE negative thing I can say about them-I can’t get through them without having to GO!) I pushed the first few doors. Two were locked, and then the third swung open but stopped short. I looked down and saw a body on the floor. Yep, a body. Was it dead? I don’t know. I screamed, turned, and ran. I looked back and was not being followed. The door hadn’t reopened. Being alone and female, I was not about to go back and see if that guy was okay (and it was a guy, I think, from the state of the blue jeans). Instead, I hurried on. Living in a beach community, it’s not abnormal to find someone passed out somewhere along the beach. Thankfully it was daylight and there were other runners around, so I felt pretty safe. I couldn’t find someone to tell about the body though, as there weren’t any county workers or police there yet. So, I don’t know what happened to that guy, but I can tell you he scared the living daylights out of me this morning!

The Beauty of Long Distance Running (And I’m Very Tired Today!)

Kathy — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:47:30 +0000

This week has been a week of little sleep.

My mom came to town for a visit, which was great, but it really excited my oldest daughter. At four, she is this bundle of energy that keeps going and going and going. Seriously, I have never met another child with that much energy, and I taught school for ten years!

I laugh because she will be a runner like me. She has to be, or she will jump out of her skin.

My mom says I was the same when I was a young girl! So she does get it honestly, as they say.

Anyway, we have been busy visiting, and my youngest kept getting up around 6 or so because she was too excited about grandma being here to sleep. I continued on my workout routine for the most part, but I skipped the tri training day at the gym. Too much time away from my mom on her last day here. Instead I did a 4.25 run, which was great in itself. I missed swimming though.

I bought a kettlebell and I love the thing! I worked my abs and arms today and used it for a variety of exercises and it worked well.

The day before yesterday I purchased my materials for the ACSM training! I need to get CPR certified and will probably do this before we leave Los Angeles. Then I’ll just have to get the testing done when we get moved.

For now, though, I’m beat, and I had a big old Starbucks coffee on the way to drop my mom at the airport this morning so sleep will never come. I knew better, but I was so tired at that point-just four and a half hours of sleep yesterday because my youngest was up all night – that I couldn’t resist. I had to get to the airport after all!

Maybe I”ll try to rest a while. I’m reading this great book Breaking Trails: A Climbing Life about a woman named Arlene Blum. These types of stories always amaze me, those about climbing mountains in the freezing cold and dodging avalanches as people around you die while trying to summit.

What a crazy life!

Last night I couldn’t put the book down. I realized as I read that I love this lady because she is much like me, and like most athletes – no, all athletes – I know. Testing physical limits. Proving yourself, to yourself. I run long distances not to show everyone else I can do it, but because I want to prove to myself that I can. That is the mentality of a long distance runner, I believe. We do it so we know we can do it, and then we think, “I can do even more.”

When I crossed that finish line at my first marathon one thought went through my head. “I can do anything.” If I can run 26.2 miles through a torrential Southern California downpour, I can do anything.

I know Arlene felt this way as she climbed these peaks, her feet freezing, her hands like ice. It’s somewhat like running those long twenty milers. Your feet are sore, maybe the knee pings a bit, you’re hungry and tired but you are alive. How else can I say this? You are alive when you are running twenty milers.

Do we need to feel pain to feel alive? I don’t think so. Running distances is not about pain. You shouldn’t be in pain and it shouldn’t be torture or you are doing it for the wrong reasons.

Still, there is some gratification I feel when I get home, completely spent. I have pushed myself to the limits and I have survived.

I can do ANYTHING.

And that is what keeps me going, even when I don’t get more than four and a half hours of sleep!

Have a great running weekend, friends. I’m doing 11 tomorrow, possibly twelve.