New Year's Running Resolutions (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third part of a three part series on my New Year’s resolutions for 2013. If you missed the first one, you can scroll down to view it or click here . To view the second one, click here. 

Resolution #3:  Be Enchanted

My final resolution is different in nature from the previous two, but it is just as or more important. It adds the balance that I feel is needed to help make me a more complete runner. Running is a mind, body, spirit activity, but I find that it is often easy to focus too much on the mind and body and neglect the spirit. This resolution is meant to keep the soul of running foremost in my thoughts as the year progresses. This may be a stretch for some of you in the way you think about running, but hopefully you will read on and hear me out. 

 In an earlier post, I had mentioned Thomas Moore and his book The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. As I explained in that post, Moore argues that in modern society we have become so analytical and scientific that we miss the magical and the awe-inspiring in our daily lives and that this point-of-view does nothing to nourish our souls. He advocates opening the mind to the enchanting and awe-inspiring in daily life by paying more close attention to the magical in the things around us.

Moore has a specific section of a chapter devoted to sport. Among other things he talks about the magic of sports and feats of athleticism:

The enchantment of sports, then, lies first in its capacity to take us away from the laws of nature and introduce us to a world that is real but not limited by ordinary physical laws. Like the magician, the athlete shows us the hidden possibilities of nature… sports are filled with magic. They enchant by revealing a realm that is close to nature – most sports are eminently physical and bodily – and yet otherworldly at the same time. (p. 323-324)

In this section, as in the rest of the book, he reminds us not to over-analyze but instead to appreciate the wonder of what we are doing as we engage in our sport. There are so many things to be in awe about in running. In the earlier post, I focused on the externals, putting oneself in a natural place that inspired a sense of wonder. However, thinking of the activity itself, the functioning of the body, the mind-body connection, the ebbs and flows of training and racing, the rituals surrounding competition, the poetry of a well run race, the power of sport to transform lives, and the power of running to create a community of strangers who might otherwise have felt no sense of connection, can also be a profound way to be aware of the soul of running. A commitment to being aware of these things, to reflect on them, and to allow myself to experience the sense of wonder related to these is what I mean when I say that my resolution for the year is to “be enchanted.”

I feel this is a very important idea for me for this year in particular. It was easy to keep this frame of mind with the running last year when I was primarily running on trails and had the wonder of nature to keep me enchanted. However, making the move to shorter distance road races, with a focus on speed, can easily lead to a state of disenchantment and soul-less running. I wrote about this last year in a post called “Road vs Trail Marathon: It’s a Mental Thing.”  Road racing can easily become an overly-analytical activity, focused on pacing, training plans, and numbers. Success and failure can become very black and white in terms of PR or not, win or lose. I fear I may slip into this mindset and lose the enchantment that I worked hard to cultivate in the previous year. 

Thomas Moore's book that inspired this post

Can a runner run without this awareness? Yes, definitely, (as Moore points out, many people go through their entire lives in a robotic fashion with almost a total disconnect from soul-enhancing activities – although I suspect most of these people are not runners), but why would we want to when to run with a sense of enchantment brings so much more enjoyment to the activity.

My challenge to myself, and my final running resolution, is to find one thing to be enchanted with, amazed at, or in awe of in each and every run I do for the year. What about you? Would you take that challenge? Would your running be better if you did? 

New Year's Running Resolutions (Part 2 of 3)

Resolution #2: Stay injury free

This is the second part of a three part series on my New Year’s resolutions for 2013. If you missed the first one, you can scroll down to view it or click here. My second resolution ties nicely into the first one because a key to being consistent is to stay injury free.

This may seem like a strange resolution because a lot of people think that injuries just happen. And it is true. Some injuries, like ruptured spleens or twisted ankles or injuries from falls, do just happen, and there is not a lot that can be done about these. Those are not what I am talking about. I am talking about avoiding self-inflicted injuries that come from common mistakes runners make, myself included.  

There are a variety of things that contribute to or cause injuries that are under a runner’s control. Let me just give you a quick list of mistakes I have made in the past that have caused running injuries: increasing mileage too quickly, doing too much speed work, running on severely canted roads, wearing the wrong type of shoes for my foot, neglecting flexibility, not correcting muscle imbalances, continuing to finish a long run when I knew there was something “wrong” (the injury in the making), and running a race when I knew I was on the verge of injury.  That is a pretty long list, but I have been running a while. However, I am, apparently, a very slow learner because I have made some of those mistakes more than once.

So, what will I actually be doing to stay injury free? Well, I will not be over-reaching with my mileage. Last year I ran an average of 30-35 miles per week. This year I will try to bump that up to an average of 35-40.  I also will stick with my training schedule which will keep me from doing too much speed work. I will run on varied surfaces, avoid concrete, and get as much soft surface (read “trails”) running in as possible. I have awesome shoes – love my Brooks Pure Grits – and will be sticking with those. Besides being super comfortable, they have done a lot to help me with my form, which also helps prevent injuries.

Dr. Tom Livermore:
A runner's best friend

The muscle imbalances and flexibility I will continue to address with yoga, strength training, and the foam roller. My plan is a minimum of three times per week on these. When all else fails, I will count on Dr. Tom. Dr. Tom is my chiropractor/ART (active release therapy) guy, and he is like a runner’s secret weapon in the fight against injury. (He is also a runner himself, so he gets us.) I have learned that a visit or two to him at the first hint of injury can often keep one from happening. He saved the X-Country Championships for me last month by dragging me back from the verge of a groin/adductor injury (and we all know how long those take to heal!). If you are in MI and have an injury this year, keep Dr.Tom in mind. Tell him I sent you. :-)

Hopefully these actions will help me keep this resolution and run injury-free this year.

Well, two down and one to go. Tomorrow I will tell you about my third resolution. It may surprise you. 

New Year’s Running Resolutions (Part 1 of 3)

I took a little vacation from the blog for the last week or so for the holidays. Now I am back, and like most of you, I am ready to start off the new year and make it a good one.  I have already begun with my first race of the year which I will be reporting on later in the week.

Like most people I am full of hope and  good intentions, and I am not immune to the idea of resolutions to help keep myself on track, especially as they relate to my running. I try to keep it simple because I know from experience that keeping it simple is the best way to help ensure that I will follow through. I decided that three resolutions is about the maximum that I will be able to actually stick to. I posed the question to myself  “What three things, if followed through on religiously, would make the most difference in my running and help me meet my goals for the year?”

The first answer that came to me is “Be consistent.”  Since I started learning about what it takes to do well in running, this has always been one of the most important things to remember. It is such a simple concept, but at the same time it is so hard to do.  It almost doesn’t matter which of the training plans a person chooses (whether Galloway, Higdon, Hansons, Daniels, Pfitzinger or others), as long as the person follows through on it consistently.

Being consistent is not as easy as it sounds. First of all, for most people, myself included, life sometimes gets in the way. It takes planning to be able to get the running in consistently and a bit of self-knowledge. I know, for example, that I always have trouble being consistent at about week six through nine  of the quarter. I am overloaded with papers and things to do for work and tend to push the running aside. To be successful at being consistent, I have to plan for those weeks and not let the running slip.

Next, I have to deal with the whole motivation issue. This is a new issue that I have had to face. I am a pretty motivated person where running is concerned. I have a lot of intrinsic motivation and drive to improve, and I also respond well to extrinsic motivation. I will knock myself out training for weeks and weeks in the hopes of picking up some little plastic, glass, or metal trinket as an award (as evidenced by the number of coffee cups, martini glasses, beer glasses, and the belt buckle and ring that I collected last year and that are spread around my house).

HOWEVER, and this is a big “however,” that was before I moved to this cold and dark place. I am a California girl at heart and always will be, no matter how much I love Michigan trails in the summer and fall. It is excruciatingly hard for me to get up early in the morning to run when it is 20 degrees and gray outside. I try to get around this by waiting for the warmest part of the day (yes, 28 degrees is much better than 20 – at least in my mind), but sometimes by the time the temperature is agreeable, I am at the low ebb of my energy.  The process of getting on the layers it takes to run in this temperature sometimes seems too hard, let alone the idea of running itself.

To address this, I am now turning to something that I learned in this past year from the talk given by Lynn Jennings that I attended and wrote about (to read that post click here). This was actually not a point that I initially picked up on (probably because it was something that I did not really want to hear), but it was one that made an impact on my husband and which I have thought a lot about since that night. I am going to paraphrase here because I don’t remember Lynn’s exact wording. Basically what she said is that if a runner wants to excel, he or she can’t wait for motivation. Motivation does not always come. You just need to get out and do it, motivated or not.  That is powerful advice for all runners. Many of us wait for motivation to strike to get out the door. I know that I am guilty of this at times, and I know that follow-through on my training schedule has often suffered because of this, as have my race performances.

Thus, to stick to my resolution, I will remember the advice of Lynn Jennings (and the marketers over at Nike) and “Just do it.”  I have a color code system on my training schedule.  I highlight in green the days I follow the plan. Days where I do the workout but don’t quite meet the plan goals for the day are in yellow.  Days I miss are in red. I will be working to have no more than one or two reds per month. (Keeping a log and checking progress is also a key aspect of being consistent.)

22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31
Rest or Xtrain	4 mi easy	4 x 800 (3:30-3:35)	Xtrain	5 mi easy	4 mi easy	8-10 mi 4.5 mi.	Rest	4 mi easy	Tempo 15/20/15

If I can keep those missed days to a minimum, I know I will be a much better runner for it.

This is the first of my running resolutions. Tomorrow I will share resolution number two. How about you? Did you make any resolutions for the new year related to your running? If so, I would love it if you shared them in the comments. I like to see what other people are working on.