Search Results for: mental toughness

Runner’s Strip: Dog Park

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I’ve passed plenty of dogs while out running and whenever I see one of the HUGE ones, the kind that probably weigh more than a few runnerchicks I know, I can’t help but imagine riding that furry beast like a horse. Let’s be honest, the temptation is particularly strong late-tempo run and you’re already entertaining thoughts of chucking yourself off of a cliff because it would probably be less painful. 😉 We don’t ride dogs, of course, because that would be cheating. But it’s always fun to dream, right?? 1) Are you a dog person? Do you run with your dogs? I could end up getting some hate mail, but when I’m out running I get a little annoyed with the OWNERS who don’t know how to control their dogs. I’m sorry, I love dogs, but I don’t want one chasing me, frothing at the mouth. I also don’t like almost tripping over leashes when owner-pet is hogging entire pathway. That said, I’m currently looking to get a pup so I’m a dog person in ‘normal life’. 😛 2) What’s the biggest dog you’ve seen, do you own one the size of a small horse? ———- Tips for battling the pain of workouts and racing: HERE HERE and HERE More of my Runner’s Strip Comic Strip 3) What have been some random thoughts when you’re tired during a workout and, let’s be honest, you play the “I bet — would be less painful than this workout/race” ?

Runners, Let Us Issue Insincere Apologies to Our Legs

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I’m a runner so I’m pretty sure my legs hate me. I take advantage of them, I use them more than they’d like me to. If you catch them on a particularly brutal day they may even try to convince you that we’re in an abusive relationship. Don’t listen to them though, because deep down they like it. To be honest my legs don’t even really have THAT much to complain about, I mean it’s not like they are Jordan McNamara’s legs or anything. Now THOSE poor stems are getting worked; don’t worry, at least McNamara’s offered an apology via Twitter: “I cringe to consider what expletives my legs would use if somehow enabled to speak. Truly sorry boys!#ActualSincerityMayVary” Do you think his legs accept? Do you believe they can even try to fool themselves into believing for just one second that this professional runner is in any way going to issue forth an apology that comes with a promise to not do the very same thing again? Well, if those legs are foolish enough to give themselves false hope than I really can’t feel bad for them. Neither should you. And you better not feel bad for your own ‘abused’ legs; I mean let’s be totally frank here: those legs complain but at the end of the day they LIKE it. Those legs were made for running, have become so adept at putting in the miles that they could function on autopilot. Heck, for many of those miles they do…us runners and our wandering minds. That pair of running legs don’t just crave the excretion we put them through they are downright ADDICTED it. Their deep-rooted desire for those endorphins borders upon obsession, probably has crossed over to straight up obsession on more than a few occasions. The onslaught Continue Reading →

No One Is ‘Born’ a Runner: Don’t use ‘bad’ genetics as an excuse not to try

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So often I’ve heard people lament, “I’m just not a runner.” Like it’s a fact, something you’re born with like red hair or green eyes, and there’s just no point in even trying to put up a fight. Lost cause, game loss on your end. This actually kind of bugs me because I feel as if the people saying this are a bit disillusioned; like running is actually EASY for some folks just because they popped out that way. Fun fact: even for the most genetically blessed ‘runner body type’ running is anything but easy. Though, without going off on a wild tangent there I’ll keep it short and say this: regardless of the genetics and body type stereotypes anyone who puts in the effort WILL improve. The awesome thing about running is that, ultimately, the biggest obstacle to overcome is self-motivation. [Haha…like that’s an easy obstacle! I just mean you CAN always work on that one.] I think a lot of people need the reality shock of ‘wow, this isn’t easy’ (and it’s not for anyone) and then to realize it comes down to YOU stepping up and gettin ‘er done. Genetics, yes, may ultimately decide just HOW fast you eventually get or how many miles you are healthfully able to put in, but the ability to improve rests in your hands…errr, legs. Trust me, I’m the most coordinationally challenged person alive, not tall enough to dunk, not bendy like a gymnast, not graceful enough for dance…but dang it, I’m OCD and self-motivated, so running fits. With the drive and will ANYONE can be a runner. That whole, “I’m just not a runner” thing is quite a tired excuse, don’t you think? 😉 1) What do you say to people who profess they just ‘aren’t a runner’? 2) Do Continue Reading →

5 Ways to Make Sure Your Race Doesn’t Suck

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Ah, the thrill of race day is what some runners live for. Take all that adrenaline and exited-nervousness and it’s a schmorgesborg of energy. With race day comes the (hopefully mostly) self-imposed pressure, expectations and hopes to run your best. You’ve got big goals you want to achieve and you hope that by the time you cross the finish line you’ve hit those. Here are 5 ways you can stack the odds in your favor to step away from the line satisfied. 1) Game Plan: You need to go into any race with a concrete idea of how you’re going to run and the goals you want to achieve. You don’t want to have to try and make decisions on the fly; in the middle of a race you don’t want to be wasting mental energy on wondering what to do. Plan how you’re going to run, the splits you want to hit, how you are going to react if someone surges or your competitors make a move. Go in knowing if YOU plan to make those moves and what you will do if someone covers them. With race plans you need a few because you don’t know what others may do; you don’t want to be surprised in the middle of a race and freeze-up. You also don’t want to mess up your entire race by poor pacing. When you’ve got your race plans it’s even better if you’re able to use mental visualization to ‘practice’ them. 2) Consider Conditions: If you’re running amidst a hurricane you should obviously be drafting off of people! Not funny, I know. But when you show up to a race you need to check the conditions and adjust your race plan if need be. If it’s really hot and humid you may have Continue Reading →

Running to Fight Rage and Hopefully PR: This run brought to you by spite and frustration

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We all run for many different reasons, but do you ever have a run fueled purely by rage? Ever feel like if you don’t make a mad dash for the door in your running shoes you’re at the risk of slipping into one of those anger fugues? You black out and when you finally come to there’s carnage around you…people around you look like they’ve seen Godzilla? Rage happens, folks, and it’s a serious issue. So please, help fight the cause and support RTFRAHPR (Running To Fight Rage And Hopefully PR). Donate as many miles as you can, give with your hearts and your legs. Run until your muscles burn more than your pent up frustrations. In the end we’ll all win out. It doesn’t take much, and your charitable donation of any size can save a little boy or girl. Maybe one named Alice or Dominic; maybe a pimply check-out boy at the grocery store, a bank teller who can’t add, the police officer who pulled you over for the broken tail light, the temp worker who broke the copy machine but refuses to fess up. It’s okay, rage happens to the best of us, but next time you feel like you’re about to boil over, do the right thing and donate some miles. Blast a tempo run fueled purely by spite. Gut through a long run, mentally ranting and raving…you’ll certainly be helping yourself, your training, and poor, defenseless, incompetent Alice. To make a donation to the RTFRAHPR just lace up and go. 1) Stress and anger, do you sometimes look forward to your run especially after a really nasty day? Do you find running acts as a sort of release? 2) Have you been able to actually solve problems or come up with ways to get rid Continue Reading →

Genetics Will Only Get You So Far…From There the Running is Up to You

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daRUNism…survival of the fastest. 😉 The topic of running and genetics…talk about opening up a can of sperm worms. FACT: Genetics will invariable play a role in how fast someone has the potential to become. It will effect which event they are predisposed to compete the best at. FACT: You can’t change genetics. FACT: Using the excuse of genetics alone for accounting that so-and-so is able to achieve an athletic feat is a cop-out. The last one there is what gets under my skin when people make any kind of remark, “You’re lucky, I wish I were a runner.” It really gets me fired up when people blame ‘good genetics’ as a sort of cop-out for runners who set records, win races or beat them. Like because they ‘look like a runner’ and may make it look easy while they run that somehow diminishes their accomplishment. Yes, I’ve jested along with all others that I may harbor the ‘wish’ to be a bit more Kenyan or Ethiopian…but I know that genetics alone will only take a person so far. FACT: Even the most genetically blessed super-human, say we created it in a lab, would not be a record holder if they didn’t have the will, drive and dedication to do the training. With running, mentality and work ethic are something that can’t be genetically programmed or forced onto a person. They are also what, I believe, will take you the furthest. If I could draw it to a metaphor of walking that Yellow Brick Road… Genetics may take you TO the Yellow Brick Road by some freak, chance-happen twister and at least kill one of the witches to make your journey easier. But after that you’re on your own to chase those monkeys, make it through the poppies and get Continue Reading →

When Brevity is in Charge: A Running Spinal Tap, Dessert Intervals, and Picking Your Pockets

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I’m not one usually short on words; if you think I’m addicted to miles then the rate of which I pound through the English language is probably right on track with what I’ve said of myself many time, “I talk like a chipmunk on crack.” Now, vocal octaves aside brevity is not exactly my strong point. I trace it back to how my brain operates; way too fast and with a flurry of a billion different things flying around at once. I try to catch them all, and am afraid I usually lose track of most of them. So I feel a bit of pressure to get all these thoughts into words and out of me as fast as possible. Though, over-explaining things has many a pit falls…mainly you lose your audience. Before I go and prove that point right now, I’m going to say that sometimes all you need is LESS. Being concise can sometimes prove your point the best and actually STICK with you the longest. “It was kind of like that movie Spinal Tap. I cranked it to 11,” was quoted from Andrew Wheating today in reference to the last 100 meters of his 1500 meter race. He just made his second Olympic Team; and the quote is courtesy of Mario Fraioli, senior producer at Competitor.com and he fired that one out of Twitter on location in Eugene. I love that quote, hilarity and relatability all rolled into one; Wheating is good with those. While the vast majority of us will never be digging for that extra gear in quest of an Olympic berth, I’m pretty dang sure we all can look fondly of times when the lactic acid, booty-lock onslaught is of epic proportions and we are grappling for one more gear. What is rarer, but Continue Reading →

Hayward Field 2012: The Olympic Trials Begin as Athletes Scale Their Own Mount Olympus

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The Olympic Trials 2012 have officially hit Oregon. Whether you deem yourself a track fan or not (but you really should be!) I would implore all runners to catch a vicarious ‘high’ off of what is about to go down. Running, regardless of the level, is hard. It takes insurmountable amounts of work, dedication, perseverance and perspective. The mental side of running is huge. All of the athletes taking part in the Trials at Hayward Field have been working towards these days, the goals they want to achieve on them, for years. Of course the Olympics, and the Olympic Trials, are akin to the Mount Olympus of goals to us, mere mortal runners. While every competitor taking part warrants being put on a bit of a pedestal for their athletic prowess, there is much us mortals can glean from them outside of some phenomenal races to watch and cheer for. Like a Boss. Getting to the line takes confidence; confidence is instilled through all of that hard work, owning those workouts like a boss and knowing that you BELONG on that starting line. Regardless of where that line is, Trials or no Trials, a goal is a goal none-the-less and every runner must build that confidence on their own level. Ironic how bolstering that confidence takes DOING and having the courage or guts to DO takes believing in yourself. So sometimes you have to just dive in and start the doing and KEEP up the doing again and again…the boss-like confidence may just have to follow. Determination. Every single athlete at the Trials, just as every single runner, has their highs and lows. The running lows have weeded out plenty of runner wanna-be’s. Injuries, set-backs, horrible races, embarrassingly heinous performances, epically long injuries, surgeries, life obstacles…they’ve had them all and Continue Reading →

Running Until Your Heart Explodes: What could you achieve if you never had the ‘pain’ signals from your brain?

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I read the Seabiscuit book before it was a movie…anything that involves running as fast as you can has my attention, even if the racers are horses. I loved the book, and movie too for that matter, but do you know what single detail will forever stick in my mind? Horses will run themselves to death if the jokey lets them. A horse can actually race themselves so hard that their heart will explode due to the exertion. How is that for proof that the mind can be your biggest limiting factor? The human brain, for its intricacies, problem solving skills, and evolved emotions we cite it as superior to any other creature’s. Along the way our brains have also developed a coping mechanism that screams at us to STOP if it gets messages from our muscles, organs and other systems telling the brain they are tired. The brain tosses up the red flags, it sends out PAIN signals…and they get louder and louder, echoing in our minds. STOP. Stop this activity that is making you sweat and pant, the exertion that is causing your heart to work and pump oxygenated blood to those muscle fibers. Quit while your lungs aren’t completely maxed out, heed to the lactic acid building up in your muscles. Give those poor mitochondria a break already! The evolved human brain reads these distress signals and implores us to quit while we’re ahead. It even manipulates things and over-amplifies these messages of fatigue, it will tell us that if we keep up this running hard business up maybe we will collapse and our body will just stage a protest right then and there. The truth though is that the body can go on much longer than it tells the brain ‘thinks’. That sneaky body of ours Continue Reading →

Warning: You’re talking to a runner and I might be secretly laughing at you on the inside

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A runner goes through different phases the longer they are involved in the sport.They gradually start to slip away from the ‘norm’ in degrees, sometimes so slight it’s not even noticeable, until of course they reach the point of no return and have fallen all the way down the runner rabbit hole. Upon entering that ‘hole’ the way you view certain things and your opinion of what is ‘normal’ when it comes to exercise and activity seem to be a bit skewed from the rest of the populous. This happens for a few reasons and in part because we recognize that, to a degree, suffering IS a part of our sport no matter what level we pursue it. Suffering isn’t something the body is naturally hard-wired to run towards, actually the opposite, so in conditioning ourselves as runners we do tend to distance ourselves from the logic or inklings of others. All that said, obviously being a smart runner is well, the smart thing, and being able to differentiate different kinds of pain is crucial. No need to be martyrs or gluttons for purposeless pain and suffering! However, there are instances when I know I can’t be alone in at least smirking or laughing on the inside at what some people say, do, or think in regards to running and working out. Let me be a little more specific… “I really miss working out, but I can’t because I’ve got some really bad blisters.” Umm, yea blisters suck, I don’t think those Hanes socks are doing you any favors. But to be honest blisters and gnarly feet still happen no matter how much you try and prevent them…pretty sure when I peeled of my sock this morning the entire top half was red. At least my blister popped en-route to Continue Reading →