‘Cross Training’ Articles at

The Running Grinder and the Recovery Champ

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Cait — 4 Comments ↓

Within every runner live the Yin Yang twins…the grinder and the ice-cream loving, sloth who lives to watch cartoons. We’ll call the latter the ‘recovery champ’.
runner and lazy girl art
While I jest, because it’s not just ice cream they love but pizza, donuts, burritos, french toast [insert runger fantasies here], there is truth to it.

In order to run hard you’ve got to allow your body to recover just as ‘hard.’ It often takes runners awhile to learn this, often the hard way. Typically everyone goes through the stage where they race every run, a run doesn’t count unless you’ve maxed out, right?! 😉 While this usually leads to improvement in the short term, eventually going hard every day will lead down the road of an injured, over-trained, mess.

Without adequate recovery you’ll be too tired to actually run fast. Easy days are important, as are other ways to speed up your recovery. In order to NAIL the days that count, your hard workouts and races, you’ve got to ensure your muscles are able to rebuild and repair themselves between hard sessions.

So there IS an excuse to laze around in your sweats and hit up a Netflix marathon. 😉 Recovery is more than just an easy day too, for most mortal runners of the world running isn’t your job so lifestyle choices and how you spend the non-running hours of your day will play a big role in your ability to recover.

Even for the elite runners, they are continually looking for ways to improve their recovery…because chances are there is ALWAYS room for improvement somewhere.

Take a look at your own habits and look for areas you know you could be better at. I’ve made a handy little checklist to give you some ideas of where to start:

* Make sure your easy days COUNT: rely on effort, don’t wear a watch if you have to, you should be able to hold a conversation between breathes on these runs.
* Proper Workout Scheduling: every runner needs to learn their body and how many hard workouts they can handle in a week. As we age we need to learn how to adjust, that may mean turning your ‘week’ into a 10 day cycle.
* Cross Training: I did a whole post HERE about how to maximize training if you know your body can’t handle too many running miles. Cross training on your easy days or as a ‘second run’ can help keep you healthy and allow for an ‘easier’ workout for recovery purposes.
* 30 Minute Refuel: eat a combo of protein and carbs IMMEDIATELY after your runs…especially your hard workouts. Miss this window and recovery rates drop upwards of 60%.
* Nutrition: eating to perform means opting for quality foods, timing them around when you run, and ensuring you get enough nutrients. This means protein, carbs, healthy fats, and overall enough calories to fuel your training demands. Eating to perform also means LIVING, if you’re training hard enough and want a freaking donut, you’ve earned it. Balance comes into play, so I’ll use the analogy of a silo. Fill your body with all the quality nutrients first, then any extra ‘energy demands’ needed to fill the rest of the silo should be up to you. A world without french toast is a dark one.
* Self massage: whole post on that HERE, flush out that lactic acid, keep your body knot-free.
* Hydrate: this is incredibly important regardless of the season, obviously hotter weather requires you to hydrate more and with electrolytes but even in a snow storm you’re losing moisture. Drinking after massage is also important to flush out all that ‘junk’ worked out of your muscles.
* Stretching: tied into self-massage, stay loose, limber, and avoid injuries.
* Time on Your Feet: it’s draining on your legs and energy-zapping, if your job requires you to do lots of ‘work’ know that you may need to adjust your training or learn how it affects you.
* Time on your butt: yea it’s important to rest, BUT office jobs can lead to problems too…too much sitting leads to weak glutes, tight hamstrings, and reduced blood flow. Not good for recovery, so be sure to move around and at least walk around a bit between Netflix marathons.
* Sleep: while I may leave this one for last, this is HUGE!! Sleep is when the body REALLY restores and repairs itself. Skimping on sleep will hamper your recovery, professional runners guard their sleep time and usually take naps too. Make sleep a priority. For those with sleeping problems and insomnia (ugh, join the party!) look for ways to improve the situation or figures out what can sometimes help. Restless nights add up to tired legs and eyebags. 😉

I think that’s a solid list of ways to improve your recovery habits. Start cracking! To let that grinder perform at it’s best, that recovery-er needs to be doing it’s job right too! 😉

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New ART is listed and available for prints on my page there…restructured to make things a little easier. As always, anything not shown, email me a request and I’ll get you a print.
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1) What are some ways you make recovery a priority?

Waiting Can Suck, But the Patient Runners Win Out

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Cait — 8 Comments ↓

Being patient sucks. Waiting for what we want isn’t fun, but the reality is that often times we are forced to wait. Even more often is it that rushing things will ultimately leave us more frustrated in the long term.

As runners, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just lace up and make our next race/workout/run a PR? If only, right?! The natural tendency to want those faster times and better fitness TODAY is the breeding ground for injuries, overtraining, and slowed progress. Beautiful irony there, right?
runner pr
Every runner has been guilty of it, and hey, some things you just have to learn yourself the hard way. (Sometimes a few times to really NAIL that lesson home.) Being patient sucks…but we need to learn to embrace it.

Yikes. Where’s the spoonful of sugar to wash that down? Well that comes when you actually ARE patient and watch your goals materialize…eventually.

The sweetest victories only come after enough struggle and work, after all.

Convincing yourself to wait it out and be patient is tough and often an on-going battle. Incidentally a large part of being able to stay patient comes from confidence. How so?

Being patient means BELIEVING in yourself, what you’re doing, and the process. A runner who lacks confidence is the one who tends to rush things, an example of that is going out way too fast in a race. It takes MORE confidence and patience to go out controlled and then pick up the pace, and close fast. A runner who tries to ‘make a buffer’ by going out too fast is subconsciously affirming they are going to slow down. See how that’s not a good way to think? It takes more confidence to be patience, wait, and then respond to your competitors (or go faster) as the race progresses.
run from problems
New runners can be a little less than confident in their abilities as they venture into a new sport. That’s natural, but it’s dangerous to go into information overload and want to do EVERYTHING and anything they read about training and incorporate it right away. This usually leaves them injured or too sore/tired that they lose any desire to continue running.

Even if you’ve been a runner for years and years, it’s quite easy to fall into the same trap of wanting to add in XYZ all at the same time…to rush the process. You know what, the same road leads to the same place.

Avoiding injuries and reaching your best takes time. Waiting is hard and it can suck at times, but if you try and rush things too fast it will, in the end, it will suck even more. (nightmares of time off or on the cross trainer missing your race should help keep you patient. 😉 )

There really ARE tons of training elements to keep you improving and progressing through the years. This should be exciting news, it’s just imperative not to rush things.

I will say that the BEST way to stay patient and keep yourself ~~honest~~ on the right track (in the moment it can be REALLY hard sometimes to know you need to be patient) is to a have a coach. If not a coach then at least an educated source or training group to bounce things off of. Today it’s important to recognize the source of the training advice you’re getting and if it’s actually got merit.

Being patient can suck in the moment, but eventually it is oh so sweet.
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Misery Loves Company: Surviving a running injury

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Cait — 12 Comments ↓

Nothing unites complete strangers more than discovering they are both, in fact, injured runners. Because let’s be honest, no one REALLY understands the agony us runners go through when we’re deprived of our ‘fix’. Miles give us endorphins, take those out of the equation and you do the math. It sucks.

Run long enough and you’ll get injured. It’s a fact. Darn these humanoid bodies not quite engineered to put up with everything we want them to do in training and racing. This isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of ways we can limit our injuries, and yes, us runners can be quite stupid sometimes in getting ourselves injured, but at a certain point you will get injured despite doing everything you can do right.
injured runner cartoon
But don’t think of that last line as a free pass to just go willy nilly, throw all caution to the wind then, when you do wind up hurt, pretend you have no clue why. Let’s start with the stupid:

• Denial: Oh we’re the queens and kings of denial, us runners. “It’s not really that bad, it doesn’t hurt that much” thought as we hobble around the house in search of more ice.
• Grimace Face: We know running hurts, but when every stride sends a shooting pain (which you’re of course denying exists) your face gets twisted into a grimace that would make Frankenstein look beautiful.
• Random Prayers: You go to bed praying you’ll wake up and magically everything will just go away. No other logic there but a runner clinging to any shred of hope.
• Eff It, I Can Finish: Said during any run or workout, you’ve denied the shooting pains for as long as possible, somehow still believing that if you just muster on through this run, get done, things will still be peachy keen.

Clearly we all have to learn from our stupid mistakes. We’ve all been there, hopefully the older we get the wiser we get. Because let’s be honest, denial doesn’t change the situation.

Over the stupid, here are the proactive:
• Self-massage: Runners if you’re not in a love/hate relationship with your foam roller, I urge you to get cozy with it. Give him or her a name even.
• Stretch: Static and dynamic stretching post run.
• Core and Strength: Strengthening your core and WHOLE body to limit the compensation issues resulting from weak muscle groups.
• Ice, Smart, Recovery, Etc: You know the drill there.
• Form Work: Ties right into strength, run more efficiently and you’ll be doing less wear and tear on your body.

I’d like to take a minute to emphasize that if you’re not doing some kind of core or strengthening routine you’re not addressing issues that WILL eventually get you injured. Not a single runner in the world pops out perfectly balanced and with perfect biomechanics. Most runners have tight hips and weak glutes, just two major issues that cause many a runner heartache come injury time. What’s more is there tends to be a little too much emphasis on stretching alone. YES you need to stretch, but save some of that time for core work because you can’t stretch away a weak muscle group if you get my gist. I’m not talking about hitting the weight room like a Jersey Shore’r (a little dated reference but I was watching a comedy earlier that did a bit on that so it’s on my mind), and in fact many of the most effective exercises for runners can be done with bodyweight or with a swiss ball. I did some posts HERE with some of those.

Crash Course: Mentally Surviving an Injury

Back on topic. So you do your preventative but like I said injuries will occur. When you’re laid up you’ll most likely experience a few emotions.
• Rage: Like wanting to literally rip off your leg just so you can smash it against a wall, infuriated that ‘it’ let you down.
• Remorse: I abstain from the word depression, but it’s like a hair away.
• Anxiety: Is this going to EVER end? Will I EVER be able to run without pain, ever? Getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and you sorta ‘test’ jog down the hall, “Crap! Still hurts!”
• Envy: Oh that lovely runner envy. Daydreaming about hopping out of your car and slapping in the face the person you see running down the street. It’s not something to be proud of, but every injured runner thinks it. 😉
• Rage: Yea, you circle on back to rage.

I blame it on the lack of ‘proper’ endorphins for our crazy train ride of emotions and THESE are the things that our family and friends tend to have a hard time grappling with. To every runner who’s gotten, “But it’s just running” and you have to literally hold your arm down from punching that person in the face…yea, that’s a normal runner reaction.

The thing is, while I like to joke and jest and be comedic about Runner Rage (it’s totally legit and an excuse that I think should hold up in court, “Sorry, I’m not fully in control of my actions, I’m a runner who’s not able to run at the moment”) I’m also the first person to say this:

“Force that positivity down. Choke it down and keep it there. Fake it.”

Yup! That’s the only way to get through an injury. You keep yourself OUT of that depressive and overly-anxious mindset because if you don’t you’ll stay right there…stuck.

How I deal with Runner Rage is making fun of myself and being sarcastic. Rather be laughing than wallowing in sadness. What also helps is to feel proactive during your recovery meaning: cross train, core, massage, find out where your weaknesses are and target them. Come up with a recovery plan and start the execution. The other really important thing is:

Take it ONE day at a time.

Think only through the day. Because thinking of weeks and weeks of the elliptical or bike is, well, depressing, right? So just get through the day.

And there is always this: you’re not alone. There are other injured runners out there. And there are non-injured runners who know EXACTLY how you feel and what you’re going through and they sympathize and are sending you heal up fast vibes!

The Low Mileage Runner: How to maximize your performance off of low volume

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Cait — 13 Comments ↓

A headline caught my eye recently: “Be a better runner without running.” *About face* Now I respect the news outlet that ran the article but the snark in me can’t resist thinking, “This kind of thing belongs in Runner’s World next to the column ‘How to get faster in your sleep!'”

Track dreams…but you still need to actually run on the track too. 😉

In seriousness though, yes there are ways to improve your running and get faster that aren’t running. HOWEVER, these are thought of like ‘extras’…you still have to run.

Everybody and every BODY handles a different amount of volume and quality. Not everyone can log 110 miles per week, with a hard speed session, endurance session, and long run in a 7 day cycle. Some people can run 170 miles per week just fine, others get hurt going over 50…waaah-waahh it’s not fair but that’s how it is.

Know your body. Know your limits and maximize them. Just because you can’t RUN more than 50 miles per week does not necessarily mean you can’t beat the runner doing twice your volume. Enter QUALITY.

Here are a few quick tips on maximizing your training if you’re a runner who is a little more ‘fragile’: (ie: improving your running with running less and doing other stuff)

* Extend Your ‘Week’: By this I’m talking about viewing your training cycle as 9-10 days rather than the standard 7. Meb Keflezighi has talked about doing this as he’s aged, and many masters runners work off of a longer training week. This allows for more recovery between hard workouts.

* Rule of 10 and Baby Steps: If you’re injury-prone already you know you need to BABY your body a bit. Only increase your miles by 10% each week. Then be honest with what your mileage ‘max’ is. If you start getting extra creaking when you kiss 50, stick there and supplement with extra cross training instead of miles.
$stress fractures suck$
* Swap Your Easy Runs: Plan your miles for the week and ‘save’ them for your hard workouts and long runs. Those are the days that will give you the most bang for your mileage buck. Cross train on the easy days; to be honest the benefit of easy days are mostly just getting the steady cardio in…you can do that running or cross training. The former is just a lot easier on your body.

* Seek Soft Surfaces: The pavement is harder on your body than the trails, track, and treadmill. Seek these softer surfaces. Also know that lots of downhill running exponentially increases the impact on your joints, so steer clear of huge, sharp downhills.

* Get More Efficient: Most injuries are a result of a weakness and muscle imbalance. Fix those and you’ll be running more efficient and most likely be able to handle running more. All the more reason to fix your form, get a stronger core, and solve why you might be stuck in a vicious cycle of injuries.

* Fitter With Cross Training: Ideally you want to be doing your hard workouts as running because this will translate the best for racing but you’d be amazed by how fit you can stay with cross training workouts. So if you have to do some of your ‘running’ workouts on the cross trainer don’t freak out and remember it all comes back to effort. Go hard, get your heart rate up, feel the burn in your legs and lungs, and you’re getting work done.

Not EVERYTHING that will get you faster comes from running more miles. Think outside the box, learn your body, and maximize your potential.

Though the snark in me still has to end with this: “but, duh, you still have to do some running.” 😉

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More articles on cross training and workout ideas!

More articles on injuries, recovering, and how to prevent them!

My Running ‘True’ Is Off, Better ‘Toe In’

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Cait — 26 Comments ↓

Yesterday I was reminded why I’m a runner and have no desire to branch out into cycling. I watched as one of my roommates did this and that to his bike; adjusting things, replacing the brakes, all that good stuff. I learned some fun new terms, which are probably the non-runner’s equivalent to fartleks and pronation.

There was something about ‘truing’ a tire, I probably have this wrong some 18 hours later due to memory lapse, but I’m pretty sure it’s just making sure the wheel is straight and aligned. The brakes have to be ‘toed in’; I liked that one because it makes me think of runner toes, but here it’s just that the brake thingy’s have to be at a certain angle.

See, I don’t bike for a good number of reasons but one of the paramount ones is that there’s just too much ‘stuff’ and too many ‘variables’ that could potentially impede your workout. The OCD runner-brain line of thought I have is this worst case scenario: “I’ve got to get my workout it, I’m mid-way through some intervals and BAM my tire goes flat, my brakes go wonky, or something else screwy happens and I can’t do my workout.” Yes, the end-all to all end-alls, I can’t get my workout in, I know, how tragic. 😉

With running you need shoes and that’s about it. Of course the KIND of shoes are of paramount importance, don’t let me under-emphasize that. But if you can tie a lace you’re pretty much good to go; if you’re still struggling with that there are little lace locks to really get you doing nil work.

Though in getting back to those cycling terms that I’ll pretend I can now toss around in everyday conversation. Runners have to be ‘true-ed up’ too I guess; here it’s our form that can get set off. You see those runners with their arms flailing around like they are doing the macarena, runners with a shuffle-stride and you just want to yell, “Do you NOT know how to lift up your knee?!”

Nope, definitely not thinking about cycling! 😉

I’d call the central ‘true’ point of a runner (any cyclists are probably cringing at how badly I’m misusing their words here, it’s like if I were to say my shoe had a bad fartlek) the torso. The core of a runner; where if this is off you’re probably setting yourself up for an injury at some point. The hip region especially can get tight and lead to overcompensation issues like none other!

Thankfully us runners have built-in brakes; namely you just stop. Yea, we have the klutzes like me who have issues there, but for the most part us runners have the opposite problem with stopping and slowing down. We don’t ‘want’ to but our brain is perpetually trying to talk us into stopping, or at least slowing down.

So for us, maybe ‘toe-ing in’ our brakes is really just babysitting our brain and telling it to SHUT UP, SUCK IT UP and keep running even though, yes, it hurts.

Yes, I’m a runner, I have no desire to venture into cycling. Yes, it’s an awes-tastic form of cross-training and yes, my very best friend is a really competitive, hard-core cyclist, but even he knows by now not to try and talk me into it. The truth there though, is he probably knows with my coordination I’d wind up road-chow.
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TODAY is the last day to enter my Injinji toe-socks give-away. 🙂

BIG shirt news coming up here soon, I’ve got my latest design about to drop…so stay tuned!
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1) Do you do much cycling? Are you into triathlons or biathlons?

2) What is your favorite form of cross-training?
elliptical baby!

3) If you had to say your ‘true’ was off, where would it be?
My dumb, annoying left adductor…right where it inserts into my glute…oh how I wish I could auction it off for parts and get a replacement for it. Do you think ebay is my best shot? 😉

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Runners Using the Rowing Machine? How cross-training can be used to give your running a BOOST by ‘sneaking’ in high intensity work

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Cait — 15 Comments ↓

When I was a senior in high school, this young runner met the bane of her existence. She even put up her own money and paid to be tortured by this beastly contraption. The rowing machine.

Paradise found perhaps?? 😉

Little did she know what exactly she was getting herself involved with, but when her coach told her that, “Back when I was in college something that REALLY made a marked improvement in my running was the rowing machine. I know it sounds crazy, but the other guys and I would go into the gym, get on the rowers, competitiveness would take over and we’d kill each other on those things. But I’ll tell you what, I never ran faster.”

Never ran faster? I was sold. And the rowing machine was bought.

If you’ve never tried the rowing machine, let me tell you that you are 1) surely making some wrong assumptions and 2) surely missing out on a good time. *sarcastic font* The assumptions you are mistakingly making are…

* Rowing is an upper-body only workout. False. Actually, the rowing machine ranks as one of the top cardio machines at engaging nearly ALL of your muscle groups: the quads for push-off, the core the entire time, and the arms on the stroke. Fun fact, as for caloric burn per minute, out of the gym machines it comes in third, only behind the treadmills and ellipticals…it’s sort of tied with the stair-climber.

* Runners have no business rowing. I’m going to say this is a fallacy in my forthcoming explanation.

I implemented my rowing in addition to my regular running training. It was viewed as additional cross-training to be done as a second workout of the day on one of my easy days. The routine was pretty simple…5000 meters of rowing HARD. When I say hard, I probably took it a bit overboard because every time I did it, I’d try and go for a PR at the distance. From the first stroke I’d go full on mad runnerchick on that rower’s butt, out of curiosity I took my pulse after one of my sessions and it was at least 200. But that was the old-school method of just counting your pulse from your neck off the clock, before everyone used an App, heart rate monitor and all those gadgets, so who knows…hehe.

Note, you don't have to be KILLING yourself on these hard sessions...advance with sanity people.

Not going to lie though, I had extra incentive to get faster times, see my mom would also row and never fail she’d whoop on my times. Blast those weaker arms of mine. 😉 The point I’m trying to make is that for three extra workouts of the week I was getting high intensity cardiovascular training that was non-impact and in addition to my regular running workouts.

I did go on and run PR’s in my running events as well; so maybe there is something to be said for runners doing the whole rowing thing. My coach told me it was helping, do I continued my love/hate relationship with that rower. No joke I’d sometimes get about as ‘nervous’ anticipating my row session later in the day as I would my hard running workouts. 😉

When I graduated high school, I had the privilege to talk about this whole rowing business with some of the top minds in our sport. I hold Alberto Salazar as one of the genius coaches in all things running so pretty much his word was/is the bottom line in my mind. He explained that, yes, the rowing probably did attribute to my drop in running times. But was it the actual rowing machine that worked as the ‘magic machine’? Probably not.

The magic wasn’t so much in the rower, but rather, the three extra high intensity cardio sessions per week in addition to my regular running training. They were non-impact so there wasn’t the added risk for injury, they were sort of like ‘sneaking’ in more hard workouts without interfering or tiring me out as much as another hard running workout would do.

Alberto Salazar acknowledged that could be done on other machines, and with of course more resources than my high school self had access to, cross-training on the underwater treadmills or anti-gravity treadmills would be preferable. They don’t have nearly as much impact as regular running and they are obviously more attuned for running training purposes.

For us current day mere mortal runners who don’t have these machines, high intensity ‘extra’ work can be done on the bike, the elliptical, and yes, the rower. Though, once I heard that the rower wasn’t the end-all machine but a good option I sold that baby and never looked back. Sorry, I’ll take the elliptical over the butt-burn of the rower ANY day! 😉

Quick Tips on ‘Sneaking’ Hard Sessions
* Aim High: High heart rate that is, which can be done in the ‘tempo’ style that I did where you just go hard for time/distance or do intervals, though keep them short like 1 minute on and off.
* Keep it Shorter. 5000 meters on the rower, I’m not sure exactly what my best time worked out to be, but I’d say you could shoot for 20-25 minutes. If this is a second workout you don’t need to be hitting 30 minutes of hard stuff.
* Be Smart. Don’t add in a ton of extra work at once and build up to even doing ‘more’ at all; if you’ve been training for at least a few years consistently then start with one session a week and see how you feel before adding more. The goal is to improve your strength and endurance WITHOUT sacrificing your running. Your running workouts are FIRST priority, if they start to suffer cut out the extra stuff.

1) Have you ever tried the rowing machine? If so, what are your thoughts?

2) Do you do any cross-training in addition to your running routine? Do you use those sessions as easy, recovery type work or do any of those days include high intensity work?

3) Of all the cross-training or non-running related activities, which ranks supreme on your ‘dread list’ or the ones you can’t stand doing the most?

Back to Running After a Long Hiatus and Tackling GI Distress For Runners

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Cait — 21 Comments ↓

Here’s what you relearn every time you get back to running after a long hiatus:

When you hit that slap of back to running reality it's a combo of pain and ecstasy to be back. 🙂

* Cross-training is just that. Nothing is the same as running, mentally and physically, and while you’re a world better off doing that tedious cross-training, it’s still a cold slap of reality when you get back to the real deal. Hello, muscles, almost forgot about you until you were sore again.

* Thank you muscle memory. That slap of reality stinks but it’s kind of crazy how the hazing period isn’t that long…thankfully the longer you’ve been a runner the more your muscles remember how to slip back into runner mode. Push past those initial harder than they really should be runs and you start getting back to your self.

* Nothing clears you out like running. Forget Activia or colonics, sorry if I err on the side of TMI, but it’s true, running keeps you regular.

This segues into my topic for today…the guts, the intestines, and GI issues on the run. I know some of us runners are ‘blessed’ with more than our fair share of these troubles and I’m one of them. Sometimes it’s totally unpredictable and you just do a slight prayer to the running Gods before each hard workout, race, or long run that you won’t have a GI disaster.

The tricky thing with these types of things is that they are different for everyone and really tough to nail down a remedy for. Experts suggest:

* Eating bland foods that sit easy in the stomach. You could call these ‘low residue’ foods, they don’t have much bulk (read as fiber). Examples would be plain, white rice; Dathan Ritzenhein goes to this before his big races because he knows that is what works for him. Other athletes find that drinking their last meal of caloric intake keeps them safe; just make sure it’s a drink that is more than just electrolytes and actually has carbohydrates and sustenance.

* Don’t over-eat. I have a very temperamental stomach and to be quite frank like to run first thing in the morning before breakfast. If I were training and had a hard workout I’d get up earlier and have some oatmeal, but it would have to be a few hours before. Planning your meals helps, and you can revisit my article about ‘Timing Your Fuel’ in Running Times.

Real book, I made it, you want one? 🙂

* Eating on the run. If you’re training for a marathon or doing a really long workout things get even more complicated. During exercise the blood is being sent to your muscles doing the work and all the energy being spent is geared towards getting you to perform; this means that there isn’t the extra blood supply to then go to your stomach and start doing a ton of digesting. For this reason that’s why sometimes people can get into trouble eating just too much during their event; estimates are that you should consume roughly 200 calories per hour of exercise if you’re running more than one hour but everyone is different. Again, liquids are your friend.

* The night before. I know going into a morning run the possibilities that there will be a pit-stop in order are much higher if I’ve eaten a certain kind of food the night before and had a bit more than my fair share. I’ll call it the “Well, I know I’ll pay for it later but it’s worth it right now” effect. Today’s run was brought to the OD of Entenmann’s cheese filled coffee cake last night…but it was worth it. 😉

* Other remedies. I’ve talked to people who swear by this or that supplement, I’ve known people who have had their GI problems solved by acupuncture, there were periods where I’d have to pop an Imodium before every hard workout or long run and it seemed to help. If you’ve suffered with this issue enough you’re willing to try or do anything.

Even with all of this there is never a sure bet. Every GI sufferer sympathized with poor Paula Radcliffe during her marathon pit-stop and it proves that 1) don’t be ashamed to talk about these things because nearly every runner has experienced it 2) don’t make fun of people pulling the bush dive, Karma is a bi*** 3) we’ve been there and if nothing else, try to laugh at yourself, it’s the only way to keep on going.

Still, even after all of these slaps of back to running reality (seriously, the last pain free running this runnerchick got in was somewhere around Halloween!) it is SO worth it, gurgly guts, sore muscles, and all! 🙂

1) What’s the longest you’ve gone without running? Did you cross-traing during that time?

2) What’s one ‘slap of back to running reality’ you have?

3) Do you have stomach or GI issues? What have you tried and what works for you?

4) Is there a certain ‘trigger food’ that you know will set off your stomach? Are there times when you throw caution to the wind and dig in anyways??
Pretty sure we all do it, I’ve got a friend who is nearly Lactose intolerant but orders up the biggest sized Blizzards if she’s sure an easy day is on tap for the next day.

Mental Games for Getting Through Tedious Cross-Training Workouts: The Chocolate Edition

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Cait — 6 Comments ↓

Tuesday morning and I, admittedly a bit begrudgingly, took to the elliptical machine. (I swear I AM a runner, even if the last time I had an awesome, pain-free run seems like a far-off, distant memory…haha) Let’s be honest, when you’re wrought with an injury the mental part of getting in the cross-training can be as much of a challenge as the physical.

All about the mind games. Distraction is key for me, so today I loaded up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Johnny Depp edition, in the hopes that waterfalls of chocolate, gum-drops the size of my head, and Oompa Loompas would help make the time with my cross-training ‘pal’ pass a little quicker.

Mission complete, thank you Johnny D; even as a whacked-out chocolate peddler you are still a hottie in my eyes. 😉 When the beast of cross-training feels almost unbearable and you’d rather torch the machine than get on it and sweat, here’s some mental games you can play, Chocolate Edition:

Come dive into some sweet treats with me, mmmk! 🙂

* Break it down. I was going for 70 minutes, but I told myself I’m really only going to do 7×10 minute segments. Even further, I break the 10 minutes up into four chunks of 2.5 minutes; I sort of imagine that each quarter is just like doing a lap around the track…easy peasy. For this one though, maybe it’d be four laps around the perimeter of the Chocolate Factory…each time you pass the front gates you get a nice whiff of chocolatey goodness…the catch if you have to do all your laps before you are allowed inside! 😉

* Chocolate endorphins. Mr. Wonka himself clearly states, “Eating chocolate releases endorphins that make you feel happy!” Hmm…not unlike exercise itself! Ironically even if you’re in the worst possible mood and dreading starting the workout…once you get started those endorphins have a weird way of lightening the mood! Then you can certainly bathe yourself in chocolate afterwards…just don’t get the whole chocolate river sweaty and spoil it for the rest of us!

* Don’t peek! Mr. Wonka didn’t want anyone spying on the super secrets going down in his factory…I play this game with myself where I test how long I can go without peeking down at the little screen with the timer. That way I can be ‘surprised’ when I look down and “Gee-golly, look, it’s already been 10 minutes!” Stupid, maybe, but it works.

* Touch my dials, will you?! Charlie gets in a bit of trouble touching things he shouldn’t in the factory, but when it comes to workout machines, messing around with the variables can help pass the time. Adjust the tension level or incline every couple of minutes…actually if you do an interval session it’s crazy how time can fly during those! However those recovery minutes seem to pass by much faster than the harder bouts, am I right?! 😉

* Drool and daydream.Don’t underestimate the power of baiting yourself…promise yourself some kind of pick-me-up or reward for putting in the time. If it takes daydreaming about chocolate bars to keep you on the machine and finishing your workout…by all means. Mr. Wonka would be proud to know he is fueling your sweat session!

Art: Cait Chock Designs

* Stay the course. Eventually you WILL get back to running (unless you get sucked up that giant tube because you got caught swimming in the chocolate river!) and remind yourself that the time spent cross-training will make getting back into running form so much easier…trust me, you’ll be thankful you did it! Also, every injury and time off from running makes me all the more grateful upon returning to it…you don’t take those miles for granted!

Thank you, Mr. Wonka for your tour through your Oompa Loompa riddled factory…you helped take the sting of cross-training down a notch!

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Who doesn’t like just plain silliness? Umm, anyone who doesn’t is not my friend! 😉 If you haven’t caught two of the funniest and also Nation’s top harriers take part in a Eugene snow-ball fight, then you’re missing out. Check out Andrew Wheating and Russell Brown…I guess that’s how you spend your free time when you’re not training for the Olympics.

AND…if you haven’t yet, go enter yourself in my Road ID giveaway…running safety is Oompa Loompa important!
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1) What was your last workout? If you got to run, I’m warning you I’m going to have a bit of runner envy! 😉

2) How do you play mental games to get through a ‘meh’ feeling when it comes to your workout or cross-training in particular?

3) Favorite type of candy? If you were in Mr. Wonka’s factory would you take a dive in the chocolate river?
Yes on the river…I’m a chocolate sweets kind of person, the hard candies and chews don’t do anything for me. Junior Mints are ranked mighty high on my list! 🙂

I’m Not Injured, I’m Just a Klutz: ‘Life Injuries’ and Injuries While Cross-Training

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Cait — 8 Comments ↓

I’m a klutz. I’m one of those people who will wake up with a bruise and not know what it’s from. If I’m opening a package with any kind of hard plastic I’m sure to wind up with a cut trying to pry the thing open. I have no coordination and so I’m a runner…even then I have enough trouble staying erect.

You'll also never catch me in a shoe with heels over 1mm...FACEPLANT!! 😛

Injuries stink and they come with being a runner, but the injuries or pulls, strains, niggling pains that come from a NON-running related event burn a million times more. Mostly because we have no one to blame but ourselves. (well, usually…getting hit by a car really sucks and in those cases there are others to blame…lol…well, kinda lol.)

The falls, the trips, the blood, the cracked bones, these can and do happen in life and as a runner when a ‘life injury’ keeps us from our favorite past-time it burns something fierce. I knew a runner who was taking the garbage can to the curb one dark night, slipped on some ice and ended up landing right on her tailbone. She had the Olympic Marathon Trials coming up mere weeks away and she thought she had broken it. Her tail bone ended up having a really bad bone bruise that healed up but she still couldn’t run for a few days.

Sorry, yes to post this one again...but gotta get my mileage out of this because it's true! Haha.

I’ve fallen plenty of times running, to the point where I’ve been a bloody mess and gravel in my palms but I got up, finished the tempo run, then had the delight of washing the caked, bloody mess with disinfectant. Fun. Thankfully I guess my body’s just used to self-abuse due to idiotism and for the most part I’ve been lucky that most of these falls and other life injuries haven’t curtailed my running on too many occasions. Again, outside of the car debacle.

I recently just did an article for Competitor about getting injured while you’re injured: ‘Cross-Training 101: Avoiding Over-Training When Injured’. It’s possible to injure yourself in a new way, or re-injure yourself, when you’re already hurt and cross-training. Trust me, those sting too because you think, “What the heck, now I can’t even run for longer because of my cross-training routine?!”

It’s happened to plenty of us, my hip flexors like to scream at me when I’m delegated to the elliptical for long periods of time. There isn’t any activity that simulates running exactly, running is running. So while there are plenty of other options that can mimic it and give you a workout that will maintain that strength and endurance, they are all using slightly different muscles to do that.

The article also covers over-training while cross-trainng…oh, the over-zealous injured runner taking out all their fury out on the machines. They then end up over doing it and digging themselves into a hole of fatigue. Again, been there, done that, not fun.

We don’t live in a bubble…sometimes life and other activities can wind up leaving us injured and unable to get in those precious miles. (one of the main reasons, outside of fear, that I’ll never get on a skateboard…that’s got disaster for me written all over that!)

Accepting those running related injuries is manageable, but the other ones, they can unleash a runner’s fury like nothing else! Beware fellow klutzes, be safe out there. 😉

1) What was the last non-running related injury that you had? Or, what was the last ‘life injury’ that somehow left you mangled and forced to curtail your usual workout routine?

2) Are you a klutz and tend to wind up abusing the heck out of yourself by sheer accident?

3) When cross-training, what’s your usual go-to and have you ever injured yourself while cross-training?
I usually go the elliptical route and that wakes up my hip flexors; aqua-jogging also does that to them. But I know this so I give those hip flexors some extra TLC while I’m injured.

“The First Run is the Sweetest”…or Something Like That, Cat

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Cait — 13 Comments ↓

Six weeks and the legs went to the dogs! 🙂 I know I haven’t talked about it too much on here (I’ve been playing by the ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’ rules a bit.) but I injured my foot awhile back and was thus held captive to the cross-training.

Still working to find out exactly what was/is wrong with my foot but it stems from head-diving into all outdoor running when I’d been doing solely treadmill running for over a year. My case is a little odd, the reason I was a gerbil on the ‘mill for so long was because I was a little iffy running on the roads after getting hit by the car.

I pretty much chop-shopped my own little rehab program to even get back to being able to walk and then run (the doctors hadn’t seen/worked on a case like mine before) but I knew where I was and I knew where I wanted to end up…so just head in that direction! Anyways, I went to the treadmill on my road back to running but after so long a runnerchick needs to get some fresh air!

Opps a-daisies! (Art: Cait Chock)

I got a little overzealous, I admit, pressed my luck a bit and my foot had something to say about it. Lesson learned, and learn from my mistakes…do as I say, not as I do, right? Running on the treadmill is a lot more ‘forgiving’ than running on pavement so if you’re making a transition you need to do it gradually.

Anyways, six weeks of burning a hole in the elliptical and let me tell you: BAM that first run back (on the treadmill) was a bit of a sucker-punch to the face. That old saying of ‘use it or lose it’ applies to running, my friends. It’s just funny because it takes awhile for the mind to catch up; mentally you’re used to a certain pace feeling ‘easy’ or at one level of effort but then you need to check yourself when you’re coming back from a running break…even if you’ve been diligent with the cross-training, there is still going to be some work getting back into the swing of things with running.

But don’t get depressed, because the GOOD news is: muscle memory. While your legs will feel like foreign objects at first and be sore, they snap back relatively quickly and you’ll be surprised with the progress. (I am reminding myself of this very thing, we’ve all been through it before) It’s just a matter of mustering up, getting through the transition, and remaining positive…your legs will eventually be returned to you.

Yes it sucks, you don't have to do a dance, BUT slap a smile on a fake it 'til you make! (you don't even have to smile but remind yourself you'll get through it...mmk!) Art: Cait Chock

Even in the short time I’ve been getting some easy runs under my belt I’ve seen improvement…this morning I did a short/easy fartlek on the treadmill (I’m going to heed my own advice and start back on the treadmill for now) and while I was hardly on world record pace I was able to get the old legs moving and the endorphins rolling…and even better news I didn’t fly off the back end of the treadmill. 🙂

In closing, I’m hardly out of the woods yet, I’m still supplementing with cross-training but my message is simple: injuries bite the big one, but they are a necessary evil as I’ve said a million times. My biggest advice though is to allow some venting (keep it minimal and give yourself a time limit of wallowing), but stay positive and keep plugging away…and then do your cross-training. I tell you, if I had done nothing for six weeks the legs would have been ravaged by the dogs and not just bitten. 😉

1) Why is it that the first few miles back running after an injury are both euphoric but excruciating?
Happiness is from the mental relief, the pain are your legs revolting…that’s why I was grimacing like that, it was a smile on the inside. 🙂

2) Your go-to cross-training and how do you keep it interesting/effective?
Elliptical and intervals.

3) When on the final few intervals of a workout, what is your mental trick to keep on plowing through to the end?
Tell myself I’ve only got one more, break down the interval in my mind and think ‘only 30 seconds more’, and pick a point ahead of me and zone in on nothing else.