There are good running days, and there are bad running days...The importance of visualization

...the trick is to imagine you're a red fox even when you feel like a bog turtle...And remember that those tough days are the important work.

What tricks to you use to keep yourself feeling like a fox when you feel like you're crawling like a turtle?

~ HRG

My OptiMYz Yoga for Runners article

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend a workshop that combines two of my loves: yoga and running.

One of my favourite yoga studios in the city, Halifax Yoga, was offering a workshop with Vancouver-based yogi and runner Mike Dennison.

Take a look at the article I wrote about the experience, which you'll find here:

Halifax Yoga offers runners a chance to stretch and learn with Mike Dennison

Enjoy it, fellow runners and yogis!

~ HRG

There's running, and then there's running stupid...

I know, I should really know better. I mean, how many years have I been running? But still, every so often, I catch myself doing it - running stupid.

Take last Sunday, for instance. I had a really really tough 19kms. The kind of run where you just want to quit at just over the halfway mark, because you can't even think how your legs are going to make it the rest of the way. Hills feel like they're 20 degrees steeper than they actually are, and there's just no more gas in the tank.

Not a fun run. Those are the days that I catch myself asking, "Do I really want to do this? Do I have to run a marathon this season? I could just start doing other things...yoga...dancing...strength training...This is getting boring and I'm not enjoying this."

According to one of my running buddies, who'd been kindly hanging back with me as I fell further and further away from the pack, at the moment where I told her to go ahead, since I was going to walk up the hill at Chebucto, I gave her "dagger eyes" when she asked if I was sure.

Oops.

I walked, and they ran ahead.

But then, after a short walk break, that little voice inside me that doesn't like me to quit said "Ok, let's go again." So I did. And I caught up with the group, who gave me a little cheer of encouragement for my super bad comeback.

...a comeback that didn't last much longer, since a few kilometres in, I started flagging again.

And what should have been a 23k run ended up being a 19k run. That was it, I was done.

But as I ran, and my legs turned heavier and heavier, the smart little voice that had told me to keep going up the hill at Chebucto had also reminded me of a few salient points (guess that's why it's the smart voice in my head - wish it would pipe up a little more often!):

- on Thursday, I'd had an upset stomach and hadn't eaten well either;

- on Friday, I hadn't had a proper supper. I'd snacked and had a glass of wine, because I had had a late lunch and an afternoon snack, and as I was counting my calories I didn't want to overdo it;- this was followed by what I've chosen to call a "popcorn supper" on Saturday.

Oh. Right.

And then my smart voice piped up again (ok, sometimes it's a bit of a know-it-all voice) and reminded me that I'd also done yoga, plus weights, plus 35 minutes on the bike on Saturday.

Oh...Right...

Is it any surprise that the next day, when I was set to run 23 kms, I ended up feeling like someone had poured lead into my legs about halfway through the run?

Maybe it's arrogance, maybe it's that I've been running (not very fast) for years, so a Sunday run just seems like any other run. But evidently last Sunday I forgot what I already knew: runners need to fuel and rest properly the day before a long run. There's just no getting around it. When you're out there for two and a half, three hours, you need to be able to draw on stored energy, and you need legs that are fairly rested.

So today, I've tried to remember what I forgot last week: I've done an easy 6kms, plus some moderate upper body strength work. But I'm not going to tack on a yoga class just for fun (though it might indeed for fun). And for tonight, I'm skipping the popcorn, and it's either spaghetti or pizza for me, followed by a good night's rest.

And we'll see how tomorrow goes!

Hope your training is going well, runner friends. Just remember: don't get complacent and even though your smart inner voice gets annoying from time to time, it probably knows what's best for you.

~ HRG

What a weekend! Yoga for runners and a half marathon (sort of!)

So there I was, feet tucked under me and sitting on a couple of foam blocks, ankles and feet asleep but in utter agony, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, this probably wasn't such a good idea."

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of a Yoga for Runners workshop at Halifax Yoga, and I wasn't about to quit. At least, not with the workshop instructor, Mike, telling us "This is supposed to suck! I want you to be happy, healthy runners!"

Well, I want to be a happy, healthy runner too, and I was there to write an article about the workshop for OptiMYz magazine, so there was no way that I could back out of things now, no matter the pain. And it wasn't so much the pain that I was worried about - the thing is, as any of you who have been following my blog for the last month and a half know, I was supposed to do a 21.1-kilometre run the next day to make up for the Halifax Hypo Half I'd missed the previous week due to inclement weather.

And working your glutes, core and ankles to exhaustion is probably not the best way to prep for a race - not when what I knew I should have been doing was to be home, hydrating with my legs resting.

I'll write more about the workshop in a future post, since I enjoyed it (despite the pain) and it reinforced my understanding of the important connections between yoga and running (and no, it's not just about flexibility). But suffice it to say that while I enjoyed myself, I still wondered whether I had overdone things the day before a half marathon - race or no race.

A race that wasn't a race

The next morning, as I went through my usual pre-race preparations (half a bagel with peanut butter, a small cup of orange juice, a glass of water, pulling all my gear together), I could feel the previous day's workout in my glutes, shoulders and back, as well as my right obliques. I hoped that once I got moving, this would loosen things up a bit.

Even though this wasn't technically a race, I'd still worn my race bib, as had a few of the other 30-odd runners who'd gathered at the Running Room on this rainy Sunday morning for their make-up run. I met up with two of my running friends, and we agreed that we'd just treat the day as a training run and do 10:1s, with the goal of about a 2:15 finish.

Although it wasn't an official race, Bruce had still put out the counter clock, to make things feel a little more official. He let all of the other run groups filter out, and then our small group of half marathoners gathered at the start, and he counted down to the start time. A few of us let out a cheer, and then we were off.

For the first few kilometres, I felt fine. We were running at about a 5:45 pace. As always happens to me at the start of a race, I wondered whether I'd be able to keep it up for the entire run, given that I'd been so inconsistent with my training and only been running about two to three times a week for the last month and a half, and missed a few long runs. And then there was the issue of the workshop I'd done only yesterday.

We started out by going down to the waterfront, then through the dockyards, and finally right and up along the hill at Point Pleasant Drive. And that's where my legs began to feel it  - a combination of tiredness but also lack of hill training. I consoled myself by the fact that there shouldn't be too many more hills and there was a long downhill at Quinpool and Dufus.

Oh right - this is hilly Halifax

Yeah right. I must have forgotten that this was Halifax, after all. You can't go farther than a couple of kilometres without meeting a hill.

By the eight kilometre mark my brain was starting to do its negative self-talk: "They're in better shape than you. You've missed too many runs. You've put on weight. You're not ready for this." And so on...

...until a kind woman from Montreal, who was running at the back of our group with a friend, came up alongside me on a hill at Oxford across from the university, and said, encouragingly: "You can do this."

Don't ask me how she knew, but those four words at that time were exactly what I needed. It's not that legs suddenly felt lighter, or I felt faster. I just knew that no matter what, even if I had to slow down to a pace several minutes slower, I could do this. I'd done it so many minutes before.

That's also about where a friend of one of the girls we were running with showed up with her young children and signs, cheering us "half-marathoners" on. And she kept on turning up every few kilometres along the route, giving us a real race experience.

I eat hills for breakfast?

For the next several kilometres, up until the 10.5km mark, I kept up with my running buddies, slowing down on the hills but catching up on the flat parts. On the long downhill stretch at Quinpool, I caught up with them. But my legs were no match for the hill at Joe Howe.

That's where I really felt how tired and unprepared my legs were. As I hobbled along, barely passing a woman who was walking up a hill, I worried about the hill that was yet to come - up Windsor.

But this wasn't a race. It was no longer about keeping up with the group. It was just about getting to kilometre 15, where two friends of ours were standing in the cold at a water station they'd set up outside their house. After that point, I knew that I'd have a long downhill stretch for a couple of kilometres, and the rest would be gravy.

Don't ask me if it's a sign of maturing as a runner, or simply not having the mental pressure of it not actually being a race, but whereas a few years ago I'd have agonized at not being able to keep up with the group, this time I just let the others drift away from me, and I focused on my own run. I knew I could do the distance, and I no longer worried about my time.

I love Halifax's running community!

At around 16 kilometres, Doreen and Barry were indeed there with their dog Sophie, a bag of gummy bears (Doreen later told us Sophie developed a taste for gummies by gobbling up the ones we'd dropped on the sidewalk) and water. They were wearing their medals, since they had done their run the day before. A major, major shout-out to both of them (and Sophie) for standing out there in the cold and rain for hours for us runners. That is above and beyond, but it also just shows what I've said so many times before - Halifax has a really great running community. It's times like these, when you're outside running with 30, 100 or 400 other runners in the middle of winter, that you realize it.

After stopping to finally tie my shoelace (it had been flopping around for at least three kilometres), I thanked Doreen and Barry, and continued along the route - down a nice long stretch on Dufus, along Barrington towards the road to the dockyards.

It's about at that point that I recognized the feeling I've had in many races - the one where the last few kilometres start feeling like they're taking ages to tick down, and your mind starts to wander and get anxious for the finish. But I also remembered what I've learned on many difficult runs - that it's those difficult runs that are the ones that prepare you for race day. Because if you can keep on keepin' on when you'd rather be snuggled up at home in your bed, then you know you can finish any run.

Ticking down the last couple of kilometres, my legs were tired and I dreaded the hill up Morris. But at the last set of stoplights on the hill, two of the women who'd been running near me turned around and waved me up the hill, with big smiles on their faces (in fact one of them was the kind woman who'd encouraged me at 8kms). Such was the mood of the day - it might have been a little drizzly and gray, but there was just such a great, encouraging feel about the race.

Crossing the finish line (kind of)!

In the end, I finished at around 2:17, even running by the display clock and Bruce holding out medals, tacking on an extra 700 metres to make sure that my watch clocked at exactly 21.1 kilometres. Reports varied on the length of the course. One of the women who I'd run the entire course with, almost neck and neck, said that it was about 500 metres too long.

So who knows - maybe my time was more like 2:15. It was by no means my fastest run/race (in fact it was my second-slowest half and anyways I wasn't racing, right?), but it didn't matter to me. I was simply proud to have finished my 7th half marathon, especially given that I'd barely managed two runs a week since the start of the year.

In fact, so proud was I that I wore my medal to Starbucks. I ordered a hot chocolate for me and a coffee for Bruce, who was still standing at the display clock in the rain, waiting for the last runners of the group.

What a contrast from my first half, the 2009 Hypo Half, where I was so disappointed to have come in 10 minutes slower than my goal, at two hours! It just goes to show - your races are what you make of them. Because unless you're Perdita Felicien or Usain Bolt, you're probably just racing against yourself, and all of the myriad factors that can disrupt even the best-laid training plans.

Thank you!

To the runners who encouraged me on the route, whether slowing down to show me the route, or running up to encourage me...To the woman and her children who drove around the route to encourage us...To Doreen, Barry and Sophie, who stood out in the cold and rain to give us gummies, water and good cheer...To my hubby, family and friends, who have put up with my talking about all things running, and have encouraged me in my up and down training season...To the race organizers, who did the best they could to give us a race experience (and also showed up for the 60 runners who braved the winds and weather on the actual race day)....

Thank you!

What's next?

Any runner knows that you almost never finish a race without already knowing what your next race is. So when Bruce asked me what my next race would be, I already knew - Freddy 2013 (aka Fredericton) in May. No expectations this time, but I'd like to train for a 3:45 and aim for a 4hr finish. That would be a huge improvement on my previous two fulls, and who knows if it's possible - life and weather will have to cooperate.

But for now it's a goal. And that's good enough for me!

Halifax Hypo Half: We get a do-over!

Were you one of the 400 or so runners last week who decided to opt out of the 2013 Halifax Hypothermic Half Marathon due to the gale-force winds and mountains of snow that had been dumped on us the day before (not to mention the prospect of doing 500-metre laps around Dartmouth Crossing for 21.1kms)?

Well, if you're thinking of making up the run this Sunday, here's the Halifax route, if you're interested:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5817892

I plan to be there, and will be wearing my bib, even though I doubt I'll be racing. Just a nice, easy long slow distance training runs.

Hope to see you there!

~ HRG

Tingly hands and soggy feet, but a good run with friends nonethless!

A little over a year ago, when I was training for my second full marathon, I remember Bruce, our instructor, telling us about how important it would be for us to get out for a run a few days after race day - otherwise we'd find it hard to get back into the groove if we took more than a few weeks off.

In fact, I'd made that mistake myself the year before that, when I'd run my first marathon. I'd taken a few weeks off, "for a break," but then the weeks turned into months with only a few occasional runs in between and all of a sudden distances that seemed like nothing ended up seeming like unthinkable distances.

So even though I didn't race last Sunday, due to inclement weather and bad route conditions, and even though I'm not racing next Sunday, I knew that it would be important for me to keep on getting back out there and hopping back onto a new training schedule as soon as possible. Even though the temptation to take a break was strong.

Tonight was my first run since last week before all the on-again, off-again race day stuff happened. I was a little curious how I would feel on tonight's tempo, given that I'd tapered the week before in anticipation of race day, and the week before that most of what I'd managed had been treadmill runs while I was traveling in Toronto.

I knew the sidewalks would be slushy and slippy, and I was tired from a day at work, but I still wanted to get out there today for a tempo run with a pace group to see how I would fare. Also, today was one of the first days we'd had anywhere near zero degrees in a long while, so I didn't see how I could pass up the opportunity to run in fewer layers than I'd done in quite some time.

I drove across the bridge, dropped off the car at hubby's work, then raced down to the Running Room to meet up with the Run Club. Only...they'd left only moments before me and I didn't know where my group was.

I wavered between doing a run indoors on the treadmill on my own and taking the bus home, trying to catch up with the group or doing 2-3k in town and then running 5k home. My Garmin had decided to freeze and wouldn't get off the clock, which told me the time was perpetually 9:48, so I knew I wouldn't have any idea of pace, but I had a pretty good sense of the distance and figured I'd just run it.

And then, lo and behold, I turned around at a red light, only to find a group of friendly faces running up behind me with two of the running friends I'd been trying to catch up to!

My plans changed again, and I decided to do the tempo run with them and let them pace me. The roads were indeed slushy, and every so often we had to stop to walk around massive swimming-pool sized puddles (I exaggerate). But overall the roads weren't nearly as slippy as they've been recently, although my feet constantly felt the itch of a potential fall at any step - the ghost of my fall from a few weeks ago kept on dogging me.

It's a funny thing when you're running without a Garmin: I started feeling like I was working hard, and then berating myself for being out of shape and getting slow. Only, when I asked what the pace was, it turned out we were running a 5:35 pace. I could live with that!

And then another nice surprise: instead of it being a 10k tempo, we were only doing 8! What a nice surprise!

In the end, it was a nice run with a pace I was happy about, and with good friends and conversation to boot. I'm glad I kicked my butt out the door to get to that run tonight, even if I ended up with tingly fingers (from the cold) and soggy feet.

 ~ HRG

T-minus zero days till race day: The race that was a brunch instead...

So - after all the humming and haing and yays and nays of the last week and a bit, not to mention my race day countdown...it turns out that instead of racing in the Halifax Hypothermic Half Marathon yesterday, I had the longest sleep-in I've had in years, watched OASIS tv with my hubby, helped shovel out the car...and then went for brunch.

All of the previous day I'd been sitting on a fence and leaning towards not going, but before I went to bed I'd agreed with my running buddies that we'd wake up early and make the call about the race then. I hydrated, I carb-loaded (kind of) and then I went to bed at a respectable time. But when I looked outside at midnight and the snow was still dumping on us, I had a pretty good feeling that I wouldn't be racing.

In fact, I didn't even set my alarm to wake me up.

Nevertheless, I woke up way early the next day, and started scanning my Facebook feed to see what folks had decided. By around 6:45, the flurry of messages started, and it looked like we were unanimous: with blizzarding conditions in Dartmouth and 50-kilometre winds, not to mention a -18 windchill, we decided to run 21.1kms together on February 17 and simply do the post-race brunch yesterday.

Had this been my first half, or the middle of summer, or if we hadn't had the option of running 21.1 and getting our medals the following week, I  might have been disappointed. But given that I've already fallen once this season and broken the side of my glasses, and that one of my friends had a scary incident where she lost vision on a long run by rubbing off the protective layer of her eyes in the cold (who knew), we all agreed that we were better to be safe than sorry.

And boy am I glad I made that call - because instead of 1.6-kilometre laps, the 60 out of 450 brave souls who did the run  yesterday ended up doing 500-800 metre laps. Which means something like 26 laps, and the course ended up short. Not to mention that it was too windy to put up the race clock anyways (I mean it was so windy I had trouble getting from my car to the hotel for brunch! I dropped my glove and had to run 400 metres to get it!).

Anyways - this means I have one more week to train, and then I'll have a fun run with friends next week. So you know what? I'm ok with that.

But to the 60 people who did yesterday's run - hats off, my friends! Nicely done!

~ HRG