• Not Running is Not an Option

    I’m at a point in my life where not getting a workout every day is not an option. Getting up early to go for a run at sunrise helps me feel calm and focused throughout the day. It’s so peaceful to start my day pounding pavement by myself with music or podcasts in my ears. Starting my day with a run helps with my entire demeanor.

    Arizona Cactus Sunrise by WillHolmes from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    And have you seen a sunrise in the desert? It’s gorgeous!

    I know I have no sense of moderation, so I have to be careful not to over train and take out my shins or my feet. As an act of self-care, I skipped running on Tuesday this week and went to the office early instead. By 10:30am, I hated everyone on the planet.

    Lesson Learned:
    Skipping Workout = Bad Idea

    I know some people who run every day, no matter what, but I was pretty sure that’s not a good idea for me, even if I’m only doing 4-6 miles/day and 20 minutes of yoga for runners. I reached out to triathlon coach David Roher for his recommendation. (He wrote my training schedule for my last half marathon.) He suggested running no more than two days in a row and biking on my off days.

    Based on David’s advice, I think this will be my workout schedule for a typical week:

    • Day 1: Run and yoga
    • Day 2: Run and yoga
    • Day 3: Bike
    • Day 4: Run and yoga
    • Day 5: Run and yoga
    • Day 6: Bike
    • Day 7: Fun Workout

    I want to use my fun workouts to get my sweat on by doing things besides running. It could be walking around a museum or street fair, hiking, rock climbing, going to the ropes course, horseback riding, step aerobics – really anything goes as long as it’s a workout.

    With all the client work, speaking engagements, new projects, and the California bar exam on my plate this year, taking time every day to move my muscles and clear my head is going to be essential for my sanity.

  • Part of my half marathon training is a weekly stretching session. (Yes, I stretch before and after each run too.) I generally suck at stretching, so I’m borrowing yoga DVDs from the library each week to force myself to do it.

    PC YogaThis week I did another Peggy Cappy DVD, Easy Yoga: The Secret to Strength and Balance. It should have been called “Yoga for Patient People.”

    This workout is from Peggy’s Yoga for the Rest of Us collection, so it provides instruction for people who have limited mobility or balance as well as people who can do regular yoga. Because of all these modifications, everything took longer than other yoga workouts. And Peggy has you breathe between everything – which may be a standard yoga practice, but her video seemed excessively long.

    I will admit there were several times I checked my phone because I was bored. The video is 76 minutes long, and I felt like we barely did anything during that time. I didn’t even finish the full workout. The last section is a guided relaxation, but by then I had reached my limit of my patience, so I turned it off.

    I think I am done with Peggy Cappy’s workouts. She is not a good fit for me. I reserved a different yoga DVD for next week. Even though it is a basic yoga workout, I hope it will be more challenging than Peggy Cappy’s.

    Years ago, I did power yoga where you move fairly quickly from pose to pose. That was more my style. Perhaps I will look for a power yoga workout next.

  • Yoga Review: Yoga for the Rest of Us

    I’m training for my fifth half marathon this fall. Since I DNFed my last race and I have a history of leg problems, I’m trying to be diligent about following my training schedule – including stretching.

    Yoga for the Rest of UsAnyone who knows me knows that I suck at stretching. It’s so boring! Even in my gymnast days, I was never that flexible compared to my teammates. I was powerful, strong, and I just muscled my way through everything and they would bend themselves in half and take a nap. Every year, my gym put on a show in June – four performances over three days. The team kids were in every performance and we were expected to warm ourselves up on show days. I remember my last show weekend; even with a stress fractured back and sore knees, my “warm up” consisted of two standing back flips – one tuck, one pike.

    Now that I’m getting a bit older, I don’t bounce like I used to. I still think stretching’s boring but it’s a necessary evil but my legs and back will thank me for it in the long run. My half marathon training program prescribes a stretching workout once a week, so I’m doing it with yoga DVDs.

    In playing to my strengths, for this training cycle, I’m getting a different yoga DVD from the library each week. I hope the novelty of a different workout each week will keep me entertained even if I feel pathetic trying to stretch my ex-gymnast body.

    I opted to start slow and easy with Yoga for the Rest of Us.

    I’m not going to sugar coat it: this is an exercise DVD geared towards older people. If you don’t mind the possibility that the 60 year-old on the screen might have more balance and flexibility than you, it’s a good place to start. The good thing about this program is no one was a super-skinny contortionist that puts your efforts to shame.

    A lot of yoga DVDs tell you that you can modify the poses using a yoga block or a yoga strap; this DVD showed you how to do it with a chair – something everyone has. It was a good stretching workout for getting back into my yoga groove. I definitely felt muscles that I haven’t stretched in a while and I built up a decent sweat during the sun salutations.

    Overall it was a good workout for my first yoga session of race training, but I’ll probably need something more challenging in the near future. I’m glad there are super easy yoga DVDs like this because my impulse would probably be to start with an advanced power yoga routine that would make me feel self-conscious compared to the lithe gumby people on the screen.

    EDIT: I just found out that the race I was training for was canceled. That’s a pisser. Doing yoga once a week is probably still a good idea. If nothing else, it will help with modeling.