Monthly Archives: August 2011

The running gods are rebuking me for my cockiness earlier this week.

That’s what I was thinking last night, as I slogged up a long, gradual hill on Alaska Avenue NW during my first group run in who-knows-how-long.

I had intended for this easy 5-miler to be my first “long” run (it’s long for me, right now) ahead of the Marine Corps 10K in October, and was buoyed by the wonderfully ego-boosting runs I had over the weekend. Both were on the hilly, challenging 3.7-mile loop that goes from my house, down to Rock Creek Park, up Grubb Road, and finally up a long, ugly hill on East-West Highway. My perceived prowess on the hills made me get ahead of myself, imagining that it would be great to work up to long runs of 10-ish miles before the 10K, counting on the magic of overdistance to get me to the finish line.

Instead, I felt tired—marathon-tired, “why aren’t my legs working” tired—about two miles into last night’s route. I cut out early, and my Garmin confirmed what I already suspected: I had essentially run a slow 5K that just happened to feel like a long run.

Maybe someday, I’ll learn to moderate my emotions and expectations, and will be able to simply accept the conditions on the ground on any given day, equally ready for a plodding slog and a breakthrough sprint. Maybe I’ll learn to be a bit more realistic, too, and won’t schedule a “long” run just a few hours after hot yoga, and just a day or two after hard hill workouts (chair pose+hills=nothing left in the quads). For now, I’m just writing off last night’s run as a life lesson—and looking forward to a better one next time.

Ugly runs happen to the best of us. What kind of positive self-talk (or other strategies) do you use to get through yours?

Running, swimming and other forms of training have taught me a lot about the peculiar, individual machine that is my body. Perhaps no lesson has been as fascinating as the knowledge that my body adapts to training the way Hemingway says a man goes broke: Gradually, and then all of a sudden.

That means that when I’m building up mileage or yardage, or when I’m first getting back into training for a particular activity, I can count on a series of workouts that feel terrible until, seemingly suddenly, one feels fantastic. I passed that blessed milestone with running last weekend, when I had two lovely runs on one of my normal, hilly routes (as opposed to my truncated, wimpy, “until I get back into shape” routes). I was annoyed that earthquakes and hurricanes and other natural disasters had kept me out of the pool, and I headed out for a quick run with no expectations besides squeezing in a quick workout.

My feet felt light. My legs felt strong. My spots that hurt (knee, hip, etc.) felt fine. My breath and heartbeat felt steady. When I got back to my apartment building, I felt a pang of sadness that the run was already done.

The next day, I couldn’t wait to run again. That’s all it took to motivate me to go farther, to go faster, to simply go—one good run.

What’s motivating you this week?

I want to start today’s post by thanking everyone again for the brave, thoughtful, insightful comments on my post about disordered eating among women athletes earlier this week.

I obviously think this is a hugely important topic for runners and other athletes (women and men—disordered eating isn’t gender-specific, even though my Women’s Running story on the topic was!), and I wanted to continue the conversation by sharing some thoughts about just a few of your comments.

Victoria (District Chocoholic) wrote: If an athlete trains appropriately and is getting the right nutrition, their body will adapt to actually be optimal for the sport. Totally. The experts I spoke to for the story all emphasized that overcoming disordered eating isn’t about your body weight meeting “healthy” standards on some chart, nor is recovery about eating a prescribed amount of calories: It’s about training for your sport (not for the calories burned), and learning to eat to fuel that training and your basic functions of living, according to what your body truly needs.

 Kimberly Turner Bouldin was one of several people to share her own experiences with disordered eating/body image struggles, and wrote: I don’t “starve” myself like I used to, but I certainly have issues. Negative thinking, food rules, freaking out if I can’t get my run or workout in. I count calories, though I tell myself it is so that I eat enough, but silently cheer when I am under the rec. amount. Thanks for being brave enough to post this, and for realizing that behaviors that look normal to the outside world aren’t OK if they’re wreaking havoc on your psyche—and for realizing that you deserve to enjoy the sports and activities you love for the pure joy of them, not for the calorie-burning prisons they can become.

Beth at SwimBikeRunDC said: It’s so hard to figure out what is normal and what is disordered. I KNOW. I struggled to wrap my brain around that when I first started researching this topic, too. Here’s how you know the difference: When you think about a given behavior, ask yourself: Does this contribute to my happiness and my health? If you get the sickening feeling in your stomach that the answer is “no,” it’s probably disordered, and you owe it to yourself to scrap it.

From my lovely friend Alexis, who’s gained a totally new perspective on health after battling breast cancer: I don’t think I’ve recently passed up a cookie, brownie, or bowl of ice cream because I felt guilty. If I did pass it up, it was probably because I wasn’t hungry or I’ve already had cookies, brownies, or ice cream that day. One of the experts I spoke to for the story said normal eating is saying “yes” when it’s appropriate to say “yes,” and “no” when it’s appropriate to say “no.” This seems so smart to me! Sometimes, you really don’t want or need the brownie. Other times, saying “no” to the brownie is deeply unhealthy, and can leave you feeling deprived. It’s a huge step toward good health to truly know what our bodies and souls need at any given moment.

Finally, many of you commented on the toxic headlines and information in women’s magazines—even in many running magazines—and in “health and fitness” blogs. This topic could fill up a book, not just a blurb on my blog post, but I feel like it’s important to address it, albeit briefly.

First, I obviously find the pressure to be skinny in certain sports, such as running, gymnastics and synchronized swimming (to name a few), sickening and dangerous. I also find the focus on weight loss in the aforementioned media maddening, *especially* when the weight-loss buzz masks perfectly good information. One example: I got some really excellent tips about perfecting my “eagle pose” from a yoga spread in a certain women’s magazine … but I had to choke back vomit when I noticed the magazine had re-named eagle pose “the thigh master.” Which is what yoga is all about, right?

Second, I just want to point out that this falls into the “we get the media we deserve” category. (Why does cable news feature hours upon hours of crap and celebrity gossip? Because we watch it, that’s why.) But you don’t have to spend your time writing hate-mail to magazines about their stupid advice on getting skinny to be a responsible media consumer. Instead, when a magazine or blog does something right, say so. And when it does something right consistently, keep reading—be the Ghandi of media consumption, and be the change you wish to see in the world (or at least the change you wish to see in your Google Reader and on your newsstand)!

If you missed my story about disordered eating among women runners in the new issue of Women’s Running magazine, I’d love for you to check it out, then join the conversation.

I have lots of topics I want to touch on today, including: why the world wanted me to take five days off from swimming (closures at my two usual pools *and* my back-up pool for renovations and bad weather); why yoga pants make me want to cry (they are SO TIGHT!); why I’m buying yoga pants (hello, new fitness venture!); and why skipping your swim for the stationary bike isn’t so bad (especially when someone leaves a copy of the New Yorker for you to read).

But I’m saving all that for later, in order to touch on what might be the most important, and most heartbreaking, topic I’ve stumbled across in my few years of health and fitness writing: Disordered eating among women athletes, which I wrote a story about for the new issue of Women’s Running magazine. Take a few minutes to read it. Then … let’s talk.

First, let me just say that I didn’t expect to identify with the women I was writing about. My eating habits are perfectly normal, especially compared to my other female runner-friends. But the more I talked to the experts working to combat disordered eating, and the women suffering from it, the more I realized: I’ve got some work to do.

Saying my eating habits are normal compared to my women runner-friends—or the running community in general—isn’t saying much, and it didn’t take long to think of several recent conversations I’ve had with my women runner-friends about our bodies and weight. Some usual culprits: “Cute shorts! I could never wear them, with my butt, but they’re cute on you!” “I would cycle more, but you don’t burn as many calories as you do running.” “None for me. I don’t want to cancel out my run.” (This last one, in response to an offer of a home-baked cookie).

Why can't we just eat the cookie without guilt?

When I asked one of the experts I spoke with to weigh in on the idea that all women athletes must suffer from some form of disordered eating, she sighed, and said, “Most Americans do.” If you read the Women’s Running story, you know why this is a terrible thing (you could break your own bones, people!).

So where does this leave us? I’d like to start the conversation by offering a few examples of how I’m changing my own thinking and behaviors as a result of writing the story, and therefore becoming more aware of how dangerous and pervasive disordered eating is:

1. I read Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, which advocates eating based on hunger, and have tried to incorporate its main principles into my eating/training life. Almost everyone I talked to for the story recommended reading it, and I love its emphasis on pleasure, relaxation and slowing down at mealtimes. One mental shift I made as a result: I have completely divorced the idea of burning calories from working out. I don’t care how many calories a given workout will burn; and when I refuel post-workout, I really, truly listen to my body, taking regular breaks to assess whether I’m still hungry, what my body really needs, whether that particular food still tastes good. I’m almost embarrassed to report how revolutionary this is for me—I didn’t even know I was scarfing mindlessly until I made conscious efforts to not do so!

2. I’ve tried to completely eliminate “fat talk,” which we women have a bad habit of bonding over. I’m friends with smart, interesting women, which makes it absurd that many conversations start with: “My thighs are so fat.” “No, they’re not. My thighs are so fat.” How boring! Let’s talk instead about why women feel the need to bond over this—have you ever heard two dudes become better friends by talking about how their jeans fit?

Sometimes, I want a pint of blueberries. Other times, I want a brownie. I'm trying to respect myself and my body in both scenarios.

3. I’ve ordered the sandwich when everyone else is ordering salad. Or I’ve ordered the salad when everyone’s eating fries. Or otherwise eating according to what my body needs, not what my plate looks like compared to other women’s plates (again … I didn’t even know I was doing this until I tuned in).

4. I’m easing back into yoga again to try to maximize my body awareness—i.e., my ability to truly be in touch with what my body needs on any given day, on any given moment. I was one of those kids who did sun salutations next to my mom as a toddler, and I’ve never *not* done yoga. But I’m committing to actually practicing it regularly, dipping into a couple of classes offered for free or cheap through my building and my gym, and ordering a Seane Corn yoga DVD at the suggestion of my yoga-instructor-friend, Lauren. Check out her terrific yoga blog here.

Did you identify any of your own behaviors after reading the story, or even just skimming this blog post? Do you and your runner-friends, or swimmer-friends, engage in fat-talk? Have you had any “light-bulb moments” in which you realized you needed to change such behaviors? Share your thoughts below if so.

Quick! Say that five times fast!

Unlike today’s title, today’s blog post is going to be short and sweet, and aims mostly to point you toward the most insightful, relatable essay about running I’ve read in quite a while. What a Cow Taught Me About Running tells a simple story: Girl discovers running. Girl gets faster at running. Girl gets injured.

But this story has a twist: After girl gets injured, girl returns to running with a new, healthier sense of perspective, having pushed past the “perfection block” by running races that were out of her comfort zone, or just for fun, or just for the experience.

I came to that realization on my own about a year ago, when I showed up for the starting line of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Virginia Beach Half-Marathon on Sept. 5, 2010, prepared to cover the distance—and that’s about all. It was a stark contrast to my most recent half-marathon attempt, the National Half Marathon in March 2009, when I trained hard and PR’ed. I trained so hard, in fact, I skipped a lot of fun stuff beforehand—a wine tasting with friends (drinks the night before a long run the next morning? No way!), a ski trip to Tahoe (if my muscles had any juice left in them, I needed that for training).

Posing with the "Udder Cream" cow at the Marine Corps 10K finish festival last year.

It’s not that anything was wrong with the second method, or that training to run a race quickly wasn’t extremely rewarding in its own way. It’s just that I’m at a different, calmer place with my running now—and for the time being, I really like that place. I’m currently viewing my pace stats the way I view my weight on a scale—arbitrary, and having nothing to do with what’s really important. I’ve been running for the fun, peace and natural beauty of it (hello, Rock Creek Park!), and racing for the fun and social interaction of it.

The next race on my calendar is the Marine Corps 10K in October. Last year, I jogged it, thanks to a possibly-broken toe, and enjoyed every step of it. This year, I think my main goal is to have even more fun, no matter what my time is.

Have you followed a similar path with your own running? If so, tell me about it below!

I’ve been trying to improve my race-planning over the last several months, to avoid a feeling that’s become all too common (the feeling: “That 10K is *this* weekend?). To do so, I’ve been planning my races based on not just what my inner toddler wants to do, but on what my current training looks like (i.e., no marathons when I’m still rehabbing some leg injury) and what the rest of my life looks like. For the first time in a long time, when I looked at my most recent list of goals last weekend, I didn’t have to completely overhaul the list. Score!

The main change: I can already sense that the Philadelphia Half Marathon on Nov. 20 might not happen for me, as I’m hardly running at all right now. But the DC Hot Chocolate 15K/5K on Dec. 3? Maybe a good substitute. Is it gimmicky and overpriced? Sure. But you get a jacket! And the chocolate! (I’m such a sucker).

That leaves my current list of goals:

Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash 5K swim, Sarasota Fla. 7:30 a.m. Oct 1. (No race website, but you can download information here.) Last year, I finished in 1:31:58.6, or 29:40-minute mile pace. Maybe I can train to do it faster this year?

The start of last year's Daiquiri Deck Tropical Splash 5K swim.

Marine Corps 10K in October.

Finish the ski-patrol training I had to postpone after an ACL tear. This includes continuing to strengthen my still-uneven quads and hamstrings, and continuing to work on agility now.

Yuengling Shamrock Half Marathon. Virginia Beach, Va. March 17, 2012.

Great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Swim. June 2012.

Prevent injury while training for all of the above: Do leg lifts and other hip- and core-strengtheners, plus rotator-cuff stuff and other shoulder-strengtheners.

What’s on your race calendar over the next few months?

The best way to complete a triathlon: Share it with your friends.

By that, I literally mean, “get two friends to do the parts of the triathlon you’d rather skip,” which is exactly what I did on Saturday at the Luray International Triathlon, which starts and finishes at the stunningly gorgeous Lake Arrowhead. Two runner-friends handled the run and cycling legs of the relay—yes, one of my runner-friends bravely made this her first-ever bike race—while I did the 1,500 meter swim. This post reflects my experience in the lake (the Cliff’s Notes version of their race reviews: Courses are pretty but hilly. Reeeally hilly).

First, I’d like to note that at least as far as the swim goes, this would be a *great* race for a first-ever triathlon. The lake was calm and lovely, and the start is split up into several small waves, which reduces almost any chance of getting stuck in a “Cuisinart start,” in which you feel like you’re getting chopped up by other swimmers’ arms and legs. And yet, you’re always an arm’s length away from another swimmer during the race, reducing the anxiety of being alone on the course.

My goal was to swim this race, much shorter than my usual open-water swims, as quickly as possible, in something like 25 minutes. I swim roughly 30-minute miles with waves and tides (which would equate to 27 minutes for a 1,500), and completed a 1,500-meter time trial in the pool in 24 minutes flat, so that seemed like a challenging but reasonable goal. It took me 25:37 to finish the swim leg Saturday morning. Time-wise, I’m pleased, as it shows I can train for speed—not my strong suit with freestyle. I came in second among female relay swimmers, and wasn’t far from the top overall female swim time of 23 and change.

But I’m also a bit disappointed in my race planning, and in the effort I expended as a result. Like a marathoner who flubs a 5K, I felt like I took too long to get warmed up, and didn’t realize until the finish was in sight that I needed to turn up the heat.

This was in part because the course seemed weird and confusing from the shore—race organizers described it as PacMan-shaped, and I, along with many other swimmers, spent my time before the start trying to wrap my brain around it.  Of course, unless you’re the first one out of the water (that guy finished in about 20 minutes—ha!), it’s unlikely you’ll get lost. My concern was that my confusion led me to plan my race all wrong, saving too much for a finish that came up more quickly than I expected (I kept waiting to finish the other part of the PacMan mouth).

The upside: I learned a lesson that in the future, if the course seems the least bit confusing, I should set my watch to beep every five or 10 minutes, to give me non-visual cues about how much of the course I’ve finished. Simple fix.

Other lessons from the race:

• I am even more convinced that I have no desire to train for and complete a triathlon right now. I’m not saying never—if I ever take up cycling again, I might really enjoy one. But for now, watching the bike leg made me think: No. I don’t like it. No, thank you. I have huge fears of crashing, and of feeling claustrophobic around so many other cyclists. I also have no desire to spend any money at all to upgrade my current ride, a “rescue” bike (rescued from a Dumpster). It does just fine for puttering around town or going on relaxed rides on paved trails, but it would get laughed off the tri course. The only downside to doing this as a team: Stares from other athletes trying to figure out why there are three people with bodymarkings and only one bike.

• The swim leg of the triathlon is even more of a paradox than I’d previously realized. From a swimmer’s perspective, it is SO SHORT! When my teammates and I figured out how long each of our legs would be, I almost felt embarrassed that my contribution was a piddly 25-minute swim. Other swimmers at the start agreed, and we joked about how lazy and/or brilliant we were for choosing the short, easy part. But if you’re not a swimmer, a 1,500-meter swim through a lake can be truly terrifying. The only solution I can see: If any triathletes out there would like to outsource that portion of the race, I’m available for those services …

• Signing up for a race is motivational. Signing up for a race in which your friends are depending on you is even more so. Of course, we were just doing this for fun, and I know my friends would be just as proud of me for a 40-minute finish as they were of my 25-minute finish. But thinking about letting them down with a slow swim inspired me to add a few extra sprint workouts to my training plan.

The flipside is also true: I was so totally proud of my buddies, especially my aforementioned cyclist friend! As a result, I felt it was time to pass along the traveling trophy I received for completing the Great Bay Bridge Swim, the Golden Pig of Awesomeness.

We weren’t recognized for any official race awards after the finish. But a) the pig was waaay better than any trophy, and b) we were recognized in an even more meaningful way: When the announcer called out that the Killer Honey Badgers triathlon relay team has crossed the finish line, he added: “They’re so NASTY.” (for an explanation of why he said that, and what the name is all about, check out this work-inappropriate YouTube video at this link). Awesome.

I’d planned to spend today’s post dissecting the swim course for the Luray International Triathlon, giving you a sneak peek at what swimmers can expect on race day. But I realized something interesting as I got ready to actually write it: *I* was bored by the topic, and I’m the one swimming it tomorrow!

Instead, I want to tell you about why I was bored by the idea of basically replicating the athlete’s guide (which you can find here): At this point in my racing “career,” I’ve sorta been there, done that.

If you’re an amateur endurance athlete (if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are), you probably know what works for you on race day. You know what to eat the day before (something pasta or pizza related), and whether you also need to be careful about your diet two days before (yes). You know how many hours you need between your pre-race breakfast and the moment the starting gun fires (two hours, so 6 a.m. tomorrow), and what you need to eat (oatmeal with blueberries, please). You know what you need to pack (my delightfully simple packing list: swimsuit and goggles).

My go-to pre-race breakfast.

By this point, you’ve either trained or you haven’t. If you haven’t trained specifically for your event, you have a good idea of whether or not your body is prepared. In my case, recovering from the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim in June and a training hiatus thanks to some unplanned travel earlier this month prevented me from training as hard as I would have liked to for this race. But I know myself and my abilities, and know I’m ready to at least try to swim quickly for 1,500 meters tomorrow.

The site of my workout tomorrow morning, which explains why I'm feeling so mellow.

That means only one thing: It’s all over but the swimming! Wish me luck!

I’m not going to tell you yet another story about yet another reluctant journalist who, as David Carr put it, “succumbed to Twitter out of professional necessity” and grew to love it despite her best intentions to continue doubting and reviling it. (If you want some of that good stuff, check out David Carr’s column on the topic). I do want to tell you about why I decided to change my Twitter handle from DCRunnergrrl to AmySReinink, and about how the change reflects my changing attitude toward Twitter.

I first started tweeting two years ago solely as a way to promote my short-lived D.C. Running Examiner page. I chose “DCRunnergrrl” as a handle without too much thought, and set out to tweet about the D.C. running community in hopes of luring more readers.

What happened next: I found this crazy, fun, virtual locker room full of amateur athletes sharing tips about training and races and horror stories about blisters and poo (runners love talking about the latter). I stopped writing for Examiner.com after a few months, but I stayed stuck to Twitter like glue, tweeting the results of my long runs leading up to the Marine Corps Marathon in 2009, and calling on my new locker-room buddies for inspiration and motivation.

Then, the traumatic (for me) Marine Corps Marathon happened, and the outpouring of support from athletes I didn’t even know was simply astounding. I started paying more attention to what else I could find on Twitter, connecting with swimmers and skiers and University of Colorado football fans (yes, we still exist), and finally to my fellow journalists and news sources. Through Twitter, I have found out about training plans for the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, the earthquake in Japan, and everything in between, to include Free Slurpee Day. I’m still a news junkie who values traditional journalism, and I love that Twitter can point me toward stories I may not have found otherwise—not to mention toward new blogs and new friends and training partners, virtual and otherwise. (A side note: Without Twitter, I never would have found out just how fired up D.C. endurance athletes get when you bring up lane lengths at Wilson Aquatic Center).

A few weeks ago, a colleague at the DC Society of Professional Journalists asked for my Twitter handle. I hesitated before telling her “DCRunnergrrl,” cringing at how unprofessional it sounded next to a simple first-name last-name construction.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to change my Twitter handle—but for a completely different reason than how it sounds in a professional setting. DCRunnergrrl represented a writer hiding from Twitter, using it for blatant self-promotion and never correcting the record when that goal became unimportant. At @AmySReinink, I will continue to tweet a wide variety of D.C. running stuff. The name-switch reflects that I’ll tweet not just about running, but also about swimming, cooking, news-nerd stuff and life stuff. It also reflects the fact that I’m on Twitter to stay, not for work purposes, but because—well, it’s just kind of awesome.

Are you on Twitter? What led you to start tweeting, and what has surprised you most about the site? Did you put more time and thought into choosing your Twitter handle than I did? If so, how did you choose yours?

My apologies for my recent hiatus. I’m back (at least in terms of my Monday-Wednesday-Friday blog-posting schedule), and do I have a story for you!

I’m at my parents’ place in Florida right now. This means lots of hot weather and lots of older folks, with all the erratic driving and early-bird specials the latter implies. The presence of a lot of older folks also greatly increases the chances that you’ll get schooled by someone old enough to be your grandpa, which is exactly what happened to me this morning.

When I’m here during the summer, I try to catch up with a master’s club that swims in the outdoor pool near my parents’ house from 5:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. daily. I drag my butt out of bed for the pre-dawn practice because the pool temperature is 88 degrees first thing in the morning with an aerator cooling the water down, compared to 91 degrees later in the day. With air temperatures above 90, with 99 percent humidity, that makes it medically inadvisable to swim at any other time. Seriously. You can’t breathe, and wonder if it’s possible to literally cook your skin in water that warm.

So there I was this morning, already red-faced and hot after my warmup. I was splitting a lane with an older gentleman swimming with a pull buoy, and he stopped to ask if I felt OK. He told me he likes the water that warm, and I thought to myself: “Of course you do. You’re 900 years old.”

“Too bad you won’t be here tomorrow,” he told me. “We’re doing 58 100’s for the coach’s 58th birthday.”

I made a face that involved grimacing, laughing maniacally and fighting nausea all at the same time. My lane partner laughed.

“So I guess that means you’re glad you missed the 72 100’s we did for my last birthday?”

I went back to my workout impressed and inspired, focused less on the hot water and thick air and more on the awesome people around me and beautiful sunrise above me.

My iPhone photo doesn't do justice to the Florida sunrise I saw at the pool this morning—but it gives you an idea.

Today, I’m motivated by the idea that someone old enough to be my parent or grandparent is out there kicking butt, which means it’s possible for me to do the same when I’m that age. My morning dose of motivation comes as Olympic swimmer Janet Evans attempts a comeback to rival Dara Torres’, and as endurance swimmer Diana Nyad attempts to swim the Florida Straits, starting last night. Check out her training plan here.

Before the swim, 61-year-old Nyad said she hoped her swim would inspire the rest of us schlubs to continue challenging ourselves and pushing for our dreams throughout our lives. “I also want it to be a moment for thousands, and I dare say millions of people my age, who are going to look and say, ’60!'” she reportedly said.

By the way, I’m also motivated by what’s coming up this weekend: My swim leg of the Killer Honey Badgers triathlon relay team at the Luray International Triathlon!

What’s motivating you this week?