“We need coaches to prescribe rest rather than workload, as athletes will always overdose.” —Jureg Feldman, FACT Canada

“You need to take two full rest days immediately.”

My trainer was scolding me! I couldn’t believe I was hearing this — again. I thought to myself, I’m running less, like he asked. I’m cross-training MORE, like he said. I even have biceps from doing nearly 30 straight days of workouts! He should be impressed!

I could feel my skin getting warm. I felt ashamed of myself for not being able to do more and ‘get away with it’. He could see it on my face, yet he continued to lecture me. He asked me honestly why I am afraid of a rest day. Is it because I am afraid I will lose all the I’ve worked for and gain 100 lbs back because of too much rest? I replied that that’s part of it, but it’s also that I feel this need to cross something off my list every day. That workout is one thing I know I can do, and do right. The satisfaction I get can’t be gained from RESTING.

When I rest, it feels like everything is on hold. I feel like someone hit the pause button on my progress and growth, and I’m not getting any better that day. When in fact, all the gains we make from our workouts are made when we are resting and recovering. In my case, my heart rate was incredibly high, a sure sign of overtraining. My heart couldn’t repair itself when it hadn’t had a rest day in 30 days. My heart. I need my heart! I took those two rest days, plus some.

The dilemma for athletes isn’t that we can’t and won’t do more. We’ll do it all, if you ask us. We’ll run every damn day, each one harder than the next. We’ll push it with two-a-days, always rise to the occasion, and we cannot say no to a challenge.

Our bodies will pay the price for it. We’ll suffer injuries, fatigue, burnout.

My solution: in order to be able to FEEL like I did something to better myself on my rest days, I decided to stretch really well on those days. I’ll warm my body up just a bit, and then stretch it out. I can ‘check’ that off my list and try to remind myself I’m getting better that day.

How do you react to being ‘held back’? Is it hard to take a rest day? Does anyone remind you to get the rest you need?

I’ve actually been working toward a few of them! Go, me!

One-on-one.

This goal was made to remind me to nurture friendships and cultivate new ones. So far, I’ve been able to do this with a few close friends over coffee, lunch, hockey, or running dates. It’s a good feeling to connect with another person.

Challenge my black and white thinking.

I need to not be so all-or-nothing. It does help me in some situations, but it hurts me in others… Anyway, this morning I was told I need to take two full rest days right away. I’d been working out every day for nearly a month straight, and my heartrate is showing I’m overtraining. At first the thought of taking two rest days right now scared me, and I fought it in my head, looking for ways to cheat or get around it. That’s because I’m 23 days into a 30 Days of 30 Day Shred Challenge. I can’t miss two days right now! I’ll have to start over! I thought. But, I let myself let go of the black/white decision to do or do not. Instead, I’ll count day 23 and 24 as Level 0 of the Shred, showing that I learned something during the process - that rest is as important to fitness as working hard is.

Travel.

I pulled the trigger on some airfare! I booked a trip for Tom and I to visit my sisters and brother-in-law in St. Louis on February 17th. That’s less than a month away! And I’m making plans to visit family in Oregon at the end of July. Exciting!

Now, I just have to get to work on the other goals…

Does anyone else have a problem with pins not loading or disappearing after they’re pinned from Tumblr? I realized that if you’re pinning from the dashboard or someone’s feed, these pins are being pinned from temporary pages, so when that page or person posts again it pushes pages down in their feed, and the ‘page 2’ in url changes and the image breaks.

This is less a list of ‘goals’ and more ‘things to be mindful of’, with the goal of a happier me.

Set more realistic expectations of myself. One example of this is the to-do list I make every day. It generally says ‘To-Do Today’ and has a list of things one person could expect to do in a week. I realized this makes me feel like crap when I leave for the day because I didn’t get everything done, even if I make the highest and best use of my time all day. Changing that disappointed feeling was as simple as crossing off ‘today’ and writing ‘this week’. I’ve seen this pattern for a while and it felt good to acknowledge it. Another pattern: believing I’ve gained 20 lbs in a single week and that I’m returning to my size 12-14 self. In reality, it seems that no matter what I do it would be pretty hard to get to that point again, no matter how indulgent a weekend I’ve had. Generally, my size 8-10 clothes still fit so there’s nothing to worry about. Sure, I’m a little fatter now than I was a year or two ago, but those looser reigns allow me to stop counting every calorie and clouding my head with guilt over every bite. The goal is to to apply this realistic way of thinking to my life wherever I see a pattern that allows me to be too hard on myself. 

One-on-one. So many people to talk to, so little time. I tend to avoid gatherings because being with more than a few people at once makes me anxious. But I’m good at one-on-one’s. So, I’ll focus on the people in my life that I care about and want to know more about, and plan to see them. I’ll put it on my calendar, even. It’s often hard to squeeze in ‘dates’ in my schedule, so one idea I had for this was instead of scheduling coffee meetings to catch up with people, I’m going to try to keep running dates. It keeps us moving and it’s the best way to chat if you ask me. But don’t ask me any questions if we’re running too fast, I’ll be too out of breath to answer. 

Family first. This isn’t anything new, but at times I am frustrated and overwhelmed by the number of people I don’t recognize on my Facebook page. I halfway pay attention to all these people, but at times don’t know what’s going on with my own family. Must. Fix. Weed out excess friend list, tend to family. See also: ‘one-on-one’ rule. Go play Scrabble with Grandma, have an ice cream with Dad, call my Mom, road trip to my sisters, call my cousin. I need that.

Challenge my black-and-white thinking. I live in black and white, and I’m very stubborn. For a long time I defined myself as someone who doesn’t gamble. Then, I gambled a little bit while in Vegas this month and I realized there’s nothing wrong with that. It was fun, and I’ve spent $14 more foolishly in my life. My challenge to myself is to let go of those black and white things that I grip so tightly and let just a little moderation in. I could dance in public, have a (tiny) glass of wine, drink a Diet Coke, take a week off from running, have a baby. Heh, got you with that last one didn’t I?? This isn’t an announcement (but mayyyybe I’ll start thinking about doing that.) Mostly this is about just letting myself live in the gray areas.

Travel. Pull the trigger on some airfare. I did this over the summer and it was one of the best experiences of my life! What is almost as good as the trip itself? looking forward to the trip after it’s booked. In the German language there is a saying: “Vorfreude ist die beste Freude”. Meaning the anticipation of joy is the best joy. Couple that advice with cheaper fares and the lesson is: book it early. 

Work it out. No, not working out. I have done my share of that, and it’s been my focus for many years. This year, I focus on my professional fitness. I challenge myself with new clients and projects, take on new and potentially scary challenges, continue to understand my team, my industry, and my clients, find a niche area of expertise within my industry, and maybe even fail at a thing or two. It’s good for growing. 

Discover my city. If I’ve learned one thing from reading The Happiness Project, it’s that you need to discover and define what makes you happy, and that it might be something very simple, and it might not be the conventional things that make other people happy. I didn’t understand it before reading this book, but now I do. You know what makes me happy? My very own city. History. Art. Architecture. Antiques. Old homes. The way things were. And so, I’ve embarked on a journey to tour as many old homes, mansions, museums, breweries, gardens, and anything else I can get my hands on. 

Cheers to 2012!

My top ten favorite things in 2011… in no particular order except partly chronological. And you’ll notice a theme… well, things that made me happy… and most of them are running, family or travel related. (Note to self: run, visit family, and travel in 2012.)

10. Being a racing sausage. I had a chance to be inside the Klements racing sausages for the Stride and Glide for Independence First. It’s hot and stinky in there, like you’d imagine being inside a sausage would be. I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun dancing around and being an idiot for a good cause. Ok, all the time.

9. Book club. My besties started a book club. Even though I only read 2 out of 3 books that we were supposed to read, it was awesome! It definitely made me read more, AND, it let me see my friends more. Win/win. Now I am just nervous because eventually I’ll have to host and I don’t like letting people in my house. Heheh.
 

8. Witnessed 50 miles. Marty’s, then Krista’s and Tracey’s. Super accomplishments and it was cool to be there to see it. My favorite part: the post-race hugs. *collective awww*

7. Dances with Dirt trail marathon. Basically, holy crap I can’t believe I did that whole thing.

6. Kim’s first half marathon. Together we raised $3,800 to fight Crohn’s and colitis and then we went to Napa Valley California to run a half marathon. Amazing!

5. Medford visit. Reconnected with my brother and family at a time when they really appreciated the visit. It was awesome to see them, and it just felt right to be there, like I was home.  

4. Las Vegas with Amy. Team Challenge is awesome, made 100x awesomer with Amy Kant. OMG, Amy. My rookie for evah. We giggled like maniacs. I <3 her.

3. 500 #rocnanza miles. Basically, half of the miles I ran in 2011, I ran them with my bestie Rochelle. As I write this, we are at 499 but I have confidence we will reach our goal at the Run Into The New Year.

2. St Louis Rock ‘n Roll weekend, aka Beth’s first half marathon. Wow so awesome to see Beth, Kim, and Adam. Throw in an Amy, a Nadia, and a Bob and the wonderful city of St. Louis, and you’ve got a recipe for fun.

1. Tom. I think we fell back in love, every day in a new way. I am happy to be part of his family. 7 years and counting. :)

Cheers, to 2012!

Source

I feel like this is even MORE true now that the Facebook timeline is a virtual yearbook of our every move since the dawn of time. Those fleeting status messages? They don’t disappear. Facebook has it ALL.

Apparently, once users activate the timeline (if anyone hasn’tthey have 7 days to decide what to hide before the timeline goes public. If you’ve been on Facebook since the beginning, that’s a lot to evaluate! Good grief, good luck.

That being said, I really like the timeline as a snapshot of someone’s life at a glance (or a scroll or ten). It’s going to be awesome for Facebook stalking. :)

Person 1: “Are those Glycerins?”
Person 2: “No. Ghost 4’s.”
Person 1: “Nice. I’ve actually been thinking of trying Vibrams.”
Person 2: “If you’re interested in zero-drop, heck, just wear flats.”
—
Person 1: “I’m wiped. I just did three at 6:30
then eight by 400 with 200 recoveries.”
Person 2: “I thought you still had that ITB thing?”
Person 1: “I did, but I foam-rollered it and now it seems okay.”
—
Person 1: “How was your marathon?”
Person 2: “It was okay. I wanted to negative-split and run sub-three;
I went through the half in 1:32, but the wheels fell off
around 21 and I wound up doing a 3:12.”
Person 1: “Is that a PR?”
Person 2: “Yeah. But not a BQ.”
—
Person 1: “Are you doing Marine Corps this fall?”
Person 2: “No, it’s full.”
Person 1: “You could bandit.”
Person 2: “Nah, I’m gonna do Grandma’s in the summer
then maybe do a fall half.”

Source

I can’t really explain it, but I’m going through a period of change. It’s mostly about allowing myself to be who I am, to like who and what I like and not like things for the sake of liking them, and to expand what I currently think makes me happy and find out what really does. It’s a time for me to stop trying to be someone I’m not just because I think I ‘should’ be a certain way. It’s a time for change in the form of learning to love who I am.

1. I like what I like. I’ve been listening to R&B and hip hop as opposed to indie and rock like I usually do. Turns out I really like it… in the past I’ve dismissed it, ashamed to like it because it’s the ‘top 40’ or whatever. But I do, and that’s ok. I like what I like!
2. I’m poor. I’m the 99%. I don’t have a shitload of money for … well… anything. I don’t own a home, I have a crappy car, I shop at Aldi, my idea of going out to a nice dinner is BW3’s. I grew up in the ghetto. I went to public schools. I don’t have a college degree. It’s ok, though. Cuz I’m pretty happy most of the time. I don’t want much.
3. I’m a jogger. It’s been a long time coming, but after so many months of recovering from injuries and taking time off, I’ve decided I’m not going to try to run a bajillion miles a week. I ran into an old friend the other day, and they asked me if I was still running a bajillion miles a week, if I was still running as much as so-and-so, asked what my next marathon would be. I realized maybe I don’t want to do any of that. Maybe I don’t want to sign up for 20 races this year and fill up my calendar before the year even clicks over. Maybe I’m tired of being defined by the number of miles I run. Even if I was the only one defining myself.
4. I’m a little bit fat. I look at old pictures of me, from 3 years ago when I lost all that weight. I was thin! It was fun! I was cute! But right now, I’m a little bit fat. So-the-fuck-what. Most of my jeans fit most of the time, and I’m cool with it. I like cookies, ok?
5. Speaking of jeans. I don’t have a lot of nice clothes or dresses or shoes or coats or even good taste to know WHAT to buy if I can afford to go shopping. I wear jeans, tshirts, and cardigans. I have regular, boring hair, and I don’t know how to apply makeup and I am not really sure what looks good on me, or if I can pull off whatever trend is happening, or even WHAT the trend is. That’s just who I am. I’m embracing it.
6. Considering a family. For a long time, I’ve been dismissing marriage and children as something I won’t do, don’t want to do, can’t do, or don’t deserve to do. But now… I want to get married. I might even want kids. I might want to at least decide soon. I might not be scared to take those kinds of plunges anymore. I mean, look at some of the idiots out there that are parents! Anyone can do it!
7. Respect myself. I have made some pretty dumb decisions in the past year or two. It shaped me, for sure… now I know who I’m not. I see the holes it left in me, the pain it caused, and it allowed me to open up my eyes to being honest with myself. I had to worry, I had to hide, for so long… I am done doing that.
8. Loosening the reigns. In the past I’ve been very strict about not doing the things I said I wasn’t going to do… for example, gambling. I defined myself as ‘I don’t gamble.’ But I went to Vegas this month and I put $14 on some slot machines and lost it all and it was FUN! I bought happiness. SO THERE.

There’s probably more… stay tuned.