Meditation Practice

I have very important news to share: I've started meditating again. Cue applause as well as balloons and confetti falling from the ceiling. I used to have a very strong meditation practice. While doing yoga teacher training I fell in love with the peacefulness that my meditation practice helped me achieve. I would meditate almost every day anywhere from 5 minutes to 25 minutes depending one what I could squeeze in. I quickly learned that even a short meditation is better than no meditation at all.

But when both of my parents got sick, a time where I should've clung to my meditation practice, I stopped completely. My anxiety was through the roof, and I could not sit with my breath without my mind spinning out of control freaking out over what the future had in store for my family. Ugh. Not fun.

After my mom passed away, I started meditating again, sporadically and it was paramount in helping me move through the grief process. In the past few months I've kick started my meditating to bring it back with consistency. Oh, how I missed it dearly. My favorite part of meditating, for me, is that doing it regularly gives me a moment or two to pause before reacting to something or someone. I'm an incredibly reactionary person by nature. And it's one of my least favorite qualities about myself. I really appreciate my brain giving me just a couple of seconds to inhale, exhale, and think before I react in a way that I might regret. Being an adult is hard, man.

I know a lot of people feel like they can't meditate because they a) don't have time and b) can't clear their mind of thought. Well, as I've been reminding myself over and over lately, even a few minutes will help. I've started my day with meditation during the work week, and it kick starts my day in a really great way. One of my teachers recommends sitting up when your alarm goes off, hitting your snooze button and just sitting with your breath for that 7 minutes it takes for your alarm to go off again. Give it a try! I hate the snooze button. My husband abuses the hell out of it, so I never ever use it. So instead, once he gets out of bed, I set my timer for 10 minutes and meditate away. After really cold runs, I often find myself in an epsom bath for a good 20-30 minutes. Instead of spending the whole time scrolling through my phone, I listen to a 20-25 minute guided meditation. Bliss. So just making small pockets of time really helps and adds up over time.

Also, no one can clear their mind of thought. That's really not the point of meditation. If we all waited until we were masters at clearing our mind to even start meditating, none of us would ever start. Ever. Instead, no that going in to a meditation that things will come up. Thoughts will pop up. A to do list might form. You might have a SUPER EXCELLENT AMAZING SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM YOU'VE BEEN STUCK ON. (That happens oh so much to me, and I love it.) The trick is to acknowledge that your mind is wandering, pause, and then commit back to your breath. Even if you're incredibly forgetful, I promise you'll remember the super amazing solution to that problem you've been stuck on after the meditation is over, and surely your to do list will still be there as well.

I've been using the app Sattva for years. It's a free download to most phones. There are guided meditations, some challenges and badges, and it keeps track of your meditation minutes for you if you're into that sort of things. It has beginner guided meditations and music to stream in the background, and just a plain ol' timer if that's what you want. I've heard good things about headspace as well, but have stuck with Sattva so far.

Who's with me on the meditation?? Get started and let me know how it's going for you.

Mental Toughness W

It seems like we've yet to complete a long run that hasn't been on snowy icy roads. Oh wait, that's because we haven't. The roads/sidewalks/trails have been in varying conditions of #winter for all of February and we've just made the best of it.

During our 12 mile long run, I had the chips stacked against me. First of all, Toni was out of town, so I had to recruit a new running buddy. Secondly, I was teaching yoga in the morning, so I had to make sure that I hydrated and fueled properly so that I could run after it. And third we woke up to surprise snow. What's surprise snow? You might ask. Well that's 2-3 inches of sparkly powdery goodness that was on not a SINGLE G.D. WEATHER FORECAST. Surprise! It snowed.

I remained optimistic as I knew the sun would be out and it would be warm for the run. In fact prior to the surprise snow I had been counting down the hours to my long run because of how perfect the weather looked for the run. Finally I could have a strong long run! Surprise! g.d. it.

We decided to try the bike trail, hoping that it had a chance to melt off by 1pm. We jumped on and it was beautiful. Clear, melted, a little windier than I expected but it felt great. And that lasted for one half mile. And then we encountered the unplowed portion of the bike trail ie: the entire rest of the bike trail save for that singular half mile stretch. We stuck with it for about 3.5 miles, feeling like we were running on the beach in a Baywatch episode, except a lot more clothes and supportive chest gear.

We made a game time decision to deviate from the trail and head to some residential areas. My running buddy energizer bunnied ahead of me, taking us through some insane hills on the east side of town. And after we had hit our 4th one that also was snow covered, I was moments from a temper tantrum. We had a quick powwow and then opted to run toward the center of town to a residential area we were both familiar running in, hoping that at the very least we could run loops around the road.

Now let me remind you of a run a couple of months back when Toni and I were supposed to do speedwork at the track, and it was such a mess that I ran one mile and called it a night. Remember? It was one of my more proud running moments. Well since that point, I have had a bit of a come to Jesus moment with myself, vowing to become a bit of a stronger runner mentally. Taking a breath, a pause, and figuring out a solution before immediately jumping to a reaction. Sometimes my anxiety flares up in this way that it's just easier to quit and be done with it. I HATE that.


We had to run a giant hill to get to the area of town we were going to. And on many many unplowed sidewalks, and through giant frozen melted puddles of water through intersections. But when we got to where we were going, we could finally settle in, figure out some loops and get the run done. It took until mile SEVEN of this long run to actually enjoy running. That's a long damn time to be struggling and suffering. But when I realized this, while still running, I also realized that I had stuck with it and kept going. Which is not something Jeri from a few months ago would've done. And that's some progress to be proud of.

Spring Half Marathon Training Week 4

Monday Planned: GA 5 miles
Monday Actual: 5 miles around town in the falling snow and covered roads/sidewalks.

Tuesday Planned: GA 4 miles
Tuesday Actual: Super cold, windy and -15 degree windchill temps. So I took a rest day.

Wednesday Planned:  LT 8 miles, 20 minute LT, 4 min recovery jog, 16 minute LT
Wednesday Actual: LT 8 miles, 20 minute LT, 4 min recovery jog, 16 minute LT. Such a challenging run mentally, but I nailed my paces and then some. Wahoo!

Thursday Planned:  GA+Speed 7 miles 10x100
Thursday Actual: We got a pretty significant amount of snow starting in the afternoon which wiped out the chance of a run after work. Womp womp.

Friday Planned: Recovery 4 miles
Friday Actual: GA+Speed 8 miles 10x100 by myself (wah!) around town in the snow. Three loops around town later....

Saturday Planned: Rest
Saturday Actual: Recovery 4 miles. I somehow managed to drag my butt outside at 9pm to do my recovery miles, solo. Amy Cragg's Tokyo Marathon performance was certainly the inspiration. Amazing.

Sunday Planned: Endurance 13 miles
Sunday Actual: Unofficial Jeroni Half Marathon. Through all the ice and slush and the miles flew by.

Total Mileage Planned: 40 miles
Total Mileage Actual:  39.12 miles. I REALLY wanted to run an extra mile on the long run to hit 40, but didn't.... because of all the ice and it being dark.

Weekly Reads: Release

I have had Release on my TBR pile for over a year. In fact I think I had an ARC of the title, and just never got around to reading it, which stinks because I really enjoy Patrick Ness' books. This is another book that I wanted to make my way through before the Printz Award was announced in early February. I was reading a book every 2 to 3 days to try to get all the ones done I wanted.  I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't my favorite Patrick Ness book. There were two different storylines throughout the book that melded together at the end, but it still felt somewhat disjointed. I was really invested in Adam's story, and didn't care much for the additional storyline that wove through it. Still a worthwhile read.

My rating: 3.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

Inspired by Mrs Dalloway and Judy Blume's Forever, Release is one day in the life of Adam Thorn, 17. It's a big day. Things go wrong. It's intense, and all the while, weirdness approaches...

Adam Thorn is having what will turn out to be the most unsettling, difficult day of his life, with relationships fracturing, a harrowing incident at work, and a showdown between this gay teen and his preacher father that changes everything. It's a day of confrontation, running, sex, love, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, hope. He won't come out of it unchanged. And all the while, lurking at the edges of the story, something extraordinary and unsettling is on a collision course.

Niggle Watch

On a recent long run, I felt like my body was falling apart. It was my third run of the week on uneven footing: areas of lighter fluffy snow, areas of packed slick snow, and areas of ice. My body was feeling pretty beat up from the unevenness of it all. The run started with some knee annoyance (oops! I shouldn't have skipped my recovery run after my tempo run, surely this is remaining from that! I told myself), at some point I had some icky sensations in my left low back, knee annoyance swapped to the opposite knee (shit!), during the final mile I had some discomfort in the back of my left knee (gah!), [guys, I had so much going on that I just had to reference my training log because I knew there was more that I was forgetting, this is obnoxious], but the thing that worried me the most during the run was my right hip flexor.

Each time one of these little niggles popped up, I checked in with my body, am I running with strong form, how am I landing, is there anything I can tune into better to allow my body to absorb the running impact better? And within a half mile or so, the niggle would disappear, phew.

But the right hip flexor. Yuck. We had been going about a mile and a half before I brought it up to Toni. At this point we were about a mile from home with 2.5 miles to go. I was unable to utilize a strong running form because the hip flexor was catching with each drive of the right leg. SHIT. If you've followed my blog forever (because apparently it's been around forever, and no one is even reading these things anymore, but I think writing is therapeutic and looking back on things is so important to me--oh I should just get a diary, you say? That might be a good idea! :P) you know that I am injury prone. I had a solid 2 years of running in late 2009-early 2011 where I was injury free, and since then, nope.

So my brain is hyper focused on injury. But at what point can I not be considered an injury prone runner? Over the last two years, I haven't needed to rest more than 2-4 days for something going on. That's pretty good right? I think strength training has been the biggest thing my body was lacking. Teaching the body how to best absorb the impact of each and every step of the run, utilizing all the muscles to propel the leg forward so that nothing is overstressed.

But on this Sunday night, my brain panicked. I finally filled Toni in that my leg hurt and it was freaking me out. As my BRF she is trying to teach me not to panic. So the fact that I left 15 minutes pass before I started to panic, I see as progress. :P I asked if we could stop to stretch, we calculated our options as I stretched. Would it be smart to just finish up the final 2.5 miles? I wanted a crystal ball to see if this was something that would be NBD tomorrow, or if I'd look back on this run two months from now and say, "damn, I wish I would've just called it quits that night." Which is totally a part of running, by the way, a total gamble. And I freakin' hate gambling.

After I stretched, we started out again, determined to get to our one mile from home marker, to decide the plan from there. And shockingly, the hip flexor pain was gone. And around this time I realized that we were running on a road that had melted. Oh. That might have some significance. We tried really hard from then on to to stay in that area and on roads that were more densely packed with snow, and that helped immensely.

I was really thankful that we stuck with it to get in the miles, as it was a mentally tough run to get through those pretend ouches. Have I mentioned lately that I'm ready for it to be spring??

Getting Psyched for All Runs

Lately I've had a strange phenomenon going on, which is totally the opposite of the way I used to be. Previous runner Jeri had no problem getting out for 3, 4 and 5 miles. Easy miles are doable. Easy miles don't cause me to stress out. There is zero drama for these miles. Speed work? Tempo runs? Long runs? Well those brought all the drama.  I don't know how many times I talked myself out of a workout because I was so scared to fail.

Somewhere in the last 6 months my mindset switched, and I started to get excited for the workouts, and excited for the long runs. Certainly my fitness has improved and some races have gone well, so that plays a big part in it, but I've done a complete 180. A couple of weeks ago, Toni and my schedule didn't match up at all. Harumph. I had a 7 mile run with all the strides and all the hill pick ups, and I had to do it solo running loops around Tea. And it was great! I was psyched to do it. Finding pockets of lesser snow and ice became a game within the run, and getting that many miles in around this little town led me down new roads and routes.

Then I had 8 miles with tempo miles inside. Gulp. The hardest of hard. I've had a mental block with tempo paces and haven't been able to get below 8:50-9:15 for the last year. Same thing: solo run around town through all the snow and ice, working hard to get those tempo paces in the 8:30s as my recent race paces have indicated. And it was great! Perfect! I felt so strong.

But those 3 and 4 milers? Nope. Don't wanna.

In my defense it's been incredibly cold, snowy and icy, and it's one thing to suck it up and do the super important runs, and I'm psyched that I've been able to do that. But when you're going out to run slow and easy for recovery runs, the cold worries me even more!

But I also know that all runs are important and have a place. So I'm working on resetting my mindset. But also, dear god, will it be spring soon, please?!?!

Boston Bound!

This April, I am Boston Bound! No I'm not suddenly super speedy and running the Boston Marathon, but I *will* be there spectating the race.

O

M

G


Right!?!?!

I'm making a trek out to Boston to see one of my college besties, and I had two free weekends, the weekend of the Boston Marathon and the weekend before the Brookings half marathon. I put in the request for April at work, and was approved. I was SHOCKED. Flights were booked, and here I am counting down the minutes to see Kathryn, her adorable kiddos, and spectate the race.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for spectating?? In looking at public transportation, it appears that the MTA goes almost parallel to the race route, so I'm hoping we can hop on and hop off and spectate on the way into the city.

Anyone else going to be there? Where should we set up along the finish line?

Any advice tips/tricks are welcome!!