Breaking Barriers Blog

When I posted my last blog entry, I had made a commitment to not run for 30 days to allow my chronic hamstring and glut injury to heal.  As an alternative, I decided to do only yoga and stretching to encourage the healing process.  I was frankly terrified of gaining weight and going through a major endorphin withdrawal.  At 15 days, I had only gained one pound and had not yet bitten anyone’s head off… that doesn’t include my boyfriend.

It is now two weeks later and I have honored my commitment to not run and have completed 10 more yoga classes.  This is the longest I have gone without running since I started back in my early twenties.  I am reporting that my experiment has been a big success for many reasons.

First of all, I can see a big improvement in the flexibly in my hamstrings, knees and lower back.  Instead of being incredibly stiff, I am now just stiff.  I can only expect so much improvement in 30 days after 35 years of running and I am not disappointed.  All but two of the yoga classes I took were Bikram Yoga, the same 26 postures in a room heated to 105 degrees.  Besides learning to endure torture, the heat encouraged my ability to stretch further.

Second, I did not go through an endorphin withdrawal.  One time I went for two weeks without running while I was on a European vacation and I became jittery and irritable.  I did not get that way this time.  Bikram’s challenging postures, especially in a hot room, proved to be much more of an endurance workout than I anticipated.  I now have a huge appreciation for those folks who enter and complete the 30 day challenges.  I am in incredible endurance shape as a long-distance runner but I couldn’t have completed the last 30 days in a row without becoming overly exhausted.  This was a different type of endurance.  But the good news is that instead of getting jittery, I got more relaxed.  In fact, I haven’t fought with my boyfriend for a week now!

Third, I got a complement on my skin the other day.  She said my skin was glowing.  The last time someone told me that, I was pregnant.  Now, I know I’m not pregnant so it must be the yoga.  Sweating, of course, can unclog pores and be detoxifying.  I tend to sweat heavily anyway so running was detoxifying, but, as you can imagine, it’s easy to sweat heavily in a hot room doing yoga.  It must have been the Bikram poses developed to stimulate the thyroid and other internal organs that have caused my skin to glow.  I understand Bikram Yoga will also slow down the aging process by restoring all systems in the body to healthy working order.  Pretty cool.

Fourth, I didn’t gain weight.  That gains repeating.  I didn’t gain weight!  I will admit that my calorie intake reduced due to not burning as many calories, but I think there must be some truth to the claim by the Bikram Yoga enthusiasts that Bikram Yoga decreases blood sugar levels and cravings.  Also, I noticed, that despite the lack of using weights, two problem areas (my abs and arms—especially my triceps) got more toned due to the stretching.

Now that I’ve reached 30 days without running, do I jump back into my old routine of running and interval classes and once week yoga?  After some contemplation, I’ve decided to forego running for another 30 days.  My intuition (and body) is telling me to stay on this course a little longer.  I want to be able to stretch and not feel the pulling pain in my glut muscle.  It is gone in my hamstring but not my glut—which is pretty amazing.  But, better to be safe than to reinjure it.  Also, I am very close to being able to sit Japanese style, which I have not been able to do for twenty years due to extremely stiff knees.  I have always been told to listen to my body, so I think I will follow that advice for once in my life

So the moral of this story is to try something new.  If I had not left my comfort zone, I would not have experienced the benefits of a very different form of exercise.  As we age, it’s important to stretch to maintain flexibility and range of motion, especially for runners.  I intend to be running strong well past my eighties—actually my nineties.

Starting October 1 is a 30-day challenge initiated by the Bikram Yoga studio in Irvine, California.  Am I in shape to do this challenge?   Stay tuned.

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It is now three weeks after the race run in hell—well it felt like it anyway.  It was a phenomenal hell, if I may be so bold, with the excitement of a grand, historic race.   The angels that lined the streets cheering us on and offering water sprays, ice, orange slices, and popsicles were instrumental in my success to make it to the finish line—the shining gate of heaven.  The 2012 Boston Marathon is over.  Now what.

My recovery is coming along—actually slower than I expected.  There are two parts to marathon recovery, one is physical and the other is mental.  Let’s cover physical recovery first.

I have found through my experience that my body recovers more slowly the faster I finished.  That makes sense.  If I ran crazy miles in my training (like 22 miles on Sunday followed by 12 miles on Saturday running 60 total for the week), I found I could run faster longer, but, despite all the training,  the speed still caused me to have a longer recovery.  So I expected after Boston—posting  the slowest time in my life at 5:26:46—that my body would snap back rather quickly.  Not so…

I have always maintained that running a marathon is more mental than physical.  My emotional recovery has been slow and is undoubtedly affecting my physical recovery.  Again, through my experience, I have always had a period of post marathon blues.  All of a sudden I don’t have a challenging goal for which I’m striving.  I made it—I finished the marathon.  My life is back, I’m not running for hours and hours every weekend.  Usually, a week or two later, I’ve adjusted and happy to be going on with my life.

This time was different.   I had another stressful event taking place at the height of my marathon training.  I joined Toastmasters six months ago and entered the International Speech Contest.  I don’t know which is more stressful, standing at the starting line of a marathon or standing in front of a room full of people, judges included, about to give a speech.  The timing of the contest was not ideal, but I dove right in.

I won the chapter contest and advanced to the area contest and I won the area contest and advanced to the division contest.  I was on a high.  I ran Boston on Monday and competed in the division contest that following Friday.  Double whammy.

I didn’t win the contest…actually I bonked (blanked on my speech) and then developed a severe case of cotton mouth.  Do you know what it’s like talking in front of a bunch of people with your mouth sticking to your teeth?  It was not a pretty site.  Talk about realizing your worst fear!  I knew the speech.  I was well prepared and had delivered it successfully many times before, but not this time.  I did recover and I finished the speech.  I was grateful to have ended that week having finished both the marathon and that !#X!!X! speech.

Okay, after that speech, all the pressure of the marathon and the speech contest was gone.  I crashed and I felt tired, achy and sore.  The feeling of fatigue is now barely lifting and I actually had a strong eight mile run today—the longest since the marathon.   Life goes on after a marathon (and a speech contest) is over.  The best therapy is to create the next goal.

I will be running the half marathon in Santa Barbara on May 12 with some friends.  I do not plan to race it but to run it for the joy of running.  Of course there will be wine at the end of the race—after all it is California wine country.   I’m looking forward to it.  Onward and upward!

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The damage to the body is directly proportional to speed.  The slower the pace, the less stress the body endures.  Makes sense, right?  The marathon is an extended effort over several hours and the damage is worse if the effort is too hard in the first half of the marathon—hence “the wall”.

As I look back on my effort during the Lincoln Marathon on May 1^st, I am, of course, thrilled about running a personal record at the age of 56 and salute myself and every other fifties-something person who strives to break this barrier.  It can be broken!  But I also see where I made an error in my race strategy that almost cost me my dream of running the Boston Marathon one more time.  I simply went out too fast.

If you are to ever run a marathon, it is imperative to listen to your body, especially as a Masters runner.  It takes me 2 or 3 miles to really warm up my muscles and then I can run comfortably at a much faster pace.   When I ran with the 3:50 pace group in Lincoln, I ran faster than I would have on my own in miles 2 and 3.  In other marathons where I paced myself, I had strong second halves and made up considerable time later in the race.  It is much more fun to run using that stategy as opposed to how I ended the Lincoln Marathon…in pain at every step.

I definitely hit the wall in Lincoln, but I hit it at a speed of 30 miles an hour as opposed to 60 miles an hour.  Instead of slowing down to a 12 minute pace, I slowed down to a 9 ½ minute pace.  Thank goodness I trained well and didn’t go out way too fast.

But the damage was done and I was beat up, so to speak.    I am recovering more slowly this time but I am recovering.  Following are my tips for marathon recovery.  If you seek more information, here are a couple of links to check out, one from Hal Higdon, and the other from Active.com. Here is what works for me:

• Keep Moving—After the race I force myself to walk a little before I sit and allow myself to recover for about 30 minutes.  Once the cramps subside, I force myself to walk another mile or so.  It hurts but it works wonders in moving the lactic acid out of the muscles.

• Hydrate—I find it very hard to eat after the marathon when I’m nauseous and cramped up (sounds lovely doesn’t it) but I hydrate preferably with a sports drink.

• Take Arnica—I also take Arnica 30c (3 pellets under the tongue) as soon after the race as I can.  It is a homeopathic remedy and helps heal the damage from the pounding.  I will take it 3 times that day.

• Eat Later—Later that evening after I’ve had a chance to rest, I will eat whatever I want—after all, not only did I burn about 3000 calories running 26.2 miles…really fast, my metabolism will stay at an elevated level for hours after the race.  It’s a good time for margaritas and mexican food.

• Take Time Off—I will take the next day off from any exercise—primarily because I’m limping and stiff as a board AND I’m exhausted.

• Cross-train—Depending on the extent of the damage I did to my muscles, I will take up to 3 days off and then do yoga (Bikram Yoga in a hot room) and then take exercise classes that use different muscles like step class or weight training class (very light weights).  Swimming and cycling are good cross-training exercises too…I don’t enjoy either so I do something else.  After the Lincoln Marathon, I did my first 5 mile run very slowly 5 days after the marathon.  It did not go well so I didn’t try to run again for another 5 days.  The key is listening to your body.

• Keep Motivated—Emotionally it can be tough to withdraw from intense training so suddenly.  Some people get mildly depressed.  The best thing to do is keep exercising (cross-training) through your recovery (active rest).  As soon as your mind clears, set another running or exercise goal in the future.

My plan is to cut back on running for the next 2 or 3 months and run 25 to 30 miles a week and increase yoga and weight training to improve my strength and flexibility (of which I have none).  I am mentally gearing up to start training for the Boston Marathon in April 2012—I will know if I can get in this October.   As the fall approaches, I will plan to run some other races like 10K’s and half-marathons.  My goal is to take it easy, have fun and enjoy the incredible accomplishment I just experienced.  We’ll see how it goes!

Meanwhile, there is much to write about.

Next—Is Training For a Marathon a Sure Way To Lose Weight?

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