Thursday, January 30, 2014

200 Hours


Here it is in ONE post.  The answer we have all been searching for... what EVERY MOTHER RUNNER needs to know.

How to fit it all in and not lose your sanity.

Step 1 – stop trying to fit it all in.

um.

Seriously, I did some math the other day to figure out how much time I really had to train for a Half Ironman each week and I came up with -32.

I need 71 hours for school, 58 awake hours for my kids, 8 hours for work, and sleep... I need about 56 hours to sleep in a week...  (Maslow says you need sleep as much as you need air and I believe him) and at least 7 hours a week to workout.  

And to me that makes sense.  1 rest day, 2 long days, and 4 regular days = 7 hours.

so that works out to 200 hours.

there are not 200 hours in a week.

but that's what I need.

Clearly some things have to give... and clearly there’s multitasking going on all the freaking time.  So do the kids sometimes have to watch me do homework? Yup.  All my time with them can’t be quality time.  It can’t.  Not possible.  

Do they sometimes have to come to my workout?  Uh huh.  They have to be part of the multitasking.  Do I put them first?  Yes.  Even when I'm at school... especially when I'm at school.  I put them first.

There aren’t enough hours in my day for me to start defending myself on that topic.

-32 seems like a negative number.

But, I have support.

And not just from Victoria’s Secret.

The support I have from my Wives, The Good Dr, my kids, and my friends helps me get a LOT done in my -32 hours.

I've noticed a trend.  Every semester I have a moment of despair.  This semester I couldn’t imagine how I was going to fit in my workout... and I still can’t...

But my support team reminded me I can get it done.  I just might not be able to get it done exactly the way I’ve done it before.

Thus, I made some changes.  

I ride in 20-30 minute blocks on the trainer at the end/middle/beginning of my day whenever I can.  I hate my trainer with a passion that burns as brightly as 10,000 suns... but I do it.

At the Hospital I used the stairs to climb 6 flights of stairs, 3 reps per shift, and called it “intervals”.  Each one took 6 minutes.  I was walking and lifting 400 pound patients for the other 7 hours of the shift soooo.... I figured that it had to count.
 
It count's, right???

I took my kids to the pool and we swam until my workout was done my 7 year old taught herself how to do the back stroke.  We celebrated her awesomeness together.  Did I get in 1600M?  um, no. probably not. But it was better than nothing.

My boy and I did a spin class for 45 minutes on a snow day.

Oh, and I ran in “Feels Like 8” for 8 miles so I could get my run done.

And lastly, I organized my Senior Service Leadership Project around my personal needs strengths...  The project is going to be a fitness/run group for 8 weeks of the semester that addresses all the fitness levels in the community so I can get something done every Monday.  

I’ll have NO free time on Mondays to do ANYTHING... but included in that NO free time will be a workout and it will be worth it.

My epic multitasking skills seem solid.

Pretty sure it's a real equation too.

(7 X 24 hours) + multitasking + support = 200 hours in a week.

amiright?

Thursday, January 23, 2014

An Open Letter to Mother Runners Who Are Better at This than Me


Dear Mother Runners who Work...

Dear Bad A** Mother Runners who work,

How do you do this and train?  Specifically, how do you get up, wrangle your posse, go to work, and train for a race?

I’m no novice here.  I’ve trained at crazy hours to get my running in while I’m in nursing school.  It’s just that now I’m working in the hospital in an immersion program and it’s completely flattening my mojo.

Motivation = 0

If it was 0.2 I could multiply it by SOMETHING and get motivated.

But it’s not.  It’s 0.

The issue is that I can’t run in the morning because it’s too early.  I mean, realistically I can’t get up at 345 a.m. every single day and run an hour, be done, get the kids lunches packed into their backpacks, get ready for work, greet the babysitter, commute to the hospital, work a (12 or 8) hour shift on my feet for (11.5 or 8) hours, and function...

it's the functioning part that has me crippled here. I mean, if that wasn't a requirement of my relationship with my kids, The Good Dr, professors, etc, then I could so totally do this...

And if you remove the run, have me sleep in till 5:15, so that I could work out in the evening.... well, I’m usually so freakishly tired at the end of the day that I’m barely functioning enough to collect my kids from the sitter, get them home, feed them, get their homework done, get my homework done, and get the (Laundry, Dishes, House picked Up) that training isn't on the menu by that point. 

Today I came home from a 10 hour on my feet work day and got on the trainer for exactly 20 minutes.  I told myself that 20 minutes was better than nothing, but I gotta be honest, not sure where that 20 minutes is going to get me when I'm on a 3 hour bike ride in June, or a 13.1 mile run in mid-March...

So, I need to know:

How do you do it?  

What is the trick that I’m missing?  What lie have I told myself about training that is preventing me from seeing the answer?  What do YOU know that I haven’t figured out yet?

I don’t want to be a slug.  I’m registered for two pretty solid races in 2014.  One in March and one in June.  Both are important to me, albeit, the June race is more important than the March race so if a sacrifice was going to happen it’s there... still... I don’t want to sacrifice, I just want a solution to get me moving in the right direction.

Anyone?

Bueller?

Regards,
GBA gf

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

wanting the run

This fall I rode 106 miles on my bike, in 92+ degree heat, with negative splits.

Never EVER in my life have I so badly wanted to train for a marathon. I want to run using the philosophy I used on that bike ride.

I went in on that Saturday with the idea that a positive attitude goes a long way....

and

A mantra that has nothing to do with success and everything to do with humor is more powerful than a canned impersonal mantra that has no emotional connection.  "Tom's Tire... Beer."  I know people who run with the mantra "Try Not to Suck", and other's who focus on "Damn you Miriam!" And I want to run again, with a Mantra of the Day, as I did in 2010.

I want to bring myself to the edge of death, and remember how on that bike ride, I pushed through and just kept going... even when it hurt, I wanted to stop, etc and so forth.

I am craving the aching muscles, the pride, the exhaustion, the doubt, the success, and the self confidence that go with marathon training... just as I experienced doubt, fear, success and galactically badass bike ride in October.

I went in undertrained exactly trained enough to finish strong on that fateful Saturday. If that event had been the 102 miles it was supposed to be, instead of the 106 it was, I might have even finished stronger... but there's no second guessing, because it's what it was in the moment.

I want to RUN.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

One Bite at a Time


For Christmas I got a Galactically BADA** gift from The Good Dr.  Like, level 10. On a 10 point scale.

I received an entry into Ironman 70.3 Raleigh.  It’s in June.

Also on my spring schedule, (also a “Happy End of Finals” gift), is an entry into a Half Marathon in March.

His idea is that we would train for the races together, and that it would give us an opportunity to spend time together on the same path before he goes down the 140.6 path and I go down the 26.2 path.  My wife, TMB~ Racing with Babes ~ and I are definitely making a LOT of Fall Marathon noise at the moment.

So, last week was T-9 weeks till Half Marathon and I didn’t exactly do much to prepare for a Half Marathon.

In fact, my new training plan is off to a ridiculously SLOW start.  Like... kinda not started...  (Whomp Whomp)

Part of it is that it’s so overwhelming.

13.1 – 70.3 – 26.2 and all the training in between is a HUGE amount of cardiovascular exertion.

More exertion than last year, that’s for darned sure.

That’s not to say I sat around doing nothing last year.  I did ride my bike a WHOLE wicked lot.  About 1650ish miles.  Still, riding a bike is a different kind of hard than running.  (swimming is still easy, even when it’s hard).

So tonight as I stepped out of the shower and prepared for bed, I reflected back on a very light week of fitness.  And I remembered what 3L said about her first marathon.

“I’m going to eat this elephant one bite at a time”.

It’s exactly the advice I used to get through Nursing School.  And it’s exactly what I needed to remember.

I don’t need to be able to run 13.1 miles tomorrow.  I only need to be able to run 6 miles or so.  It’s 8 weeks away, and all I need to do is get through this week.