Running into Fear

Runners should not be allowed to watch scary movies. There should be some sort of fancypants device on our DVD players that senses when we have thoughtlessly inserted a mentally disturbing film, and automatically snaps the little DVD in two. Why? Scary movies can put a damper on running.

I watched a scary movie one week ago. That night, I didn’t sleep. Seriously, I lay in bed and kept scanning my room for lions, tigers, and psychos (oh my!) for over an hour. Finally, my body won over and I would pass out for thirty minutes, awake terrified, and not be able to fall back asleep. Fun.

Well, this mess of a sleep schedule made running the next day difficult, since I was pooped. Also, with the scary movie in the back of my mind, I was on hyper-vigilance during the run (even though it was in the middle of a day so sunshiney and bright I was surprised Care Bears weren’t tumbling down the streets in merriment). But I kept imagining dark-clad figures looming ahead of me, lumbering from behind me, and waiting to get me.

I think I swear more from fear than from running, which is sort of hard to imagine.

FInally, after almost a week of terrified daylight running, I knew I was going to have to suck it up and run at night — the time change has made it impossible to skip this, since I don’t often leave work before the sun has closed his giant eye for the day. I headed reluctantly out the door, then immediately came back in, my boyfriend watching me as though i were being strange the whole time. I grabbed my pepper spray, and went out for an over-scanning, super paranoid, only-well-lit-streets run.

Despite all the anxiety, it’s nice to know I’m still going to live my life, even if I am mildly panicked. Now if only holding pepper spray made me feel better while I’m trying to sleep….

 

Me? And The Zone? Sweet.

Rare are moments when my mind is quiet and when I’m not busy analyzing every last detail of every last conversation or action. From the way I ate my lettuce at the staff holiday party to the way in which a coworker was collaborating with me to ways I can be a better friend, my brain is in constant cartwheel motion about not just myself, but everyone else. If only I could at least read the thoughts of people I am interacting with on any level, perhaps this thinking process could be less time-consuming!

Over-thinking rarely is detrimental to my work performance or in my personal life (I wonder what the boyfriend would say about that statement…). However, I’m the first to admit that this tendency to analyze my motion and be critical in the moment has a way with severely interfering with my sports performance. On the soccer field, I am a whirlwind of self-critquing, wondering if I should be in that open space versus this open space, if I should run to the ball or cover another player on defense, if I ran down the open lane fast enough, why I biffed that kick, where is the ball supposed to go during a stopped play, how can I avoid the really big guy scoring, who is open, why can’t I look up more when dribbling, where should I dribble….

Oh right. I’m writing here. So my brain gets just the tiniest bit cluttered.

Well, all that clutter got cleaned up last night, and my entire playing style changed changed. Apparently, I fell into The Zone. And I cannot figure out how or why.

The Zone is this beautiful, wonderful, pinnacle of sports playing that I had never once been privy to. The Zone is a mental state in which everything is working for you both on the playing field and in your head. You are focused on the game, moving with purpose and muscle memory, and not thinking so much as doing. Top athletes often speak of The Zone as being in a place of clarity, of seeing the whole field, of being able to feel what they are supposed to do. And the best athletes in the world tend to be able to be in The Zone most of the time they are competing.

In more scientific terms, The Zone is a phenomenon in which an athlete is working and succeeding in the moment of the game.

Must be nice.

Apparently, if you’re like me and you think too much, you’re more likely to struggle with performance. According to an article on WebMD, “Athletes with neurotic tendencies — who dramatize events as catastrophic — have more negative thoughts and a harder time hitting the zone. This intrusive chatter is distracting and results in the athlete’s ‘thinking, instead of doing,’ says researcher Roland A. Carlstedt, PhD, a clinical sports psychologist with Capella University in New York City.” Over-thinking is distracting — yikes!

No wonder my soccer performance has been suffering. Every time I get too critical and question too much, I’m being detrimental to myself and to my team because I can’t, as the coaches say, keep my head in the game.

Somehow, though, last night I suddenly felt great. I literally dribbled around people — it sort of seemed like maybe the team we were playing was a little slower than other teams, but who knows. It was as though I had ball-handling skill. I also managed to take the ball away from the other team while they were dribbling, instead of just hindering them as I am wont to do. I  managed to often be in a really good open space on the field, and hit a nice assist to another player. I even scored my first goal with this team. WIth my left foot. And I did it all while being only in the moment, and not getting down on myself when I wasn’t playing well.

Seriously, where did this come from? I’ve reviewed my pre-game activities to see if there was anything that could have helped me get to this state–I came home from work, folded an endless amount of laundry, laid down for ten minutes, ate a spoonful of peanut butter, and drove to the game. And I did sing my power song, “All the Small Things” by Blink 182, which used to my favorite get-pumped song in marching band.

Hmmm. All I can say is I hope to have many more games like that in the future. Minus the killer headache I got during the game, that followed me around for the next three hours. Still getting those darn exercise headaches. Yuck.

 

More Harm Than Good

Being interested in the world of health, men’s and women’s, my ears perk up like a fox who hears a hunting horn when NPR’s All Things Considered starts reporting any sort of wellness news. Naturally, in the last few days I keep hearing these reports about how doctors are now going to be recommending that women do not need to have an annual mammogram until the age of 50, rather than the age of 40. Their reasoning: mammograms do more harm than good.

When I heard that statement, mammograms do more harm than good, I thought, “Holy Apollo, really? What kind of badness? Are they toxic? Is this like X-raying your foot when you have it measured?” I was in the car driving to soccer with my boyfriend, and I’m pretty sure I turned the radio up over something he was saying to hear more. Cell phones be damned, NPR is more dangerous to my driving than having a conversation — I was a hungered wildabeast who had to know the latest breast-cancer prevention news.

Apparently, what the harm in mammograms boils down to two things:

1. There are false positives.
2. These false positives lead to biopsies and possible removal of uncancerous lumps of healthy breasts, and an aircraft carrier load of  anxiety for the women who undergo these procedures.

Those doctors are pretty smart, you know? I cannot wait for them to start applying this logic to other medical tests. Honestly, when they have recommended that I get that damn AIDS test, I’m incapable of having a thought for the next two weeks while I wait for my results. Talk about anxious. And they have more false positives than false negatives with those things — off with the AIDS test head, I say!

Oh, and pregnancy tests! Those are another source of concern for women and men. My heart-rate becomes audible as I’m waiting for the results of that pleasant experience, whether I’ve peed on a stick or simply had blood drawn. And again, like the AIDS test, pregnancy tests are known to provide false positives. Why put couples (or non couples) through that stressful test at all?

Obviously, these tests are doing more harm than good.

Another point that really galls me is the print-out you get with medication these days that lists all the things you should not do while taking the medication and gives a run down of the side effects. Along with the side effects, there is a comment that reads something akin to this — Remember, your doctor has prescribed this medication to you because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects.  Does not the same hold true for tests? You have the test because the benefit is great than the risk? Wouldn’t you rather have an ambiguous lump removed than wonder if you’re okay? Are there women out there who have had a breast biopsied and thought, “Darn, that was a waste of time?” when they found out it wasn’t cancerous? I think, and I speak with experience not in breasts but in other regions, they were simply relieved. Honestly, my first thought when I heard the why behind doctor’s pushing back the age of mammograms, I sort of thought they were being lazy–or is it the insurance companies that are lazy? If having the mammograms and checking out worrisome areas is not taking up significant time that could be spent on other people, what is the harm?

Granted, I realize that I was born into and raised in the American health care system, and my tendency might always be to be hyper-vigilant and over-treated (and if you add in my hypochondria, I’m a prime candidate to want everything to be checked out), so perhaps I’m making sand castles out of piles of sand here. Still though, based on their analysis of the amount of mammogram harm, any other test is producing the same amount of harm — I find their reasoning to appear fishy and be unsound.

So what is the real reason?

 

Why Are My Long Runs Accidents?

Yesterday, I awoke with purpose. Not only was I going to get cultured at the Bower Museum in Santa Ana, hit up a dinner party at my new friend Holly’s home, and also manage to get to the library, but I was going to run around the Newport Back Bay, which, by my calculations, was a six mile jaunt.

I almost drove to the Back Bay, but it’s really only a mile and a half away, so since I had run seven miles a few days prior, I figured nine miles was an achievable goal, and would make me feel good about myself. With my house keys firmly placed inside my sport’s bra (still my favorite key holding method) and my iPod equipped This American Life, I started jogging.

Having only ever biked around the Back Bay, I knew I was in for some grueling hill action, and was rather looking forward to it. So many of my runs are hill-free, and it gets pretty boring, and I welcomed the change of altitude. The run started easily, and I’d only come across one piece of roadkill — a dead mouse — when my first episode of TAL wrapped up. As 20 Acts in 60 Minutes wrapped up, I took stock of where I was, and was a little disturbed by how much longer I had to run. I had figured a nine mile run would take me at the most 90 minutes, but by my calculations, I was only halfway done running. Was I really only running 4.5 miles an hour? That was sort of depressing.

I kept running, and started on another TAL episode, What I Learned from Television. There were not many runners or bikers out on the paths, so it was a very solo journey. I only saw one person to wave at, and I did, despite my un-waving nature. As my second episode of TAL dotted its i’s and crossed its t’s, I became even more concerned. I still had another mile to go. Nine miles in over two hours? I reminded myself that speed is not as important as finishing, so I maintained my pace until I got home, to a very surprised boyfriend, who noted how long I’d been gone as I gulped water like it was going out of style.

Curious about my disturbing lack of speed, I went to my favorite running site, Map My Run, and got my cartography on as I sketched out my run. And lo and behold, I hadn’t finished a nine mile run; I had completed over 12 miles.

Oops. I accidentally ran 12 miles. How is that even possible? I had only run seven miles early in the week because I had been motivated by a lot of cookies, and I’ve been a strict 4-6 miler for months now.

Maybe, much like planning fun, I cannot plan long runs. If I do, I mentally freak out. But if I don’t, I just go along with it because I want to get home.

An interesting thought. A very interesting thought.

 

 

Eating = Running!

 

So I found something else that motivates me into my running shoes like no other: eating.

Those vegan cookies from Trader Joe’s might be tasty-delicious morsels of soft-cookie wonderfulness, but while they lack butter and eggs, they certainly to do not lack caloric content. So when six of them are enjoyed within a half-hour period, it’s easy to imagine just where on my tummy they are going to settle, and that feeling alone jetted me out the door on a 70 minute run.

Also a weakness of mine is pizza, particularly when I’m at a house party where I don’t know many people and I’m the designated driver. While the rest of the party dance-danced away on table tops and talked loudly with each other, I was standing alone in the kitchen with a giant cheese pizza in front of me (they must have been the most un-hungry group of tipsy party goers I had ever seen). I ate plenty of greasy-goodness, and woke up the next morning with an urge to run that was unshakeable until I’d hit the pavement for two hours.

Which was sort of an accident, really. See the next post.

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And see this post at Student Stuff, which highlights a photo essay I did using Photo Booth.

 

Water is to Running

That unmotivated spirit has been haunting me for weeks now. I’m still getting out and running almost daily, as well as splashing around purposefully in the pool, but it all feels like work, work, work instead of play, play, play. Even with the Dana Point Turkey Trot getting closer, I’m still not quite enthusiastically bounding out my front door, down the flight of stairs and out into the world. In theory, though, the fact that I am doing it remains the important part, not so much as to whether or not I like it.

Since internal inspiration has been severely lacking, I have been looking to outside influences for why to run, why to be healthy, and why to do crunches even if I have to do them in front of my boyfriend, and it didn’t take too long to find an idea to cling to: I run because I can, and because there are people who have had to work even harder than me to learn to run, and they are doing it.

I spent time with an old friend this week, one whom I had not seen since the dawn of time (okay, three years ago – but three years ago might as well have been the dawn of time). It was a time before I ever ran, and it was definitely a time before she ever ran. When I knew her best, R was not a runner. Nor was she much concerned with the art of exercise, the calorie content of her latte, or how much hydration she was accumulating during the day. How times have changed.

R has lost 95 pounds since I last saw her. Her BFF, T, has lost 65. If it hadn’t been for my occasional need to stalk them on Facebook, I never would have even recognized them when I saw them in person this week. R works out almost every day, be it spinning, kick-boxing, weights, or cardio at the gym. She counts points with Weight Watchers, and drinks eight glasses of water a day, Oh, and she ran her first 10K last month.

Having known the old R, it was obvious to me that none of this came easily to her. When I asked her about it, she said something that really struck me: I deserved to look like that. I didn’t do anything to help myself out, and I did it to myself. And we both deserve to be healthy.

Maybe the most motivating image I have in my head lately is of R. She was telling me about how much she hates water. She cannot stand the taste of water (and she lives in Oregon, where the water, to a water-junkie like me, tastes like liquid perfection), and Weight Watchers insists you drink 64 ounces of water each day. When she first started WW, and before she discovered the miracle of Crystal Light, she would stand over her sink and drink 32 ounces at once just to get the required water-intake over with. Imagine the thing you hate most in the world – like Jell-O – and someone telling you that you had to eat 64 cubes of Jell-O every day, even though it makes you gag, she said. In order to be healthy and stay healthy, for two years R has imbibed something that makes her feel like she’s going to vomit. God, and I’m whining about taking a forty minute run?

If R can drink water, I can take a short run.

 

Team Spirit Activated

So J, my friend who asked for assistance in training for a 5k, is about to do her last run before she leaves for Washington DC, where the road race is actually taking place. I’m super-thrilled to give another update on her progress, mostly because after a month, she is totally ready to a 5K finisher!!

We did an almost 4 mile run together last week to work on pacing — she says one of her biggest issues when she runs alone is she runs too fast. This hasn’t been a problem I have encountered; if anything, I run too slowly because my aim is to run for a long time, not sprint anything and not to get it all over with. So we worked on running at a conversational pace, which of course meant we had to delve into some conversation — issues such as what the freaky noise in the bushes was, my first trip to Vegas, her job at Goodwill, and our mutual hatred of flying were discussed, and left her with enough energy to bound up the final hill towards her car.

The best part of the run was when she turned to me and said, “Let’s keep doing this, even after the race!”

Hells yes. Watch out Orange County — we’ve got one more running addict on the road. Next stop: Dana Point Turkey Trot. I’m excited to have TWO friends to do this race with (Ken has agreed, too!), and to finally have a race to look forward to. Maybe I can break out of these pretty mortifying 9:45 minute miles and get my running groove back.

 

Hypochondria Lovin’

 

I found a lump in my leg yesterday after soccer. I noticed a bit of pain as soon as I kicked the ball during our two minute warm-up, and I ran around like it was the World Cup for the better part of 50 minutes despite a slight nagging pain in my thigh. Once back in my car, I was trying to feel out the pain when my fingers found a strange knot somewhere between my inner thigh and my quad. Even Dr. Dad wasn’t sure what to make of it when I told him about it over  the phone — is it the physical sign of a strained muscle (is my soccer kick really strong enough to produce such a strain)?; is it the remains of my fall from the bike a few weeks ago? Or, is it, as my mind leapt to initially, something growing in my leg?

Oh, being a exercise hypochondriac can be rather trying.

 

 

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If you want more health related news, check out my StudentStuff post about exercising with your crush here!

 

Runner’s Delight Asks You for Advice

There is an incredible difference in my life from when I started running three years go to the past six months; something happened that altered not only my entire lifestyle, but that actually had serious repercussions on my running, my swimming, and my biking (and every other aspect of my life, too, I suppose): I wound up with a boyfriend.

 

Having been single for my entire running career, I didn’t realize what difficulties in the running realm lay ahead of me when I changed my status from “single” to “in a relationship” on my Facebook relationship status. Sure, I have married and might-as-well be friends who cited “just not having enough time” to exercise, but that excuse did not make sense in my single days. I was working 80 hour weeks and still swimming a mile every day and running five days a week; if I had the time, didn’t everyone?

 

My wising up process was a slow one; it started with giving up one day a week of swimming when my boyfriend was noticeably irked that I was slagging my way out of bed at 5:00am every day. That was followed by a sudden lack of bicycling unless he was coming with me –it was something we both liked to do, so I felt like I was multi-tasking, and then only playing on two instead of three soccer leagues, and then only one instead of two. And then, we both transitioned from being partially employed people to being full-fledged employees; he puts in at least 40 hour weeks, and my work is relentless—I usually put in at least 50 hours, and I definitely need to put in more. With the latest change, I noticed it even harder to run, and for awhile, I couldn’t figure out why. I had worked this sort of schedule before. What was different?

 

Oh right; the boyfriend thing.

 

Instead of coming home from work and motivating myself out the door, I come home from work and find someone sitting on the couch who is super happy to see me, and says “what do you want to do?” I have learned he is not asking me what I want to do solo, but rather, what do we want to do – what are my ideas for us. Strangely, he does not want to go for a one hour run the second he comes home from work. Everything I do has become everything we do, and with that comes the responsibility of not functioning as a completely selfish being. With the sharing of all the fun stuff comes the sharing of everything from laundry, to bookcases, to time.

 

Oh time, you flighty bat.

 

I now all too well understand that feeling of “just not having enough time.” With a full time job and a boyfriend, slipping swimming and running every day has become more impossible than Mission Impossible (because um, MI was totally possible—anyone else annoyed by that?), and that is without mentioning that I lack any sort of social life. What’s a runner to do?

 

Finding balance between my priorities, my incredible need to run, and just making it through every day life is a challenge I did not expect to face, but since I want happiness for me, my boyfriend, and me and my boyfriend, it is one I am taking on.

 

I should note that I’m whining that I don’t get to run and swim every day, but that does not mean I’m not doing one or the other. My friend Sean actually pointed out I might be healthier since I’m not asking so much of my body physically, and I’m typically only doing one physical thing a day. I still aim for two or more.

 

I’m still figuring out how to figure all this out – I know I usually advise others on the art of running, but I’m curious how other people in long-term relationships, especially at the front of those relationships, managed to incorporate fitness into their lives.

 

Television and Exercise? Now We’re Cooking With Fire

There are plenty of awesome things in the world: pilots who give first-time adult flyers wings, wearing your favorite fancy clothes to work because you can, swimming in the ocean on a summer week day. But I’m not yet convinced anything is more awesome in the fitness world than this:

The LifeFitness of tomorrow is happening now in hotels near and far.

That’s right. An elliptical machine with a television built right in. I first saw one of these at the Hyatt I stayed in during my recent stint in Long Beach. Now, this hotel was sort of strange –it lacked free wireless internet, and seemed to have a problem with unplugging clogged drains, but its fitness center was what other fitness centers all around the great state of California should aspire to. There were multiple treadmills, station cycles, rowing machines, and a glorious row of ellipticals standing at attention, plus a hat rack that held jump-ropes, a line of hand weights, and  the biggest flat screen television on ESPN Sports in case your own personal TV just wasn’t enough.

I’m not much of a television watcher. In fact, I have to admit that I don’t even have television at my house – I’m strictly a DVD sort of girl, and any TV shows that are going to be watched either have to be sent via Netflix, or watched from Hulu. TV disappointments me because honestly, I’m not sure it gets better than Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls. Also, if I recall correctly, TV sucks time faster than a black hole. In my pre-running years, I seem to remember watching plenty of television. In any event, I keep the house TV free, much as I keep the house ice cream free. If it’s available, I’ll devour it, but if it’s not, I don’t really miss it at all.

My father, on the other hand, is an avid purveyor of television; in fact, at least ten years ago, I recall him setting up our stationary bicycle downstairs right in front of a television straight from 1979 and blasting the entire house with the sounds of whatever generic show he could find while he peddled. My father should have been a fitness equipment entrepreneur. At the time, I thought it was a pretty strange thing to desire – fitness and TV. Now, it’s obviously becoming the norm.* He was ahead of the times.

The screen-filled elliptical does scare the sociological side of me quite a bit—what does it mean for society, for the idea of meeting people at the gym? What does it mean about each of us being wrapped up in ourselves and not involved in our communities? What does it mean about our interest and dependence on screens of any kind? Where does personal thought come into play if we’re all busy staring at a device that offers us information?

Despite my fears, I liked the built in television. Okay, I loved it. I wound up being late for dinner one night because I was busy watching Jack Black drop it like it’s hot in School of Rock and wanted to see how the movie ended. So even though my forty minutes were up, I kept pumping my legs like I was actually trying to get somewhere until the credits of the movie started to roll. So obviously having a distraction like television is motivating, and even encourages one to exercise more, which is a notion I’m all about. Angie, take note.

I pretty much wanted to spend all day in this fitness center. Plus, it was air-conditioned. Really air-conditioned. Arctically air-conditioned. Totally bad for the environment, and totally great for me.

* I wonder if soon we’ll be doing other fitness things while watching TV…like taking an aerobics class from a live instructor while a TV is on in the background, or rollerblading** while projecting something into the distance?

** I wish more people rollerbladed. Heck, I wish I did.

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If you can’t get enough of me, I’ve got a review of Michael Jackson’s This Is It over at studentstuff!