Dirty Inspirations

Mindfulness is being attentive to and aware of the present moment. As westerners we may hear the word ‘mindfulness’ and conjure up images of candles or incense burning by chanting monks in maroon robes. Though mindfulness is the basis for the teaching of meditation in Buddhism it is not solely a religious concept but rather a means to a focused, aware and powerful mind in everything we do. Even the most learned Buddhist teacher will tell you that one need not study the dharma to realize the immense value gained from regular mindfulness practice.

Research has shown that training mindfulness can offer a variety of outcomes toward well being on many levels. In fact many practitioners of western psychology use mindfulness to aid in alleviating a variety of mental and physical disorders. And since concentration, laser focus and a clear mind are key components to peak athletic performances, sport psychologists regularly use a variety of methods to generate attentive focus for athletes—they just traditionally call it something besides mindfulness.

With consistent mindful training athletes can improve focus, heighten mental clarity and therefore improve efficiency and safety when we train and race. Mindfulness training helps us negotiate stress under pressure while increasing our ability to adapt to change—we can learn to respond rather than react. In all this we strengthen our confidence while generating a quiet, powerful mind.

Any elite endurance athlete will tell you that the ultimate satisfaction in their sport comes during that rare race or training session when the world drops away around them and the mental effort exude is nil. Some happen upon these experiences because they are aware enough, and they’ve put in just enough hours training or have spent just enough money on races that the odds are they’ll hit the jackpot at some point. But consistent satisfying experiences will come more easily if we train our minds to be present and focused. If we want to run faster we have to train our speed. If we want to run faster consistently while truly savoring each effort and experience—we have to train our mind.

My experiences as an athlete in this process have been memorable and life changing and as a coach and consultant I want you to experience them too! I

Meditation and yoga pavilion at Land of Medicine Buddha, Soquel, CA

consult with athletes regularly on their mental training processes and am over-the-top excited to be offering Mindful Running: Trail Running, Meditation and Yoga Retreat this September. Launch your running (and your mind!) with a unique retreat experience in the ultimate peaceful setting.

I’ll be chatting more on this topic on my blog so stay tuned. I’d love to hear about your experiences with mindful training, meditation or other techniques that have enhanced your racing experiences. Do share!

Back at you,

Terri

After basking in your post-season confidence and doing a bit of playing in the off-season, what the heck are you supposed to do next? There are a myriad of ways to organize your off-season time through recovery, playtime, and building your next season. In looking ahead, you may decide to refine your skill and speed to master shorter distance races or take your racing off-road. You can up the ante in distance, or create a combination of the above.

In the Northern Hemisphere, most endurance racing seasons run from March through October, with a few early- or late-season races sprinkled in. Most athletes in these areas will train for an early-spring start to their season and add races or events throughout the summer. Their most important, or A race, may lie near the middle or end of the season. But whichever way you slice your season, there will generally be challenging, focused periods when you are hitting your build-recovery cycles of training spot-on. These will be the most stressful times of your season and can be considered your midseason regardless of where these weeks actually fall in the year.

Recharge Your Batteries
After your final race in the fall, it is essential to physically and psychologically take a break from the rigors of prolonged, focused training. A consistent high-level workload is positive stress on your system. It gives you a training effect that can aid in top-level performances. But carrying this high level of stress year-round is a mistake and can hurt you in various ways.

Many athletes who train hard throughout the year end up injured, burned out, flat, or unmotivated for their first races of the season. Often they’re unwilling to let go of their end-of-season fitness as they are concerned they will not be able to return to the same level of fitness in the future. But in addition to giving your muscles, tendons, joints, and physiology a much-needed break from the rigors of scheduled training, you also need to take a mental break from following a routine.

Taking some downtime from training is healthy in all regards and is also a lesson in trust. If you can trust that your body needs a break, you can trust that you will soon be fired up again and ready to get back into your routine. By the end of the season, you’ve worn your batteries down a bit. You need to recharge your mental and physical capacity for work. Trust in the time needed to recharge, and you’ll come back even stronger than you were at end of last season.

So forget all the worry surrounding your off-season recovery time and go out and play! Allow yourself to let go of definitive structure in your training, and the result will be a fresh, hungry, and rested mind and body.

The length of play or recovery time needed is dependent on the races in which you participated during your season and the training time devoted to those races. The longer the events and your season, the more recovery time might be needed. In general, after a full season of racing several or more events, settle into two to four weeks of playtime. If you really desire to train during this time, do. Go for a short jog or easy spin on the bike. But if the thought of a long ride or jumping in the pool makes you cringe, then don’t.

Play, Play, Play
During off-season recovery time, allow yourself to play in activities that are not a part of your regular training regime. Take the rock climbing class you’ve been eyeing. Get back in your kayak a couple times a week, or dust off your mountain bike and hit the trails. Pull out the snowshoes or take a cross-country ski lesson. Try your first cyclocross race or yoga class.

This is also an excellent time to do some “spring cleaning” in your life—catch up on personal projects, clean out your closet or filing cabinet, read a book, or engage in other hobbies you can’t squeeze in while in full training mode.

Sleep in! Or enjoy those extra few minutes of being awake when you climb into bed to catch up on some reading or time with your spouse, as well as the blissful moments between the sheets each morning to rest your body and mind.
During the second or third week of your recovery, look for the spark to ignite. It’s the first sign to rekindle the fire. You may notice that your energy is coming back or that you have lost energy due to lack of training. You may notice that you are starting to think about racing again next year, or that you have lost interest because you are feeling fat and lazy. These are all signs to get the process flowing again and start looking forward to moving and organizing the events in which you wish to participate.

To get the fire brewing again, you may need a kick start to stir things up again. Sign up for a 10K, 100K fun ride, swim lessons, or that next season Ironman or ultra running race. If recovery doesn’t do it—the act of laying down some cash toward a goal will definitely ignite you.

In a continued era of ‘mechanization’ of fitness with more strength training gadgets than out of work Americans, I am a huge fan of taking strength work back to the basics. One way to do this is to implement some overall body exercises using plyometrics, push ups, and ab crunches, prior to, during, or after your endurance workout. These can be done…wherever you happen to end up and at no additional gym or personal training costs!

In short, Plyometrics exercises can promote reflex power through a broader range of motion than that which most endurance athletes experience. They help maximize power in the stretching and shortening cycle of a muscle or muscle group. The balance/strength aspect of the movements allows for the development of overall movement efficiency. These exercises also train an athlete to absorb shock better and therefore define and redefine resiliency in the joints and soft tissue.

Here are three basic plyometric exercises to get you started. Below I’ll explain how to you can place these in an overall strength training/running program on the go.

1. Walking Lunges – This would be considered a warm-up to the more dynamic exercises: Step out with your right foot far enough in front of you so that you can go into a 90 degree bend with that leg and still keep the knee over the heel. Lunge down with your left leg only slightly bent behind you, until your left knee almost touches the ground. Lift body up and over the right foot and step out in the same manner with the left foot without pause. Use arms as needed for power and balance while keeping the focus of the exercise in the quad and glutes.
2. Standing Jumps – Stand in place with your arms at your side. Squat down and jump in place while trying to bring your knees up to your chest. As your feet touch the ground after each jump go directly into the next jump. Use your arms as needed for power and balance.  The set is done when all reps are completed repeatedly without pause.
3. Side Shuffle Lunges – Step to the side with your right foot, feet slightly wider than shoulder width, then go into a full squat, arms will naturally want to move to the front of your body. Stand up while shuffling your feet to the right, moving the left foot to where the right foot was and placing the right foot another several feet to the side. Squat again, lift body, shuffle to the side and repeat the motion. A full set is a continuous motion of squatting, lifting, and sliding until the set is complete. Alternate leading legs on each set.

Sample Strength Training on the Run workout:

Run easy for 10 minutes.

End up at a staircase that takes you at least 1 minute to run up.

Do 3 repeats up the stairs.

Then do the following:

1×10 Walking Lunges

1×10 push ups

1×10 Side Shuffle Lunges

30 Ab crunches

Run easy for 20 minutes.

End up at a staircase that takes you at least 1 minute to run up.

Do 3 repeats up the stairs.

Then do the following:

1×10 Walking Lunges

1×10 push ups

1×10 Standing Jumps

30 Ab crunches

Run easy for 20 minutes.

End up at a staircase that takes you at least 1 minute to run up.

Do 3 repeats up the stairs.

Then do the following:

1×10 Walking Lunges

1×10 push ups

1×10 Standing Jumps

30 Ab crunches

1×10 Side Shuffle Lunges

Run easy for 10 minutes.

Only do this workout 1x per week. You can do the strength specific work 1-2 additional times per week on non-consecutive days. Start out doing each exercise (except the ab crunches) at 10 reps each set, after a couple weeks increase to 15 reps and then 20.

If done properly, you will get sore your first week! These exercises can be combined with any sport specific training program and over several weeks you will start to notice an increase in strength and resiliency.

A sprint-distance triathlon or a 10K road race are wonderfully concise distances to race. Why go longer? International-distance events or half marathons are plenty long enough to earn you that post-race stack of pancakes—why up the ante to half-Ironman or marathon—or even more obscure—a trail ultra? There are countless happy athletes who focus their time and money on shorter distance races, and if you are new to a sport, staying short to gain some experience or refine your speed makes sense. As a long-time client and short-course triathlon specialist, Sherri points out, “In a shorter triathlon, you can zip through, have fun without all the excessive wear and tear on life and limb, and still have a great sense of accomplishment.” If going short excites you, then there is no point in upping the ante, especially if you are doing it because everyone else is doing it—not a good enough reason. The key is to choosing any race distance is to hone in on the length that beckons you in an intelligent and methodical manner.

But if the desire to go longer does pull at you, you may be sensing that there just might be more than you can imagine waiting at that finish line. Just as Greg Crouch recognized when faced with climbing in one of the harshest environments on earth, “There remains so much that I do not know.” An ultra-distance triathlete may ponder the same when toeing the line of an Ironman event. If part of what you seek is a knowing of self, then longer distance events may be the perfect medium to nurture that desire for depth.

But don’t dive in without gaining inventory on whether you are ready to dive in! There are many factors to consider when upping your distance ante. Stay tuned for my next blog post and we’ll ponder those together.

Enroute to my Kona PR (9:29) and 4th woman in '92. My fist went up just as I saw my time on the finish clock.

In order to sustain your pace in a triathlon, you first need to know what pace you want to sustain! Track workouts are about learning pace as well as learning to run fast with efficient form. When you start the run of a triathlon, do you know what pace you are running? If not, you should work diligently on this process. Integrate pace into your mind as well as your body and remember what each pace feels like (don’t just rely on your HR monitor!).

This was a benchmark workout for me prior to an Ironman race. When all of my other training was in place and I nailed this workout while feeling completely in control, I gained huge confidence in knowing I was on target to run a strong Ironman marathon—and most often I was correct. The benchmark was not in obtaining speed but in sustaining the overall effort and hitting my pace right on.

*        1.5 mile warm up at 70% of max

*        10 minutes of stretching

*        8 strides (100 yards striding or building speed up to a sprint; 100 yards easy jog)

*        2 x 2 miles: within each 2 mile, alternate between a 400 at a pace 1 minute-per-mile slower than your 10K pace and a 400 at 10K race pace. Recover with 5 minutes of easy walking and repeat. For example, I would run my first 400 at a 7-minute-per-mile pace, the next 400 at a 6-minute-per-mile pace, recover and repeat.

If you are training for a sprint- or an international-distance triathlon, try starting out with 2 x 1mile as your main set executed in the same manner describe above. Over time increase to 3 or 4 x 1 mile. Always end this workout with a 1{en}2 mile cool down at 70 percent of max.

As your fitness increases, challenge yourself by decreasing the pace over time. Learn to love this workout by starting out at a reasonable pace for the faster quarters.

This workout requires you to know your goal paces—rock solid. Know the pace you are able to and desire to run, and train it. Memorize it. Know it in your sleep. Training for pace is about fine-tuning your inner running clock. This skill is invaluable, and this workout helps you dial in that clock.

photo by Steve Goodman

In order to swim in a straight line in open water, you need to sight off of objects in line with the direction you are moving. When you are in the water, your ability to see and your awareness of your surroundings is diminished, so it takes a concerted effort to gain vision. Many swimmers have an imbalance in their swim stroke, which may cause them to veer to one side when they don’t have a black line to reference. Some triathletes swim in circles due to pulling stronger with one side of their body. If you notice this in your open water experience, have a coach assess your swim stroke to work on balancing out your stroke. In addition, learn to sight consistently in open water to keep yourself on track.

Sighting requires you to know what object you are moving toward—a buoy, boat, or something on shore that is in line with your swim direction. Once you know what you are heading toward, you can count—ten or more strokes—and then pop your head up for a peek, or swim one or two head-up strokes to lock eyes on your desired destination. When you see your objective, count another cycle of strokes before you peek again. Some need to sight after just a few strokes in order to keep their line. Practice in open water to determine what works best to keep you going straight.

Once you get your count-and-peek technique down, you’ll execute it without disrupting the timing of your stroke. While swimming in swell or chop, you may need to take your quick peek a couple times in a row before you spot your objective.

If you are swimming in a group or drafting another swimmer, do not assume that your swim companions are going in the correct direction. Continue to sight as you would if you were swimming solo. If the swimmer giving you a really great draft starts to head off in the wrong direction, abort your draft partner and move toward your objective. Sight in this manner with regularity, and you will always swim straight.

I’ll be hosting a 5-Week Open Water Swim Clinic starting on July 24^th. We’ll be covering MANY topics relevant to open water and ocean swimming including sighting. You can get more information on this clinic HERE

photography by Steve Goodman

When putting together a triathlon training program, there are several facets of life to consider. Look at your weekly and monthly life agenda and then decide how much additional time you wish to devote to your training program. Your life agenda may include work, family time, hobbies, classes and study time, socializing, and relaxing.

Avoid creating a training program based on what you feel you are supposed to be doing or on what other people are putting out. In order to generate a healthy sense of balance and eliminate the frustration or guilt that can emerge when unsuccessfully executing your training program, it’s important to create a program after you have evaluated your real life schedule.

Evaluating Your Life Schedule

Look at your calendar for a month and record how you spend your time. Make sure you are including time devoted to travel, commute, study, and additional work. Schedule in time with your spouse and children as well as important solo time needed to relax and recharge your personal batteries. Then honestly look at each week and decide how much additional time you might have for training. Base the training program you create on that time. Sometimes in the excitement of engaging in a new sport, you may wish to jump to a level of training that will give immediate tangible results. Rarely, if ever, can an athlete do this without getting injured, burnt-out, divorced, or fired.

Move into your training program in a realistic manner and not only will your body and mind productively adapt to the new stresses in your life, but you’ll be able to maintain enjoyment in the process. Triathlon is a lifestyle sport and one you can do indefinitely and successfully if you are good to your body and keep your mind fresh by easing into your training time slowly.

Though the hours per week you are able to train may dictate the distance of triathlon you can shoot for, don’t limit your aspirations to somebody else’s predetermined guidelines. Athletes have successfully trained for sprint- or international-distance triathlons on several hours of training per week. These folks may need to alter their ultimate goals to be highly competitive in their age group or to complete a long-course event or Ironman race, but their goal to cross the finish line in the sport of triathlon is definitely in their grasp.

Creating Time and Motivation to Train

After you determine how much time you can devote to training, get creative in order to fit that training into your schedule. It might be easy for highly motivated people to simply place the training time into their calendar and execute it as planned, but for most, syncing training and life becomes more of a balancing act.

Here are a few keys to creating time and motivation to train:

• Strive for efficiency by scheduling your training into your calendar, commuting to work on your bike, or planning ahead of time.
• Maintain motivation by signing up for a race, scheduling your training with a buddy or group, or joining a club.
• Get support for your training through the training buddy system, or training with your dog or spouse.
• Cement your commitment to your training by doing it first thing in the morning, not missing your training appointments, and taking your workout time seriously.
• Be adaptable by allowing that a shortened workout is better than none, or by getting creating getting workouts in around other appointments during the day.

Reevaluate this process at the end of each week and each month. Be open to refining it to best suit your goals. And always remember that part of the balancing act is fully accepting your time limitations while embracing the efforts you do choose to put toward your training and race aspirations.

Terri in Nisene Marks State Park - photographer steve eichner

Trail Racing season is upon us and entries are rolling in for the upcoming Dirt Inspires Women’s Trail Half Marathon in Nisene Marks State Park in Aptos. Have you been toying with hitting the dirt but aren’t quite sure how to negotiate the natural obstacles nature offers? In this intermittent blog series – How To Run Through The Woods 101, I’ll be offering brief random tips and thoughts on trail running and racing. All in the hopes of inspiring you to hit the trails this season! [Note: Most of these tips were generated from email questions I received prior to last years Dirt Inspires race]

Training/Racing Tip#1: Creek Crossings

Creek crossings are very common in trail races and with some exception, creek crossing are usually through ankle to knee deep water. When crossing a creek in training or a race you have two options: 1) run (or wade) through the water, or, 2) pick your way across by stepping on stones or logs in the river. The first is faster, the latter gives you more of a chance of staying dry. Either way you may get your shoes wet but within a few minutes the water will drain out of your shoes, you won’t even notice that they are wet. You’ll just carry on.

Training/Racing Tip #2: Counter the effects of Poison Oak

It is possible to encounter poison oak along many trails in California. If you are in a State or National Park there is a chance the trail has been groomed a bit, but there may still be opportunity to brush up against some stray leaves or branches. If you are someone who is sensitive or allergic to poison oak, we recommend that you bring some Tecnu (or other anti-oak-oil soap) to apply (and then wash off) right after your race or training run. You can purchase Tecnu at most drug stores. You can also wear long sleeves and tights to protect your skin but that can get warm in the mid to late summer months.

[Interesting Note: It is thought that one does NOT become immune to poison oak over years of exposure. As that may be true for some folks I am someone who once got horrible bouts of it and now, doesn’t get any. Whether my system has accepted the oil since the years of surviving debilitating cases of oak, or, my immune system is more solid, I rarely get it anymore.]

Gear/Racing Tip #3: Hydration Systems

The Dirt Inspires Women’s Trail Half Marathon is a Green event and will not have cups on the course at aid stations. We require you to carry a water bottle and top off your bottle as needed at aid stations. This system is very common for many trail events so you’ll want to check with your race to see what they offer, or not. For shorter events of half marathon or less, I recommend you get a hand-held water bottle or a single bottle hydration belt to carry fluids. For more info on Hydration Systems for longer events stay tuned to How To Run Through The Woods 101 – as I’ll be going into this in a bit more detail later.

If you want to try out trail racing for the first time, check out our Dirt Inpires Half on August 29. We not only have prize money and oodles of age group prizes but we cater our event to newby trail racers by making your overall experience user friendly. Come for the amazing trails and stay for the party and expo!

Thanks to our Sponsors for making our event possible:

 Division Sponsors: Columbia and Mountain Hardwear. Additional: Montrail, Nathan, Go Lite, High Gear, Road ID, Whole Foods, Fleet Feet Sports, Totally Tubular Design, NUUN, Luna, Petzl

Tiburon to Angel Island. Tony is using a Go Pro Camera mounted to his back. I'm the one swimming.

[Note: For 20 years through my coaching, clinics and camps I’ve enjoyed helping athletes learn to love open water swimming. Join my upcoming 5-Week Open Water Clinic to master your open water experiences!]

If you are new to swimming, new to swimming in open water, or new to both, you may have some fears about venturing into a lake or the ocean. In open water, you don’t have lane lines or the pool edge to hang onto or to push off of. Waves, currents, and swells create a dynamic situation in open water that you don’t contend with in a pool. In total, these elements make open water a change from what is familiar. A change can create apprehension prior to it becoming recognizable.

The more you expose yourselves to change, the more quickly it becomes a known entity. But during that process of making the unfamiliar familiar, there are some mental tools you can use to help this process along.

Do your first few swims with support from someone who has done open-water swimming (take a clinic!). Stand on the shoreline and recognize your strengths in swimming. You know how to swim. With your wetsuit on, you are a buoyant swimmer. Keep these facts in the front of your mind when you step in the water.

Take your time getting in. Notice that water will start to seep into your wetsuit once it hits the bottom of your zipper. Submerge your body slowly, then your face. Move into the surf when you feel ready to take on the waves and dynamically move through the surf line. Once you get past the shore, stop and float in your wetsuit.

Roll onto your back, let your arms and legs float, and completely relax your body. Put your head back, soak up the sun, and take a deep breath. Enjoy this moment of complete relaxation. Remember that at any time in your swim, you can roll onto your back and float and take a break–this is your open water equivalent to hanging onto the edge of the pool.

When you start swimming, practice sighting off of objects in the water or on land that are in line with your direction of travel. Count your strokes—10, 15, 20—then sight again. Take turns practicing drafting with your swim buddy, while you continue to refine your sighting techniques. You only need a few feet of water in which to swim, so your first time out, swim along the shore past the surf line if you want the option of hopping out of the water to take a break.

At any point during your swim, you may notice thoughts creeping in that feel distressing. Perhaps you are thinking about what might be below you in the water or maybe you are doubting your ability while you are swimming. These thoughts may cause some fear or apprehension. At the first notice of distressing thoughts, say to yourself, “STOP!” Then replace the distressing thought with something positive about yourself as a swimmer, such as, “I am a smooth, relaxed swimmer,” or “I get the job done in the water.” Say this phrase to yourself while watching your hands move through the water under your body. When the unfamiliarity of open water creates distress, then infuse a familiar entity. Focus on counting your strokes and watching your hands move through the water underneath your body. Think about your technique and body position. Once you count to 20, sight, then start counting again to 20. Do it again.

Each time you get in the water, allow yourself time to warm up and engage with the new surroundings. When you swim, practice counting and use your phrases as tools to dispel distressing thoughts. Over time you’ll learn to change fear to function and in that process embrace this new medium of movement.

Embracing open water swimming is partly about gaining knowledge. Review the above information as many times as needed to help yourself develop a healthy relationship with open water swimming.  Or, join my upcoming 5-Week Open Water Clinic to master your open water experiences! – Terri

Your coach is your teammate in your training and racing process. You need to feel solid about having this person on your team.

After you’ve addressed what you want out of your coaching relationship using the guidelines from Part 2 below you can peruse these additional qualities that I believe should be present in a quality triathlon coach to see if they are important, or not, to your coaching relationship. Your coach…:

*        Guides you in making your own decisions. A smart coach does not force-feed your process. He facilitates your evolution as an athlete.

*        Guides you in learning more about yourself through the sport.

*        Sees and acknowledges the different needs of male and female athletes as well as elites and beginners.

*        Can speak to your personality type. Does she talk to you in a way that you can hear her? Or is she continually talking over your head or down to you?

*        Knows how to give positive reinforcement when it is warranted, but doesn’t play perpetual cheerleader.

*        Shows you your strengths on a regular basis as well as how far you have come in your training, especially when you forget to see this for yourself.

*        Can safely point out areas that need work, while acknowledging that most athletes are sensitive to criticism.

*        Teaches you how to coach yourself during races and during the off-season.

*        Teaches you how to execute an event without having to vicariously hold your hand.

*        Teaches independence in the athlete and supports the relationship as one based on growth.

*        Mirrors the healthy ways in sport. He practices what he preaches; he is someone you respect.

*        Has extensive experience doing your sport—this becomes more critical for ultra distance events. She has been there and can relate to your experience on all levels.

*        Allows that your program is the most important thing to you and treats it as such.

Ask for references and find out what other athletes say about how he operates? Set yourself up to select a coach who will shift your training to a positive light. And in doing so, don’t ever settle for less than.