Thanks to all participants for making this event memorable and for all of your continued amazing feedback these past couple days! Here’s what a few participants had to say about their experience in the woods this year:

“I have run over 20 races in the last 2 years and this course was, if not my favorite, close to it!!!”

“It was a wonderful balance of single trail, fire roads and rolling hills. The river crossings were fun!”

“The location is hard to beat…”

“I love trails and getting dirty is a passion I am passing on to my daughter who ironically loves water!… I am an individual who feels strongly about nature (mother) and that we all need to tread lightly but tread nonetheless…. My daughter, nearly 4, asked if she could get dirty and run with me one day. This event has inspired me to do just that keep trail fit so we can run together.”

“This is by far the most beautiful and inspirational half I’ve ever done and I’ve done it both years.  It’s like a Fairy Tale run – going deeper and deeper into the forest.  I felt like Snow White.”

“I’m definitely looking forward to next year and plan to drag more ladies with me through the dirt! Truly inspiring day!”

In the end we give credit to all of the incredible volunteers, the pro race announcing of Eric Gilsenan, the precision organization of Penni and Tim at Finish Line Productions, or all of the top notch support from our sponsors, BUT in Dirty races, Mother Nature will always take center stage for a humans excellent experience. She’s just that good.

Continue to Get Dirty and Get Inspired! We’ll see you out on the trails…

• One of my sponsors – Mountain Hardwear’s is back with their Send a Kid to Camp campaign. For every click on the “Send a Kid to Camp” button found at www.mountainhardwear.com/givesback.aspx Mountain Hardwear will donate $1 to the cause, up to $40,000.  You can and should come back each day until April 15^th and click the button until they’ve reached their goal!
• On Friday, March 19 from 7-9 PM at Simpkins Swim Center, Santa Cruz County Parks is offering A Night of Inspiration for adult athletes. All proceeds from this evening will go toward providing scholarships to children for summer camps and swim lessons. I’ll be one of the presenters at this evening so come by and say hi for a great cause! More info here – http://www.scparks.com/pdfs/night%20of%20inspiration%202010.pdf
• Ann Krcik of  http://www.ExtremeConnection.net will be presenting at the University of Wyoming on the topic of:  “Using the Outdoors to Summit in Your Career”. She asked me and other Extreme Connection speakers to offer some sage advice for college students. Here’s what I came up with:

“Be in the outdoors regularly in order to gain ‘advise’ on what you might want to be in the outdoors. Playing, working, moving, hanging in the outdoors frequently offers us a chance to be in a medium that is indifferent to who or what we or others think we are. Nature does not care about the style of your hair, the brand of your shoes or how many friends you have on Facebook. This indifference offers a clean slate from which to create an authentic essence of who you can, are or wish to be. Nature has no agenda for you, you are required to create it for yourself. If we engage with nature frequently we are giving ourselves freedom from a contrived definition of self and over time we can truly see who we are and what our passions might be. Strip away everything man made, and you might be able to catch a glimpse of what truly drives you.” – TS

• I’ll be heading to Idaho in March as well, to inspire students with an interest in technology to ‘Do Amazing’ – using an outdoor based message.

If you know of any upcoming opportunities to inspire a kid to get out let me know and I will post them here and on my Facebook wall.  Get Inspired!!

After years of studying and practicing this type of mental focus in my own training and racing I’ve gotten pretty good at sharpening my mind at will, conjuring appropriate self-talk words or phrases in a flash, or kindly reprimanding myself for straying without placing value judgment on my disruptive thoughts. Racing can mentally be very logical and functional if you are willing to accept your fate on that day (or days), then hunker down and make the best of it, especially if one is comfortable being in discomfort.

But despite my ability to remain relevant in the face of desert heat, high winds, pouring rain, snow and pain—finding that elusive headspace in the office has never been as easy. 

It  could be because; when I am sitting at my computer I most often would rather be moving, or, that the emotional grind of surfing my favorite sites to catch up on the difficult world news can create internal angst, but I think for the most part its because I’ve trained my brain for many years to cope well with forward movement through nature and have not ‘trained’ for the mental rigors of day to day human living—until recently.  

I figured if I can stay present to my purpose with swollen, blistered feet I should be able to learn to suffer the sometimes tedious effects of organized work. So to help my cause I’ve been working on lots of types of sitting mediation (among other things) and last night we learned how to insert tiny meditations into our day with intermittent 10-15 second breath focus. One of the goals is to simply ‘Add spice to our day’. I can always deal with loads of spice and these are so fun and easy that I thought I’d share the great info! Here’s how it works:

Sit in a chair, feet on the ground, posture tall but relaxed and comfortable, eyes lightly closed. Let your breathing be relaxed and natural but as you breathe keep your focus on your breath ONLY. Don’t force the breathing, but when you do inhale be aware than you are inhaling and when you exhale, be aware that you are exhaling. Allow your focus to remain only on your breath for 10-20 seconds. After a very brief time and before your thoughts start to play in your head again, take your last aware breath, open your eyes and get on with your day. Do it again in an hour. And then again.

This is in some ways is the same manner in which we train in sport to control our head chatter (except there is more dialog involved and we are moving and in discomfort) – “relax for speed”, or in this case, “breathe for focus”. The result for practicing in both moving and sitting is a calm, yet laser focused mind, open to all tasks at hand, accepting, decisive. So if we slow down for a moment a few times a day our brain can actually work longer at warp speed and at will. The idea in both sport and work is that if we stop trying so hard and the results will happen.

Sprinkle this spice of calm focus into your day today and onward and you might even notie that “relax for speed” will happen a bit more quickly on your next run as well. Let me know how that goes! Namaste.

I have been testing the waters with a bit of jogging here and there, hiking, and backpacking (don’t tell my doc I climbed a mountain). Though I am pragmatic in addressing injuries, training and racing, I am an athlete in love with trails. Doesn’t any and all sort of love make even the most resolute athlete tip the practicality scales now and then?

Injured athletes convince themselves they are healed when they are not. On what feels like a “good” day, they will do a little impromptu trot across the parking lot to their car, overstretch or over-strengthen the area to see if it will hold up to the stress (or because they are pissed off at the injury), and of course, they do the daily body check of the injured part immediately upon waking. We wake up and our subconscious mind goes immediately to the injured spot (unless something else is hurting). We move it around a bit and convince ourselves it feels different. Today, it feels better, doesn’t it? Then we ultimately get up, don our cycling clothes and head out for another non-running activity. Though optimistic, 10 months later we are still leaving our bed each morning, dissatisfied.

This week in honor of my anniversary and my love for trails (an oxymoron) I have been hauling 60 lb loads of water up onto a remote aid station for the Dirt Inspires Women’s Trail Half Marathon. I initiated this race 10 months ago while declaring – “If I can’t run on trails I want to support other women in running on trails!” With lots of work and 300 registered runners later we’re on for Aug. 30^th. I would not wish my injury on anyone but since this super cool race is a result of my demise there will be a celebration in order on the 30^th—for the runners, especially the new trail racers. That feels good.

What also feels great is hauling 60 lb loads of water up a tough trail (after waking up dissatisfied). I’m pretty certain I was a pack mule in a past life or I am heading in that direction. Hard work feels nurturing to this sturdy body. Perhaps “everything will be ok,” or, “it could be a lot worse,” but right now hard work will do the trick until I can lighten the load and move a bit faster.

See you on race day!

Terri

(Note: The doc actually said my leg is looking quite good! – better than expected given the severity of my injury. I’m cleared to start doing more than an impromptu jog (a bit more). I think I’ll haul a few more jugs of water tomorrow in celebration .

(from July ‘05)

For an experienced ultra-runner, pacing another runner in a 100 mile trail race is like being a fly on the wall of one’s own chosen abyss of suffering. I had yet another opportunity to experience that genre of voyeurism in the Vermont 100 two weeks ago. My friend and training partner, Kevin, signed up for this race as his first 100 and asked me to escort him the last 32 miles to the finish.

The concept of “pacing” a runner in a 100 mile race was conceived as a means to keep a compromised and late-in-the-game delusional, athlete safe during the literal and emotional darkest sections of an event. Since those who run 100 milers frequently enter challenging altered states and severe bouts of physical and psychological discomfort, pacing was designed as a way to guide a runner to his destination while lowering the incidence of face plants, passing out on the trail and choking on one’s own vomit, wandering off trail into a void, and therefore not making it safely to the finishline. I summarized pacing to my rookie Western States pacer this year as, “I am the drunk person at the party who is trying to have a good time, and you are the designated driver. Your job is to keep me safe so I can party on.”

The pacer makes sure the runner is eating and drinking properly, she encourages the runner in his labored efforts to run and helps keep the body and mind moving forward positively. The pacer constantly negotiates silence and what she should say to the runner in a “walking-on-egg-shell-type” relationship in which verbal expression is carefully planned and executed.

Pacing is sort of like a mini adventure race except that one of the teammates is really messed up and the other is fresh, and the two only go as fast as the messed up one can manage. If the pacer is fit, she sees the experience very clearly, can multi-task easily, and keep pace without effort.

A pacer will escort the runner for 30, 40, or 50 miles+. This distance depends on the difficulty of the course and, therefore, when a runner is expected to hit sunset. Strange things happen for runners when the lights go out. Pace slows, perceptions change, motivation can wane and most definitely decision making is altered. In an otherwise crazy moment in a runners race, the pacer can become the voice of reason and calm during that last stretch of darkness and/or sunrise to the finish line.

For an experienced ultra-runner, pacing is like looking in the mirror of ones own usual race condition and the reflection most often isn’t pretty. As with most all 100 mile racers, Kevin struggled a bit and then a lot the last 20 miles of his race. He grew sullen, he had fits of temper, laughter and frustration, he ran courageously and solidly, he walked with difficulty and through it all he pressed on. I watched in fascination the expected demise of an otherwise strong and capable athlete. 100 miler’s reduce humans to a throbbing mono-focus and the pacer gets to take it all in with enthrallment.

The pacer observes this odd spectacle and asks, yet again, why she herself chooses to partake in this nature of difficulty. And somehow through the ache she sees something bright and worthwhile. She sees the rawness of the person, the undercoat, the warrior, the peeled away layers of self. And she realizes that this type of exposure could very well be the authenticity that eludes most people in life—the epiphany of who we truly are. A 100 mile race is a personal measurement of success that is very honest and pure. Perhaps the rawness of the human, striped down to nerves and blood and emotion is the genuine essence of self. And through the dirt and the sweat it all seems simply worthwhile and unavoidable for those who chose to live in a world of ambiguity and challenge.

Post race, I asked Kevin what was different in this race from other Ironmans or 50 milers in which he had participated. He said it was this raw pain. During and post race, he had experienced a unique and novel means of suffering. A unique and novel means of tapping into depth—a primitiveness. For him it was an affirmation of who he was as an athlete. And just a couple weeks post race—he’s already planning the next challenge. Amen.

I’ve watched many of you plan your upcoming seasons, gain the confidence to sign up for exciting new events, build your base, and see results from your commitment to training. This is the process that keeps me psyched and motivated as a coach—to see you, building a bigger you. And because I am typically taking on the same process for a compelling upcoming adventure, I’ve been asked frequently, “Terri, what are you training for?”

My response right now, “I’m training for life.”

There has never been a time when those trite words were truer.

Due to my Achilles tendon injury it has been 7 months and 4 days since I’ve gone on a “real” run. This is by far the longest period that I have not run for 38 years and it has required me to see shifts in my body and my psyche. In most ways I have not accepted, but conceded to my predicament. But in all ways I have made intriguing swings to different dimensions in my life.

Though I’d rather be running in Namibia, climbing a mountain, or training for a 100 mile trail race, I cross-train patiently and live vicariously through others doing the long stuff. I am even reticent to plan a future adventure, as having that big carrot on the horizon may cause me to push my leg before its ready. Yes, I have struggled with these requirements. Mostly I have learned that I can either remain in the struggle, or, I can accept and face the struggle while focusing on different areas of my little world. I don’t flail gracefully, so I’ve chosen the latter.

My vision is that I am circumambulating all other dimensions of Gong Longer and will come full circle in the near future and start prepping for a big novel physical endeavor (that I have already formulated).  As my good friend Charlie Engle says, some of us don’t wish to do things that we know we can do. I think for some, Going Longer requires us to toe the start line to a goal with a huge dose of physical ambiguity.

In the meantime I am going longer in my professional life, pushing forward new business projects and spending time on two new book proposals—all with no immediate financial return—in the worst economy we could muster. If I can’t experience the mood swings of a big mountain, I’ll settle for rolling the dice financially while enjoying my continued driving force toward the right passion focus for my current life. I’d like to round the bend at the end of the summer with a new book deal, a couple new biz projects in place, and ready to take on my next bout with physical ambiguity. We’ll see how it plays out.

In the meantime, if you have been physically sidelined and required to change dimensions in how you Go Longer in your life, I’d love to hear how that’s going for you. If you are solid physically and opting to Go Longer in your endurance life this season, I’d love to live vicariously through your goal!

Just as going longer requires your fuel plan to be dialed in, it also obliges you to be prudent in your early race pace. “My pace felt too easy the first 10 miles, so I went a bit faster than I had planned” is a common comment from wall-hitting marathoners.

Of course it’s going to feel easy at the beginning! The best pace for you to run is the pace you can evenly sustain–for the entire 26.2 miles. To hold this pace at the beginning of the event feels effortless, so it is critical that you are incredibly patient with this early effort. If you are not patient and not hitting your correct pace, you will not only slow down toward the end of the race, you may slow down significantly–1, 2, or more minutes per mile.

The place in triathlon where many forget to heed the virtue of patience is on the bike. Again I hear, “I felt so good on the bike, but my run didn’t go so well.” Triathlon is a swim, bike, and run event. So if you have a blazing swim and bike and blow up on the run, it won’t matter if your bike was the fastest of the day for your age group–your finish line result will be disappointing.

The longer you race in triathlon, the more patience is required. An inappropriately paced bike leg in an Ironman can leave a 3:30 marathon runner doing the Ironman shuffle on the run course. Because I have done so many long events, “patience” is one of the words I use in training to bring myself to a place of global reflection of my race. In Ironman events, patience often meant I put my blinders on during the bike leg. Being super fit and tapered for an Ironman equates to feeling like you are on fire on the bike. This is an exquisitely fun sensation but one that needs to be kept in perspective if you wish to have a strong total race experience.

When I said “patience” to myself, it would be my cue to look straight ahead and not at the people passing me. I would check in with my pace, given the distance left and the marathon looming, and I would relax into my own race plan.

The longer you go, the more you are required to fine-tune your fuel plan. Consider adding some protein to your fuel plan, and be hyper-diligent about taking in that fuel on a consistent basis. Toward the end of an Ironman, your body is moving almost solely on what you are consuming. If you miss a food stop or are late in taking in calories or water, you can push yourself over an edge that will be quite challenging to reclaim.

Create a fuel plan that is steady throughout your event–without missing a beat. Missing a feeding in a shorter race may mean that you have a poor performance and a post-race headache. Missing some much-needed calories over the long haul may mean that you miss out on your well-deserved finish line experience.

Revel in the Experience. A client who recently did his first Ironman in Hawaii had a very poignant goal for the race: “I’m so excited to go to this race, I really just want to race smart and take in the whole experience.” His main objective was to finish the race. It being his first Ironman, he didn’t know how that would play out. So he came up with a plan for pace and fuel, adapted it as needed along the way, and then metaphorically sat back and enjoyed every minute of the experience. The result: a life-changing experience and a desire to go back and do it all over again.

Going longer is a journey of which you’ve never participated. If you allow yourself to put aside all the worry and hype and revel in the extended experience of your training and the race itself, you may come away with a refreshing view of life and yourself.

Success is Relative. My personal successes in the distances that I have raced or trained are not about you. The way that I define success for me is based on my own experiences and interpretations of their value in my life, and yours need be based on similar criteria–for you.

Your distance-based successes and accomplishments are relative to your own experiences. There is no point in comparing your success to others–they do not live your life, nor you theirs. Each of us will have a definition of success that is relative to our own life. Period.