Category: running

Family, Marriage, Parenting, running

What can I blame on 40?

Posted on by kosanford

I turned 40 this summer, and now I have something new to worry about.  Ever since my birthday, any ache or pain that arises I think to myself, did I sleep in a weird way or is this 40? A few weeks ago I went for a run on a very hot day. I had stayed up too late drinking tequila and laughing with friends.  Needless to say, the run was not a thing of beauty.  The whole time I was thinking to myself. This is awful.  Is it the tequila or is it 40?

The number has become a catch all for my fears.  I have fallen asleep on the couch a couple of nights in a row.  Am I tired or is it 40?  My jeans are a little tight.  Is it the guacamole or is it 40? It’s a game with virtually no end, and in some ways it’s nice to have something to blame for any unwanted behaviour.  I don’t have to take responsibility for my short temper, or my disinterest in cooking. I can blame it all on 40.

Of course I know this is ridiculous but it is very funny to see how this new excuse came to live in my head.  There is no question that my forty-year-old hips and knees feel different than my twenty-year-old ones did.  The equipment has had industrial use; it’s entitled to some aches and pains.  Should I be gentle with myself if I am feeling short tempered or achy? Absolutely.  Should it have anything to do with me turning 40? No.

What I can say is that I now have the wisdom to see when I am getting in my own way…sometimes.  While it can be handy every once in a while to make excuses, the old ones of stress, exhaustion, or infants don’t really have the oomph they once did.  40 is like a whole new landscape of excuses.  I was explaining to a friend this new story line of mine. We were laughing about it because it does sound so ridiculous when you say it out loud.  She confided that she found herself doing the same thing except for her the phrase is “I am almost 50…”
Age, like weight, is a useless statistic unless it is somehow way outside the norm.  After you stop counting your age in weeks or if you aren’t deep into your 90’s your age is really subjective.  I know very few people who hit their stride in their twenties, but many who did in their forties.  I am, as always, a work in progress.  If I stay up too late drinking tequila and then decide to go for a run on a hot day, and it isn’t awesome….that’s not 40’s fault.  That is only proof that wisdom doesn’t always come with age.

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Family, Food, Meditation, Parenting, running, Yoga

What if we all tried hibernation?

Posted on by kosanford

It is almost the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year.  More and more I find I have to make deals with myself to get out of bed in the morning, to get out the door to exercise. I’m feeling tremendously lazy, and am unusually interested in carbs.

Thinking of my summer self bounding up into the hills and coming home for a farmers market salad is like listening to a story of someone I knew in grade school.  I can hardly remember who the girl was who had run, and meditated and done yoga all before 10 am.

My first instinct as the days have become shorter and darker, after the farmers market closed for the season, was to ignore those changes and continue on with my routines.  Getting out of bed in the pitch dark, sitting for meditation and a short yoga practice when every ounce of me longed for bed.  Forcing myself out the door and up the hill for a run, despite the grey sky and my heavy legs.  I have been buying expensive out of season produce; I will never forget how scandalized my mother was the first time she saw tangerines and cherries next to each other at the grocery store.  The literal definition of too much of a good thing.  After a few weeks of denying both the clear messages my body was sending and those outside I had a radical idea: what if I slowed down a bit? What if I actually stayed in bed? What if I did everything less…

For the last few weeks I have been doing less, much less.  I have been running barely at all, my yoga practice has been very slow and quiet.  I have extended my meditation practice because sitting feels good right now.  I am eating all the starchy foods that appear this time of year, the squashes, potatoes, and apples.  When it first dawned on me that my body was really telling me it wanted a bit of a break, I thought back on the last few winters when I have not adjusted my program at all.  I have gone at 110% regardless of what the weather suggested or my internal clock required.  Both this spring and last, I started the season nursing injuries of overuse…..It’s stunning to think I needed to learn this lesson twice. Actually more like 39 times.

None of the things that I fear about letting up on my routines have happened.  My jeans all fit. My sleep is just as deep if not deeper.  I am calmer.  I have focused my yoga practice on forward bends and hip-openers. No jumping, nothing fancy. It is more a practice of hibernation than acceleration.  I am hoping that when spring comes that I will feel refreshed and renewed by this period of slowing down.  By actually paying attention to what my body wants, by curling up with a book in front of the fire, and sleeping in, I feel like I am taking care of myself. It’s easy to get confused, to think that going full speed all the time is actually what we need.  It isn’t. It is what we become used to, but that doesn’t mean it’s what we always need. Sometimes we need to pull back, to go inward and slow down. The world will continue to turn.  In fact we may find it turns with fewer creaks and compaints right into spring……

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Meditation, running, Special Needs

Synchronicity as a practice….

Posted on by kosanford

“Sanity comes from a sense of being synchronized within ourselves.”

Irini Rockwell

 

I came across this sentence and felt like it really captured everything that I have come to believe about finding balance in life.  I think everyone has had the experience of being out of sync with ourselves.  Sometimes it is as simple as agreeing to lunch with someone when you don’t really want to, or endorsing an idea you have misgivings about.  Other times it is more complicated: it can be time to change jobs, or end a relationship but inertia keeps you stuck in place.

 

There are millions of suggestions and avenues for creating synchronicity between our internal and external lives.  For me it is a combination of yoga, meditation, and running that provide the space to make sure I am not moving too far from the center.  For someone else, it may be swimming, walking their dog or writing.  We all need something, some sort of barometer of our own wellness.  Without a quiet center built into our lives we can find ourselves distracted by every shiny object or tragedy that life has to offer.

 

When I look at my daughter I am so aware that so many of her issues arise from the fact that it is almost impossible for her to be in sync with the world around her.  This morning she woke up and came running out to the kitchen table where I was sitting quietly, lights dimmed, listening to classical music and having coffee, she let out a growl of delight at the sight of me and jumped up on the bench where I was sitting and started clapping and laughing….it was 6 am. Mae is clinically not aware of the cues around her; being quiet in a library, joyous on her birthday, or patient in a long line, are all possible only if she is in the mood.  What the world wants, is not her concern, but for her that’s normal.  It also doesn’t bother her especially if she has bounded into my quiet morning like a freight train.  She doesn’t do guilt.  She is autistic.

 

For most of us though, we are aware when we are out of sync with ourselves or our world but not always sure how to fix it.  We can acknowledge it; we can say “I am working too much” or “I am working too little,” or “I am tired, sad or depressed.”  Being aware of it is an important step.  The next step is to  define what feeling in sync is for yourself.  We must be clear on what we think balance is, before we can head in that direction.  No matter what avenue you take this requires honest, and loving self reflection. I say honest because sometimes we get confused by what we think sanity looks like, and what it really looks like for each of us.  That serene woman in front of me in a yoga class may be sane, but I can’t be her, so I have to think about what serenity would look like in my life not my fantasy version of hers.


I am always interested in how to make things a practice, so I made a list of the areas in my life where I feel out of sync.  Some are big; am I professionally fulfilled and does it matter? And some are small: it bothers me that there is a cord hanging out of the family room ceiling.  Obviously, one of these things has an easy answer and the other doesn’t.  The point is not to have all the answers.  It is more to identify the questions, and then create some sort of framework to bring things back into alignment with each other.  The first part of the practice is creating the questions and the second part is moving to address them in practical ways.  Just engaging in the thinking process about balance seems to make me more balanced.  Almost always it is the effort not the outcome that has value.

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Meditation, running, Yoga

All the good advice you ignore…

Posted on by kosanford

I regularly ignore good advice.  We all do.  How many times have you flipped passed an article about how much we need regular sleep, or tuned out a news story on the benefits of stretching? When I make a choice that I know is not the healthiest one, it is usually because I am taking the path of least resistance, sticking with a habit rather than making a change.

There is inertia associated with change, even positive change.  Sometimes, if you have been doing something one way for a long time or developed a habit that doesn’t seem harmful in the short term, you even forget that change is possible.  I was reminded of this last week during a run.  These days I am running every morning on trails near our house that stretch in every direction for miles.  Rather than turning to head back home on the usual trail, I decided to head left on a trail I had never been on before.  I figured that it looped up at some point to a road I would recognize.  It was a beautiful morning, and as I ran farther and farther in this unknown direction I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t lost.  I could turn around and re-trace my steps at any moment.  I had no phone and no water with me.  I never take those things when I run, I like to be as unencumbered as possible during that brief period of my day.

After a long time I realized that if this trail did have an ending point it was not going to be near my house, so I turned around and retraced my steps.  It ended up being a five hour run.  I am not exaggerating when I say that by the end birds of prey were slowly circling the sky overhead.  I was so thirsty when I got home that I felt like I could have stood outside with the garden hose to my mouth for the rest of the day and still want more.

It is not as if carrying water when you run is hard to do, or that hydration being an important component of exercise is a carefully guarded secret.  Every running book and magazine expounds the benefits of proper hydration.  It’s just that I could run without it, and since I could manage fine it didn’t occur to me that hydrating during a run might improve the experience.

After my adventure on the trails I decided that I should run with water and was amazed at the number of devices they have created to make that as easy as possible.  I chose the one that was right for me, a nifty handheld situation which I barely notice at all.  The kicker is that running with water is way better.  I find that I am faster and much less beat up when I come home.  Again, this is not a newsflash; just a small change that vastly improves a good experience I was already having.

Our lives are filled with things like this, things as ordinary as a tree branch that hangs into the driveway or a purse strap that is slightly too long or bigger things like not getting regular exercise or not sleeping enough.  We become accustomed to ignoring changes that we could be making in our habits and simply adapt to the situation. Some adaptations are about survival but many are simply due to inertia.  I have been reminded by this experience that a small change in behavior can yield big rewards.  Instead of ignoring the tree in the driveway, go trim it and you will feel better every time you drive by; instead of staying up to hit “refresh” one more time on the computer at 11 pm, head to bed with a book at 10.  There is plenty of good advice we all ignore, sometimes it is as simple as deep breath or a softening of the jaw.  I think really the best advice is to pay attention to your habits: are they really serving you, and if they aren’t, can you make a small change? As simple and obvious as bringing water on a run. 

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