Grit: Mental Tricks

Everyone knows that being an athlete, no matter your sport, involves being both physically strong and mentally strong. That those interval workouts are just as important for leg turnover as they are for developing coping mechanisms for when things get tough. One only gets stronger, better, and faster by pushing through when everything inside is begging to stop.

Over the years, my local 440 yd (a quarter mile, or 402m) has become a friend. I know this old decaying track well. The divots to avoid on one of the turns, which lines have been refreshed with white spray paint, and where it's most slippery after a rain. This year I finally realized this is where I build my best mental strategies. It had become more than a friend, it had become a coach. While I completed my interval workouts this fall, I reloaded my mental toolbox. Each lap refreshed a familiar strategy, brushing the dust from each tool until it was polished and shiny. Each repeat reminded me of the strength within myself. It's important to get those reminders.

Rachel C. photo.

Seeing as I have another marathon next week, one I'm struggling to feel prepared to run, I thought I'd list out some of my mental tricks and mantras to help refresh my memory, and maybe one of these will resonate with you.

Less Than: One of my favorite tricks is to think about the remaining distance or time in a way that makes it sound shorter. Less than half a mile to go until I finish this repeat. I've got less than 5K left to run. When the time gets to be less than twenty minutes, I shift into minutes rather than miles. I can do anything for less than twenty minutes, right?

All PRs Hurt: Running a personal best time is uncharted territory. It's a place my body has never been before, it's going to hurt. When I made the shift from completing marathons to competing in them, the discomfort came much earlier in the race. The first time I ran with a big time goal in mind, it started hurting somewhere around mile eight. I freaked out and my race suffered. Mile eight is still where the easy feeling falls off but I'm prepared for it so when it happens, I think to myself, Ahh, right on schedule. Good job legs.

Future Karen: Even if I have the worst race of my life, only I know how much I put in and if it was truly my best effort. Sometimes when I consider giving up or slowing down to recover, I think about next week's Karen. Will she be mad at me if I wimp out now? The answer is always yes.

Don't Waste It: Sometimes it helps to think about the previous miles in the race. Am I going to waste the first half of hard work right now by quitting? I remind myself that I've laid the foundation for a great race, now all I have to do is follow through with it.

Past Seasons: Not all training cycles go well. That's definitely the case with the one I'm in right now. But looking at the big picture, I know that I've got many years of training behind me. All that experience, all those miles, my legs really do know what to do. It gives me confidence to know that I had at least one recent PR (half marathon) and that my track workouts have been faster (ran an 880yd PR) and more consistent than before.

Mantras:

Make it hurt. Taking an active role and telling myself that I'm administering the pain myself helps me push through it.

You are stronger than you think you are. This was a piece of advice a friend once gave me. My life has had plenty of physical challenges and limitations and I've constantly surprised myself. This sentence ties all of that up perfectly without getting too specific.

I like hills. Running and competing against the same people in the running club, I've realized I place higher on hilly courses than flat ones. Since I train on rolling hills, pancake flats destroy me. Yes, more hills please!

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What mental tricks do you use to keep yourself motivated when you get tired? Add your favorites in the comments! :)

Comfort Season and Changing Direction

No matter where I'm living, the shorter days of fall always do something to me. It doesn't matter if I'm hiding inside from the sub-zero temperatures, ice storms, or driving rain, this time of year is always different.

Since I live far away from family, the holiday rush and excitement is pretty lost on me. Instead of anticipation and winding myself into a ball of anxiety trying to get things done, I find myself decompressing.

Really cool clouds last week looked like sky mountains.

After a busy year, time finally slows down and for this I'm grateful. Life should and must have these ebbs and flows in order to maintain balance. I'm more introspective and daydream more in the fall than all the other seasons combined. I spend more time with my tea, knitting, and a big fuzzy blanket. When I go to the store, I often skip the running clothes rack and head for the aisles containing hot cocoa and throw blankets.

One of my reading spots. Best on sunny days.

What's even better is that this short season often coincides with the fall marathon taper. I don't even have to run. My body feels rejuvenated and refreshed and it's wonderful. Then it's race day and all of a sudden the rest period begins again. I can hole up on the couch with my knitting and tea for one more peaceful month. By the time I'm ready to start building the mileage up again, the days begin to lengthen. It's perfect.

Running through a forest of 300 ft. trees feels cozy too.

I've been thinking about my outdoor life a lot lately. Between each knit and purl is a thought. After my spring marathon (already registered), I'd like to pull away from that distance for awhile. It requires a lot of focused training and energy and I think it's time to shift that focus to include a broader scope of things rather than pavement and running in circles on the track. I have other outdoor interests but they always are pushed aside during marathon training season.

In addition, I've also been struggling with a lingering hip injury and honestly, that scares me. I'd like to have a semi-functioning body when I'm eighty, so that requires me to be proactive and change things up every so often, before something happens that I can't reverse through rest and rehab.

So far, this stuff and a lot of stretching has kept it at a dull ache.

I really love what running has done to my ability to hike a lot, so I plan to retain my endurance base, but expand it to include different activities. Beyond that, I'm mulling over a few ideas that will bring more balance to my life:

-Focus on the half marathon. Giving up roads completely is out of the question. It's all too convenient to lace up and run straight from my front door. I'll never be someone who drives to get to each and every workout. It seems silly and wasteful. I've tried to get myself excited about 5Ks and 10Ks, but when the time comes, I make excuses and change my mind. I don't love it and have accepted that I never will. Half marathons, on the other hand, have always been my true love. Less long runs with about the same amount of speed.

-Crescent City Triathlon. When I was a kid, I was a natural at swimming. I loved it and it was my first glimpse into my preference for endurance events. I could swim miles in the pool without stopping. I took all the advanced swim classes, but eventually stopped at age ten because the next class was lifeguard training and I was too young by several years. I swam a lot during college and loved that my weak arm didn't really affect me much in the pool. As an adult, I've always shied away from triathlon because I absolutely cannot be kicked in the arm during the swim, and if I'm going to lose my arm to something, it's going to be falling off a big ass mountaintop. Out of naive curiosity, I asked the triathlon club Facebook group if there was a way for me to avoid that. They explained how pool swims work. There's a local triathlon that is a perfect first tri and the swim is in the pool, almost all my multi-sport friends do it. Since my limitation can be classified as a disability, the director could probably get me my own lane and I'd get to do it too!

-More trails, but less long races. Summertime trail races are a little bit of a letdown. I sit around a lot during the summer, spending two weeks tapering in July and then two more in August for recovery. By the time I'm ready to go again, it's fall. I could use less pavement pounding and more challenging terrain anyway. Even though I love the Siskiyou Outback in July, I'd like to pass on that this year.

-More yoga? After too much pressure on my hand left me with injured fingers for almost six months, I've been afraid to practice much again. (See above RE: irreversible injuries). Adding another yoga mat (up to three now, it's almost like a mattress!) seems to help, so we'll see how it goes. If I end up hurting myself again, I might just chalk this activity up to something that I really shouldn't be doing anymore, like downhill skiing.

Zoey likes yoga too.

Enough about me. How are you doing? Do the shorter days make you feel more relaxed or do you get caught up in the holiday rush? 

What do you do to change up your workout routine in order to avoid long-term injury?

November: A Training Update

I turn the page in my daily journal and peer at the numbers written at the top of the page. I flip a few pages ahead, one page per week, and realize that the number I'm seeing isn't a mistake. After almost two months of training mileage between fifty and seventy-five miles a week, this week requires my legs to travel only forty miles. The California International Marathon really is only three weeks away!

Sundial Bridge in Redding

As most training cycles do, the taper sneaks up on me. I'm so focused on completing one day at a time that I lose sight of the big picture. Each workout gets longer, the fatigue builds, and then just as I'm about to beg for an easy week, the weight of training is released.

The real goal of any marathon training plan. Check!

My legs are happy for the break. I've got a few nagging sore spots, one in my right hip, and my left IT Band, that would appreciate more time on my cushy yoga mat and less time on concrete sidewalks.

Brooks Launch training group

Here's a quick overview of the numbers. Included are a couple of taper weeks leading up to half marathons, a few missed workouts because my allergies kept me running easy, and paces for each of the longer workouts I completed. In some cases, a race was counted as a  marathon pace workout.

Click to see the bigger version.

November, as is always the case, offered a reprieve from my allergies and nearly every workout between the first day to the taper has been strong. I had some lovely track workouts that felt almost a touch too easy.

My marathon pace runs, where I struggled in October, have returned to their usual pace and effort level.

My long runs, for the most part, have been strong. For a change of scenery, Matt, Rachel, and I traveled to Redding for twenty-two miles of bike path without many stoplights. Trees along the Sacramento River were at their peak fall glory and I spent a lot of energy taking photos and then catching up to Matt and Rachel. It was worth it.

Mt. Shasta is looking white again!

Turtle Bay

Sacramento River Trail

We even managed a few pickup miles at the end and then tackled a huge hill in the last half mile. All of the miles felt strong and I loved it.

Ribbon Bridge

Delirious at mile 20.

Mile 21.5 with big sign that says "Steep Hill"

MADE IT!

The next day I finally came down with the cold Matt was nice enough to share with me. Of course.

My final week, intended to be seventy miles, was just over sixty and I cut a few from my long run on Sunday. Seventeen miles was all I could muster and probably more than I should have done for the day. Even as I write this post, I take frequent coughing breaks as I try to hack up both lungs.

I'm still not sure what my goal will be for CIM. Barring any complications from this cold (read: sinus infection or bronchitis), I'm probably going to start out at the pace I finished with this spring: 7:55/mi. Strava also has a promotion that if you run a negative split the second half of your marathon, they'll give you a free pair of New Balance shoes so that idea has been floating around in my mind too.

Since the paces felt more comfortable and less challenging, I think that I might be ready to nudge my training paces faster again and really work hard for that 3:25 marathon in the spring.

Eleven Years

I was riding shotgun along the Richardson Highway in Alaska, miles of wilderness passing by, when I got a message to call Mom. Unusual for her to contact me while I'm out of town, I immediately assumed the worst. Someone died. It had to be. First my mind went to Grandma, who has been slow to recover from open heart surgery. Then my second thought was Delainey, my five year old cousin. I learned the latter to be true.

Today begins my eleventh year in remission. As I've said before in these yearly posts, it doesn't get a lot easier being a survivor as time goes on. The fear of recurrence is still there and the survivor guilt doesn't diminish. This year was especially hard on me and my family.

My dad's side of the family is special. One of twelve children, calling my dad's family big is an understatement. I have nearly fifty cousins on that side alone. Despite the size, the family is closely knit and everyone rallies together in a crisis. They gathered around my hospital bed after my numerous surgeries and hospitalizations and they did so for Lainey too. I'm uncomfortable sharing more details since her story isn't mine to tell, I'll leave you with this, a link to her obituary. (Warning: you might need tissues, I sure did.)

Lainey, I'm happy that you're finally cancer-free, too!

Yes to Stoney Ridge!

I'll be the first to admit that not everyone shares my idea of a fun adventure. I've learned this the hard way many times, dragging friends beyond their comfort zone and leading them through miserable hikes. Some never accept an invitation from me again. While I try not to do this intentionally, it happens sometimes, and for the record, I feel really bad when it does.

While it's rare to find someone whose flavor of fun matches mine, it's even more difficult to find someone who always says "yes". My friend Lanore is one of those people. She seems to relish the opportunity to be forced out of her comfort zone and best of all, doesn't whine about it if she's uncomfortable. Tough as nails, I could probably drag her through the snowy mountains, complete with ice and sub-freezing temperatures and she would finish the adventure wanting to go again.

Oh wait. That's just what we did!

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October has been wet. Second wettest October on record, in fact, and the coast received almost ten inches of rain. Meanwhile, the inland mountains received their first dumping of snow. Our backpacking trip to the Trinity Alps was shortly after the biggest storm of the season. Thankfully, we are able to wedge our trip into a sunny weekend between two of those wet weather systems.

In an effort to push myself from my own comfort zone, I choose a new trail. Stoney Ridge Trail climbs through a familiar area, but on the opposite side from all my previous trips. I'm excited to experience the same mountains from a different vantage point.

Since hiking and finding a campsite in the dark is no fun at all, we opt for the campground at Bushytail on Friday night. Sleeping at 3,000 ft. is a breeze and I question whether I brought too many warm layers after I slept most of the night with my 20F bag unzipped.

Saturday morning comes sooner than expected. I emerge from the tent at eight o'clock and Lanore has already gone for a two mile walk. Oops. Our first mission is coffee. As long as I keep her fully caffeinated, Lanore is a happy lady.

We break down camp, climb in the car, and make our way up the mountain. It's not long before we are treated to our first views of the day. Mt. Shasta hides behind a nearby ridge and fog sinks into the valley as the sun lifts away from the horizon.

The trail gains the mountainside with the steepness I've come to know and love about all the Trinity Alps routes. These punishing climbs deter all but the hardiest of backpackers so when we go out in the off-season, there's a good chance we'll be all alone. Perfect. I like having this place all to myself!

Once the trees thin out, I recognize some of the local landmarks. To the right, Granite Peak, the granddaddy of all ass-kicking trails here. To the left, the broad expanse of Sawtooth Ridge. Behind us are the many arms of Trinity Lake, many thousand feet below in the fog.

We smell smoke as we gain the never-ending ridge. Soon, two groups of campers come into view. We smile, wave, and take the lead. The trail eventually turns to mud and then snow and we're blazing a path up the mountainside. The trail is difficult to follow in some places and I think about the footsteps I'm leaving behind. It's always easy to mindlessly follow prints in the snow and trust they're going the right way, so I feel the added pressure to at least pretend I know where I'm going. Haha. For the time being, I can still make out the ribbon of sunken earth beneath the snow.

Then it's Stonewall Pass. Wow. The view suddenly changes and I find myself staring into a huge valley surrounded by craggy snow-capped peaks. Incredible. Mountains are best in the snow.

We stop for a snack to take in the view and then begin our descent. The snow is deepest on this side of the mountain and due to the midday sun, it's a bit icy and wet, too. I'm careful not to slip and fall, but my feet become drenched in the process. Winter always sneaks up on me and I regret not wearing my GoreTex hikers rather than old trail running shoes.

We trudge on through the snow, up to a foot deep in some places, keeping an eye out for Echo Lake, our planned camping spot. There's no trail to this particular lake but from the shape of the mountains, we can already see where it should be. The granite mountains to our east are shaped like a bowl so we head that way, assuming there must be a lake in there.

Unexpected section of gorgeous brick trail.

Looking toward the Stuart Fork.

After convincing myself that the scenery can't possibly get any better, I lay eyes on Echo Lake. Oh. emm. geeee.!!!!! At that moment, I promise myself to visit more often. Once a month sounds good. We'll see if I can carve enough time to do that. :)

Echo Lake

Perched above the lake, we can see that a flat camp spot will be hard to come by. We retrace our steps, continuing along the trail to Little Stonewall Pass. After we spot no suitable camping spots there, we retreat back to the valley.

A small patch of fall color still hangs on.

View down valley.

Another storm is blowing in!

Gorgeous evening light.

After finding camping spots that are too wet, too rocky, or too vertical, we find one atop a patch of snow just sturdy enough to protect us from whatever pointy things are underneath. Lanore pulls out several of those foil blankets from marathon finish lines and we line the tent both inside and out. They're the perfect size for the tent and are surprisingly insulating. I'll have to save this trick for later.

The next step is warming up again. Now that we've stopped hiking, a terrible chill has set in. Cocoa and soup for Lanore, macaroni and cheese for me. Finally, we heat up some water for a snuggle bottle. Then it's time to hang the food and climb into our bags to get warm.

I pull off my wet socks, replace them with fuzzy dry ones, and roll the metal water bottle on my feet. Sweet relief comes soon as feeling returns to my toes. A rush of warmth courses through my veins and I sigh. Welcome back, toes!

Lanore stays outside to watch the sunset. She calls from outside the tent as the clouds turn pink. I can't bear to leave my warm cocoon so I snap photos from inside. We crawl into bed, chat for a little bit, and then doze off.

At home, my bladder rarely wakes me at night. My theory is that the colder it is outside, the more likely I'll have to pee. If backpacking companies made catheters so I wouldn't have to leave the tent, I would be first in line to buy one!  This trip out of the tent is incredible. The moon lights up the surrounding mountain peaks. The stars twinkle brighter than I've ever seen before. It's perfect! I almost wake Lanore up to check it out for herself, but she's snuggled so far into her bag that I don't want to disturb her.

The worst part about sleeping in the snow is stuffing my feet into frozen shoes the next morning. I pull the shoes over my dry sleeping socks, hoping that when they melt, some of the moisture would be absorbed. It worked. By the time we break camp and I change into my hiking socks again, my shoes are toasty warm and moderately dry. I love that I learn new tricks with each passing winter trip. :)

Best concoction yet: oatmeal and Starbucks Peppermint Mocha Coffee.

Our return trip is earlier in the day, so instead of cascading waterfalls down the trail, patches of crunchy ice break beneath our boots. One of my favorite wintertime sounds, I make a special effort to step on the especially satisfying crunchy spots.

We stop to take in the view as we approach the top. While I'm taking a video, I notice Lanore drop her pack and climb higher. We make one last side trip up Red Mountain, snap some photos in the freezing cold wind, and retreat to warmer climes.

Returning to the forest is warm and comforting. The wind is gone, the day is heating up, and now that we're headed downhill and can hear each other, conversation resumes. Before we realize it, we're back at the car and headed for home.

It was such a wonderful adventure, I had a great time! Even more importantly, my buddy had fun too and told me she went straight to the REI website to check out some new gear!! :)

Can't wait to go again!