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Thoughts For Those Who Are Often Bored Running

Running On Empty

6/17/2020

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By Issy G.

I follow just about every running outlet on the Internet, so I had always believed that I was pretty in-the-know about all things running. Sure, I might have known every stat about the top runners in the nation. But I wasn’t aware of one of the most pressing issues in the running community. I didn’t understand why some of the girls around me looked so unhealthy, or why rising stars in high school fizzled out and faced injury after injury. 
I hadn’t heard of the term “female athlete triad” until my junior year of high school. The triad consists of three components: low energy availability with or without an eating disorder, menstrual dysfunction, and low bone density. These three components wreak havoc on the female body, and can lead to long-term or permanent damage such as broken bones or infertility.  I think that it’s pretty revealing that I was clueless to a phenomenon that affects so many women and girls. In fact, around 78% of high school athletes experience one or more of the three components of the triad (Hoch). Why didn’t I know that the triad was especially prevalent among female endurance athletes like myself? It had taken me ten years of running to even hear the term, let alone understand its consequences and effects on girls in the running community. 
At that point I had gone through what, in my opinion, was the most impressionable part of my life as an athlete: my body had changed as I hit puberty, and I had adapted. My perspective of myself and others in the sport was changing as well; I was much more conscious of the other body types I saw on the line. Although I made it through this time healthily, many female athletes are not so lucky. I’ve definitely dealt with my share of health issues, but they’ve always been manageable and relatively minor. I never developed an eating disorder or lost my period as a result of running. I’ve never had a stress fracture due to a lack of estrogen or nutrition. Not every female runner can say the same.
One of the most high profile cases of the female athlete triad is that of Mary Cain. In her New York Times Op Ed, she recounts how “an all-male Nike staff became convinced that in order for [Cain] to get better, [she] had to become thinner. And thinner. And thinner.” I had grown up hearing about Mary Cain’s incredible performances, and like so many others, I had simply accepted that she was ‘burnt out,’ and that her career was over. I never questioned who or what was responsible for the breakdown of her body, and thought that this was just what happened to high school phenoms. After watching her OpEd in the New York Times, I felt as though there was finally some light being shed on an issue I’d been witnessing for a while, an issue that had really shaken my faith in the running community. I hoped that people would begin to care about the long term well-being of female runners, and not just sit in awe of stars who burned really bright when they were still just girls. I hoped that young girls would be able to pursue their goals in a sustainable way, without putting their bodies on the line. 
One of Cain’s allegations in particular stuck with me. When describing her time with the Nike Oregon Project, Cain says, “I got caught in a system designed by and for men, which destroys the bodies of young girls.” It’s not just one program or one coach that caused Cain’s downfall. Rather, the lack of regard for and miseducation about female bodies in this sport is what causes girls’ bodies to break down. Alberto and his all-male team did not adapt Cain’s training to be feasible or sustainable on the female body. Cain points to the lack of female coaches as one of the factors that made her feel so unheard and hopeless at the Nike Oregon Project. Again, this rings true across the running community, not just for the Oregon Project. According to a 2018 study, just ten women held head track and field coaching positions at NCAA Division 1 schools, compared to 83 men; for cross-country, 17 women and 86 men (Strout). I think that disparity is significant, and that with more female coaches, female athletes will be more seen and heard. 
I don’t want to come off as offering a be-all-end-all solution to such a complex problem. I know that it’s not as simple as hiring more female coaches, or requiring coaches to learn about the triad and prevention techniques. But I do think that female athletes deserve to be heard and voice their grievances with a system that exploits their successes and then discards them when their bodies begin to break down. Cain’s story resonated with so many women in the running community, including myself. She helped to expose the flaws in the system, and has demonstrated how the stories that we tell can help to enact tangible, positive change in the running community. As I enter a more intense phase in my running career, I do so with hope. I believe in this sport and the running community to continue the narrative that Cain started. I believe that we can teach sustainability and health. And I believe that we can get really fast, on our own terms.   









Works Cited
Hoch, Anne Z et al. "Prevalence of the female athlete triad in high school
     athletes and sedentary students." Clinical journal of sport medicine :
     official journal of the Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine vol. 19,5
     (2009): 421-8. doi:10.1097/JSM.0b013e3181b8c136 
Cain, Mary. "I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike." The New
     York Times, 7 Nov. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/
     nike-running-mary-cain.html. Accessed 2 June 2020.
Strout, Erin. "American Running Needs More Female Coaches." Outside, 14 Sept. 
     2014, www.outsideonline.com/2342711/why-we-need-more-female-coaches. 
     Accessed 2 June 2020.

​
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Running for Myself: How the Pandemic Helped Me Breathe

6/2/2020

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By Issy G.

When it was first announced that Indoor Nationals had been cancelled, the first emotion I felt was relief. Of course, other thoughts entered my mind; I was incredibly disappointed to hear that I wouldn’t have the chance to race against some of the best two-milers in the nation, or to see my friends and teammates run, jump, and throw their hardest. But with this cancellation, I realized that I would have to take pride in my fitness without proving it to others, which was a huge change to my training and my mindset as a runner. 

​I’ve been lucky enough to compete in many exciting, high stakes meets over the course of my high school career. The competition that I’ve raced against and the results that I’ve ran to are some of the best memories of my life. But I don’t think that we hear a lot about the other side of those meets, when things don’t go quite according to plan: the anxiety in the hours, days, even weeks leading up to a race, or the disappointment of a poor performance on a big stage. I’ve struggled with these anxieties and defeats especially in my senior year. Looking back, I realize that I should have been savoring every moment I had to run in a high school race and be with my coaches and teammates.


I felt the pre-race-pressure especially before Footlocker Regionals in New York. I had expressed to my coach the week before that I didn’t even know if I wanted to run in Regionals. I emphasized that I wasn't sure about where my physical health was at, but in reality, I just didn’t know if I could take another race, mentally. I vented about my frustrations with how the end of my season had gone, and how I felt as though I had to get so psyched up for almost every race I competed in that last month. It was exhausting, I told him, to have my mind constantly thinking about my next race and the competition that I would face. I was especially anxious about the competition at Footlocker, and I felt as though I didn’t really belong there because of my last couple of performances at meets. That’s when my coach told me that he knew that I could qualify for Footlocker Nationals; in fact, he expected it of me. I was shocked. I had never really imagined what it would feel like to be among those ten girls who made it to San Diego, not really. I had fantasized during my summer training about crossing the line and qualifying, but I hadn’t ever really believed that I could do it. 


My coach’s confidence in my abilities gave me the extra push I needed to make it to the line that day. However, I still didn’t really believe in myself. I felt like a fraud carrying around my Outdoor Nationals bag with its All-American patch. I told myself that my performance at Nationals was months ago, and that I hadn’t proved myself in cross country yet in the way that I needed to. I didn’t let myself feel pride in the fact that I had finally broken 18 minutes in the 5k, or that I’d won in meets against some of the fastest girls in the state. By not appreciating how far I’d come that season and believing my performance that day would define me as a cross country runner, I’d already lost my ticket to San Diego. 

I finished the race in 12th. Two spots and ten seconds off qualifying, to be exact. I later learned that the 11th place finisher had been invited when another girl had to drop out. I had been one place away from making it to Nationals, and I was devastated. I couldn’t think about the huge improvements I’d made from last year in cross country without also thinking about how I had given up on myself before the race had begun. 
The results of Footlocker Regionals stayed with me longer than I’d care to admit. I was frustrated and embarrassed that I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of cross country during my high school career (which, on reflection, couldn’t be further from the truth). I lost so much confidence after that race, and as a result, I had a pretty terrible start to the indoor season. I didn’t believe in my abilities as a runner. I let poor results snowball. I was tired of running in little circles, and I was a bit tired of running in general. 

​After what seemed like a particularly disappointing race at the Millrose Games, I sat down with my coach. Tears were shed over lots of things: my latest performance, my lack of confidence in my racing, and my uncertainty about the future. We made changes to my training, but also to how I approached my training mentally. Instead of fixating on how hard a workout was, I began keeping a journal where I would write down what challenged me and how I got through it in the end. It became my “confidence journal” (shoutout Kara Goucher!), and it was almost as important as my sneakers by the end of the winter season. 

I was excited for Indoor Nationals. Really! I love the energy of the Armory in New York, and I was in great shape physically as well as mentally. But as I said before, I was relieved to hear that the meet had been cancelled. Although I had made so much progress with my mindset since the beginning of the season, I realized that I still needed time to get back to who I used to be as a runner. I have loved running ever since I stepped on a track at seven years old, and I really do mean that. But over those last couple of months, that statement seemed less and less true. Medals didn’t seem to gleam anymore, and every mile I ran, I wondered why I was still doing this.

I didn’t come here to write about how these cancellations are a ‘blessing in disguise,’ or something like that. They’re not. Of course, I understand why events needed to be cancelled, but that doesn’t make going on another solo run without my team any easier. This situation is frustrating and unfair, and I am beyond disappointed that it had to happen during my senior year, or even happen at all. With that being said, I’ll have the chance to run for almost seven months without racing, if cross country in the fall goes as planned. That means seven months of runs and workouts in my journal that I can look back on and take pride in. I’ll have seven months of Sunday long runs with my sister, who will also be (is also? Time is weird right now) my teammate at Harvard next year. Seven months to run just because I want to. 

​I am extremely grateful that I have at least a vague idea of what comes next with regards to my running career. I have a coach who is challenging me to use this time to adjust to new training and conditions to prepare me for my next season at college. I also have a pretty awesome sister: she is not only my training partner, but someone who I can lean on when I need advice or support. I’m so thankful that running has been one of the constants in my life right now to keep me (mostly) sane. And I’m not alone! It seems like everyone wants to run during a pandemic. I think it’s telling that the way so many people are getting through this uncertain time is by going out for a run. I can understand that. I’ve gotten through some of my most difficult days in the same way: by lacing up my sneakers and putting one foot in front of the other.

About the Author 

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​My name is Issy Goldstein and I’m a senior at Germantown Academy. I’ll be attending Harvard University next year, where I’ll be running cross country and track. Along with running, I also love writing, and I hope to combine my interests in this blog!
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Athlete Spotlight: Bryan David

1/22/2020

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By Bryan D.
​Forward by Drew M.

Bryan and his wife Heather have been making regular appearances at the JRC Growlers group runs since they moved to the area. After running with them a few times I have come to know that they might be some of the tougher athletes I have had the pleasure of knowing. Bryan's story shows how an athlete needs to constantly adapt to continue making improvements. 
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"I was never a part of any organized sports when I was younger, but I was always active. From playing tag as a kid to basketball with friends in my teens, it didn’t matter as long as I could get outside and move. 

I joined the Marine Corps at 17, and that put me in a whole new world of physical exertion I never knew. Boot camp was the first time I ran continuous distances longer than your typical gym class in high school required. After boot camp, and picking up smoking somewhere along the way, running was not my friend. I did the minimum required which was two 3-mile running tests annually. That, and other unhealthy habits, followed me until just before I left the Corps. I realized I was not where I should be as a 25-year-old and ditched the smokes and started running more. When I got out in 2011 at age 27, I PR’d my three-mile test with a time just over twenty minutes, and I was hooked.

Fast forward a few years to 2015, when I was in college, and a friend asked me to join him at a Spartan Race. I said “sure” because I thought I was in decent shape. And I was; just not enough to compete at a Spartan Race. I finished that five-mile race after giving my all and having my whole body cramp at the end due to exhaustion. I was in so much pain, but I fell in love. I ran two more races that year, extending my longest ever run to 16 miles at the Spartan Beast in Vermont. I just couldn’t get enough. I continued to get better each year, running upwards of 8-12 races a season. This increased running also started causing many injures. I struggled with multiple stress fractures and other injuries that sidelined me. But after going through rehab and learning how to properly run over the last two years, I’ve overcome all those injuries. And at 35 years old in 2019, I finally got to the point where I was becoming a competitive force. I found my niche, which turned out to be races less than 10k. I haven’t finished lower than 7th place all year and managed to secure two 2nd place podiums and one 3rd place podium. 

​I plan on taking myself to the next level in 2020 by running in the Spartan Elite heat for their Stadium Series. This series has racers running through iconic baseball stadiums such as Fenway Park, Citi Field, and others. I figure I have been doing this for five years, and I’m not getting any younger, so if I’m going to see what I’m capable of, now is the best time."
On behalf of JRC I would like to wish Bryan the best in his 2020 competitive season!

​Be sure to come out and meet Bryan and other wonderful members of our community at our group runs!
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Neverending Story

12/23/2019

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By Calvin W.

​Like many people, every year I have trouble managing my weight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Instead of just exercising self-control on the caloric-intake side of the balance sheet this year, I decided to improve my chances of coming out even by starting my first run streak: Three miles a day for 36 days.
By any measure of effort this should have been easy. If I did no long-distance runs, 3 miles a day would only amount to 21 miles per week, less even than my typical 30-mile maintenance weeks between marathon training seasons.

Instead this streak has been daunting and relentless. One reason is that I only run 3 days a week when I’m in maintenance mode, Monday (8 miles), Wednesday (8 miles), and Saturday (14 miles). And those days are so much a part of my routine that I hardly have to think about doing them. (For those of you who are actually counting, this is why it wasn’t a 35-day streak, Thanksgiving Thursday to New Year’s Wednesday. I’d already done my usual Wednesday run, adding 1 day for a total of 36.) The other 4 days haven’t been part of any routine and I’ve constantly had to wrestle with where they fit.

The second reason why this streak has been so challenging is that there’ve been many soggy and rainy days that I could otherwise just skip. When I’m maintaining 30 miles per week, it’s no big deal to blow off a day here and there. Sometimes I can make up that day, but other times I can dismiss one without guilt. By definition, though, a running streak has no days off. Day in and day out, regardless of the conditions, the streaker has to get out and deliver. Rain? Get out. More rain? Get out. Monsoon? Get out.

It took me until day 11 to figure it out the third reason, though. From day 7 the streak already seemed relentless. As a marathon runner, I’ve learned to break a 26.2 mile race into quarters and thirds to help gauge my sense of progress. With a mile as the unit of measure, 7 is one quarter down. Nine is one third. Thirteen is a half. But the unit of measure for this streak has been days. At 36, it’s 10 longer than a marathon. You can argue that comparing days and miles is like apples and oranges, but it’s counting either way, and reaching a count of 7 still hadn’t gotten me to a quarter of my goal. That wouldn’t happen for 2 more days, when I reached 9. At a count of 13 when I would be virtually half done with a marathon, I was still shy of half of my streak by 5. At a count of 26 when I would otherwise only have 0.2 miles left to finish a marathon, I will still be 10 shy of the end of my streak. Neverending.

Solutions: (1) Start measuring runs in kilometers, which would put a marathon at 42 units and condition me to work with numbers bigger than 26. (2) Do this streak every year, which would also get me more accustomed to numbers like 36. (3) Never do a supra-26 streak again. Hmm.

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat" 

Text: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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A Tale of two races

10/17/2019

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Tale of Two Races


Sometimes it all comes together in running.  Sometimes, if you're prepared, it comes together twice. This is the tale of two races where despite totally different approaches, the end result was the same. 

I ran a half marathon using a 20 week plan divided into 4 phases with a taper period.  It was the high mileage, high intensity type of plan that has been really successful in my running development.  Starting with hills and moving to tempos and extended interval sessions with form drills included, I was running at least 40 miles a week with three event specific intensity running workouts and ran two times a day twice a week.  Knowing that the course is typically windy I ran most speed work into the wind on a 3/4 mile long abandoned Navy airstrip to get ready for the anticipated conditions.  I also found a hill similar in grade to the only uphill on the course and tried to run it at about the same time of a workout that I thought I would be running it during the race.  I also ran all of the workouts in the 4th training phase in the exact clothing and shoes I planned on using, used the same fueling pattern down to specific flavors of gu at exact times at race pace, practiced drinking at the right times and speed and ran most of the sessions by myself at the time of day the race would be held so that I knew I could run at pace by myself if I wasn't in a pack during the race.  I also diligently weighed myself, had a fairly strict diet, got 8 hours of sleep every night, lifted and did yoga and core work on alternate days and extensively studied the course even though I knew it from having run the race many times before.  Finally knowing I was running this for both time and place, I developed an A, B, and C race goal plan that not only included my plans but incorporated how I planned to respond to and/or take advantage of my competitors' known strengths and weaknesses.  Looking at the weather conditions during the week before, I was positive that I'd average between 7:50 and 7:55 per mile in the race and place well unless some wild card was inserted that I hadn't planned for. 

We went down to the race a day early, sat in the room and watched baseball and I ate a preplanned meal. On race day I ate early, followed my prerace drinking plan, did an extensive warmup, changed into my matching racing attire and everything worked like I thought it would.  Despite having to pretty much run side by side for the last 5 miles with another guy my age racing for place in our age group, the plan worked and I placed third in my age group, top 50 in the race and averaged 7:52 per mile.  Pretty much right what I had worked for and planned to accomplish.


Six months later I ran a 10 miler in the same city and had a much different approach.  Since I'd run that half earlier in the year, I'd also raced another half in early August.  For the rest of August, all of September, and the first two weeks of October I didn't look at my watch at all and ran whatever speed I felt like running for as long as I felt like running.  I was still averaging about 40 miles a week but was also stopping during runs to look at foxes, eagles, and chipmunks or running and talking with other people at their pace instead of being focused on running by myself.  I did no speed work or intervals, ran no hills and didn't really taper much either.  I ate whatever I wanted, stayed up late, and didn't even go near the airstrip. 

Two nights before the race, I stayed up until 12am, then went down to the race a day early, walked about 6 miles, ate brats with saurkraut and hot mustard and garlic noodles, walked some more, got some fudge, walked a little more and went back to the room thinking about maybe getting some sleep.  I didn't get up early to eat, followed no drinking plan, grabbed 3 random gu flavors and walked to the race.  I wore totally non-matching gear, which if you know me is totally out of character, forgot my running water bottle and only did a marginal warmup primarily so I'd have a good reason to end up down by the good indoor bathrooms and not have to use the portapotties.  I lined up around the 9 minute pace group because I figured that seemed about right. 

From the beginning I knew, as most people who run a lot do, that this was going to be great and a fun race.  I walked every water stop, ran 3 miles talking to another runner and moved up gradually through the field increasing my pace every mile and ended up making up a one minute fifty second gap between me and the guy in my age group that was running 3rd in the last two miles and turning it into a 20 second gap positive gap for me. Despite doing pretty much everything I tell people not to do if they want to race well, I improved both time and place from the previous year and had a great time doing it. 

So what do I take from this tale of two races?  First that if you want to run a really good time, you do need an extensively thought out and executed training plan.  The plan let me run nearly 30 seconds faster per mile for the half than I did for the 10 miler.  Second, it's okay, as shown by the 10 miler, to relax and do what you want because if you have a basic training base and miles in the tank it can be fun in a different way. The no plan reduced the stress to almost nothing and made training more free.  Third, both ways worked for me and I'm going to do it again in the future.      
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SOOTHING THE SAVAGE BREATH PART II

9/11/2019

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​By Calvin W.

In the last post, Soothing the Savage Breath, I introduced the idea of rhythmic or cadence breathing when running, i.e., your breath rate synchronizes with your footsteps. Then I brought up the idea of even-pattern and odd-pattern breathing rates. With the even-pattern breathing that people commonly use, you inhale across a certain number of footsteps and exhale across the same number, e.g., 4:4, 3:3, 2:2, and 1:1. With odd-pattern breathing, you inhale across a certain number of foot and exhale across 1 fewer foot strikes, e.g., 4:3, 3:2, 2:1. Finally I brought up the idea of combining the 2 types to transition across a running effort.

​Here’s how it works for the different kinds of running I do.

For an easy run, I start out with 3:3 breathing. Once I relax and fall into a steady, sustainable, not-too-aggressive pace, I switch to 3:2 breathing and maintain that throughout the duration of the run. This is the kind of effort and breathing pattern common to a long, slow run.
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But there are many paces runners, not just long-distance runners, use when training. Efforts of other speeds also belong a training plan. (Or different levels of effort within a given running effort.)

Sometimes you’ll read or hear about 10K pacing in a marathon training run or even 5K pacing, e.g., for interval work. It should be clear that 5K pacing is pretty much sprinting. But neither is 10K pacing as slow as a long slow run. For me, 10K pacing generally translates to 2:1 breathing.

I say ‘generally’, because the more tired you get, the harder you have to breathe. When you’re getting to the end of a race, even if you’re running the same speed as you were at the beginning (which usually isn’t the case. Most people slow down) you’re most likely to be breathing 1:1 (in and out with successive footsteps). A 10K pacing of 2:1 means that the majority of my run is with that rhythm. I still go through the 3:3 and 3:2 patterns of a long slow run, but switch to 2:2 before the middle portion of a run and switch to 2:1 from about the 3rd quarter to the end. I finish with 1:1 breathing at the very end of a run, usually the last mile or so, when I’m working the hardest, but I’m most tired.

N.B.: I’m a negative splitter, e.g., I train (and generally race) by running the 2nd half faster than the first, effectively splitting the race in half so that the time of the 2nd minus the 1st is a negative number. To be even more precise, I try to run each quarter of a race faster than the previous, so that I’m constantly speeding up through the course of a running effort.

Whether you negative split or not when you run, the breathing progression that I’ve been describing will work for you, too. Positive splitters will experience some kind of progression of effort throughout a training or race effort that requires a comparable increase of breathing rate throughout the run.

Using this alternating even-pattern and odd-pattern breathing-rhythm progression has completely eliminated the ragged breathing that characterized my early running.

I’ve come to liken this progression to the gears on a manual-transmission engine. You can drive a manual using 2nd, 4th, and 6th gears, but it’s not optimal and the car won’t operate with the highest efficiency that way. You can also drive a manual using 1st, 3rd, and 5th gears. Using mixed pattern breathing has allowed me to progress smoothly from effort level to effort level with confidence and efficiency.

In part 3, I’ll talk about how breathing pattern can gauge effort.

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat"

Text: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The contents of this post represent the opinions and convictions of the author alone and not necessarily those of any associated entities. The author is not a medical professional and does not offer the included information as medical advice.
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ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT: LAUREN TAYLOR

8/28/2019

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​By Lauren T.
Forward by Drew M.


One of the great things about working with the vibrant JRC community is getting to know each runner as a person. A few weeks ago I ran into one of our customers who is an avid member at Orangetheory Fitness in Willow Grove. When I first met her she was just starting to get serious about Orangetheory and since she has grown into one heck of an athlete. I had heard that she was competing in Spartan Races but I didn't realize I was speaking with a top 25 racer in the world. What impressed me more however was her backstory:
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"​To give you back story of my fitness/athletic history I have grown up always being active, starting to play sports at the age of five. A three-sport high school athlete turned into a Division II NCAA Field Hockey Athlete at Shippensburg University studying Exercise Science. During my time there I played in four NCAA final four tournaments and won one National Championship, winning 77 games and only losing 10 games in my entire career. This career was not all perfection, it was more of a battle. My freshman year I was diagnosed with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which is impingement of the Brachial Plexus to the Ulnar side. This impingement was due to a broken collar bone in high school, for three years during college I spent extensive time doing physical therapy to only end up on a surgical table after my junior year. I learned to play autonomously with a numb hand, but the constant tremors in my hand and lack of pulse recognition had to end. During surgery I lost 2.5 liters of blood, but thankfully due to my health I was able to walk away from this surgery successfully. In a month I was back on the field and playing, but the blood loss took longer to recovery from than the actual incision.
After college, I promised myself that I would not allow myself to be the former athlete that turned into a couch potato. I continued working out but missed the competitive feel and working out with my teammates. This brings Orangetheory Fitness into my life, where I met wonderful people whom pushed me to be a better version of myself every day. This workout has made me a better athlete and pushed me to build my confidence. A fellow member continually asked me to join him for Spartan racing, but due to what I thought was my lack of upper body strength and limitation with lingering numbness and quick fatigue in my shoulders, I was hesitate. After a year of him bugging me, I finally gave in. Now in my first year of Spartan racing I will complete Four Trifectas (Sprint, Super and Beast/Ultra). Outside of that I have had amazing success podiuming in these races and finishing within the top 10 each race. I have also completed an Ultra Beast which consisted of 31.5 miles, 68 obstacles, over 12,000 ft of elevation gain. This was my fourth Spartan race to date, where I achieved my first podium placing 3rd in my age group and 6th overall. I have qualified for all major championships; North American Championships, World Championships in Tahoe, CA, and World Ultra Championships in Sweden. During North American Championships I finished as the 6th best female in my age group and 41st overall female amongst the qualified females from USA, Canada, and Mexico. I am currently ranked 23rd in my age group in the World Series Ranking. My 2019 season is not over yet, as I have 5 remaining obstacle races and two trail races."

Lauren's story is that of breaking through barriers. Each time she has faced a hurdle in her career she has found a way to get past it without giving up or making excuses. Even now as she sees success in a new avenue of her career she finds ways to reinvent herself to overcome the obstacles in her path. Lauren's impressive story certainly inspires me and I hope you find inspiration too. No matter what life throws at you there is always a way to keep moving forward. 

On behalf of JRC I'd like to wish Lauren the best of luck with the rest the season and Championships!
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SOOTHING THE SAVAGE BREATHE

8/21/2019

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By Calvin W.

One of the early challenges I remember when I first started running is figuring out how to breathe. It all felt so ragged until I got to that point in a given running effort when my breath rate finally matched my pace. Until it didn’t again as I got further into the run. Until it did again as I progressed even further.
I came to realize that the first period of smoothness came when it took 3 footsteps to inhale and another 3 to exhale. That happened relatively early in a run not long after I got started. But that never lasted long as my body moved to the next level of effort. That’s when my breath rate and running cadence became asynchronous and ragged again. The next level of synchrony happened when I settled into the next higher level of effort when my breathing pattern became 2 steps to inhale and 2 to exhale. Once I reached that level, which fortunately lasted the majority of a running episode, I was comfortable and my breathing rhythmic.
There are terms for the phenomenon of breathing rate matching the footsteps—rhythmic or cadence breathing—and it’s the kind of issue that running authorities address. Conducting an internet keyword search on ‘breathing pattern running’ returns several popular running authorities who do just that: Runner’s World and RunConnect among others.
Reading through some of their pages, you can find information about even patterns like 3:3 and 2:2. Runner’s World (Exactly How to Breathe When You Run So You Can Go Faster and Longer) also talks about 4:4. The author even talks about odd-pattern breathing rhythms like 4:3 and 3:2.

I first heard about odd-pattern breathing in conjunction with the assertion that your body relaxes when you exhale which leaves the runner susceptible to injury when you consistently land on the same foot. Odd-pattern breathing alternates which foot you land on when your body is most relaxed. It’s an assertion that hasn’t been borne out in research. Here’s an article that talks about the practice and the research: How Should I Breathe When I Run?
What no one seems to talk about is transitioning. They talk about finding the right breathing pattern for yourself for different running efforts. But who of us maintains the same level of effort throughout a run? Even starting a given run, it takes a few minutes to warm up. And if you’re a long distance runner like I am, I don’t warm up for 3-5 miles. That’s a lot of minutes of irregular breathing.
I started experimenting with odd-pattern rhythmic breathing for my own reasons. During that period, I found that 3:2 breathing worked for a lot of my running: inhale across 3 footfalls, exhale across 2. It takes some getting used to, but like any habit, once you get used to it, it becomes second nature.
Still, as I asserted, no one maintains consistent effort level through a given running episode, and I still experienced irregular and awkward breathing across the transition to 2:1.
Then it hit me. What about combining both even-pattern and odd-pattern rhythmic breathing across a run? Here’s where I’ve landed.
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I start out with 3:3 breathing as soon as I settle into a steady pace at the beginning of a run. That happens so quickly these days that I barely get going before that’s the pattern that I notice myself using. Then as my effort level increases, I switch to 3:2 breathing. As my pace picks up faster and my energy demand increases, I then switch to 2:2 breathing. Finally, for the fastest and most aggressive running I do, typically toward the end of a run, I switch to 2:1 and finally 1:1 breathing.
That might seem like a lot of transitioning—and no question it made for a lot of attentiveness when I first started figuring it out—but it’s become effortless.
In my next post, I’ll go into more detail about how breathing patterns and transitioning works for the different kinds of running I do.

​-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat"

Text: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The contents of this post represent the opinions and convictions of the author alone and not necessarily those of any associated entities. The author is not a medical professional and does not offer the included information as medical advice.
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IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GET OUT OF THIS CAR

7/17/2019

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When I first started running, I had to develop some training routes. I definitely didn’t like the idea of an out-and-back, mostly because I wasn’t confident early on of what I was capable of doing and didn’t want to be stranded too far from home. My earliest route was zigzagging in a nearby neighborhood where I could do up to 4 miles and still be not much more than a mile from home at any point.

After a few years of doing variations of that route grouped with other safe, nearby training loops, I could safely say both that I was getting bored and that I could handle marathon-training distances without poinking some body part catastrophically. I could comfortably introduce more adventurous routes. Enter the point-to-point training run. Aside from using a ride service or making some poor sap (No, those aren’t the same things.) get me to a starting point or back from an ending point, the handy option became combining long training runs with driving trips. Weekend getaway? “Hon, drop me off 16 miles from our destination. I’ll see you in a couple hours.” 

What’s great about this kind of training run is that it overlaps with the driving time the driver’s doing anyway. With my spouse, it allows for reading or sightseeing planning time when she reaches our destination before me (Pretty inevitable). Another pro is that I really like experiencing places at speeds slower than automobile speed, so I can look around and observe and think, and faster than walking speed, so I’m actually traversing some kind of distance.

There are cons, of course, f’rinstance getting lost if the route wends too much. Suffice to say that while it’s taken me time to start using my phone’s GPS and map functions, I’m much better at using them now. Bugger, though, if I’ve misjudged my battery life. Here’s a combined pro and a con: Once you’ve started, you’re pretty committed to finishing, no matter what happens.

In Alaska, where I regularly do service work, point-to-point runs work great. The first long run is approaching Glennallen (check out a map), a 4-hour drive from the Anchorage airport. The center of this teeny-weeny town (which is still the largest municipality within 3 hours) is at milepost 187. Actually, the entire town is pretty much at 187. Since that’s also where our team lives when we’re serving, it’s easy to hop out of the van at the milepost of choice and hoof it the rest of the way. 

This year, unfortunately, the temperature was 90. Also, unfortunately, I tend to forget the requirements of seasonal running when those seasons are just starting. Without blaming my teammates, I had no water for my 13-miler from milepost 174. Whose fault was it really? I made it just as my wife and another team member decided I was out long enough and came out looking for me with water in hand. Yeah, the phone battery died.

The better point-to-point is from our service site in Copper Center back to Glennallen. That’s a 12-miler that I can do during otherwise social or down times that I can count on the team van traversing at some point or another. 

Sometimes, I can even get picked up.

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat" 

Text: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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TO RUN OR NOT TO RUN. THAT IS THE QUESTION.

6/28/2019

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​By Calvin W.​What motivates you to run? 

I don’t mean what motivates you to be a runner, but what motivates you when you’re facing a specific run?

Runners are cut from different cloths. Some are driven by internal motivators like the need to stick to a specific weekly schedule. Some are driven by external motivators like the desire to spend time with a runner friend.

I became a Wednesday night runner at JRC partly because that day fit my weekly running strategy. As for running with the store group, I did wonder if a group would keep me motivated as a relative newbie. Of course, the fact that it was a group was only part of the thinking process. I wasn’t going to keep running with any group, after all; what if I didn’t like the members? Worse, what if they didn’t like me?

And what about the running route? Then-organizer Chas said it might not be for everyone: 1 mile uphill at the end. Well, the uphill wasn’t that steep and I could dismiss other aspects of the course that I didn’t necessarily care for. The Growlers Group Run still does that route during the winter when we can’t get into Alverthorpe Park. And now I’m just used to it.

There are other factors runners consider: What’s the weather like? Some runners can accept a little rain, but a steady rain might be a no-go. (Comfort is a funny ask for someone who’s rapidly moving her or his feet for distances measured in miles. On the other hand, thunderstorms can be a real safety issue and I did cancel a recent Wednesday run under the threat of them and the visual confirmation of local storm clouds moving in.) Now, what happens if a heavy rain starts mid-run? Most runners I’ve been with will just gut it out. You still have to get back to the starting point.

Here are even more factors: Some people run to take care of their emotional health. Difficult day? Run. Others occasionally have home or work responsibilities that can’t go to someone else to manage. Run another time. Family members have grown pretty independent. Run. Nursing an injury. Maybe not.

People can only manage a finite set of variables when a decision is on the line. If the equation becomes too complex, they’ll just toss out a bunch of the lower level variables in favor of the most important ones. We do it in all aspects of life, not just running.

I’ve started my run in many a downpour when I’m in the middle of a marathon training cycle because I need the workout. Low-level variable: discomfort. Moderate-level variable: relatively short run. High-level variable: Sticking to the training plan. On the other hand, last month, when I wasn’t training, I looked out the window upon a modest rain while on the phone with a running buddy…and I bailed. I just didn’t need the run that badly and the prospect of wet shoes made me give up, even with a definitive running partner. Now if she’d twisted my arm, the scales might have tipped enough for me to give in. But she didn’t and so I didn’t. Low-level variable: getting a workout. Moderate-level variable: An available running partner. High-level variable: discomfort. Notice how discomfort figured into both of those considerations.

A few months ago, I wrote about EPBR Tania telling her kids she was going out for ice cream. Unwilling to face the ribbing she expected from them for running yet again, she used it as an excuse to join GGR secretly for a 3-miler. Low-level variable: the time it took to squeeze in a 30-minute run. Moderate-level variable: the likelihood that her kids would figure out it didn’t take an hour to get ice cream. High-level variable: the availability of other runners. High-level variable: the need to do a few more miles.

The point is that balancing multiple variables can cause a runner to make funny decisions as some jockey for position over others.

Pay some extra attention to the decisions you face, including non-running ones, and see if you agree with me.

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat" 

Text and photos: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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RACE GOALS: MET! ALMOST

6/19/2019

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Image courtesy Calvin Wang
The Delaware Marathon this past spring was a good race for me. For a bunch of reasons.

It took place in Wilmington on April 28 on a cloudy and cool day. It’s not a big race, particularly for one that’s been running for a few years and is so accessible. For someone like me who’s accustomed to small races—hundreds of entrants, rather than thousands—it was familiar.

My main race goals were typical for me—run negative splits, establish a new personal record, make a good social connection with a new friend.

I successfully ran the negative splits aided by the kind of confusion that can happen when so much of your energy is going toward moving your body at the expense of your mind. 

I’d already planned my pacing based both on my training and on other recent marathon efforts. All that suggested I could average 8:48 min/mile (8.8 to be weird) by running the first quarter at 09:06 (9.1), then dropping 12 minutes/mile (0.2) with each quarter to finish at 8:30 (8.5). I’d never actually run a race with quite that progression but I’ve done some relatively close efforts with even- and negative-split pacing. And I’ve run a final quarter at 8:12 (8.2). Of course the trick is putting it all together in one effort.

I had 2 ways to monitor my pace—my dumb (vs. smart) digital watch together with split times on my smart phone’s lock screen and the running app Strava. The problem was that between the 2 the watch said I was going too slow and Strava said I was going too fast. Unable to process where the discrepancy lay, I paid attention to Strava and forced myself to go slower. I gave in to the conflicting information and started picking up the pace during the 2nd quarter. It was only at the ½ marathon mark that I realized Strava had my distance at 13.8 miles, instead of 13.1, which meant that I was now significantly slower than my target time and it was now past time to pick it up.

People sometimes say you can never make up time during a race. DE may have proved that point. I ran a considerably faster 3rd quarter which may have worn me out for a slower 4th quarter. I ended up running 5 minutes slower than my PR, but I still finished my 4th best marathon out of 15 with an admirable 3:54:50. I also negatively split the first 3 quarters and the first half. I ended up pacing my quarters thus, respectively: 9:36, 9:00, 8:30, and 8:48 (9.6, 9.0, 8.5, and 8.8).

I did meet my social goal. Since I’m generally picking up my pace through a race while other people are slowing down, it’s not that easy to find someone I’ll be next to long enough to have a conversation. Yeah, sure, it’s also not that easy to talk while you’re running fast, but doing training runs with a running group helps. Anyway, it does usually happen in a race, even if not in ways I expect.

Here’s how it happened in DE. At mile 20 I heard footfall approaching me from behind. Since DE hosts relay teams, I thought it could have been a fresh relay runner. As she passed, I could see she wasn’t wearing a relay bib. Her singlet said: ‘It’s my birthday! I’m 30!’ I yelled, “You’re running awesome!” She smiled and thanked me appreciatively…kept up her pace, opening up a lead with amazing speed. I had no hope of staying with her. 

I never saw her finish, because she never slowed down. My wife congratulated me at the finish line (small race, right?). I told her I had to congratulate the birthday girl who she’d also seen and we found her surrounded by an entire cheer squad. “Birthday girl! You did awesome! How much did you negative split by?” Though she wasn’t even sure she did, someone who could have been a sister jumped in, “10 minutes!” It was an amazing performance that offset the disappointment (mild!) of not running a PR and but still helped me achieve my other race goals. 

(Late note.) And how about this: She’s from Philadelphia and we have a common Facebook friend! I’m messaging her as I finish this post. 

I did say it was a good race for me.

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat" 

Text: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Photo: Barbara Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
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​MINDFUL RUNNING, YOUTHFUL RUNNING

6/12/2019

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​By Calvin W.A month ago, I had to miss the usual Wednesday night Growlers Group Run from the store because I was in Chicago. Upon my return I learned that BD (Big Dave) had brought his 2 young’uns, Rowan (9) and Maren (7) who each ran some 3.5 miles (See “JRC Growlers Group Run Weds, 6:30 p.m. run, 5/15/2019” email and cross-posted Facebook GGR Group post).

Bless my soul, they showed up again this past Wednesday and here are some of the thoughts that issued from their presence.


To start, Dharma Running’s Eric led us in a standing loving-kindness meditation for Global Running Day. (For the month of June, Dharma Running is changing its Mindful Monday to Watchful Wednesday and joining the Growlers.) We devoted a few minutes of compassionate thoughts about people who are easy to love consecutively to people who elicit neutral emotions. Normally this metta meditation would go the next step to transferring those thoughts to people who aren’t so easy to love thereby helping to cultivate compassion everywhere, but we were going easy for the night. (Presumably we’ll go to the next step in future runs lest we become merely quasi-compassionate people.)
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photo courtesy Calvin Wang
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THE GROWLERS ARE, LIKE, OFFICIAL!

4/28/2019

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image courtesy Calvin Wang
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I toyed with the idea of a cartoon character first. (I’ve always liked Berke Breathed’s Bloom County cartoon eyes. Additional aside: Though an academic librarian now, I also have previous training in visual art—medical illustration, specifically.) The idea of the letters as pavement were there from the start. I designed my own typeface with a density that emphasized blackness. The character still has some potential, but it felt like we need something a little more elemental. The growler still needed to be there somehow and the idea of it becoming part or the name itself materialized.

Don’t laugh (Kate did, at least to herself) but I use PowerPoint a lot for graphic work. Librarians don’t have much call for Adobe Illustrator, so I don’t have it. And you can do amazing things with its curve-drawing function once I figured out how to tweak individual points and their splines. A few clicks for the profile, a vertical flip for the other side, a couple of extra shapes, and voila! A growler for an o. With input from Drew, Keith (the store manager), and Kate (an interior designer), I jazzed it up with a shoeprint featuring the Monotype Corsiva J from the store’s logo. (Okay, I actually ignored their suggestion to ditch the J. I’ll take the hit if you agree. I’m a big man. Figuratively.) The dashed lines cemented the pavement imagery and the Jenkintown Running Store logo the parentage. The one recommendation I did accept from the peanut gallery was to find a more open, readable typeface. Enter Impact which took the place of mine perfectly and I have no misgivings whatsoever. None. At all. Really. >snork< 

The TM gives our new logo authority. It’s legit even though it’s not registered. That would be a Ⓡ. (I teach a course on intellectual property.) Finally, with store owner Joe’s blessing the logo became a thing! And we’ve now jumped off the cliff too. Safe even, cushioned by the bodies of those who leapt before us. Let’s make a million selling merch! 
-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat" 
Text and graphics: Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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NEGATIVE SPLIT OR POSITIVE SPLAT

4/17/2019

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​By Calvin W.As a competitive long-distance runner, you’re constantly trying to ride the fine line between running as fast as your body will permit in a given speed-based effort and bombing out by going too hard. When you’re training for an event, you might not always be working on speed—conditioning your body to tolerate long distances doesn’t generally require speed work—but doing so is an important part of training. Efforts like interval training and tempo work are speed- based and a runner does improve by working on faster. In a race like a marathon, there are times to hold back, but overall you’re hovering around a point that is as fast as you can tolerate, as long as you don’t crash. Makes sense to me. 

​Most people run slower during the second half of a race than the first. Any race that provides interval times will demonstrate that. Consider Chasing the Unicorn in Bucks County, PA. The vast majority of competitors, including the elite runners go out faster during the first half than the second. Maybe some people plan to do that but others go out feeling good and pushing too hard just to start hitting their limits during the second half, hence they’re forced to slow down a little. It’s called positive splitting because the difference between the times of their two halves, second half minus first half, is a positive number. If you’re trying to speed up throughout a race effort, that’s bad. (I know. It’s a little confusing that a positive number could be negative.) When I first started running in 2011, I was always positive splitting: that’s the way my training went and that’s the way my races went. Then came the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. 

Apolo Anton Ohno was favored to become the most medaled Olympian in history. As an Asian watching an athlete of mixed-Asian descent I was pretty excited about his success. But I was also watching his race strategy because I’d already been aware that many racers actually work on negative splitting: they go easy enough to save energy to be in position to win the race, but not so fast that lose energy before they finish. Watch a high-level long-distance competitive effort and you’ll see racers looking pretty relaxed at the beginning of the race and really going all out at the end. And that’s what I saw every time I watched Ohno racing. Even if it meant that he wasn’t going to come in first in a preliminary heat, he would be racing easy. Then he’d turn on just enough heat to qualify for the final and save enough energy to win that race. Using him as inspiration, I started working on negative splitting both my training runs and my races. I have little trouble, now, running negative-split training efforts. That’s positive. 

I have more trouble negative splitting during races. It seems that it’s easy to misjudge the fine line between going fast enough to achieve a personal record (PR), especially after a well-managed taper, and going too fast to sustain and crashing. Failing to fuel properly can result in carb-crashing which results in a very positive split. That’s negative. The trick is to gauge the necessary level just right to be able to sustain a first-half effort that permits a nice fast finish. In my 2 best marathons, I was passing people left and right as I closed in on the finish line. People said things like “Pedal to the medal!” of “Negative split!” as I passed them who were looked like they were seriously positively splitting. Negative. 

The last time I posted to this blog (4/12/2018), I had my fingers crossed for a negative split and a PR. Neither happened. The taper had me feeling well rested and I went out much faster than was sustainable on average. I blew it and lost all my steam. Once you use up all your carbohydrate stores, you can’t recover it and you have to slow down. A lot. 

With that race in mind, I ran another one. For that I kept forcing my speed slower than I felt I was able, to a point just below what I thought my average speed should be for the entire race based on my training. This time it paid off. I both negative split, finishing strong, and I missed my PR by a mere 25 seconds. Considering that I wasn’t trying to PR, that was a great effort.

With both races in mind, I trained hard to increase my speed and smash my PR with a super-fast effort. And I failed again. Same story: My taper had me feeling like I could sprint the whole way and I didn’t listen to my brain telling me that I simply hadn’t trained hard enough to maintain that pace throughout the race.

Maybe for elite athletes like Apolo Anton Ohno it’s easier to know limits and pace more thoughtfully, maybe they don’t always win, but they compete consistently. For me it will always be a sloppy balancing act, sometimes achieving spectacularly and sometimes bombing abysmally.

Still, even abysmal can be a success. I was conditioned enough for my last race that, despite dropping my pace by 2 minutes per mile in the second half for a very negative positive split, I still finished 15 minutes faster than my last bombed effort. That’s positive!

-CtCloser (Calvinthe), "Negative split or positive splat"

Calvin Wang, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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DHARMA RUNNING

1/7/2019

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​By Eric W.

​Dharma Running is a work in progress of more than 30 years.  I started reading books about Buddhism and meditation as a teenager, and had my first formal instruction in Zen in 1994.  It wasn’t until after graduate school at Naropa University in Boulder that I got into running, but the timing was perfect as I’d spent the last three years studying Tibetan Buddhism and deepening my meditation practice.  “Mindful running” came naturally to me, even if nobody was calling it that at the time. 
​Inspired by the book Running With the Mind of Meditation by Sakyong Mipham, the son of the Tibetan lama who founded Naropa and an accomplished runner, I started to more intentionally integrate mindfulness practice into my running in 2009, when I started a 366-day running streak and completed my first marathon.  Using techniques from sitting meditation of following my breath, and from walking meditation of focusing on my foot strike, I started to understand more deeply how the simple act of bringing awareness back to the body again and again on a run can help improve form and pace and reduce injury.  (That might seem obvious to long-time runners,  but the understanding doesn’t come naturally for everyone.)
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​I should stop here for a minute and point out that nobody can be mindful all the time (well maybe the Buddha and the Dalai Lama, but I don’t believe either of them is much of a runner).  Over my running “career”, I’ve had miles, marathons, and even months when I’ve left the meditation stuff behind.  Everyone needs to pop in the earbuds and zone out to the Who, the Ramones, or the Beastie Boys (I am a child of the 70s and 80s) once in awhile.  But becoming more mindful in daily life can help you know when it’s ok to tune out and when it’s important to tune back in to the body and mind. 

​Over the last ten years I’ve continued to experiment with combining meditation practice with my running, and have seen success in achieving my goals – qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon, hitting new PRs in 5ks, and branching out into ultras with a 50k and 50 mile race in 2018.  The results I’ve had are what led me to get my coaching certification from the Road Runners Club of America and launch Dharma Running.  I’m excited to do what I can to inspire others to run, to practice mindfulness, and to find and spread joy!

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