running to lose weight and gain your soul

nearly two and a half years ago my wife and i were blessed with twin boys. they are brothers in every since of the word. they look out for one another, they disrupt one another, they play together, they laugh together, and they cause mischief together. life gets hectic after you have kids. you seem to forget about things you used to do, or liked to do, or did because they made you a better person in the crunch of scheduling feedings, playtime, bathing, parenting, and nurturing your own marriage and life. in short, it seems that every moment of those first days, weeks, and months of parenthood are sucked up by controlled chaos. you can't remember at times how you got from 6am to 6pm, and yet you eventually begin marking days, activities, and occurrences by the schedule that runs your life.

sometime within the past two and a half years and a well-developed and monitored schedule i quit running. it was a slow burn out really. leading up to the time that we started thinking about having children i trained for and ran my first marathon. i marked my days by a different calendar during those months. it was long runs, tempo runs, weekly mileage, and rest days. after that race i started to slowly drift away from running. it wasn't a conscious decision, but as is often pointed to in situations like this, life simply started happening. i stopped lacing up my running shoes, started making it from one feeding to the next, worked a 9-5 job in between, and quit making time to run. and i paid for it.

it wasn't a quick change in my life that indicated i had totally stopped running. i didn't throw out my running shoes, or abandon the solace of running on a cold morning against a crisp wind blowing into my face. i simply irregularly trotted out the door on a whim. and that's all running was to me for nearly a year and a half. when it struck my fancy i took to the roads and felt the twinge of inability to do what i once could do with little effort. inevitably at the end of the run i would tell myself i was out of shape, needed to run more often, or at least exercise in some way.

i can't tell you what happened exactly. it wasn't a magical moment that changed things in my life. sometime around a year and a half ago i stepped on a scale. i was at my heaviest weight and i could visibly start to notice not only clothes not fitting, but pictures of me looking differently and close family members gently suggesting that i had put on a few pounds. around this time i was unemployed for the first time, to be followed by a short stent of employment, and now entrenched in nine months of my second tour of unemployment - and that perhaps has been the biggest change. i had plenty of idol time on my hands after doing household chores and job searching every day. so i started to run again. and slowly it came back to me, much like the feeling of riding a bicycle for the first time.

reminding myself to take things slowly and to not push too hard too fast were difficult concepts. running slowly became something that i was doing again, was feeding my soul again, and was a priority. i gained the perspective that to effect change in one's life requires making priorities that can facilitate the achievement. after a while the pounds started to come off. and after a year and a half i have lost 40 pounds.

i was recently asked if i had any tips to help people who are looking to run in order to lose weight. this is what i shared:

1. keep pushing yourself to accomplish and work towards your goals. the best way to do this is to set concrete goals with concrete checkpoints, i.e. sign up for a 5k in the future and that will help keep you motivated to keep running and working toward a real event.
2. find someone to run with you. running can be an intimidating sport – it always seems like everyone else knows more than you – but the benefits of having a running partner or group far outweigh the drawbacks. it will be built in accountability for the days when you’d rather stay in bed. my brother provides that for me in the form of picking races for us to run together. i can’t let him down by flaking out simply because i haven’t been training – it keeps me going on the bad days.
3. my running mantra has gotten me through many a workout and run that i simply wanted to quit – “practice not quitting. practice not quitting.” pick something that will help refocus you on your ultimate goals and take you out of the present moment of pain, discomfort, or disillusionment.
4. there will be good days and there will be bad days when you are running consistently. don’t get too down on yourself when you are not seeing the results you want to see during a run. remember: there will be another run this week and you can work towards your goals then.
5. finally, to use a racing metaphor, this is a marathon not a sprint. losing weight through running will take time and will be a combination of exercise and change in diet. while the results may not be immediate, they will come and you should celebrate them when they arrive. 

ultimately when i consider my running journey the pounds gained and lost are inconsequential to regaining a part of who i am. there is no bigger joy for me than when i come around a final turn, into the view of the finishing chute, or just through the front door of the house and two toddlers are cheering their dad on. 

it doesn't have to be running. we all lose the passion, excitement, or fulfillment of hobbies from time to time. choose today to reclaim that hobby and regain part of who you are. happy running.

have you ever slowly lost a hobby that you found out later made a big difference to you?

the air of pain

my training lately has centered around time goals. slowly shaving seconds off of miles takes hard work and dedication. it isn't enough to just go out and put in your miles. you have to commit yourself to running harder, faster, and approaching, even surpassing, your thresholds of pain. one thought has consistently been repeating itself in my head during the endless footfalls of my runs:

in the stratified, thinly layered air and altitude of pain, it is a more mental than physical game. you must neatly, quickly, and efficiently dispense of the thought of pain and suffering stopping, slowing, or altering your pace. pain is but a natural consequence of the elasticity of the human form. 


happy running.

to rabbit or not to rabbit

elmer j. fudd, he of looney tunes fame, famously and dubiously, we might add, proclaims, "be vewy vewy quiet. i'm hunting wabbits!" it was and is a constant battle for him to catch these said "wabbits." the same cannot be said for runners.

rabbits are a pacing mechanism used in some races by elite athletes to hit goal race finishing times. the theory goes that the rabbits will pace the lead group for at least half of the race distance at the goal pace time in order to help them attain a specific finishing time, most often of the record (course, national, country of origin, world) variety. one could rightly ask, what would be the point of these mechanisms otherwise? the rabbit has a predetermined pull-off point at which they stop running. not fall back to a slower pace, but literally stop and quit running.

the wall street journal has an interesting article running today about the ban on rabbits in the new york city marathon. for several years the race organizers have eschewed rabbits for tactical racing. the idea behind this runs something like this: when you eliminate people employed in a race for the specific purpose of pacing the lead runners to a goal time you require the runners themselves to manage and dictate that pace over the total duration of the course, not just part of it. it also requires that the runners accept the mental burden of running in a tactical race for, say 26.2 miles in the case of the marathon, versus part of the race, say 13.1 miles in that same case of the marathon.

i have run competitively, granted not at the same level as people running for a living, and found that one of the most difficult parts of managing a race in order to achieve a desired outcome is the very lack of knowledge of the runners you are running against. in most cases you don't know what their race strategy will be. will they try to lead from the front the entire race? will they yo-yo their pace in order to test the strength, fitness, and endurance of the other runners? will they have a back half pace of brutality that is designed to see who has the most heart in a race rather than the fastest legs? in other words the mental game of furtive glances at the runners, watching as a runner disappears around a corner at a pace you can't maintain in that moment, or playing your cards at the moment you feel is right by accelerating the pace on a hill, flat, or downhill in order to pull away from those around you is not an easy game. it requires an extraordinary amount of mental toughness in the moment.

do rabbits hinder these game? do they steal from the beauty and art of play that unfolds over roads, trails, and fields as runners perspire? and are the two even mutually exclusive? do rabbits inhibit tactical racing?

what say you readers and runners? rabbits or no rabbits?