Saturday Run: I Have Nothing To Talk About Outside My Children And Their Activities

This morning, our running group started at 6:30 and for the second week in a row ran the the hilliest hills in Nashville.  The Flying Monkey is approaching in November and it is run in Percy Warner Park.  SO HILLY!!  So we keep doing these rather fast paced 11 milers through the park.  While I have been glad to do whatever, I have to get down to business next weekend.  Next weekend marks 16 weeks out from my Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville.  I think, however, getting down to business really only means 13 miles next weekend.  The eleven miles went pretty well; fast in the beginning, and then I dropped back towards the end.

Overall though, I have to say that it was a great morning.  I went to bed at 8:30 slept like a champ and fed the baby before I left the house.  Once I put him back to sleep, I drank my glowing green smoothie and got a reasonable parking space once I arrived at the park.  We started running,  I think there were 6 of us, and I will be honest with you, I was a social let down.  Being sort of in the trenches right now with my kids, I will admit that my ability to hold a conversation out side of my current life experience was pretty pathetic.  I had nothing.  I did a lot of listening and then every once in a while, I would find myself rattling on about soccer practice or swim lessons or how not to curse in front of your children. I was not much of a thrill.

I need to read up on my current events and my sports teams and such.

Oatmeal Bake

So this morning, all went smoothly.  I popped out of bed, drank my glowing green smoothie and headed to the park with two slices of oatmeal bake.  My oatmeal bake is rather life changing and I usually have it in the house.  I eat it approximately 20 minutes after my glowing green smoothie.

Recipe as follows:
3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup chia
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
three or four shakes of cinnamon
2 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 package milk chocolate chips
1/4 cup brown sugar (you can add more if you leave out the chips)
1 cup almond milk

Mix it up.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

You can always switch out the chocolate chips for raisins for craisins or what have you, but I love the chocolate chips.

Marathon Plan

Start of Rocket City.  I ran it that year!!!

SO, I am running the Rocket City marathon in Huntsville on December 8th.  I have run this marathon probably 6 times; maybe more.  I know the course, the weather is always good, it is relatively inexpensive and it is approximately one hour and 15 minutes away from my house. A couple of times,  I have driven down the morning of the race.  Also, another sticking point, it is a small marathon, relatively uncrowded, and there is never a time when you have to elbow around corners because the course is tight and there are so many runners.  All around, it is a great race.

This year, I was even organized enough to reserve my hotel room in advance, so I can walk to the race start.  Being organized enough to get a great hotel room is a first for me.  Normally, I have to drive down the morning of the race OR spend the night in a hotel room across town and get a shuttle to the race at which point I am a bundle of nerves.  So, I am pretty thrilled that at 36 years into my life 6 or so years into racing this particular marathon, I have it together.

I have been working on my training plan all week.  It is sort of a chess game with trying to incorporate my biking and swimming in with my run schedule.  I need a day of speed work (probably Tuesday mornings)  and some long runs on Saturdays and I also need a temp run at some point (probably Tuesdays).  I am really enjoying my bike rides and I do not plan to give up swimming.  I think I need a day off where I am just doing yoga or some such in the way of strength training.

SO, all of these ideas are slowly making their way into a spread sheet that I will have coordinated by next week.  I am going to put off speed work as long as possible, maybe until October. For speed work, I have to be at the track at 5:00 AM, (misery!!!) and speed work is just overall pretty disagreeable.  I am designing my training plan to start next week.  Hopefully can publish my spread sheet tomorrow!

Honestly

Woe is Me!!

You know, this morning when it happened, I did not say "honestly".  I said something much much worse, and I am taking sides with the person who says that if a tree falls in the forrest and no one hears it, it does not make a sound.  No one else heard the pretty hard core expletives that I find that this type of situation generally elicits from me.  Anyway, I have to chide myself for having such a meltdown at 4:57 AM, everyone has had the bottom fall out of their mason jar.

Every night, I set a glowing green smoothie on the countertop to thaw out before morning.  THIS MORNING, when I picked up my mason jar of glowing green smoothie, the bottom fell off.  The bottom of the mason jar hit the tile and broke into a million pieces AND THEN the smoothie fell out of the bottom.  The smoothie hit the floor so hard that it splashed THE CEILING.  The floor was covered and the cabinets were all splashed.  I could go on all day about the baseboards, the windows, the all of it.

It amazes me how things like that always happen to me when I am in a huge hurry to get out the door on  time.  I woke up at 4:55 AM, walked into the kitchen and ruined my morning.  Thursdays are bike ride mornings.  I meet my group at 5:25, and we try to be riding by 5:29 AM.  Everyone has work and I have to sprint home to feed the baby and we have to be on the road by 5:29.

A Glowing Green Smoothie explosion is nothing that you can just leave.  My marriage would not survive waking my husband to clean up my mess so that I could make my bike ride.  I had to clean it up. It had to be cleaned up, and while I worked lightening fast to get all the mess off the floor and sweep up the glass and wipe down the cabinets, it made me late.  I was 7 minutes late out the door, and it was super sad because as I whipped into the parking lot I could see my bike group cycling into the sunrise about 5 minutes ahead of me.

Five minutes on a swim, I might make up and five minutes on a run, I could definitely make up. Five minutes on the bike, and I might as well be dead.  SO, with heaviness of heart, I got all my gear together, and pedaled as fast as I could for 17 miles.  I never saw the group, and I was the lone cyclist.  Also, my cadence sensor never picked up.  It was all very sad, and if I had had a soundtrack to my morning, it would have all been written by The Fray.  It was that sad.

This is where I am not sure about myself.  When that mason jar hit the floor, should I have scrapped my ride.  Should I have just said to myself, "this is not happening for me today.  I am cleaning this up and getting back in bed."?  I knew that there was a good chance I would not make it on time.  Why didn't I just get back in bed? Even if I couldn't sleep, I could have read my book or prayed that the rest of my day would be an improvement over recent events.

Instead, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, still arrived late and then got stuck in morning traffic because I got back to my car late.  Morning traffic turns on a dime, by the way. Ten minutes later than usual, and it is gridlock.

I sort of enjoyed the ride, however, even though I didn't go as fast as I would have liked.  16.5 miles per hour is fast for me, but I had been reaching upwards of 18 miles an hour with the group.  There is nothing like a group to encourage your speed.

My Time Constraints

This will be me!!

This morning, after I had been up at 4:00 AM (unwillingly this morning, as opposed to yesterday) to breastfeed, then crawled back in bed until I woke up much too late feeling like I had been run over by a truck, and figuratively maybe I had,  it occurred to me that training for a marathon has the potential to be most unpleasant.  I am struggling to find the time to watch my DVD (it is only 30 minutes) about my Diastasis Recti.  How am I going to find the time for two more 70 minute runs per week.  Womp Womp.  I was pretty excited about it when I signed up.

Also, I have, I think, four new magazine subscriptions.  They were free, and I said "yes", but why?  So I can toss them, unread, into the recycle bin?  So I can trip over a pile of magazines and children's toys, as opposed to just children's toys.  I sometimes think that I am so resentful of my time constraints that I refuse to acknowledge them and keep piling more things on my plate and becoming more frustrated.  If I were in therapy, this is what I would ask the therapist to tell me.  BUT, and here is the rub, I don't have time for therapy.  So I just keep stoking the fires of resentment and having a cocktail at 4:00 PM.  Maybe its all the same anyway.

However, I did get to the outdoor pool at my gym for an hour swim.  A cold front blew through last weekend, and the pool was freezing.  FREEZING. I persevered with 2500 meters and am hoping to hit the pool again tomorrow.

Hopefully some discussion of my training plan tomorrow!!

4:00 AM

This morning, I woke up cheerfully at 4:00 AM.  I just peeled out of bed, fully rested.  I was up before the baby.  It was ridiculous and it is happening relatively often.  I will say that I was in bed at 8:30 last night, reading just a bit of Mornings On Horseback before turning off the lights.  This has me slightly concerned that I am starting some midlife shift of my circadian rhythms.  Am I on my way to being that crotchety woman up with the garbage collectors and the local weather.  Am I going to start living my life like Matt Lauer, nervous if anyone suggests eating dinner after 5:00 or staying out past 7:00?  Is that going to me?

I still have sequin shorts in my closet and high heel shoes.  Nobody wears high heel shoes to eat dinner at 5:00 PM.

Anyway, amidst my crushing concern about the demise of my sequin shorts lifestyle, I popped onto my bike, met my fellow cyclists and pedaled 17 miles.  We rode at 16.9 miles her hour, which is quick for me.

However, I now have hanging over me a marathon on December 8th.  For this reason, I need to study and organize my swimming, biking and running into a manageable plan that will give me success on the 8th.  Will keep you posted on the development of my plan.

Diastasis Recti: Tupler Technique

So, it was a big bummer that Baby G split my transverse muscle.  After my first son was born, I was back in a bikini in six weeks, which I was pretty sure was because I was awesome.   After my second son was born, six weeks after the birth I was routinely being asked if I was pregnant.  Three months after the fact, I was routinely asked if I was pregnant.  It was beyond what I could handle.  Now, I realize that this is a first world problem.  I have two healthy children, and we are all safe and sound and well fed and I am obsessing about washboard abs and the perfect belly button.  My vanity is not lost on me.

Anyway, I spent the first few months after my pregnancy, just cranking my abs with post partum workouts.  I ordered a Tracy Anderson workout, which I did without fail every night to no avail.  In fact, I sort of thought my stomach looked worse.  So, I consulted a trainer who told me that all the pilates and ab work I had done post partum had totally made the situation worse.  She was right and it was a big bummer.  Why doesn't anyone tell you about diastasis recti immediately after giving birth.  Why does western medicine encourage us down these disterous roads?  Once diagnosed, I got sort of obsessed and began hours of research on diastasis recti.
I had a four finger (at least) seperation initially.  You check yourself by laying on your back, bending your knees with feet on the floor, and lifting your head and shoulders off the floor.  Then you see how many fingers you can get in between the gap right above your belly button.

SO, when you have abdominal wall separation, as in a diastasis recti, crunches and such wrench the separation further apart, allowing your organs and such to move through the gap and increase the chances of the 16 year old lifeguard at the pool asking you if you are pregnant.  Womp Womp.

The trainer at the YMCA taught me a good bit about it, but I obsessed over it and ended up enrolling in Julie Tupler's online course, wearing a splint, reading a textbook and watching videos.  There is a very good chance that I am going to go to New York later in the year and take her seminar personally.

The key to closing your diastasis recti is doing transverse pulses, some 500 or 1000 a day.  This is when you hold your belly button all the way in and pulse in and out while pulling your ribs together.  It takes about two minutes per set of 100.  It isn't that bad, you can do it in the car while you are driving.  You also try to wear a splint for at least 18 weeks.  I saw a dramatic difference in three weeks and even more in 6 weeks.

Now, however, I seem to have plateaued.  My stomach is flat, but my belly button is funny.  This is why I need to talk to Julie Tupler at Maternal Fitness.  She is the guru, and I want her opinion about my belly button.