The Athlete Meets Yoga
The Athlete is about passion. Drive. The Zone. Whether you run, bike, swim, do gymnastics, play ball …. we are all the same. We work hard. We play hard. As good as our sports are for us, there are drawbacks. A lot of our activities are repetitive and tend to exercise one muscle group more than another, creating imbalances in the body. Another drawback is when you do have less than optimal bio-mechanics leading to bad form, the repetitive nature of our activities can lead to lower performance or even injury.
In walks Yoga. Yoga is about balance. Balance within a movement. Balance within the joints. Balance within the mind.
Yoga is a fun compliment to any activity that can improve performance and prevent or address injuries. In simple terms, yoga is a bucketful of poses done in different sequences that exercise the entire body, cultivating balance within the skeleton structure.
Through the consistent practice of yoga, the joints become SUPPORTED and ALIGNED as a result of appropriate strength and length within muscle groups. A runner’s knee pain may be the result of imbalances within the quads and hamstrings or as a result of weak hip stabilizers. Get on your yoga mat often enough, working towards a nice balanced Warrior III and you find that the hips get stronger, the quads and hamstrings reach equilibrium. The knee becomes quiet.
As you practice triangle pose you’ll learn to respect the limitations of your inner thighs and hamstrings, while using your quads to help the hamstrings loosen. You’ll find the back stretch coupled with the upper body strength to create a wonderful expression of strength and space. Each yoga pose has its challenges.
The fun comes in with the challenge of each pose, the music, the others in class with you. It’s an awesome way to do the work needed to keep the body working well and in balance. This happier body then plays ball better, runs faster, swims more efficiently, sleeps better, recovers faster and experiences less injury.
Play Hard. Do Yoga.
So what to do. Well, we are all individuals. Gloriously unique. So our approach to weight loss will be unique. Now, that’s not to say that their won’t have a similar foundation, but everyone will have different needs. That sounds complicated, but actually, it’s not that hard. Takes some patience. Some investigation. Some experimentation.
It was sort of cold but not too bad. You layer up. At 6 we started out with a short run over a pedestrian bridge to get our map, coordinate and directions. Then a short run back to our transition area to map out the race. Mark showed me how to do the coordinates. I liked that part a lot. Though…you know me…directionally challenged. Come to find out, I’m good at navigating to landmarks and what not. Need to be careful here, could end up with a bad day if you got some coordinates wrong.
After we got the coordinates all mapped. And double checked. We got ready to take off. The first part of the race was biking, on our mountain bikes, through beautiful neighborhoods of Little Rock. The city is a bit hilly so there was an element of work. We traveled a bit in town, getting to checkpoints and what not. At about checkpoint four, we were lucky enough to catch the first checkpoint at the entrance of a nice park. Very beautiful. And the beginning of our single track adventures. It was pretty easy to lose your way in this park as the leaves made the paths hard to see. The below video was a bit of an example of the type of terrain found in the park.
They had a person there giving hints. Good thing too. At one checkpoint we had to climb down a pretty steep ravine to look for the check point. If you got lucky and the team in front of you wasn’t lost, you could get clues as to where the check point was. Or if they were totally lost, you could spend a lot of time looking in an area for NOTHING. So back to the ravine. And back out. Back on the roads and heading to the dam checkpoint by checkpoint. Here’s Heidi in some really cool bamboo.
Was reading a magazine. They say training for the long races changes you. In a big way. In so many positive ways, in different aspects of my life. You learn how to embrace all that you are, find a rhythm, find equilibrium and go. And keep going. Not so much just pushing and clawing your way through, but climbing up…because you still can climb, you still have more.
To ensure nice steady breathing, I took a pre-race jog which was very nice and calming. The swim was wetsuit legal. So in the suit I went. Also part of my calm breathing routine was consuming some goo that had caffeine in it. Got some glide on, mostly around the neck and to race start I went with Jeff and Scott. I felt pretty calm. It was a real change of pace to get into the really MUDDY water. Most were doing warm up stuff in the water. ME…I was peeing. Though I got to asking myself…my wetsuit is so tight, why in the world did I walk out here to pee. You figure it out. So…ready to swim, got myself situated where I wanted to be. Mostly in the back of the pack. My routine is to start slow, get my breathing under control and then try and pick up the pace. Things were going really well. I felt in command of the swim when the next heat caught up to me. No biggie until someone hit the back of my head fairly hard and made my calves cramp up instantly. 
That was hard to deal with. I had to stop, stretch out my leg, praying to the Saint of swimming that my calves wouldn’t stay cramped. It went away. I started swimming again. It happened again, the bang on the head/calf thing. So after that I started to elbow/kick the swimmer that would run into me over and over. (Honey badger coming alive). I did decide to swim wide. And amazingly enough, I was swimming straight. So I finished up the swim totally crazy happy and proud of myself.
HAHAHAHA. I wonder if that would have been a penalty or disqualify. Anyway…my nutrition was pretty good. Beans. Some perpetuem. Some cliff bars. Some chomps. And a bit of banana. I was missing ONE thing though. A big thing.
I wasn’t doing too bad until about mile 2 and started to feel really bad. I’d drink more. And feel even worse. I’d try to eat and I’d feel even worse. OH NO. I was thinking to myself. 13 miles of this will kill me. I wasn’t until I got to an aide station when a (very) concerned volunteer said…”you need to hydrate”. And I’m thinking to myself as I stumble to a walking pace, “dude I am”. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken ANY salt pills on the bike. AT ALL. Seriously, what a stupid (and harmful) mistake. More water was just making things worse. So I pop 4 pills right there. Well, actually it was one clump of mostly soggy pills from my fuel belt which thank goodness I didn’t choke on. After that…about 1/2 mile down the ride. All was right as rain. I found my rhythm and pace and the miles started to dwindle at a nice pace. I continued with the 4 salt pills at each aide station for awhile and I felt good. The songs that got stuck in my head. Black and Yellow. Wild Ones. Over and over and over for 13 miles. I tried repeatedly to get to Emimen ‘Till I Collapse but it was hot and my brain cells were dying off fast.
All this STUFF got stored in my body, my mind, my spirit ( my _____ ). Some of this stuff has been locked up for many longs years, now working its way to the surface and doggedly expressing the need for release.
For all these years, underneath it all, I have made the act of “watering” this plant about the relationship. My feelings for how it went. Again blah blah blah.
So I got to thinking…an acquaintance of mine tends to say things like “I traumatize my body with all this training” and what not. Which has always irritated me. I wondered why…and have gotten to this thought with the nudge of Jerry. Being healthy is about physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual. A combination. I read an article that being physically healthy is a small part of being HEATHLY. That emotionally being healthy has a bigger impact. So while I am physically stressing my body (which sometimes stress is a good thing, that’s how we grow and move forward), I’m making myself very happy. I feel good when I train. I love the people I am around. I enjoy myself 100%. Which I totally think outweighs the physical stress.
The water was really ROUGH. 2 to 3 foot swells. IT WAS AWESOME. I started out, didn’t panic, worked to keep calm, felt fine, just couldn’t quite get the the rhythm of the freestyle. Without drinking a ton of water. I got pretty good at getting a nose full of water and snorting it out. So I did a lot of breast stroke. Found a rhythm. Found a way to ride the waves a bit. Stopped drinking so much water. In the back of my mind I was aware that I needed to get around the buoys faster. So I’d go back to the freestyle, where I managed to find this feeling of moving through the water better. Then I’d drink some more water. And move back to breast stroke. I was getting there, slowly. The chic I was keeping up with was pulling away. I was getting a little nervous. Then the guy in the kayak told me I had 12 minutes to get in. I had three more buoys left. I said “F$CK”, measured the distance, concluded that I wouldn’t make it. And said “F$CK” again. I start to sob a bit. WHAT??? CRYING IN THE LAKE???
At the point, I had resigned to not getting in on time. And I wanted to finish this $250 dollar swim strong. If this was the last of my race, i wanted to do it well. So I pressed on. Hard.
That was the only time someone passed me. For about 30 seconds.
Starting the 13 miles was hard. My legs felt ok. It was just plain HOT. And the run was so incredibly boring. The highlights of the run: Running with Glen for a bit. Seeing Dan a bunch. Seeing Ashlea’s rockstar @ss. Kelli on her last bit, getting myself an “another lap to go kiss”. The honey badger sign at the aide station. She recited the video to me, so that was cool. “He’s so NASTY…He doesn’t give a SHIT. He just takes what he wants!” The water hoses. And the seasoned triathlete that said this was a really hard race.
I passed a lot of runners. I tried not to walk. I walked more on loop one. Average pace was 12:20. Loop two got better. ALMOST DONE. Pace quickened to 11:00. Still feeling pretty good.
