Two miles at a time

This morning I got up early and jogged on the treadmill for almost forty minutes. My cat kept me company and we both stared longingly out of the basement windows, wishing it wasn't too dark and too cold to be outside. (We both may have also given some thought to the bears and coyotes we might encounter in the dark.)

I slowly covered two-and-a-half miles according to the display, which was about a half mile longer than yesterday's jog, but not quite the four mile run my spring training plan called for. I am grateful for two-and-a-half miles, however.

It's more than I was able to do two weeks ago, and much more than I could do a month ago.

The time on the treadmill has been an experiment in coming back. I've never torn a ligament or had plantar fasciistis. I've never had an injury that kept me from running if I chose to, but my inner ear problem might as well have been. As much as I dislike the treadmill and wish I could get out on the road, it has given me an opportunity to find out how high I can get my heart rate before my head starts to drain and the equilibrium changes. I'm glad to have the hand holds when the room spins.

I must begin my marathon plan next month to be ready for the Adirondack Distance Festival and my first attempt at a full marathon. I am grateful for this time to work my way back. I am grateful for Dr. Schwerman at the Schroon Lake Health Center for figuring out what was wrong and helping me fix it in time to start training.

I am also grateful that, despite a relatively inactive winter, I am not sore after my runs and not far from my "race weight" thanks to Isagenix. I'm grateful for my family and friends who saw me through and picked up my slack. I'm grateful for my yoga students, who gave me a reason to get out of bed when I felt like I could have slept forever. And I am grateful that my own yoga mat was waiting for me when I was ready to unroll it again.

Onward to marathon training...two miles at a time.

Sometimes They Listen

Photo by Noah Hamilton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last evening, after some small miracle occurred and a movie I chose made it to the top of our Netflix queue, we watched Soul Surfer. This movie is about Bethany Hamilton, a surfer who lost an arm to a shark then went on to compete as a professional surfer.

After Bethany did poorly at her first attempt at competing after losing her limb, she was surprised to get a bunch of fan mail. When she asked why, her wise movie-mother said "because you tried."

And my son, snuggled next to me on the couch, said, "and DNF is better than DNS."

My husband and my daughter both replied, "huh?" but I understood perfectly, because months ago, on Thanksgiving, when my son and I were running our own 5K turkey trot, I had said those very words to him. They're words I read often on the forums of the site that got me through my first triathlon. The phrase is one of those endurance athlete cliches.

Did not finish is better than did not start.

Sometimes things happen. We get injured, we lose a bike tire, we hit the wall. We might not finish. That's why every time I race, there's one line I strive to make it to - the starting line. After that everything's gravy. What matters is that I tried.

Racing, like yoga, teaches me lessons that apply very nicely to life. I try to share those lessons with my children. Most of the time I'm pretty sure they ignore me. But then there are moments, like the one last night, when they let me know that sometimes they listen.

Too tired to say I can't #365Yoga

My long-time yoga teacher, Tracey Ulshafer of One Yoga and Wellness Center in East Windsor, New Jersey, often told us that breakthroughs in her yoga practice happened when she was too tired to tell herself she couldn't. After having plenty of my own exhaustion-inspired breakthroughs, I've taken that to heart and shared it. My first lift-off into Bakasana came at the end of a long vinyasa workshop that followed a sleepless night of riding trains to New York City and back. (Don't ask.)

Like pushing through the "wall" when running, at some point during a physically demanding yoga practice your body decides thinking is using too many precious resources, and redirects them to your muscles. Your brain still works, it's just gone on autopilot. And you don't have the energy to say "I can't."

I've been exhausted for months thanks to my uncooperative ear, but I haven't been asking much of my body. For weeks I've been relegated to supine, non-dizzy-making poses. And, since it's still pretty cold here in the North Country, most of those supine poses have been practiced under my fluffy quilt...which is on my bed.

Anyway, today I did something my feisty life coach Annie tells me to do sometimes - I took a "f*ck it all pill" and had myself a real, physical, sweat-producing yoga practice. I practiced Surya Namaskar with no dizziness, no nausea, no ear pain. Woohoo! Then I took advantage of my recovering equilibrium to play with a home practice sequence I tore out of Yoga Journal months ago and promptly put someplace I'd be sure to never see it again, unless I had some time on my hands due to lack of practicing and cleaned my desk.

I was enjoying myself, thinking of ways I could adapt the sequence for my varying levels of flow classes until I wore myself out too much to think. When the paper said Bakasana, I flew. Then I read the next step. (Yes, while balancing on my hands I was reading from the magazine page. Yoga does have its perks.) It said to draw my chest forward and float my feet back into Chaturanga Dandasana. Countless times before, when a yoga teacher said "jump back from crow," I quietly put my feet down and stepped back into plank.

But today I taken a "f*ck it all pill" and I had made myself too tired to say "I can't." So it did what it said. And it worked...almost. I went a bit sideways and only one foot found my mat. But the second time it worked just fine. And the third, and the fourth. Then my brain woke up and sent me into Balasana.

When my forehead hit the floor, a big chunk of something (use your imagination) slid down the side of my throat. I swallowed before I realized what I was doing. Gross. But when I swallowed, my ear didn't make the crunching sound I'd gotten used to hearing. So I swallowed again, just to be sure. I'm not positive it opened completely, but something definitely changed in my ear.

At the Colorado Yoga Journal Conference a few years ago, David Swenson told us that we would, at times, be visited by the yoga fairies who would sprinkle us with fairy dust and we would suddenly be able to do whatever asana had been eluding us. He also pointed out that the yoga fairies had a sick sense of humor, so after achieving that challenging asana, we'd probably not be able to do it again the next day. So I won't be surprised when I wake up tomorrow and my ear is cracking and I can't jump back from crow to low plank.

But today, when I was too tired to say "I can't," I had it.