STOP READING if you’re already living your best life; this blog is not for you…
But if you’re like me, and you feel pretty good about your life, but you have a feeling you could do, learn, give, discover, and/or accomplish MORE, come along for the ride – we’ll grow together.
With so many ways to reach new heights and deeper levels as a human (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, intellectually), where the hell does one begin?
Some might start with their highest priority, or some with their biggest weakness, but I’m going to start with what I know best and work out from there: the physical.
I have a goal…
The OCRWC 3k World Championship race is in 101 days, and I want to put myself in the best possible position to win it.
Despite leading by a hair for most of the race last year, I finished third. Like before, I’m training very hard, but if one wants a different outcome, they must do something different. So I’m ready to take things to the next level. To have a shot at being THE best, I’ve got to discover and develop MY best. Let’s start with first thing in the morning…
How are your mornings? My mornings have a solid foundation of healthy habits already (https://medium.com/authority-magazine/rose-wetzel-american-ninja-warrior-athlete-on-the-morning-routines-and-habits-of-highly-a4b8814f0812), but they can definitely be better.
One might think that to be a better athlete, one should just do more working out, and I will be adding in almost-daily, ever-increasing pushup and pullup challenges, but there’s a saying in Chinese medicine that if you have too much yang, your body forces you to shift to yin. Think of the last time you over-worked yourself, with too many hours cleaning up messes at work or home and not sleeping well – we tend to get sick, and our body forces us to take rest, no matter how inconvenient the timing is. I remember many of my personal training clients who worked high-stress corporate jobs would work extra hard to get things lined up before a vacation and then…get sick on vacation.
So, to become the best athlete I can be, in my quest to become the best human I can be (or was it the other way around?), I’m adding in both yang (think things that fire up the nervous system) and yin (think things that slow it down and help it recharge) in the hopes that the yin will allow me to create capacity for more yang (in the form of training) without getting injured or burnt out. Bring on massage therapy after an intense couple weeks of training – yes, please!
Morning mantra: “My body is rested and my mind is clear. Today is going to be a great day.”
2 minute meditation
10 minute yoga/stretch
no social media until 9am
My goal is to share my progress with you everyday to hold myself accountable. I’ll add in a few things that generally take me out of my comfort zone and/or cause me to be more disciplined, such as doing dishes (I hand-washed a TON for my family of 11 people, as a kid), swimming, burpees, heavy carries, and things like changing our car’s oil. I’ll add in my typical run training as well, once my body recovers from the 14.7-mile, 2600 feet of climbing, and 31 obstacles my body endured last weekend in Puebla, Mexico!
After five minutes of being harnessed in and looking 75 feet down, my heart raced and my palms sweated. I felt scared – very scared – but leaving the platform via the stairs wasn’t an option…
I was committed to the jump. it was just a matter of gathering the courage.
How did I know in my mind I would do it? Because leaving one’s comfort zone is like a muscle – the more you do it, the easier it gets, even if it still feels difficult.
Ever since moving across the country as a teenager to accept an athletic scholarship to a college where I knew nobody, I’ve slowly gotten comfortable feeling uncomfortable – a skill that has consistently helped me to conquer fear and live a fuller life.
Think of all the brave things you’ve done in life.What’s the next scary thing on your list?
A limiting belief I’ve told myself for over a decade is that I can’t run high mileage without getting injured. (I started to try once, when I first got to college, and…got injured, with a stress fracture, after increasing from 25 miles a week in high school to 50 miles a week, within less than four months).
Three months ago, when covid wiped all of my races off the calendar for a few months, I figured it was time to go for it again, using all the information I’ve gathered over the years from reading running books, and observing my training and others’.
“What did I have to lose?” I figured.
This week’s training stats of 80 miles of running (along with 53 miles of biking and a couple hours of strength training) exceeded my goal of hitting a 65 mile week (after hovering around 45-50 most of my athletic career).
Looping through trails may not lead to a cure for cancer, (though I am learning quite a bit about cool topics like neuroscience, social psychology, grit, and motivation from my self-help audiobooks), but it has allowed me to expand what I think is possible, a discovery I’m confident will flow over into other parts of my life in a positive way, and inspire my daughter, too.
And while this piece of running mileage is setting me up for a potentially excellent season, if I get so fortunate as to safely have one), it’s done that much more than that for me. It has proven to me that I can focus and get more organized than I thought I could, resulting in accomplishing more than I thought possible (at least for the disorganized, monkey-minded, stress fracture-prone me, who, even if her body could handle the mileage wasn’t sure her mind could).
Tips for increasing mileage:
only increase mileage by no more than 10% each week (so if you run 30 miles in one week, only add up to three more miles the following week)
so the two weeks up, one week down method: incrementally increase your mileage for two weeks by 10% each week, and then decrease by 20% for a week before building on to the previous weeks total by 10%
proactively schedule and self-care, such as dynamic stretching before your run, static stretching after, doing mobility work, foam rolling, and putting your feet up the wall
eat plenty of nutrient-dense food and always have a water bottle nearby for adequate hydration
And if you start to feel rundown, in the words of my Georgetown track coach, “When in doubt, take a nap“ or a day off from running.
Less than a hundred years ago, my grandma won her middle school regional girls athletics competition in B.C. There was a trophy for the first place boy but not the first place girl, so her dad had one made, knowing she would win it. She was the first place girl, as expected, but the organizers refused to give her the trophy and gave it to the second place boy instead. Luckily, my grandma lived long enough to see many of her granddaughters granted trophies for their athletic efforts, in both the U.S. and Canada.
Some girls and women in other countries, however, are not so lucky. Almost 750 million women and girls alive today were married off before their 18th birthday. Out of the 130 million out-of-school youth, 70% are girls. If we eliminate the barriers that keep girls out of the classroom, girls around the world will, statistically, marry later, have fewer children, earn more money (of which they tend to reinvest 90% into their families) and thus break the cycle of poverty, leading to their daughters AND their sons growing up with less malnutrition and more hope for a decent future.
I’ve seen with my own eyes people suffering in absolute poverty, in both Brazil and Ecuador. It’s out there. It’s real. When 10% more of its girls go to school, a country’s GOP increases an average of 3%.
When we educate girls around the world, everyone benefits.
