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.
Whenever I hear the comment, “You have, like, no body fat,” I cringe a little inside…
The “nice girl” in me awkwardly says, “Thanks,” knowing it’s meant to be a compliment, but the grown-ass woman in me wants to say, “Of course I have body fat! If I didn’t, I’d be dead!”
You can’t see much on my arms right now, but it’s because I’m genetically pear-shaped, so it prefers to live on my thighs more than on my arms and abs.
In order to live the healthiest version of themselves, most people are looking to lose fat, but some people actually need to gain some fat to keep their body functioning and their hormones happy. It’s all about balance.
AS LITTLE BODY FAT AS POSSIBLE IS NOT A HEALTHY GOAL!
If I hadn’t have kept enough fat on my during my 2016 race season, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my period and get pregnant one month after the long, grueling Spartan World Championship, and I cannot imagine my life without our precious Taylor.
In my decade as a personal trainer, rather than focus on a particular weight or body fat percentage, I encouraged people to work out using the peaks and valleys method (hard day followed by easy day), eat healthy 80% of the time, and try not to overthink or over analyze anything.
If people work out consistently and eat well in general, the body will find a healthy composition for it’s unique self, allowing people to enjoy their lives rather than constantly fight their body to look different.
Another comment I get sometimes is, “I’m just not that disciplined.”
My answer to that is usually “Oh, exercise is my therapy,” or “I get paid to work out.”
I realize I could just say “thanks” and leave it at that, but when I see other people, usually women, looking at me with less with a smile of admiration and more of a critiquing frown on their own body, I feel compelled to give some context to my body, and acknowledge that I got there originally because I had a stressful childhood and running (as opposed to singing or art) happened to be my therapy of choice.
Couple that with some natural talent and good coaches and I started getting rewarded for it (high-fives! hugs! scholarship!), so I doubled-down on my dedication and eventually became a professional athlete.
Now I literally get paid to work out, so even though yes, it still takes a lot of discipline, it’s not the level of discipline required from someone with an 8-10 hour job, plus a family to take care of and/or a social life to navigate on top of trying to find time and energy to work out well.
In the same way that it would be silly and stressful of me to compare my mediocre cooking to a professional chef, I encourage anyone looking at photos of professional athletes to remember that not only do we get paid to work out, but the photos you see of us are generally action shots with muscles engaged. (Sometimes I’ll look at a photo of me swinging on an obstacle and think, “My back does not look like that when I look at it in the mirror.”)
And most important, we all have different genes and body shapes, with no one particular size/shape defining what is healthy or fit.
I’ve spent just enough time on the comparison train to know it doesn’t make me happy, so I’ll take my defined arms/abs + thighs that sometimes rub together while others can have their apple-shape with defined legs + love handles, and still others, their whole-body curves, and we can all dance away to the beat of our own drums.
(I’d like to give my friends in eating disorder recovery a huge shout-out for opening up about their experiences and working to change the conversation around body image. One of my biggest anxieties about having a daughter revolved around the fear of watching her potentially get sucked into society’s trap of judging her self-worth on what her body looks like, and I feel more encouraged each day that she can be free to love herself regarding of what the scale says. Thank you, Amelia, Bailey, Cali, Nell, and Rea!)
Let’s be real – many of us stay fit because we love to race and race well. Take those races away and it can be tough to maintain motivation. I applaud people who can push themselves to high levels of fitness without racing – digging deep at the gym or on a trail just for the pure satisfaction of it. I’m married to one of those – my husband, Tim, can SPRINT on the stepmill for 30-45 minutes, sweating profusely, for no reason other than to feel fit, vital, healthy, and alive.
Unfortunately, that’s not me.
I need start lines, big challenges, competitors to push me, and people to cheer me on. Maybe it’s because Tim, is the self-confident oldest of a small, normal, loving, attentive family, and feels he has nothing to prove, whereas I’m the 8th of a big family of nine kids – the youngest girl – stilling fighting for attention and respect even as I (gulp) push 40.
If anyone out there can relate to my experience, going through a long period without racing is tough. We miss the thrill of it, the accountability of it, the celebration after it. I’ve been there – while pregnant, I was fortunate enough to be able run throughout my pregnancy BUT being able to run without the ability to race (at least not all-out) also meant I had to find motivation to get my me and my belly out of bed and onto the track or trails with no races to try win or no personal records to attempt to set.
A few ideas for getting through this weird time:
1. Compete with yourself
Create personal benchmarks, e.j. fastest mile time or max pushups
Do virtual races/charity challenges
2. Compete with others
Chase local Strava segments and FKTs (Fastest Known Times)
Go for a creative Guinness World Record
Enlist a friend in some friendly head-to-head competition
3. Take a break from competing
Do whatever you want to, including something new, with no agenda
Work on mental game, flexibility/mobility/yoga
Take an extra long off-season and focus on other priorities, guilt-free
Whichever you choose – good luck, hang in there, and have fun!
