Thursday, March 9, 2017

More is not always better...


We all want to be better, faster and stronger.  When we first start training we are told to get better we need to up our mileage.  We also increase our intensity for our hard workouts.  Then our long workouts are supposed to get faster.  Now let's add in some strength training.  Next is lifting heavier weights (for some).  More, more, more... faster, faster, faster.... harder, harder, harder!!!!  And the better we want to be the more we start to think we have to do more, all the time.

But more is not always better.

Last May I competed at the World Team Championships of Race Walking in Rome, Italy.  One of the benefits of making Team USA is when we travel as a team we have a medical person travel with us.  I have found that they can be a source of invaluable knowledge and wisdom and every trip I take I learn so much!  Rome was no exception as our physio was absolutely amazing.  She was very dismayed by the lack of flexibility in my hips.  Now, as a race walker, you would think I'd have super mobile hips, but not so.  When I was a kid I never sat cross legged.  Whenever I do cobbler's pose in yoga my knees are always up pretty high, I've never in my life had them on the ground in that position.  I figured it was just the way I was built, and I would of course continue to stretch but not worry too much about it.

The physio said not so!  I could gain more flexibility!  She worked like crazy on me and gave me a bunch of stretches and mobility exercises.  And they were working!  My knees were getting closer and closer to the ground!  Thus started my journey to increased hip flexibility.  And like any good athlete, more is better!  I'd do them all the time.  Then in November in New Zealand I saw a physio who gave me more exercises to do!  Hazzah!  More is better!  These were focused a bit more on flexibility in the joints.  So I dove right in to those as well.

After a while though I started noticing that when I'd do some of the exercises on my right side my hip would ache.  No sharp pains, just a dull ache that would take a few minutes to go away.  But then it would happen sooner and sooner and get more and more painful.  So I figured I just needed to put my big girl panties on and push through it.

Here in New Zealand I have an amazing massage therapist.  She's awesome, knows how to get in deep and has tons of experience working on race walkers and race walking specific issues.  I told her about wanting to increase my mobility.  She was totally for it!  So she'd work away, we'd talk over the issue, try new things.  Then one day we were really working deep in there and it was a few days after a 10K PB and my body was tired and WHAM!  My muscles totally spasamed up.  It took about a week for them to calm down and a week of sub par training.

More was definitely NOT better.

I have since gone to see another physio to look at my right hip.  Basically he thinks there could be some spots where some of the cartilage is thin and that's what's causing the dull ache in my hip.  So we take out the stretches that stretch the joint and keep the ones that stretch the muscles.  Whew!  Luckily an easy fix.  But one that could've been so, so much worse.

So what's my point?  More is not always better.  Yes, train hard.  Yes, increase your mileage.  Yes, get stronger.  But don't go overboard.  That's one of the main benefits to having either a coach or someone to advise you.  Very, very rarely does anyone have to tell me that I'm not working hard enough and get my tooshie in gear.  More often someone has to say to me, hey, you've done enough, time to stop.  There's a time and a place to push yourself to your limits.  There's a time and a place to challenge your body past what you think you can do.  But there's also times where you need to listen to your body and back off just a bit.  I would rather have a month of really solid training with no amazing, spectacular, PB performances than only having one spectacular performance and a bunch of sub-par efforts.

Having someone to monitor you and keep their eyes on you and an independent opinion of how things are going can be crucial.  If it was left up to me I'd probably work myself to death, especially during 50K training as I LOVE to go long.

More is not always better.  Train hard, but train smart.   And have fun doing it!



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Saturday, March 4, 2017

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My blog originally was supposed to be on race walking, farming, music and more!  However it tends to be focused quite a bit on race walking.  Probably because the majority of my life is spent training, racing, stretching, cross training, working on core, mobility, and eating (not necessarily in that order).  Today I’m going to talk about something other than race walking…. Gasp!  At least the first part of it will be.  I’ll talk a bit about race walking stuff at the end of it, well, because I just can’t help myself.

Before...  the long hair

After!  So short and some color

For those of you who don’t know me personally I have very long hair.  Long as in down below my waistline.  When I was 13 I got my hair cut short and permed (I know, I know, but it was the early 90s and that’s just what you did…)  I hated it!  It ended up looking like a Little Orphan Annie hairstyle.  Don’t get me wrong, it looked great on her, on me?  Not so much.  So I grew it out…. And just never stopped.  In January of 2016 I took a jump into the deep end and got about six inches cut off!  It was terrifying!  But I did it and it was nice.

Well, the idea started brewing in my brain… Maybe it’s time for a change… There have been some times when my long hair has been quite annoying.  It’s warm and humid here in New Zealand and I’m quite sweaty a lot in my workouts and my braided hair will whip around and get stuck on my arm and all sorts of annoying things.  When I’m doing yoga it seems to always be in the way.
So Friday I went to a salon.  Not a place that cuts hair, a salon.  Keep in mind, most years of my life I never got my hair trimmed at all, so I have spent very, very little money on hair maintenance in my lifetime.  So I felt like going to a salon once would be okay.  They were so nice.  They could tell I was super nervous and my stylist (Rochelle) put me at ease.  We talked a lot about what was going to be done and looked at pictures and all sorts of things.  So besides getting my hair cut I decided to get it highlighted too!   For those who are interested I will document it in pictures at the end of the blog. 
Of course you could just say I’m so dedicated to attaining my race weight I’m taking it off wherever I can J 



Aaaaannnnndddd back to race walking.  It’s been a weird week.  Monday I was walking along and clipped my toe on the pavement and almost went down.  I managed to catch myself before I actually hit the ground, but not by much.  Unfortunately it totally jammed my spine and threw me all out of alignment.  I had an appointment already arranged for Wednesday with a physio so thought he’d fix stuff then.  Unfortunately he didn’t do a darned thing for it.  I was starting to get massive headaches from my neck being out and all sorts of stuff.  I looked up chiropractors and found one close by where I’m staying.  They opened 7:00 AM Thursday, so at 7:15 I called them and gave them my sob story.  They were so nice and fit me in for an 8:00 AM appointment!  She took about an hour with me and really focused on how my body needed to be aligned.  I left feeling the best I’ve felt all week.  It was amazing, my mood instantly changed and I could walk easier, even just down the street walking.
Since I had a race on Saturday she wanted to see me Friday as well, which I was happy with.  I was so far out all the way out my spine and had been for basically four days, it was very possible I might slip back out.  That appointment went well and I again left feeling really good. 



Saturday was the Auckland Championships at 3,000.  I was planning for another big PB, but felt some self-doubt with my spine being out most of the week and not getting in any speed work.  But I was going to give it my all.  Warm up went okay.  Near the end I started feeling pretty fluid and decent, not great, but decent.  We were called into the call room 15 minutes before the race.  Unfortunately there were some issues with the meet and we were stuck in there for 40 minutes.  I did my best to stay loose and fluid and warm, but had a really hard time and as we walked out I just felt flat and tired.  I tried to do some pickups and get moving again.  I think I was only partially successful.

Alana smashed it out.  I'm considered a visitor so I got a second place visitors medal.


So I started off okay, not as fast as I wanted, but not slow either.  I ended up finishing in 13:45.82, less than 6 seconds off my PB and breaking my masters age group record.  For having a day where I felt totally flat I’m quite happy with that time.  And I’m hopeful that with more self-care my body will be a-ok and I can get back to quality training.


Enjoy the pictures, if that’s your thing.  I’ll throw in some pictures from the race and stuff too, just for fun.

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The "holy cow I'm nervous" before shot

highlight foils

highlight foils marinating

washing and adding the toner

all done!

the awesome Rochelle who I spent 6 hours with!