Introduce Yourself to...Yourself

What I failed to mention in my last post is that I'm taking a week off.  I know.  CRAZY! Insane!  Stupid!  Why would I take a week off??  I'm in the peak of training!  I'm just getting into the good stuff, I've only just begun to dig my heels into this marathon!!  But the truth is that I tried to go for a long run on Sunday and I had to stop after 6 miles.  I was dehydrated - I coudn't gather any energy, even after drinking al the water bottles in my fuelt belt.  Even after GU.  I was overheated - I had gone to the beach the day before, I was sunburned and I was running at 2pm.  My muscles were cramping.  I took a walking break and couldn't force my legs to relearn how to run.

Brief panic set in - was I plateau-ing?  Would I lose interest if I kept running like this?

But I remembered from years of sports training and fitness magazines - this is also a great metaphor for LIFE guys, get ready - one bad run doesn't mean that you're a failure.  It didn't mean that I was never going to run again, it didn't mean that all of the sudden I was going to go at an 11 minute mile for the rest of my life.  It meant that my body was ANGRY at me because for the past month I've been pulling 30 mile weeks.  It meant that I wasn't paying attention to my hydration levels or my nutrition (I might not have eaten anything before running except a piece of peanut butter toast at 9am).  It meant that I had spent too much time in the sun in the past 24 hours.  It meant that I had neglected to pay attention to my body - and my body is the only thing carrying me forward in my endeavor.  

Well geez, that was pretty stupid of me!

So I told myself...no running this week (a rule which I immediately broke the next day by going running with a coworker, but I decided it was a worthy exception).  Instead, I would focus on reading some articles about nutrition and I would return to the basics - strength training and a focus on flexibility.  Which is why today during my lunch break, believe it or not, I went to a yoga studio and bought a pass for 2 classes.  Granted...I then signed up for a Pilates class and a "Fit Flow" class instead of traditional yoga.  But I figured that doing stuff like this, controlled exercise with someone supervising my movements, would help me in regaining a sense of personal balance and find new inspiration to run (I'm REALLY pushing this in my head).  

So I went to Flow Yoga Studio on P St. and signed myself up.  They have, no lie, a purple staircase.  You are asked to take your shoes off when you go in and you can sit in the heavily incensed lobby/entrance, which has little sofas (divans?) for you to sit on and relax, with flowy, meditaton-inspiring music playing in the background.  They have 3 different recycling bins at the front.  They ask you to relax with filtered tap water and encourage you to buy a reusable water bottle because bottled water is a waste.  I believe their mats are organic.  

I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but places like this usually make me giggle.  It's not that I don't respect their attention to the environment and to the importance of breathing and being in touch with your own body.  I just have a really hard time getting into it.  I'm a very hyper, quick-paced person.  I prefer a different type of challenge that these places usually present.  But this is a bigger challenge to me than running a marathon - this is forcing myself to listen to my body and be aware of what it needs.  After floundering in my run on Sunday, I kind of felt like I had to introduce myself to myself: "Body, I'm Sarah.  It's so nice to meet you, now please behave."  "Sarah, this is your Body.  You're KILLING ME."  

Therefore, I went to Flow this afternoon and took down one of their organic mats and went through one of the hardest, one of the best Pilates classes I've ever taken.  We were in constant motion and I knew right from the start, when they put on the song "Perfect Gentleman," that this would not be boring or unbearable.  The only times I giggled were when the instructor had to force my arms to stretch out farther than they wanted to and when I found that I cannot lift my leg to hip-height.

I guess that what I'm trying to learn from this is that you have to learn how to read your own body.  Personally, I find it really easy to lose track of myself and to push too hard without realizing that I've gone too far.  On Sunday, I kept trying to tell myself to go a little bit farther, run a little bit longer.  If I had done what my mind said, I think I would have ended up passing out.  And if your body says stop, STOP and don't punish yourself for it.  It's not a sign of weakness or failure - the human body can withstand an awful lot, but I don't think that it's fair to push yourself to the point of shut-down.  Well....unless it's race day.

SARAH'S UNPAID ENDORSEMENT:  http://www.flowyogacenter.com/flow/index.html

Flow Yoga Center is a tiny little studio near the Whole Foods on P St. in Washington, DC.  The atmosphere is surprisingly relaxing, the people who work there are extremely friendly, and from what I can tell so far, the classes are challenging without putting a lot of pressure on participants.  Prices are reasonable - if you are new to Flow, you can get a pass for 2 classes for $20.  Later, if you want to buy a pass for say, 10 classes, you can get a 5% discount if you do it online (that way you save paper and the earth...awww).  Also, because it's by the Whole Foods, if you take an evening class and don't have anything for dinner, you can pop in and buy yourself something healthy.