Reasons to Race

I absolutely love to race! It was my desire to get back into the world of competitive sport that took me from group exercise classes at the YMCA to joining a running group.  I know many people who can stick to an exercise routine and be perfectly motivated and happy without having a race or competition in mind.  I am not one of those people.  In order to get excited about working out on a regular basis, I NEED a race to train for.  My workouts are much more consistent, structured, and of higher quality when I am training for a race.  I admire anyone who can workout consistently without the need to compete, and would encourage those individuals to keep doing what they are doing if it works for them and they are making progress towards their personal goals.  If you do not have any races in mind, and you suspect that having a race to train for could be good for you, ask yourself these questions:

Do I feel a sense of purpose about my workouts?

Do my workouts have any kind of structure (including scheduled rest days/ periods) to them?

Am I aware of the progress (or lack thereof) I have made since I started working out? 

If you answered ‘No’ to any or all of these questions, signing up for a race might be a good decision for you. 

While I realize that not everyone has the competitive nature I do (which compels me to highly desire a personal best time and/ or a trophy at every race I enter), I imagine anyone who signs up for a race has the intention of (at the least) putting their best foot forward on race day.  I doubt there are many people who register for a race with the goal of finishing last.  Even if your goal is purely just to finish, and it honestly does not matter to you what your finishing place or time is, you probably still don’t want to be the one all the race volunteers are waiting for to finish so they can go home after a long morning of serving and encouraging athletes.  Having a race to train for, a day marked on your calendar that signifies THIS IS THE DAY I AM WORKING TOWARDS helps give a sense of purpose to your workouts.  If you feel your workouts have purpose, it will be mentally easier to get motivated to start and complete them, and you may be more willing to physically push yourself harder during the workout. 

After registering for a race, most athletes want a plan of action for how they can get to the point of performing to the best of their ability on race day.  Books, online resources, coaches, and experienced training buddies are all great resources for finding and devising a training plan that works for you.  A proper training plan will incorporate rest days and rest periods in order to allow your muscles to develop and to help prevent injury.  Without a training plan, it can be easy for a motivated athlete to over train; or for an unmotivated athlete to not put in the work they need to reach their full potential.

“Race once and you will be hooked!”  I was told this before I registered for my first triathlon, and then experienced the truth that statement held firsthand a couple months later.  Every triathlete I have met claims it took only one triathlon for them to want to do another, and another, and another.  Most runners I know are in constant pursuit of a personal best time.  After one race, there is something inside a competitive runner that makes them want to run that race again, but faster.  They register for another race, train hard, run the race (faster this time), and want to do it all over again, and again, and again.  It’s a cycle that can be both healthy and unhealthy.  A cycle that can serve to motivate, and at times can devastate a determined athlete.  For the purposes of this particular post, we’ll focus on the healthy and motivating aspects of this ‘Constant Improvement Cycle.’  Racing allows one to gauge their progress in a fair and structured way.  There is no guarantee that you will reach the finish line of a race at your highest potential because there are many factors that contribute to how a race will turn out, but in general, if you have followed your training plan, you will have a fair gauge of your level of fitness.  Warning: the desire to improve is addicting, but of all the things I can think of that a human can be addicted to, self improvement of any form is by far the healthiest.  Achieving your goal on race day gives an athlete an amazing sense of accomplishment and pride.  The environment and atmosphere a race provides is the perfect setting for celebrating the achievement of a hard earned goal with training buddies and like-minded individuals.  Sure, it feels great to run a personal best time during a training run, but nothing compares to the feeling and excitement at the finish line party of a race. 

Inevitably, each and every race teaches you something.  Racing has taught me what I can and cannot eat the night before a race.  Racing has taught me that I can do anything I put my mind to (in athletics, and life in general).  Racing has taught me that, no matter how well I prepare, some things in life are out of my control.  Racing has taught me that I am not an endurance athlete; I am a sprinter.  Racing has taught me: there will always be someone better than me, and someone not as good as me- in every aspect of life.  Racing has taught me to be humble, yet proud.  Racing has taught me that physical performance is 90% mental, and so much more.  I did not learn any of these things about life or about myself during training sessions. I am continuously amazed at how every race enlightens me in a new and different way. 

Finally, racing provides life long memories.  There are definitely some training runs and bike rides which will remain engraved in my memory for years to come, but my brain holds many more memories from races.  When you think that training sessions typically outnumber races at least 30:1, that says a lot for the kind of memories acquired from races.  There are too many memories to list as this post comes to a conclusion, but I will leave you with one of my favorite race memories to date:

            This memory is from my first half marathon (Asheville Citizen Times Half Marathon, 2008). 

 A couple running buddies, one spouse of a running buddy, and myself had an amazing fall weekend in Asheville, North Carolina.  Everything about the weekend (the pre race pasta dinner, post race tour of the Biltmore Estate, brunch at a delicious and funky Asheville-esque cafe) was perfect, minus the 12.1 miles of uphill during the Half Marathon.  Mile one of the race was a tease: it was 100% downhill.  The remaining 12.1 miles of the race were pure torture for an un-gifted uphill runner such as myself.  In hindsight, I should not have chosen such a hilly race for my half marathoning debut, but I had…  The internal (and sometimes external) dialogue in my head was very negative and profane throughout the race.  Before the race, I had said that I was ‘too proud’ to ever walk during a race.  I had done a (relatively flat) 13.1 mile training run weeks before without walking at all and finished it feeling great, so I truly believed I would not have a problem running 13.1 miles non-stop on race day.  After a seemingly endless supply of hills were thrown at me, around every single turn, however, I was forced to tuck my pride and walk up most of the hills the second half of the race.  Not only was my internal dialogue filled with negativity and questions as to why I ever decided to take up running in the first place, my ears were constantly picking up on other runners negative comments about the never ending hills.  Even if I had possessed the positive self-talk skills then that I do now, I don’t know that even the best self-talk I could come up with could have drowned out all the negative comments from my fellow Asheville Half Marathoners.  After rounding a corner, as I ascended up yet another hill, I heard a tiny voice coming from a small group of spectators along the course.  A little boy (probably no more than 3 years of age) turned to his mom and said “They are all winners, mommy!” as I ran past.  The comment made me laugh because, growing up, the phrase “You are all winners” seemed to be the go-to phrase from adults when the team I was on did NOT win a particular game or competition.  “You’re all winners” had always been synonymous with “You tried hard, but there is only one real winner, and we feel sorry for you so we’ll just call you all ‘Winners’.”  At that moment in time though, as I trudged up that hill, and for the remainder of the race (and to this day, actually), I completely agreed with the wise words that little boy said.  We WERE all winners.  Everyone who crossed that finish line was a winner in my honest opinion.  We accomplished something most humans wouldn’t dare try, or couldn’t physically or mentally ever fathom completing.  I crossed the finish line a winner (even if only by my own newly revamped standards and those of a 3 year old boy).  I will always cherish the memories gained from my first half marathon weekend, and I continue to hold the belief  a tiny spectator helped me realize during that race- that anyone who sets out to accomplish a goal, and achieves it is a winner.       

I race to keep me honest in my training, to learn new things about myself and about life, to gauge my progress, and to gain memories I will cherish forever. 

Coping with Athletic Injuries

"Have you thought about the possibility that maybe you are depressed?"  As those words exited the mouth of the Nurse Practitioner at the Urgent Treatment Center, a few tears streamed down my cheek.  I went in to the UTC expecting there to be a physical reason for why I had become abnormally tired and unmotivated the previous couple months.  Blood tests, xrays, and MRI's all came out fine, and when the Nurse Practitioner asked me that question, I knew immediately she was on to something.  It was my Junior year of collegiate swimming, and  I had pulled my groin during a swim meet a few months prior.  My swim season more-or-less came to a halt after that injury.   Until that point, I was lucky enough that (with hard work) I was able see steady improvements in my times throughout my entire swimming career.  The groin injury happened while I was swimming my leg (breastroke) of the 400 yard medley relay.  After pushing off the wall to swim the second half of my 100 yard leg, I did my regular underwater pull and kick, but this kick was anything but regular. I heard and felt a 'snap' in my groin, and when I tried to kick again, it hurt and had absolutely no power behind it.  I finished my leg of the relay by pulling as hard as I could, and making the breastroke kick motion very gently.  I climbed out of the pool, and hobbled straight over to the athletic trainer. The diagnosis of muscle pull, and recommendation to not swim breastroke until the groin completely healed stung worse than the injury itself.   My dream of breaking the school record I was so close to was merely just a dream now.  My goal of reaching the podium for the 100 yard breastroke at the Conference meet was stripped.  Even my identity was uncertain now. For about as long as I could remember, when someone asked me to tell them something about myself, the first words out of my mouth were "I'm a swimmer."  I wasn't able to practice at all for a few weeks, and when I was finally allowed back in the pool, I could only swim freestyle (my worst and least favorite stroke).  I didn't feel like a swimmer anymore, and in my mind if I was not a swimmer, I was nothing.  I never would have imagined that a groin pull could ultimately lead to a depressive episode.

I share this personal story because I want it to be known that it is completely normal to feel depressed, angry, or hopeless as a result of an athletic injury.  Luckily I have avoided any major athletic injury since the groin pull, but I have had my share of minor  athletic injury-related setbacks since becoming a runner 4 years ago.  An athletic injury is unfair.  You've worked hard to be healthy, and towards the goals you have laid out for yourself.  The last thing you deserve is for your progress to be halted.  It is completely normal to throw a pity party for yourself when you have an injury that keeps you from doing what you love, but sitting around, focusing on the negative is not going to heal your injury.  If you can manage to deal with your injury gracefully, you will come out of it a more focused, flexible, and resilient athlete.

Learn about what you are dealing with:  With the free time you now have on your hands, learn about the causes, treatment, and prevention of your injury.  Educating yourself about your injury has several benefits.  Knowing exactly what you are dealing with will lessen your sense of fear and anxiety about the injury, and will make you feel more in control of your recovery process.  Knowing how to properly treat the injury will get you back to your sport sooner. Knowing the causes and how to prevent the injury will greatly decrease your chances of experiencing that same injury in the future.

Take ownership:  Accept the fact that you have an injury, and you are the only one who can fully determine the outcome.  Dwelling on the past, conjuring up a list of factors to blame for your injury, and wishing for the injury to magically heal itself as quickly as it came about won't heal you (trust me, I've tried!)  Doing everything in your power (physical therapy, strength training, *rest, etc.) to heal the injury and prevent it from happening again is a much more efficient method.

*rest: I completely understand how frustrating it is for an athlete to be forced to rest.  No athlete wants to lose all the hard work they put in to reaching the level of fitness they have obtained.  Your mind is in constant battle with what you know you need to do to heal (rest) and what you know you need to do to reach your goals of improving (keep training).  Unfortunately, if you return to activity that irritates your injury too soon, you are only prolonging the recovery process or setting yourself up for another, potentially more serious, injury.  Fighting the urge to get back out there to participate in your choice activity sooner than you should is one of the most difficult facets of athletic injury to deal with.  Fortunately, most athletic injuries do not keep you from participating in all forms of exercise, so if you are willing (and you really should be!) to try a new form of exercise, now is the time! 


Maintain your fitness in other ways:  A realization that I needed to cut back on my running and pick up cross training in order to keep my running injuries at bay led to my discovery of triathlon (which is now my favorite sport)!  Most athletic injuries will not keep an athlete from every single form of exercise.  With many running injuries, an athlete can still cycle, swim, water jog, do Pilates or yoga, etc.  Many athletes do not realize that if they maintain cardio fitness while they are unable to participate in their sport of choice, they will remain in great shape for when they are healed and able to return to their choice activity.  In fact, an athlete is likely to find that the cross training they did while injured made them a stronger, more well-rounded athlete.  You may build muscles during cross training that compliment the muscles you use doing your choice activity.

Keep a positive attitude:   A negative attitude can negate all the good things you are doing. If you are resting like you are supposed to, keeping up with all your treatment sessions, and doing everything your doctor has told you, but your attitude remains negative, it may take longer for you to heal, and it will take a toll on your psyche.  Channel your negative energy into remaining focused on your treatment regimen.  When you start having negative thoughts, take some time to relax, close your eyes, and imagine (or visualise)  yourself doing your sport injury free.  Trust and know that in time, you will be participating in your sport again.

Set rehab goals: Goals are what keep you motivated to train and improve in your sport, right?  If you've been setting and making goals for quite some time, you know how to set a realistic goal! Translate that set of skills into your rehab process.  Shift the focus of your goals from performance to recovery and write them down.  This will keep you motivated to recover.  You will be able to see and check off small improvements in the rehab of your injury.   

Maintain friendships:  For many athletes, their best friends are those they train with.  You are use to seeing your training buddies several days a week, and the absence of them in your life could be another reason for your sadness.  If you play a team sport, keep going to the practices and stretch and socialize with the team before and after practice.  During practice, you can help the couch and provide support for your teammates.  If you do an individual sport, make plans with your training buddies to meet for coffee or dinner to catch up.  Most likely, your training buddies have their own experiences with injury to share with you,  and they can provide an ear (if you need to vent your frustrations), and encouragement through your rehab process.


Look Forward: Think about how insanely happy you will be once you get the clear to participate in your sport again.  Years of participating non-stop in a single sport can cause burnout for athletes, so that time off from your sport may have bought you several months or years worth of 'burnout protection' because it made you realize how much you love your sport, and appreciate that (for the most part) your body lets you do what you love.

I'll end this post by suggesting you think about athletic injuries in a way that I bet you never have before. Over the past few years, I have come to consciously appreciate being injury free.  I am thankful for each and every injury-free run, bike, and swim workout that I have.  I realize that I have been given the gift of an able body. Not everyone on this planet has been given the gift to walk, run, swim, cycle, etc. so I consider myself lucky to be able to physically do such things.  In the grand scheme of things, an athletic injury is in fact not the end of the world.  Instead of focusing on how your body failed you, be thankful that your body let you participate in the activity that injured you.  Take the opportunity to grow as a person by learning how to cope gracefully with obstacles.

My Running History

I want to share my history with running because in my next post, I will discuss ways to deal and cope with athletic injury, and I want you to know what kinds of  running injuries and issues I have dealt with and overcome. 

My first attempt at running (1999- 2001: Sophomore - Senior year in high school) came to an end at the high school Regional track meet my Senior year when I was forced to accept the fact that my legs would not physically allow me to participate in the 4 x 400 meter relay.  That day was the culmination of 2.5 years of botched attempts to run with forced intermissions of varying lengths due to a mysterious, persistent injury or condition which (since never really diagnosed) I termed 'Achey Leg Syndrome'

From age 9, I swam summer league (May- July)  and took dance lessons the rest of the year.  When I entered high school, I had to make a decision between dance and swimming because high school swim practice and dance lessons conflicted.  To this day, I love to dance, and wish I could have kept up both, but there is no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision by choosing swimming.  I thank my lucky stars for having such a strong swimming background at the beginning of every triathlon!  I also hold the belief that I would never have started running (the first, or second time) if it weren't for swimming.  After all,  I joined my high school cross country team the fall of my Sophomore year for the sole purpose of cross training for swimming.  Cross country quickly became my 'fun' sport.  I got some great cardio cross training for swimming, and met some new friends who I got to spend an hour a day with chatting, laughing, and getting into mischief while we ran on wooded horse and hiking trails.   The first couple months of cross country were great.  Running felt good, and I had fun seeing improvements in my 5 K time.  I never took running as serious as I did swimming, so it really was just a fun new endeavor for me.  Somewhere during month three of my new endeavor, however, my legs began feeling intensely achey all over after a hard run.  After hard practices, and every single race from then on, this painful feeling would take over my legs.  My legs would hurt so bad after a race that after one meet, a couple of my teammates had to carry me to the bus because walking was excruciatingly painful.  I finished that cross country season because I did not want to quit (on principle), and spending time with my new friends was worth the pain.  At the conclusion of the season, however, I said, and believed, I would never run again.  It appeared as though my body just wasn't built to run. 

I spent the following winter and summer swimming as usual and added a fall season of swim practice to fill the void of inactivity during the fall that cross country had filled the previous year.  The end of my Junior year swim season marked 10 consecutive months of swimming, and I wanted a break from swimming until summer league started back up.  I decided to fill those few months by joining the high school track team- NOT as a runner, but as a high jumper.  I heard the team needed female high jumpers, and I had high jumped in 8th grade, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to spend the next few months in a high jump pit with some cute male high jumpers.  I told the track coach that I would high jump for him under one condition: I never ever, under any circumstances had to run- not even as a warm up at the beginning of practice when even the shot putters had to run a lap around the track.  He agreed, so we had a deal!  My Junior year of track went as planned, so when my Senior year rolled around, I committed to another season of high jumping.  My Senior year track experience went exactly like my Junior year had until an afternoon storm canceled a track meet.  Since the meet was canceled, coach made us have practice in the gym.  After changing in the locker room, we entered the gym, and coach told us to start running laps to warm up.  There was no high jump pit to escape to in the gym, so I decided to suck it up and run that day only.  Practice got underway, and it became time for a sprint set.  My competitive nature came out during that sprint set, and I caught the attention of my coach by keeping just a couple steps behind the teams' star sprinter.  Coach pulled me aside after practice and informed me that he would be 'Getting my times on some things at the next practice."  I let coach talk me into running because the season was half way over already, and I knew my training and racing would be geared towards sprint distances.  Despite my hopes that a short period of time, and shorter distances in training and racing would protect me from having those leg pains, by the end of track season, 'Achey Leg Syndrome' struck again.  After about six weeks of training and racing, that post-run leg pain became a part of my existence as a runner once again.  It got so bad, that I couldn't even run the 9 strides it took to get to the high jump mat without the pain shooting through both of my legs.  On the day of the Regional track meet, I traveled to the meet with the team, and coach let me wait until after we got to the track and warmed up to let him know if I felt like I could run in the 4 x 400 relay.  Warming up was painful, and I feared that my legs would literally give out on me if I tried to race.  I didn't want to jeopardise the relay for my other 3 teammates, so I had to pull myself out of the meet.  I had finished the track season to the best of my physical ability, and again, uttered the words "I will never run again."

Fast forward to 2008, and the events that led to my second attempt at becoming a runner.  After my collegiate swim career came to an end my Senior year (2005), I took a full year and a half off of exercise all together.  Swimming and running were the only sports I was ever really good at.  I needed a break from swimming, and, although it had been 4 years since I had felt that intense ache in my legs, there were permanent mental scars from my previous attempts to be a runner.  In my mind, those were my only two options for exercise.  After putting on 15 pounds within a year and a half, I decided to join the YMCA and do group exercise classes.  I had a lot of fun doing step aerobics classes, but my need for competition was not being met.  I still was not mentally excited to pick up swimming again, so for some reason I started running.  I supplemented about 1 run a week (often skipping two or three weeks at a time) with my step aerobic classes.  Upon finishing grad school in 2007, I lost my student rate at the YMCA, and decided to drop my membership in 2008.  Running was much cheaper, so I joined a running group and started running more often.  I loved running with a group, but there was always the thought in my mind that any day the 'Achey Leg Syndrome' would return, and I would have to stop running and would never see my new running buddies again.  It has been almost 4 years since my second attempt to become a runner, and I can happily report that the 'Achey Leg Syndrome' has not been a part of my running experience this time around (although, it does still haunt me)!  I have not escaped injury, however.  I have had pain (beyond soreness) in my IT bands, outer calf muscles, and piriformis; sprained my right ankle twice; had extreme tightness in my hips; and fallen to the floor a few times due to a brief sciatic nerve issue. 

If you are a runner, chances are at some point you will have an injury.  My next post will address how I get through and overcome injuries, and provide suggestions for how you can too. 

I hope you have an injury-free week!

Psychological Benefits of Exercise: What those who "Don't get it" don't get.

"You have to wonder at times what you’re doing out there. Over the years, I’ve given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement." – Steve Prefontaine, great American distance runner


If you are an athlete, and those around you (co workers, friends, family) know this about you, chances are you have been teased about your exercise habits.  I have received a lot of ‘jabs’ about my running, biking, and swimming over the years.  I have lost count of how many times I’ve heard “Why do you run? I don't get it, the only reason I could ever think of to run is if the cops were chasing me!”  I have even been scolded for doing triathlons.  A woman once told me “Triathlons are dangerous, that’s just taking it too far…and the only reason people do triathlons is because they want to be able to say they did something that others can’t do.”  Upon receiving such remarks, I generally feel sorry for the maker of the comment, because, in making a joke out of me, they have informed me that they have never felt the self satisfaction and pure happiness that comes from exercise.  For anyone who has ever felt that 'high' after completing a tough workout, or that amazing sense of accomplishment one can only get from setting a fitness goal, working hard towards it, and finally achieving it understands exactly why someone would run or do triathlons.

If those individuals who choose to sit on the couch, conjuring up insults directed towards those of us who choose to live an active lifestyle only knew our ‘secrets!’  Here are a few psychological benefits of exercise those who "Don't get it" don't get:

Stress management: Exercise reduces stress by boosting levels of serotonin in your brain and creating a more positive mood.  Whether by allowing one the time to think about life's problems, or time to escape them for awhile, tension seems to lessen with each passing mile.  Distance runs are great for solving problems. A 2 hour run by yourself (or with your trusted running buddies as a sound board) can really clear your mind and allow you to pin down a solution.  Speed runs are great for managing aggression and anger. Focusing your emotions into a few sprints is a much healthier alternative to blowing up at your spouse or boss, or bottling your frustrations inside.

Anti depressant: The brain’s release of endorphins can reduce pain, boost the immune system, and bring a greater sense of well being. It has been said that these endorphins can have eighty times as much pain-easing effect as morphine.  One of the problems with the downward spiral of depression is not feeling in control of your life.  With exercise, you get to decide when, where, and how you want to spend that block of time each day.  In an unfair world, running is fair, in the sense that, (barring injury) the more or harder you run, the better you get at it. With individual sports, you really do get out what you put in.  It’s up to YOU to decide how much you want to give, and trust that in time you will get back something truly amazing in the form of self satisfaction.

Self esteem and confidence booster:  Running (as well as cycling, swimming, and any ‘time-oriented’ individual sport) builds confidence like few other sports can. It allows an athlete to defeat trials and obstacles, growing stronger and more sure of ones self with each gain in performance or obstacle overcome or. It allows one to constantly create and conquer goals.  I will never forget training for my first half marathon and marathon.  Week after week, I got to set a new ‘personal long run record’ in training, and I have yet to find something that provides as much of a sense of accomplishment as crossing my first marathon finish line did!  Asking and training your body to perform tasks you previously thought not probable or possible provides a feeling of empowerment and freedom that comes with realizing that your body is strong and capable. Confidence is even more a product of exercise for those who lose weight and gain a better self-image.

Addiction Replacement: Running has been used for years to treat clinical depression and addictions of all kinds. A reduction in tension, fatigue, and confusion are a few of the changes patients report after beginning a regular running program. Exercise gives something for an individual to focus on besides their depressed state or addiction. When a recovering addict isn't using, there tends to be a void left in their life. Exercise can help fill that void. Working out becomes a "positive addiction." A key to recovery is to pick an exercise that a recovering addict likes, otherwise they won't stick with it.  Aside from running, biking, and swimming, there are plenty forms of exercise which are easily addicting!

Exercise sharpens focus and improves mental stamina.  This is accomplished by giving circulation a boost and increasing the flow of blood to the brain.  Running can be as much of an exercise for the mind as it is for the body.  By making yourself overcome the obstacles that running brings, you learn focus and determination. The will and strength that gets your body through long runs or those swim workouts you'd much rather skip is what in turn strengthens your mind and gives you focus and determination in other aspects of your life.

Perhaps if everyone knew the 'secret' psychological benefits of exercise, this world would be a healthier, happier place.  Encourage those around you who 'Don't get it' to give it a try for the sake of their body and mind; tell them "You never know when you might need to outrun a cop!" :)