This post might be a bit of a stretch

Stretching is vital for any athlete and should be done if not every day at least after every workout. Stretching keeps your muscles from staying too tight which can lead to injury. There are tons of stretches and ways to stretch but here are a couple of tried and true ones that I consistently do and have always made me feel much better after I do them.

Touch your toes

This stretch is great for your hamstrings, glutes and lower back. If you can't reach your toes then you can place your hands lightly on your shins. Go as far as you can till you feel a slight tug, then stop and breathe. Keep your knees straight and your heels planted flat on the ground. It's ok if your back is rounded. Hold for about ten seconds, then slowly roll your up to standing, take a moment to breathe then slowly roll down again and hold for ten more seconds. In all of your stretches you should be breathing along with the stretch and the movement of your body.

Open leg stretch

This is a slight modification on the toe touch stretch. Instead of your legs being close together you spread them out. This can give you a deep stretch in your glutes and your lower back. You may be able to feel this stretch in your inner thigh as well. Keep you knees straight and your heels planted on the ground. You can put your hands on the ground or put them behind your back for a deeper stretch. You can also shift your upper body to the right and left to get a deeper stretch in each leg. Make sure you keep breathing.

Sitting hamstring stretch

I like this stretch because it's slightly modified from the stretch where both of your feet are out in front of you. You bend one leg with the foot touching the outer knee of your other foot. Bend at the waist and try to keep your back as straight as you can. The photo below has a forward view of this stretch.

The goal is to keep your straight leg as straight as you can, your back straight, your bent leg pushing down to the ground and your chest upward, not flat on your leg. If you can't reach your toes you can have your hands touch your shins. Check the picture right above this one and see a modification for your hands. This stretch focuses on your hamstrings, inner thigh and back. Make sure you do both sides.

Lying leg stretch

Lie with your back flat on the ground and bring one leg up in the air. Grab the back of your leg and slowly bring your leg toward your body till you feel a sight tug then hold and breathe. Your leg should stay straight and try to flex your foot. If you can't flex your foot initially you can point it but alternate between pointing and flexing your foot. For a deeper stretch you can count to ten and slowly keep pulling your leg toward your body. Make sure when you pull your leg that the movement is slow and controlled and your knee stays straight. Then when you feel the deep stretch in your hamstrings release your leg to a straight position with your foot facing upward, take a slight pause and repeat. You can do that four to six times on each side. As always make sure you keep breathing.

Lying glute stretch

After you do the lying leg stretch you can do this one. Bring one leg up straight up in the air  with the other leg bent. Cross your straight leg over your bent leg and place your foot just above your knee. Slowly bring your bent leg up towards your body and grab the back of your bent leg. If you look at the lying leg stretch it's easy to see how you can transition to this one. The lying glute stretch hits various parts of my legs, not just my glutes. I'm able to stretch my inner and outer thigh and my hamstrings. Make sure you do both sides and don't forget to breathe.

Quadricep stretch

For this stretch you'll want to start sitting up and bend one leg back then bend the other leg in front of you. Slowly lie back till you feel a slight tug then hold it and breathe. Make sure your upper body is straight and both of your knees should be as close to, if not touching, the floor. Your chest should be up and not caved in. If you can't get all the way back to your elbows then you can modify it and lean back with your arms straight behind you like the picture below. *Smiling is optional

Even with the modification your knees should still be trying to reach the ground and your legs should be as flat as possible.Your chest should still be up and keep breathing. Place your legs where they feel comfortable. Don't try and bend your legs so much that when you recline back that your knees start to point upwards. If your knees start to move up, readjust your legs by moving your feet outward a bit more then try and recline again. The goal is to feel the stretch in your quad muscles. You can hold this stretch for about ten seconds then go back to your sitting position, take a moment and slowly recline back. You can do four to six on each side.

Remember that stretching can be fun and and if you need help or simply want to distract yourself you can always get a stretching buddy. 

If you believe it you can achieve it

I've been running with my running club for the past six or seven months now. When I joined I only did long runs with them because I needed to get out early and I didn't want to run by myself (plus I needed some motivation at the time). I kept doing only long runs with them for a while until about a month ago when I decided to do their tempo/hill workouts and early morning weekly runs which we loving call our vampire runs (we start at 5am). 

I wanted to be able to ease into marathon training rather than feel like I was hitting the ground running. So increasing my group runs was a way for me to get miles in early in the morning and interact with the club more. And as my marathon training starts in about a week, I feel more than prepared for training.

Do you see that!? This new record was obtained last week during a grueling hill workout. If you haven't already, check out my earlier post about running with my club HERE and see how I transitioned from being a singular runner to a group runner. 

All the science even points to the benefits of running with others as seen in this article from Runner's World. Of course I didn't pay attention to that earlier in my running career because I'm stubborn and don't like to listen to others (my wife has first hand accounts of this). That's not to say that I didn't get faster on my own. Within a year I was able to reduce my pace by over one minute. But there's something about running with a group of people that can produce greater results.

This glorious time that I posted has come after a month of group runs and being coached with specialized workouts (I'll do a separate post about the benefits of having a running coach). When the record flashed on my watch I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not one of the faster runners in my club but over time I've been able to keep them in my sights on my runs. 

If this is what I'm capable of now, I'm certainly looking forward to how I'll do after training. 

Do you have a running buddy?

For over a year I was the lonely runner. I ran by myself morning, noon and night. My only running companion was my two year old who would ride in the jogger as I panted and sweat when I pushed her. I talked with other runners who thought I was crazy for running by myself. What!? How can you do that? Don't you get bored? I never thought I was bored because I had been a singular runner for so long. And quite frankly I didn't think that I was cut out for running with other people.

The few times that I ran with my wife there would be sprinkles of conversation nudged between long gaps of silence. How could people talk? I needed all the oxygen I could get and I certainly didn't want to use up more by talking about the weather. Plus I never knew what to talk about. So..... looks like it's gonna rain today huh? 

I admired people who could run with a partner. I certainly believed that by talking for the entire run that it could make the time go by quicker. Earlier this year as I was setting out my clothes for an early morning run the next day I simply got fed up. I needed some help, some motivation to get me through the thirteen miles I was planning to run in less than eight hours. 

I called up a friend who is a part of a running club ad asked her the location and time that the group was meeting. Ever since then I have never looked back.

Running with a group/buddy has opened my eyes to a whole new world. 

1. Running with others makes you accountable.
2. Someone else can understand your running struggles.
3. You can motivate one another.
4. They become a new group of friends.
5. Time flies when you chit chat for two hours.

I haven't gone back to running by myself because there hasn't been a need to. Once marathon training starts, and I'll need to pick up some extra miles there will be times when I have to run alone. And those will be the runs when I'll miss running with the group. 

When it all falls down

Yesterday during my long run, I fell. Yup! Face planted right on the concrete with my fellow runners watching. Honestly I wasn't embarrassed I was just in shock. As I was falling I was saying to myself I can't believe this is happening, am I really falling right now? Then right as I made contact with the ground I made sure to pause my Garmin. Priorities people! 

Most of the contact that I had with the ground was on my hands. I did hit my right knee but not so hard that it had me in pain. After my fall I simply got up, checked my body to make sure nothing was bleeding and no bones were protruding. Once I noticed that everything was okay I got back up and kept on with my run.

I had a feeling that as the day progressed that I would begin to feel the aches as pains a bit more. Soon after I got home and took a shower the family went out to the beach. It's been terribly hot outside so getting into the ocean felt like the way to go. I leisurely swam around and looked at the school of fish that were keeping my company. The day was going great!

Yes I did color! :)

Then once we got home I started to feel kind of blah. My knee wasn't bothering me, nor were my hands or wrists. But I did start to feel a scratch in my throat and my nose was constantly running. I had gotten some sea water in my nose during my swim but didn't mind since I needed to clear out my sinuses anyway. By dinner time my throat was getting worse and my energy was declining.

Long story short my fall didn't put me on the side lines for the rest of the day, swimming in the ocean did. Don't you hate it when non running activities cause you to stop running?

Have you ever had to take a break or gotten an injury from something other than running that caused you to not run?

Being a dancer has made me a better runner

For seventeen years I was a dancer. I spent well over thirty hours a week taking class, practicing, rehearsing and performing. In all of my years of dancing I never sustained a serious injury, only minor sprains and strains. As I got older and the passion for dance started to dwindle I went into panic mode. What would I do that challenged me like dance did? I'm not sure what drew me to running initially, especially since my history with running was not a pleasant one.

I had a very brief track career in middle school. When I made the team the coach gave me the mile and I hated every minute of it. Once my ballet teacher found out that I was in track she told me that I had to quit immediately because running would bulk up my thigh muscles and ballet dancers needed long lean legs. I can't say that my teacher's words resonated with me and prompted me to quit but it certainly helped. 









Now that dance was no longer the primary activity in my life I decided to give running a try. The first couple years of running were rough. I had this notion that because I was a dancer for so many years that my level of fitness would be high, so transitioning to running wouldn't be hard. Boy that was an incorrect assumption! Running uses the leg muscles in ways that I was not accustomed to. I actually felt sore! After many stops and starts I finally committed to running. Now that I've got some years under my belt and have done multiple races running has taken the place of dance. 

In the past couple of months I've gotten compliments on various things about my running. The compliments that I've gotten the most are about my form and how did I get my legs to look like they do. After I explain that I was a dancer people often reply with Oh so that explains it. Hearing this a couple of times made me want to take a deeper look into this. Has my dance career helped me with running? Well I think that it certainly had something to do with it and here's what I discovered:

1. Running form The same way that I would check my back, turn out, toes and arm carriage in ballet is the same way I review my form when I run. At some point during a run I do a body scan from my toes up to my head. When something feels off or slightly out of whack I'm able to zone in and correct it. I can thank all of ballet teachers for yelling, guiding and correcting me on my form all of those years because it certainly comes in handy now. 
2. Breathing I remember being in modern class, doing Graham technique and my teacher telling me that I need to breath with my movement and the breath should be so loud that she can hear it. She would say Holding your breath is like holding back your movement. You don't breath, you don't move. I didn't understand what she was conveying at the time and honestly I felt silly doing it. Exhaling so loud and using my breath to move through the space felt weird to me at the time. Though I thought my teacher was a little eccentric I did as she asked. As I got older a did more contemporary pieces the use of breath helped me. Now those same breathing techniques help me when I'm running. And she was right, you don't breath you don't move.
3. Stretching Every dancer that I know stretched. It's what you did. This was the golden ticket to getting your legs high in the sky. If you didn't stretch, you were tight and if you were tight you were prone to injury and that couldn't happen. You never heard of a dancer not stretching and if you did you questioned whether that person was a REAL dancer. I remember spending hours in my room sitting in the most unique positions trying to increase my flexibility. I will admit that my stretching is not nearly as structured or as frequent as it was when I was a dancer but I still do it. There was a period when I didn't stretch after my runs and after a couple of weeks I was feeling the difference. Now, even if it's something as small as touching my toes or doing lunges, I make sure I stretch. 
4. Diet and Nutrition Many people assume that dancers (ballet dancers in particular) have eating disorders. While there are some dancers out there who go to extreme measures to keep their weight down, many dancers understand the importance of eating well. You need fuel to be able to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. If there's nothing in the tank, then you got nothing to work with. Of course at the time I was young and didn't always eat the best foods but when it came to what was cooked at home, that was always healthy. My grandmother was the cook and made healthy and delicious meals. I credit her to this day for laying the foundation for how I cook today.
5. Practice, practice, practice I didn't think this was a concept that applies to running but now I see that it totally is. If you're someone who does races, all of your daily runs are practices that lead up to race day. If you aren't into races you may have some goal that you are working towards. Maybe you want to reduce your pace or lose some weight. No matter what the motivation, each day you lace up your sneakers and step out the door is a practice run to get you closer to your goal. 
6. For performances, leave everything you have on the dance floor and HAVE FUN I admit that this one is still something that I have to work on when it comes to race day. I do enjoy myself and try to be in the moment. But I do tend to check my pace to see if I'm on schedule and I get caught up in my head. The first race where I completely let go and didn't pay attention to time or pace felt like such a breeze. I talked with other runners, laughed with the volunteers and fell in love with the whole racing experience in a way that I hadn't felt before. The whole point of practice is to put the work in so that come race day, you can rely on your training and just enjoy yourself. The race (like the stage) is your time to shine and you don't want it to be a fleeting moment. Soak it all in and remember to smile! :)

Do I get an "A" for effort?

It's taken me some time but I feel like I'm finally getting back on track with my fitness. Have you ever been off for a week and suddenly a week turns into a month or even longer? I never completely stopped running but my weekly mileage took a huge nose dive. Thankfully everyone is finally feeling better after our Toronto trip so I've been able to kick things into high gear.

I haven't been working out with my mom friends because it's so hot around 10am when we start and my little one likes to run around while I exercise. I'm a bit concerned about having her out in the heat even though I bring ice cold water and have her in cool clothes with sunblock. There have been times when I've taken her to the park and she got so flush so quickly. I just don't want to take that risk. 

So I've been working out at home.

I want to get leaner so I've been weight training with fifteen pound weights. I try and workout at least three times a week. In addition to working out I've been adding some effort-based sessions to my running. Effort session are tempo runs, hills and intervals. The running group that I'm a member of has tempo runs and hill workouts once a week. 

I know this isn't a large hill considering I'm in south Florida but we work with what we got.

Last week our hill workout consisted of:

• Ten minute warm-up 
• Five minute tempo run
• 4 x sprint up the hill and jog back down
• 3 x 30 sec. sprint (on flat ground) with 30 sec. recovery jog
• 4 x up, over, down and back on hill
• 3 x 30 sec. sprint with 30 sec. recovery jog
• Cool down

Though I feel like my lungs are about to collapse on me in this crazy heat and humidity, I know these sessions are helping.

For my long run today I was able to maintain a nine minute mile pace. While that's a pace that I've been able to maintain for a while now, it didn't feel as rough as it normally did. There were even some splits when I was running at an 8:45 pace. Considering this heat was getting to me about 30 minutes into this run, I was pretty pleased with how well I did.

I got a chance to really break in my new capri pants.

I found these at T.J. Maxx for about $18 dollars. I was in need of a new pair of pants since one pair was literally coming apart at the seams. I'm trying to add some colors and patterns to my wardrobe since I mostly have black.

Two weeks of adding effort sessions and weight training and I think I'll have a great base to work with when I start marathon training at the end of this month.

*side note* My oldest daughter had a minor setback in volleyball. Last week we were practicing her serves and her shoulder came out of the socket. This has been the fourth time that this has happened and each time it gets worse. She's been doing some cross training to build up her strength but it hasn't seemed to help her shoulder. Her volleyball coach said that's not normal and she has a sports doctor that we can meet with. My daughter is pretty upset about this and is concerned about how this will affect her training and overall ability to play volleyball. Until we see the doctor there isn't much that we can do for now.

New recipe

It's been a while since I posted a recipe on here. While I have made some new dinner entrees, nothing has really warranted a post to talk about it... until now.

Last week I decided to shake things up and make a vegetable curry dish. I don't know about you but when I don't plan out my meals for the week I often look for recipes based on what I have in the kitchen already. Since I've been trying to eat a cleaner diet lately I have a ton of vegetables in the house. Though my wife is not a fan of curry dishes she did say that if I made it, she will try it. So when I came across this curry dish I simply had to try it.

Here's the link.

I didn't use all of the vegetables that are listed in the recipe. My oldest daughter is not a fan of zucchini or eggplant and I didn't want to put the raisins in. Regardless of that, this dish was such a hit with my family that it has been added to the regular dinner list. Even my wife absolutely loved it.

As I was cooking it my oldest daughter (who was in the living room) said, "I don't know what you're making but whatever it is it smells delicious." The recipe doesn't call for rice but my daughter thought it would be a great addition so she cooked some brown rice. Whether you have it with rice or not this is a great dish!

Try it out and let me know what you think!