Free Entry to the Big Cottonwood Canyon Marathon

ATTENTION!!!

To ANYONE who buys a mile (excluding miles 1-5) between now and July 10th will be entered into a raffle to win a free entry into the inaugural Big Cottonwood Canyon Marathon  or Half Marathon
http://www.bigcottonwoodmarathon.com/


This race is 9/22 and will be awesome! I am so excited to do it (next year...sigh) and you get in on the first year!

Oh and did I mention that this race is a Boston Marathon? And that it travels down the canyon from Brighton Ski Resort? In the Fall? How freakin pretty is that???


So all's you have to do is log into my fundraising webpage, pick a mile, donate the appropriate amount (my page tells you how much each mile is) and then comment below which mile you bought. Your name will automotically go into the raffle. And lets be honest people, you have ReALLY good odds of winning :) Remember all donations go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to help fight blood cancers and they are tax deductible.

Fundraising webpage:  http://pages.teamintraining.org/ut/nikesf12/rblackamix

Thanks and Happy Running

Bike Ms- The Best Dam Bike Ride

This weekend I had the pleasure, nay the pain of participating in Bike MS Utah: Harmon's Best Dam Bike Ride, which just so happens to be the best dam bike ride ever! :)

Check it out!
http://bikeutu.nationalmssociety.org/site/PageServer?pagename=BIKE_UTU_homepage

Last year was our first year for Josh and I, and despite an awful fight I caused at about mile 70 which left us not talking for the rest of the weekend we still LOVED this event and were thrilled when we found out that Josh's family reunion was the week after so that we could participate again this year.

So let me explain to you how this ride works... first of all it is in no way a race. You are not timed, no one cares when you finish or how fast you go. This a Saturday/Sunday event that provides just a really good time. Saturday you have the option of riding a 40, 75 or 100 mile course and on Sunday a 40, or 75. So you could potentially ride 150 miles+ in two days. So cool! They provide killer support, support wagons, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and much much more.

So last year we did the century (100 miles) without training and it was PAINFUL but we finished. So this year we did just a little training and thought, what the heck, we could probably do the 100 again... well can I tell you it was a horrible, no good, awfully bad idea.

Well let me tell you a little bit about our day. First off we get up and take team pictures (yay I made it into the pictures this year!) and then prepared to leave at 7 am. I believe at 7 am it was already close to 70deg.

Team Tent for Team Brain (Go us!)

 The starting line.

Yay! We're feeling great!

We started in the 2nd wave of people and headed out of town, going north towards Idaho. Don't ask me the route because I don't know it. I simply just followed everyone else. We started out being able to hold a pretty quick pace and were able to catch up to some of the other riders from our team.

 At the second aid station we caught up with Tim and a group of about 8 other Team Brainers. Despite the gradual increase in heat we were feeling great. We were drinking lots of fluid. Loading extra salt into our Power Ade and eating lots of salty snacks at the aid stations. We stayed with this group until mile 45, when the routes split. Josh, myself and two other riders we'd randomly picked up wanted to do 100. The others were smarter... and only did 75.

At mile 40 still feeling great.

At mile 50ish... I caught a few pics of the route and the ride.

Sorry its so shaky, but I took this video while riding... perhaps not the safest thing in the world to do.

At lunch. Mile 75, the temperature kept climbing and things kept feeling worse and worse. Josh really didn't feel good. In fact non of us felt great. At one point the temp was around 100deg and we couldn't stay hydrated. We all felt like crap and just couldn't keep the pace up anymore. We were getting severely dehydrated.

At the finish line. So we did finish... but the last 30 miles were murder. The wind was so strong blowing in our faces the entire way. It felt like a blow dryer going full blast. At the finish line Josh struggled sitting up and just wanted to lay down. Unfortunately for him a lady from our team saw what bad shape we were in and sent for the EMS ladies to come and check him out. They gave him ice, took his BP and O2 saturation. he he he it was wonderful!

Trying to relax post race. But good news, we got our medals!

So despite some serious opposition (you try riding in 100deg with strong winds, so not fun). we managed to finish and make it back to camp alive. And despite the pain, and dehydration it was still a really fun fun ride. We'll be back next year, not to worry. 

This is what our helmets looked like.

Where it All Began

Have you ever wondered how I got involved in Team in Training? Why on earth I'm putting myself through all this nuisance to do something that I could easily do, and have already done on my own? Well I want you to know its not for the money.

I haven't always liked running. In fact there were numerous times throughout my life that I had decided that I hated it. Fortunately for me I give in easily to peer pressure.

I started running in December of 2008 when I let a coworker/friend talk me into becoming his running buddy. I finally gave in for a few reasons. First of all I was studying exercise science up at the U of U and while I enjoyed it, I didn't really have a passion for exercise. I was mearly using the degree as a stepping stone to a PT degree. Well needless to say constantly being surrounded by in fit, highly active people was causing me to feel a little bit guilty ;p. That wasn't the only reason though, another reason is that I did not feel satisfied with my life. I felt somewhat lost like I hadn't really found myself yet. I didn't really know what to do with my life and since I trusted this friend, I figured maybe this is what I needed. Lastly, I blame my coworker/friend Russell. I'm really not sure if he'll ever understand what significant role he played in my life for those short few months. Not only did he introduce me to running, my passion and therapy, but he taught me a lot about myself as well.

So needless to say, I started running on a fairly regular schedule. It became theraputic. Running to me was like a healing ointment. Each time I went out I never failed to feel rejuvinated, stronger, and like I could face the problems that life would give me. Its interesting, but that really hasn't changed much. I wish everyone could feel what I feel when I run. If they did, they wouldn't find it so difficult.

Early on into my first year of running I kept seeing flyers for Team in Training. I was not only impressed by the idea of taking something I already love and doing it to help others but by the idea of being part of a team again. I always had intentions of joining, but I couldn't seem to convince myself to do it. I was afraid of something... I don't know what. I didn't really even know much about it at the time. My interest in Team in Training never left the back of my mind. I've always told myself I would do it one day... and so I did.

One afternoon while sitting in a class for my Master's degree this year I was debating how I could make a little more money and get some more coaching experience. I had recently received a flyer in the mail for TNT and so I thought why not e-mail them and see about coaching? Then I can really do something I love for a good cause. Well next things next I met with Stacie and became a Coach. My first season with TNT started in March and just barely ended. Now this season I'm both coaching and participant.

I'm thrilled that I have finally done what I wanted to those few years ago, and that I am able to really share my passion for running with other people.


Do you want to know how TNT got its start? Check out the link below. Such a cool story!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgia-cleland/post_3439_b_1567673.html

Thanks for all your support!

Updates on the Run-A-Thon

Holla!

So it has been a good week. This Saturday I ran 17 miles and honestly, it felt tons better than last week run and bike ride. Yay! So this week I need to stay on top of training. During the week I've been letting it slide a little bit and not getting in the volume I really wanted. Maybe that's for the best because I don't want to become overtrained either. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to keep up with Josh at the Bike MS this weekend.

So great news! I've gotten several donations of merchandise to raffle off for donations :)

1. A gift basket full of Real Salt seasonings and other organic items like clay and toothpaste that smells divine!

2. Small house tools from Homedepot (about 8 or so different things)

3. A $25 gift card to the City Creek Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company

4. Gift certificates to get your 2013 taxes done ($70 value) by my Dad Wayne Eschler of 4E's Accounting and Tax Services

5. 2 Free sessions of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy ($100 value/each) Learn more at:
http://www.utahsportsandwellness.com/hyperbaric.php


Besides all of the great stuff I also have a fundraising event scheduled with the Sunflower Market on 200 S and 700 East for August 8th!!! WOOT WOOT! So excited!

Things are really looking good. Now... I just need YOU to start donating and buying miles of my Run-a-thon "38,000 Strides to Cure Cancer"

Please, Please donate!

I am going to start drawing names of people who donate for these cool raffle prizes on a weekly basis. You're name stays in the drawing until you win, or I'm out of prizes. EVERYONE who donates will probably end up winning somethin! So Donate now and win this week :)

Thanks in advance!

It is a Wonderful Wonderful Life... despite my stupid mistakes.

Well let me get you up to date on what has been happening in my life thus far as well as my thoughts and perceptions of those experiences.

1. Last Thursday before I spontaneously decided to give blood when on my way home I saw a "Give Blood Donation" Sign. While I'm always glad when I act on impulse to do something good, even when its not convenient I'm not quite sure this was a good idea this time. For starters giving blood really negatively affects your endurance performance.

When you give blood you donate a significant portion of your blood volume and therefore your oxygen carrying capacity decreases. If you were not aware O2 is predominantly transported in the blood via your RBC where it is dropped off to the cells all throughout your body. Your muscles need O2 in order to function aerobically (with oxygen) and your endurance is basically determined by your aerobic capacity. If you lose RBC through blood donation you are no longer able to transport as much O2 to the muscles and their endurance is impaired.

SO while I know all this, I decided it was a good thing to do so I donated blood anyways. Well to make a long story short within the next two days of giving blood I developed a sinus infection which meant that I had to call ARUP and tell them they couldn't use my blood :( because the infection would have been in my blood already.

Needless to say I'm rather sad I wasted my blood that I could be using. Oh well... I'm always glad for an opportunity to do something good, hopefully I'll be blessed for trying. Oh and that I won't suffer during the Bike MS next weekend because of it!

2. On Saturday after my run with TNT Josh and I rode 45 miles from our house in West Jordan almost to the Marina by the Great Salt Lake and back. I say almost to the marina because we had to turn back in order to get home for our dinner guests.

It was an awful windy day heading North West. It was hard to hold anything faster than 12 mph on our bikes. While it was tempting more than once to give up and turn back sooner we kept going as far as we could. Two things kept me from turning around sooner.
1. My ego- I've never been good at quitting
and

2. The thought that kept going through my head that sure its easier to ride with a wind at my back and to only train when its nice outside, but that won't make me unstoppable. How often are races completed in less than desirable conditions? Too often. In reality, days like this one are more common than days with no resistance.


3. Life has a funny way of showing its ups and downs. Sunday Josh and I took the dogs on a walk/picnic on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. While eating our sandwhiches by the stream I watched, paralyzed, unable to react as my camera slid into the stream! I couldn't help but laugh. Not that I was thrilled to ruin yet another camera... but at the irony that I probably could have stopped it, yet I sat and watched...

Well when Josh pulled the camera out of the back pack and let it drain out we knew it was done for. However, there was a small hope that the warranty I bought at Best Buy was still current??? I meant to take the camera in on Monday but simply forgot.

Tuesday for my morning running class I dropped my jacket outside by the Huntsman Center when I started to warm up. I had intentions to come back and get it after class... but completely forgot until I got home. I called the office and had them see if they could find it... no luck. Its gone. My awesome Pearl Izumi Track jacket has been stolen :(.

However, when life has a down there is also an up. Tuesday night we took my camera into the Geek Squad at Best Buy and they looked up my warranty and to my dismay told me that my warranty had expired exactly 1 day ago! UGH! I couldn't help but be amused at the irony of life. But despite missing the warranty by a day, the guy helping me was still able to check it into their service center under warranty! I was SO relieved! and Thrilled! I feel so blessed that I was able to use the warranty! Granted its not a great camera, but I do not have money to replace it.

I can only hope that everything continues to work out well. This experience has reminded me the importance of a little faith and hope. Sometimes it is worth trying even when you don't think that you can do it.


The Moral of the story is: that really, despite resistance, ironies and problems its still a Wonderful Life


Happy Training,
Coach Becky

The Space Between

On a scale of 1-10 how hectic would you say your day is? Do you find yourself rushing from activity to activity? At the end of the day can you remember everything you did? Do you often find yourself repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
If so you may be human... but you may also be missing an important step in life. This step I call "the Space Between" some people call it time to reflect, meditate, or ponder.

Savasana is the final relaxation pose that we take at the end of each yoga class. We lay down on our mats and try to completely relax the body as we focus and clear the mind. Savasana (shavasana) is a Sanskrit word (language of the Yogi's) which is roughly translated as corpse pose. There is a great deal of symbolism in this deeply relaxing pose.



 and no, its not supposed to be just a nap time.


The point of Savasana or corpse pose was to act as a symbol of the death and life cycle.  That each time they died, they laid down the old and could begin again with the new. Savasana is a symbol of laying down the old and beginning again.

Corpse pose or Savasana represents death. Does that give you the heebie jeebies? While Yoga is not a religion, it was a form of spiritual worship for religious people such as the Hindus. In their world death was not something to be feared (unless of course you had done poorly), but something to celebrate for if you had done well in this life, when you died you would be reincarnated into a higher caste or class until they reached a state of Nirvana. Nirvana being when their soul is finally released from the life and death cycle and it becomes one with the universe. They only saw death as the space between one life and another.

When we brainlessly rush from work to school to homework to dinner to sleep without ever pausing for a moment to re-energize, reflect and learn from our experiences we tend to miss out on important opportunities for learning, growth, enjoyment, etc. If we never reflect on your thoughts, actions and efforts we might find ourselves repeating past failures and our thoughts tend to dwell more in the past preventing us from enjoying the present and preparing for the future.

As we take time to pause, self-reflect, meditate in The Space Between we will find several changes taking place in both our bodies and mind.

Some of the benefits:

- decreased anxiety
- increased sense of relaxation and peace with life
- increased vitality
- greater insight into your own thoughts and actions
- ability to see more clearly what you need to do next
- fewer repitions of mistakes and wrong choices
- increased sense of self worth

The challenge:

Make a conscious decision that you will take a moment to pause, reflect and meditate in the space between activities. And if there is no space... well make one. we don't have to ALWAYS be doing something visible you know. The key to using the Space Between isn't necessarily how long you pause or whether you lay down in corpse pose so that you can fully relax.  The key is that you pause to reflect, meditate and clear the mind. If you have the opportunity and can sit back or lay down and relax, Wonderful! But more often than not you might not be able to do the physical svasana but you can take a mental break.

How to Enjoy the Space Between:
- Try to take a moment between activities in your schedule to

• First clear your mind and focus on your breath for a few moments.     
• When necessary reflect on your experiences
• Enjoy the experience and try to gain some insight or inspiration from it
•  Congratulate yourself for your efforts in making good choices and working hard
•  Recognize your faults, weaknesses and mistakes. Accept and own them and the negative consequences they bring.
• Have faith in your ability to try again and to improve. When necessary make plans to repair damage that you may have caused.
• End by re-focusing the mind on the breath, as thoughts of the past or future come up try to clear away this debris (random thoughts and ideas) by either writing them down or storing them on a mental shelf for later.

And most importantly Do not critize or judge yourself harshly, if you recognize and own both your strengths and your weaknesses you have no need to put yourself down. Doing so will not help you to be better. Recognize the opportunity to learn and grow from the experience because if you can do that, it was not wasted.


I hope we can all learn from the Yogi's and remember the symbol of Savasana.

Happy Training,
Coach Becky, HFS, USAT Level 1

Rule #1 - Listen to your body

Whether your egotistical or just a little insane some of us have this desire to see how far we can really go... Well let me tell you this thinking can get you into a lot of trouble. And I think I'm in  A LOT of trouble.

Last Saturday I ran 14 miles and did ok... I managed, but it was pretty slow. Before that my long distance running had been a bit sporadic, but despite that I felt fairly confident I could do at least 12 and 14 if I pushed it. So what did I do? I pushed it to see if I could do 14. SO I did what every good egotistical person would do I thought "you must be REALLY good" and decided to do push myself a little harder this week. Monday I ended up completely burning out practically all of my energy and the rest of the week I just did my best to hang on for my 16 miles this today. I ran loops around the Capitol building and Memorial Park. It was a really nice morning... until about 10 am when the sun came out full force and I was beat.

While my ego feels great that I just ran 16 miles... my legs are arguing a rather different story.

So what did I learn? Well #1 is to Listen to your Body and #2 I'm actually not superwoman. I know I know you're all shocked right?

So as it turns out our bodies are pretty good at surviving... In fact that's why we've lasted as long as we have. If it weren't for our bodies self defense mechanism that attempt to override the ego we'd have died ages ago. Our caveman ancestors would have all died while trying to see who could kill the biggest dinasour or something like that.

Survival takes a moderate amount of ego, common sense and a lot of attention to the cues your body is telling you. Its pretty easy to ignore the warning signs that your body is sending you until its too late and something drastic happens... like you pass out from dehydration or injured with a muscle strain. Or on the other end of the spectrum- when you ignore the signal to move you end up with a serious illness or disease like Metabolic Syndrom and Type II Diabetes.

5 Important Signals.

Practice listening to your body throughout the day and while exercising.  You can do this by pausing, analyzing the situation, look at yourself from inside out and ask yourself what do you really need?

1. Learn what Hunger really feels like. No I don't mean starve yourself. But do you know the difference between a craving/stress/emotional signal and a hunger signal? Most people don't.

2. Learn the difference between mental and physical fatigue. Physical fatigue is your body's way of saying I need more sleep or a rest. Mental fatigue is a way of saying I'm over stressed and your mind needs a break. Sometimes exercise can be a great "mental break" for your mind. So are activities like yoga and meditation.

3. Learn that the difference between stress and anxiety is simply how your mind intereprets the situation.

4. That restless feeling in the middle of the day? Your body wasn't built to sit around all day. Get up and move around.

5. Learn the difference in muscular sensations during exercise. It will help you know when to push on and when to stop. Not all sensations are bad, some are just stronger than others. Simply because your legs or lungs are burning doesn't mean you have to stop. But when you feel that muscle sensation (aka pain) that IS telling you to stop you need to listen.


Please help me by becoming a sponsor of my Run-A-Thon!!! See Run-A-Thon Event Details page on this blog for more info.