My Running-Esteem

I've spent the vast majority of the short life I've lived on earth ashamed of who I am.  Or, let me rephrase: I spent the vast majority of these years ashamed of who I thought I was.

No, that still doesn't sound right...

I spent the first five sixths of my 30 years in this life being disappointed in myself for not being who I thought I should be.

I wasn't as short as all the other girls.  My hair wasn't straight.  My boobs weren't big enough and my feet weren't small enough.  My stomach wasn't flat enough and my skin wasn't flawless enough.  I wasn't outgoing enough.  I wasn't interesting enough.  I wasn't as comfortable talking to boys as all my other friends.

I spent the entirety of my teens and early twenties wanting to be an ideal version of myself that had absolutely no connection to who I actually was as a person.  Who knows where the image of this ideal version came from, but I honestly didn't think people would ever really like me until I became that person.  I was insecure and I was unhappy.  And I hated myself for that too.  I wouldn't look in the mirror and I spent my evenings filling diary after diary with all the things I hated about myself and all the things I thought I should be.

Let's just say that my self-esteem wasn't quite the best.

But somewhere between the ages of 24 and 26, events, emotions, and locations collided enough for me to finally realize that I was a person worth knowing.  I was interesting.  I was nice.  People liked being friends with me.  I could be funny.  When I talked, people actually listened.  And suddenly, as I realized that other people thought I was worth knowing and being around, I began to acknowledge who I was to myself as well.

Slowly, I let go of all of the preconceived notions of who I thought I should be, and started to get to know myself as I was.  And, turns out, I kinda liked that person.  I began to shed my layers of insecurity and bolster my self-esteem with newer, stronger layers of skin.  I couldn't grow those new layers of skin until I let go of the old ones.  From those new layers, I've grown into the person I'm proud to be today--and I couldn't have done that unless I let go of the image of myself that I thought I should be and accepted the person I actually was.

I realize that this story isn't unique.  I'm not the only one who has faced the tortures of low self-esteem and the discovery of oneself.  But we needed to get through all that understand what I'm currently experiencing in my running.  It's time to switch gears from self-esteem and begin talking about what I'm now going to term my "Running-Esteem."

Running-esteem could be defined as the belief in yourself and your capabilities as a runner.  We all have our own levels of running-esteem, which affect the way we see ourselves as runners.

When I started running in 2008, I didn't consider myself a runner.  I didn't care about my running-esteem because I didn't view myself as a runner.  After my first half marathon in 2009 and even my first marathon in 2010, I still didn't really see myself as a "real runner" and therefore had no expectations for myself as a runner.  But after my second marathon in 2011, I started to develop an image of myself as a runner.  Which also meant that I started to develop an image of the runner that I thought I should be.

When I ran my third marathon in 2012, I PR'd by 10 minutes, but I wasn't really happy with that race.  Because in my head, I thought I should have run faster.  I let loose a little in my 4th marathon because it was part of the Goofy Challenge in 2013, and I gave myself a brief reprieve from the expectations of what I thought I should be as a runner and just had fun.

But then came marathon number 5 that happened just about a year ago.  Let's call marathon number 5 the late teens of my marathon career.  I had an ideal image of who I thought I should be as a runner.  I should be faster.  I should be stronger.  I should feel better.  I should...I should...I should...

Because I had this image of who I thought I should be, which in reality I wasn't, my running-esteem plummeted.  Running wasn't fun anymore.  It was the constant torture of trying to push yourself to be someone you aren't.  And we all know that you can't will yourself into being anyone apart from yourself--not really.  We can all guess how marathon number five turned out.  Crushed hopes, frustration, and anger.  And then anger at myself for feeling that way.  Let the spiral of a plummeting running-esteem commence.

For about a year and a half, I've been stuck in that spiral of trying to be the runner I thought I should be and then getting more and more disappointed as I struggled through endless uncomfortable, painful, and unpleasant runs.

But now, two and a half weeks into my very short Eugene marathon training plan, I find that I'm crawling out of my low running-esteem hole.  And it is one simple, major difference that has allowed me to finally raise my running-esteem:

I've finally realized that I am who I am as a runner.

If there was only one important thing that I took away from my Lydiard coaches training and my conversations with Coach Shelby since then (there isn't just one important thing, but I do think this is the most important), it's that I must be true to myself and who I am as a runner.  My body is capable of doing exactly what it is telling me it can handle.  Pushing it and pushing it to the extreme in an effort to be the runner it think I should be only works against me.

For the last 2+ weeks, I've been doing nothing but listen to my body.  I changed the display on my Garmin to show only time--no paces, no mileage, nothing else.  All I get to see is how long I've been running.  The rest I gauge completely based on who I am right now as a runner.  I listen to my breath.  I feel my legs and my lungs.  I take stock of my energy level.  And those factors are the only ones I pay attention to as I run every day.

I've accepted the runner I am right now and have shed the insecurities that resulted from constantly trying to be the runner I thought I should be.  I finish every run now feeling good and happy.  Not exhausted, frustrated, and angry at the numbers on my watch that just won't seem to register the way that I want them to.

I've felt better about my running in the last 2 weeks than I have in much too long of a time.  I've left the early twenties of my running career and have entered the mid-twenties.  I've taken the first step necessary in growing into the runner that I may one day be.  I've learned to love the runner that I am right now.

My running-esteem is right back where it should be.  And I'm ready to keep building on that strength.

How Lydiard training made me feel great again

Today was a great day.  For so many reasons.  It was one of those days where everything seems to mesh in the right time, in the right way to make you feel wonderful.

I had a great day at work.  Even though it was 80+ degrees in Seattle today (way outside the normal Seattle comfortable non-complaining range of 40-70 degrees), which makes first graders cranky and somehow motivates them to do everything possible to annoy their classmates, I still had a great day at work.  It's the time of year when I look back at where these little guys started in September and clearly see how amazingly far they've come.  Even as they're squabbling over who's touching who on the carpet and who cut who in line, I felt like I had the big picture in my head all day.  They've come so far.

I've also been getting a lot of positive feedback from coworkers, my principal, and even district-level employees in the past couple days.  My love for problem-solving based math instruction has somehow trickled its way through my district, and now I'm getting emails left and right from teachers and district leaders who want to come and watch me teach.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I've put a lot of work into becoming the teacher I am today, and it feels absolutely amazing to have my name being tossed around the district as an expert at what I do, after less than a year in this district.  And while the recognition alone is exciting, it's even more exciting that I get to help other teachers learn to teach this way.  A few people have expressed how surprised they were that I was so willing to open my door to let people into my classroom, but for me that is the most exciting part.  Helping spread the love for an instructional technique for teaching math that I believe truly works is something I'm MORE than willing to do.

And then, after this great day at work, as the kids went flying (yes, I'm pretty sure they flew) out the door, one thought popped into my head: "Today I get to run."  It wasn't "today I need to run," or "today I have to run."  It was "today I GET to run."  It wasn't a feeling of dread or discomfort that accompanied this thought.  This thought made me happy.  Today, I wanted to run.  And, my god, that was a great feeling.  It's been a really long time since I've felt that feeling.

And then, after I went on my 60 minute run--the fourth (FOURTH!!) run in the past week, which also means the fourth run since October, that has been pain free--all I wanted to do was come home and tell you all about my day.  I felt that old familiar urge to write.  Which is another feeling I haven't had in a really long time.

The reason that I was so excited for today's run, and the reason that today's run felt so good was because I spent this past weekend being trained as a Lydiard Foundation certified running coach.

Check out their website here for more info.

I spent 2.5 days learning more about running than I have in my 6 year career as a runner.  This training was incredible.  While there is no way I could even touch on all of the things I learned over the weekend, there were a couple ideas that stood out for me, which I think will be really important as I start tackling my Eugene Marathon training (which started today!).  Here are my biggest take-aways from the weekend:

1)  Listen to your body.  The most important thing you can do for yourself as a runner is listen to what your body is telling you.  If your body is telling you that it's tired, it probably is.  If your body is telling you that your speed work is a little too much, you should probably cut back a little.  And if your body is telling you that it feels great, it's important to acknowledge that too.  I've spent the last few months preaching about how I need to listen to my body, slow down, and pay attention to what it's telling me, but I haven't really been listening.  I've still had this "pace" in my head, this idea that if I'm not pushing it or my watch isn't registering certain numbers then I'm not being successful as a runner.  And I had a certain amount of shame attached to that.  Today when I ran, I felt free from those all of the pressures.  I had forgotten what that kind of freedom felt like.

2)  Every runner is different.  What works for me may not work for everyone.  And what works for my running friends may not work for me.  This ties directly into the point above--we all need to listen to our bodies and tailor the training that we're doing to fit what our own body needs and what it's telling us.  It's important to figure out what works for each runner.  I found this to be incredibly similar to the how important it is for me as a teacher to figure out how each of my individual first graders learn best.  In fact, I made quite a few connections between teaching and running this weekend and then today happened to stumble upon not just one but two completely unrelated articles about teaching that compared the trials we face as teachers to running.  The way I adjust my teaching to fit the needs of each of my students, I must adjust my running to fit my own needs.  And when I start coaching again, I'll begin to adjust our training plan to fit the needs of each of those runners.

3)  Forget speed.  This one isn't new.  I know that when I'm training for a marathon I shouldn't be running fast on my long run or easy run days.  I shouldn't be worried about pushing my body to hit a certain speed or certain number of miles.  I've always known that.  The difference now is that I know why.  I'm the type of person who needs to know why.  Now I know that when I'm building my base, running my long slow runs, I need to be running slow in order to build up my aerobic endurance.  As soon as I start speeding up, hitting the threshold of my anaerobic system, I am no longer building endurance.  I have pushed myself into training a completely different system, defeating the purpose of the long run.  Right now, my body can only go as fast as it will go.  As I continue running and building endurance, followed by more specific hill and strength workouts, speed will come.  I can't force it.  And if I try to, I will only end up making myself slower.

4)  Recovery is everything.  Again, this ties into paying attention to your body.  If your body isn't recovered from the track intervals you did two days ago, don't go out and do track intervals again.  The are easily identifiable signs of recovery that you can track.  If you push your body to do more when it isn't recovered and ready, again you are working against yourself.  Instead of getting stronger and stronger, you'll depress the systems in your body further and further until running becomes something you simply don't want to do anymore.  I know this to be true, because I realized that that is exactly what I've been feeling for the last year and a half.  My body has been fighting for a long time to fully recover from the stress I've put it under, and I haven't let it.  Which is why running has been so miserable for me for so long.

5)  Your mind is as important as your body.  It is so important to feel good about yourself.  It is so important to end every run feeling happy and satisfied and proud.  Because if you don't, why would you go back and do it again the next day?  What possible reason could you have for going out there and doing this thing again that makes you feel miserable and horrible about yourself?  If you don't feel good on a run, slow down.  Say you are in the middle of a track workout, feeling spent but great, but the schedule says you have one more set to go.  Don't do the last set.  You know that your body can't handle it, and if you push it then you will end the workout feeling tired, miserable, and angry that you struggled through the last set.  If you don't do that set, you'll leave the track feeling good.  You'll want to come back again next week and see if you can make it through that last set.  Because next week, you probably will.  A positive attitude is everything, and if you find the negative attitude creeping in a little too often, it's time to take a few recovery days to get your mind and your body back together.  

6)  This training season isn't everything.  Each training season builds on the next.  As I build my aerobic base for Eugene, I'm also building a base for my next marathon.  As I go through the training pyramid, reaching my peak on race day, my next training season will have the foundation of this training season.  My next training season, I will get faster.  Which means that if I don't hit all my goals this season, it's ok.  Next season I'll be even better.  Because the great thing about Lydiard is that it's designed to help you improve with each training cycle, regardless of your age or fitness level.  It's designed to help you break through those barriers that either you or the world around you have imposed upon you.  Before this weekend, a Boston Qualifying race seemed like an unreachable goal for me until I hit a much older age group and the time demands lowered.  But now, I can see BQing as an attainable goal for myself in the next couple years.  It's not going to happen in Eugene.  It probably won't even happen in the next marathon.  But as I keep training, building season upon season, I think I'll be able to get there.  Suddenly a BQ doesn't seem like a pipe dream anymore because I'm making goals that are more than 3 months away from today.  I'm making goals that go past my current training season.

I learned so much this weekend about how to be a good coach, how to training for many different races, and how to design a training program for people of all abilities.  But I also learned a lot about myself as a runner.  The Lydiard training theory seems to have laid a lens over my entire running career, making every improvement and every defeat so clear.  I can see why things worked when they worked and why I crashed and burned in the last year and a half.  I can see why I loved running so much in the first 4 years, and why the last stretch has been so incredibly difficult, dissatisfying, and frustrating.  Now that I know the theory and the science behind it, it's amazing how clear it all is.

And maybe sometime soon I'll explain to you why my running career has taken the twists and turns it has over the years.  Maybe sometime soon I'll sit here and analyze it all for you, in the hopes that by thinking through my own mistakes and successes in a logical way, it can help you as much as it helps me.  But today is not that day.  

Because today was a great day.  Today, I officially started training for the Eugene Marathon.  Today, I had a really great, pain free run, and I don't care what my pace was.  Today I got a few solid confidence boosters at work.  Today, half my class brought me flowers because it's my district it's Teacher Appreciate Week.  Today, I realized how much I've taught all those little guys.  Today, I woke up feeling good.  And I will go to bed feeling good too.

I hope you can find a way to make that happen for yourself, too.  If not, just think...tomorrow will be a great day and everything will be ok.

It's all too loud

I had a thought today as I was walking Lucy and Penny on our 15 minute post-work walk route.  This was the thought that got stuck in my head on repeat: Life has been too loud lately.  And I mean that literally.  My life right now just seems to have too much noise in it.  From the traffic I can hear outside my open living room windows to the bass on my neighbor's music system that I hear far too loudly through my walls to the incessant non-stop talking of first graders in the springtime, it just seems like I haven't had a quiet moment in months.

I'm hyper aware of noises right now, which doesn't help.  Although Penny has adjusted by leaps and bounds to a life that includes much more outdoor time than I think she was used to (no more shakes on walks!  Unless it's raining of course--although that's getting better too!), the month or two I spent avoiding busy streets, buses, and anything close to Aurora Ave upped my sensitivity to all that noise.  While Penny has adjusted, I can't seem to get away from it anymore.

When I moved to Seattle from New York, I was amazed at how quiet Seattle was.  No sirens blaring at all hours, no cracked-out bums screaming on the street at 3 in the morning.  The silence here kept me awake at night.  But now I've recalibrated, and the noise has become grating again.

My girls.  Fantastically well-adjusted to the great outdoors.

So as I thought about the run I was about to go on--the run that I had thought about all day--I decided to do something daringly different.  I decided NOT to take my headphones.  This frightened me slightly because my headphones have always been my distraction on my solo runs.  They're my lifeline when I'm in pain.  My music is my source of emotion when the emotion I'm actually feeling isn't one I really want to face.  My audiobooks take my mind away from the movement of my feet and the steady rhythm of my breath.  Going for a run without these crutches pushed me out of my comfort zone.  But I was desperate for quiet, and the thought of throwing more sound directly into my ear canals had me cringing.  So I waved goodbye to my comfort zone.

There was another reason why this greatly anticipated run had me feeling slightly out of my comfort zone too.  I haven't run in 2 weeks (except for a run with the dogs at the animal shelter last Monday, but that doesn't count).  I took a self-imposed, potentially knee-healing two week break after my Team in Training coaching season officially came to an end.  Today was the day that I was officially allowing myself back into the running game.  Today was the day I would see if it was all worth it.

Once I returned from my walk with the girls, I strapped on my Garmin, laced up my running shoes, left my headphones in their drawer, and sat my phone on the table for a rest.  Then I stepped out the door with my fingers crossed behind my back.

After strolling for two blocks giving my Garmin the annoyed "comeonalready!" face, it connected to its satellites and we were off.  Let me lay out for you the thought process of what happened in the next mile:

"Yay, no knee pain!"
"Don't celebrate so soon, it's only the first couple blocks."
"Tighten your abs, push your hips forward."
"Use those glutes!  Run with your butt!"
"Man, those cars are loud."
"Oh, that was a pretty little bird chirp.  I wouldn't have heard that with headphones on."
"What is the name of that bird I hear so loudly from outside the zoo all the time?  Why can't I ever remember it's name?"
"Shoot, I think I forgot to make those copies for tomorrow."
"Glutes! Abs!"
"How's the knee?  Hmm, still feeling good I think.  At least it feels about the same as the other one right now."
"I need to remember to ask for more snacks from the parents at school tomorrow."
"What was it those two first graders were arguing about today?  Ugh, I need to talk to them in the morning."
"Push your hips forward!  Engage those glutes!"
"Could I be running on a louder street?  I don't think I could."
"The Sounders game on Saturday was fun."
"I wonder when the next one is I'm going to.  I should check my phone when I get home."
"OH MY GOD I'M RUNNING A MARATHON IN 12 WEEKS!"
"I wonder where I'm meeting my friend for dinner tomorrow night."
"This hill feels great, I feel like I'm flying."
"Stupid cyclist, get off the sidewalk.  There's a bike lane right there! Literally, RIGHT THERE!"
"Abs! Glutes!"
"Check in with the knee.  Yep, still feeling good."
"Sometimes I feel sad."
"But I'm not sad right now, what do I have to be sad about?"
"Oooh! Kids playing soccer games!  Scan the crowds, look for those first graders!"
"I wonder how far I'll make it today.  My breathing feels good."
"How fast am I going? NO! Don't look at your watch, idiot.  Just run how you feel."
"Tighten your butt!  What are your abs doing?"
"When will I ever find a boy who actually likes me?"
"The tag in the back of this shirt brushes the strap of my sports bra really loudly.  How have I never noticed that before?"
"I'm getting tired already."
"POSITIVE THOUGHTS ONLY! You're doing great.  This feels great."
"What am I going to write about in the blog tonight?  I hope I get inspired, it's been forever since I have."
"Is that...oh no, it just looked like her."
"Glutes!!  Abs!!"
"Those cars are SO LOUD."
"What should I make for dinner tonight?"

This endless stream of nonsense continued until I hit about mile two.  And then it hit me.  In fact, it punched me in the face.  And my mind, as it always does, went back to The Oatmeal who so eloquently said:

"And the buzzing road of the world is nothing compared to the noise inside my head. I'm an introspective person, and sometimes I think too much, about my job and about my life.  I feed an army of pointless, bantering demons."

YES.  This is where all that godawful noise has been coming from.  This is why I can't get away from it.  It's not the stupid cars or my headphones or my annoying neighbor.  It's the noise in my head that's so loud (that train of unconnected thoughts above plus all the more personal demons I omitted from publishing on the internet).  The Oatmeal, of course, explains how he quiets his demons:

"But when I run, the world grows quiet.  Demons are forgotten.  Krakens are slain.  And Blerches are silenced."

You know the Blerch.  The fat little cherub on your shoulder that urges you
to lounge on the couch and eat, eat, eat some more.

This used to be true for me.  There was once a time when running could silence all those demons for me.  Or at least provide the silence necessary for me to work against them and silence them myself.  But I haven't been running much lately.  And when I have, it all sounds pretty much like the random selection above, plus or minus a few things.

So for the second half of my run, I focused on silencing the demons and the krakens and the Blerches.  Generally, I focused on not feeling.  Just not feeling anything.  Until I realized that sometimes I run because it makes me feel.  Because there are certain feelings that I'm not very good at allowing myself to feel and when I run, I feel things like pain and discomfort and struggle--all those difficult feelings I like to ignore in my personal, non-work, non-running life.  And I realized that that is the exact opposite of what the Oatmeal likes about running.

And then I told myself to shut up again.

Just SHUT UP.

But I guess I'm not very good at that.  Because after struggling through a 4.5 mile run, trying not to feel anything and apparently feeling everything instead (except a pain in my knee--didn't feel that!!), I decided to come home and blog about it.  To delve even deeper into the noises in my head.

Which has all led me to the final big realization of the day.  It isn't running that keeps my voices quiet.  And it isn't writing that quiets them either (I have, in fact, been writing a ton lately despite the silence on the blog and while I'm happy with what's been spewing out, I wouldn't say it has promoted sanity).  It's this strange combination of the two that quiets the demons, krakens, and Blerches in my head.  This odd imbalanced equation where running plus writing equals sanity.

These two also, counter-intuitively, make my life just a little more sane.

With the amount of running and writing in my life both increasing on the near horizon, I'm growing hopeful that this "not-exactly-me" feeling I've had about myself the past few months will slowly disappear and the real me will return again.

But that's something I'll worry about later.  For now, after a good run and a solid stint of writing, I feel the world around me growing silent for the first time in way too long.

I'm going to go enjoy it.