Yoga Bingo

This month, Studio South is doing something called Yoga Bingo: there's a chart laid out like a bingo sheet and in place of numbers, there are activities you can do instead. They range from taking a class with a new instructor, to tagging SS in a Facebook status, to eating fresh, healthy foods for an entire day (farmer's market this weekend, anyone?). Each activity on here is different and varies between lifestyle, social, and individual practice. Depending on how many rows you complete by the end of the month, you can win prizes like t-shirts, oils, or the big one: a free private yoga session.

Well as we all know, I like a good challenge. Like, really love a good challenge. I like having goals to work towards, what can I say? And I'm not even totally sure I'm motivated by the prizes (but prizes don't hurt), but I want to see just how many of these activities I can complete. Apparently, I am super competitive with myself! It's almost in an obsessive way. Every day on my to-do list, I just have "BINGO" listed in all caps, to remind myself to do something or start one of the week-long activities, so I can cross it off the chart. A little overboard, right? NOPE. Granted, this behavior completely goes against my yoga-based philosophy of "let things happen as they will,""be in the moment," etc etc. I am so totally motivated to do everything on the bingo sheet! I mean, in good news, most of the things are healthy life decisions, things I already do, and nothing really out of the norm. But still. One month to do them all! The pressure! I think Will thinks I've gone off the rocker a bit, because every time I go into the kitchen, I just stare at the bingo chart, contemplating what I should be doing. Nothing wrong with me, right? So much for being a calm, peaceful yogi--hah!

So here's what I've accomplished so far:
-I've taken a class from a new instructor and gotten her initials
-I've learned the Sanskrit name for my favorite pose (pigeon = Eka Pada Rajakapotasana....don't make me pronounce it)
-I've reviewed barre on Google
-I've taken 5 classes so far this month, but need to take 10 (oh darn, what a challenge)
-I've been a Karma yogi and done something for someone without expecting anything in return
-I reviewed Studio South on Yelp
-I've started drinking my 64+ oz. of water a day for the next week
-I'm figuring out when the best class time is to bring a friend to their first yoga class (!!)

(My H2O and my bingo chart, always close at hand)

On my "easy to-do list," I've got:

-Ask an instructor for help with a pose

-Reserve a space in an upcoming workshop

-Eat only fresh, healthy foods for one day

-Check in on Facebook (I wish I'd stop forgetting to do this!)

-Take a picture with my Namaste Y'all shirt on

-Practice a restorative posture for 5 minutes each week

There's a bunch more left to do on the sheet and I've plotted out what I know I can accomplish easily and what requires more planning/thought. The month is already 1/3 over and I've got so much left to do! Are there any other Studio South yogis out there who have taken on the yoga bingo challenge? If so, what have you accomplished/what's on your bingo to-do list?

Studio to Home: Evolving My Yoga Practice

I love yoga. We all know this. I try to scamper to the yoga studio a few times a week in order to enjoy instructor-led practice. I read books and blogs about yoga and enjoy looking at pictures of people in beautiful poses on Pinterest. I know each time I unroll my mat, a different experience will occur that only helps me grow as a person, both physically and emotionally. Without yoga, I feel unbalanced and vulnerable to life's dismays.

However, I struggle with practicing on my own. You would think someone who has been practicing music almost her entire life, would find it easy to practice something else. But it's not. Yoga is not like music where I go to a lesson and have an assignment for the next week, with a certain expectation of what I will accomplish. It's not running, where I lace up shoes and know they physical movements I need to do in order to accomplish a run (literally just putting one foot in front of the other...a beautiful kind of mindlessness). Instead, to practice yoga, there are patterns and poses that I have to come up with on my own that speak to my body in that exact moment. And it's not that I'm incapable of coming up with a sequence, but I find I am so concerned I won't do enough of the "right" postures or that because I haven't pre-planned it or written it out, that I will forget to do something that I love, or will mess up a something as simple as sun salutations. And I know that's not what yoga is about-there is no messing up and there isn't a wrong way to do it, but I still hesitate before rolling out my mat and tackling it on my own. I always feel like I'm short-changing myself out of something, whether it be that I don't spend enough time in poses, simply breathing and allowing my body to open up and relax, or that I missed a pose that my body might really be needing that day.

But then, when I shut out all that chatter about how I think my home practice should be, I'm reminded of what yoga is at its core: finding your inner peace. The poses don't matter, it's who you are when you get there.

Race Recap #2: Race Day

After having a few days to reflect on the race, I think this post might actually be shorter than I originally imagined it might be (hah)! Well, as short as I can keep it, that is. But after a few days of recovery, I think it has all settled in and "normal" life has resumed.

After the expo Saturday, we went to a naval base in VB and climbed a lighthouse, strolled the beach and then went out to Plaza Azteca for dinner. We didn't really know where to go/what to do for our carb-loading dinner, so we figured we'd had luck eating at Plaza before weekly long runs before, so we knew it wouldn't hurt. We chowed down on guac and fajitas and then returned to our hotel room and were in bed by 8 PM. 8 PM! But we were both pretty tired from getting up early, roaming the expo, and hanging out in the heat most of the day. So true to our old-person ways, 8 PM bedtime didn't seem so bad. It also made it easy to get up at 4 AM on Sunday to prep for the race! We wanted to be up early enough to drink a full cup of coffee, a few cups of water, and to be completely awake before heading to the shuttles. We left the hotel around 5 and caught the shuttles from the ampitheater to the race start with no problems. Our bus driver was a little nuts, racing down the roads and yelling/honking at people in our way (at 5:30 AM....think about that...there weren't many people to honk at but she did it anyways), but we got there in one piece.

While we waited to line up in our corral, we chugged water and constantly had to keep going to the porter potty's from all the water! However, we were lucky enough that a lot of people didn't show up until closer to 6:30, so we didn't have bad lines to wait in. Once the corrals opened up, we went and hung out in ours, listening to all the pre-race hype and MC-ing. Oddly enough, we weren't really that nervous at any point that morning, like we anticipated we would be. We were just ready to get running! The race started at 7 and after the first 11 corrals took off, it was finally our turn to start! And off we went! No more than a few blocks away from the convention center,  did the humidity set in and we knew it was going to be a challenging run. The bands were great and really rocking during the first few miles (I paid less attention as we ran), so that helped keep us motivated.

As we kept running, we were keeping a better-than-anticipated pace around 10:00/mile, yet we weren't overdoing. Somewhere around mile 6, we saw the elite runners/winners crossing their mile 11 and it was really fun to cheer them on with all the other runners around us! We had been in the shade for awhile and the humidity wasn't super stifling--all was going pretty smoothly and it was shaping up to be a good first half-marathon!

But then, as we kept going, we were in a more humid and sun-exposed area and things started to turn downhill for me. I began feeling really dehydrated, even though we only skipped one water station at mile 3 because it was so overcrowded, and we had been eating energy chews about every 1.5 miles. So I started taking 2 cups of water at every station--I don't like Gatorade, so I don't take it at races, which I actually think might have been working against me on Sunday. After drinking a lot of water (and being hosed down by spectators), I was still feeling parched, but I had to pee really badly. Like, really badly. Not like, "oh I think I gotta go" but like "OMG IT'S GOING TO RUN DOWN MY LEGS ANY MOMENT NOW" kind of bad. Sorry to be so graphic, but I just need to emphasize that it was almost painful to run because I had to go! Somewhere between miles 9 and 10, there was a water station with porter pottys and I bolted over to them. Will got annoyed because we'd been making good time and might be able to finish somewhere between 2:10 and 2:15 if we kept pace, and he knew if we stopped, it'd be hard to get going again. I knew this too and even though I was starting to feel fatigued, I probably could've pushed through if it wasn't for my damn bladder. As I waited, I was pee-dancing like crazy (ladies, you know what I mean) and Will was grabbing some more water/Gatorade and trying to keep moving. When a potty finally opened up, it was extremely relieving. After, I grabbed some water and tried to get going again. But I immediately felt dehydrated and weak! Argh!

I knew something wasn't right and I let the yogi in me overcome the runner in me and listened very closely to what my body was saying. I convinced Will that something really was not right and I wasn't just being lazy/giving up/etc, and we stopped to walk for a bit. We had both really hoped to make it through the first race without walking, so I knew I was letting him down. But I was really not feeling well and had started to get dizzy while running. So we walked for a bit, occasionally interspersing in running (although that was starting to cause cramping for me, so I could only do it in short spurts), and at every water station, I just chugged and chugged. I was glad we had decided to walk because right around mile 11, we started to see more and more runners on the side of the road being attended to by medical personnel--I knew I would have been one of them if I hadn't stopped. As we approached the 13 mile mark, I walked through the last water station and Will kept going. His knees bother him a lot to alternate running/walking, so he just had to keep going to the end if he was going to run across the finish. So I mustered up what energy I had left and ran the last leg of the race by myself, and managed to run across the finish. Amazingly enough, I still finished in 2:29:something, which was right at our predicted race finish time. If only I could've kept running--what a great finish we would've had!

Once I crossed that finish line, though, I hit a physical wall. Without even thinking, when the staff handed me a water bottle, I chugged half of it. And then I suddenly felt extremely ill and it occurred to me for the first time all morning that I wasn't DEhydrated, but that I was OVERhydrated. When I found Will, he immediately knew I was not well from looking at me, and he sat me down and fetched a banana to try to get some protein in me. I felt like I was going to be sick, and all my body kept saying was that it wanted water, but I knew it wouldn't help! It was such a weird dilemma to be dealing with and I know it's my own fault because I can't stand Gatorade or chocolate milk, the other two options at the finish line. But for the first time in my life, water (basically the only drink I drink) was not my friend. After letting me sit for awhile, Will saw that I wasn't improving much and decided we should get on the shuttle and get back to the hotel ASAP so I could cool down, lie down, and un-hydrate myself. Well then our bus was freezing, so I was shivering from being soaking wet and cold, which didn't help either. But eventually, after changing out of wet clothes, crawling under the covers, and taking a shower, I finally started to feel better. It was such a shame because I had definitely been hoping for a more glorious race finish, where I'd be overcome with joy from completing a half-marathon, but instead, I felt like I was going to hurl. It also meant no post-race pictures with our new bling and our proud accomplishment :(

Reflecting on the end, I think I should just be happy I made it relatively in one piece--there were apparently many people who went to the hospital and were treated for heat-related illnesses on Sunday, so I'm mostly thankful that my first half-marathon didn't end that way! In some ways, I feel like I cheated myself out of my first half-marathon experience by giving up and walking, but then I remind myself that my body wasn't asking me to stop--it was telling me. And when you're body tells you to stop running, sometimes you have to go against your mind and listen to your body, no matter how much you don't want to. All I can say is, it's definitely not my last half-marathon, so I will get that glorious race finish and post-run photos next time! And whether I ran the whole thing, or ran most of it and walked the rest, I still finished 13.1 miles and earned the sticker that I'm going to put on my car!

Lessons learned:
1. Um, overhydration is a thing that I need to be aware of, apparently.
2. Pick a cooler race--next up will be in November!
3. We need to work on more long run distances. But now we have a couple months more to train, so yay!
4. We apparently can keep a slightly faster pace than I realized-also yay!
5. As much as I love the taste of Honey Stinger Organic Chews, we probably need to switch back to Jellybeans, since they have caffiene and other things in them.
6. Grapes are awesome around mile 11-thanks to whoever was serving them! New favorite run snack.

Race Recap #1: Expo Day

We officially completed our first half-marathon yesterday! It's hard to believe that after only about 9-10 months of running, that we did 13.1. I still can't believe that we accomplished it, but more on that in my next post.

First, I'd like to share our experience at the race expo, which we attended on Saturday. What an overwhelming experience! For two people who still don't consider themselves runners, being surrounded by that many products, tips and people, was almost too much. We got there right around 9:30, so the expo had only opened about 30 minutes before. Once we checked in, picked up our race bibs and swag bags, we didn't really know which direction to head. So we started wandering around, kind of setting out on a zig-zagging path for ourselves to check out the booths. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but there is something so uncomfortable about being one of the only people wandering around an expo! The poor vendors either look sad that no one's at their booth, or they're jumping out at you because you're the only ones in sight! In these situations I either feel really guilty that no one's at a booth and feel obligated to go over, or I feel obligated to talk to the person who's leaping on me to show me their product. Either way, it's not my favorite experience. After wandering around for about half an hour, Will and I had done our best to avoid talking to people and more people were starting to show up--phew!

Once more people were around and it got crowded, we felt a little safer checking out things we were interested in. Since we didn't have any other plans for the day, I figured we might as well loop around and take advantage of reading about/talking to vendors about products that we may want to research further in the future, try on shoes, and get a few little things. We only had about $20 to spend at the expo--in a way, that was nice because it helped prevent any impulse buys. So what did we get/explore?

Well, for the most part, I did all of the getting and exploring, since Will is mostly along for the ride. But I got:

2 Hippie Runner headbands
1 new Bondiband for yoga
1 13.1 bumper sticker (the whole reason I wanted to run a half was to get one of these!)

What did I explore? Now that my friends, is a different question. I so badly wanted to check out the kineso tape for my ankles and Will's knees, but that was an opportunity we didn't jump on early enough, because the line got really long. However, Will made the excellent point that we didn't want to get all taped up before race day and to have to deal with that new aspect. But I still wish we had gotten samples or at least gotten to talk to someone about the aches and pains we experience, just to get a little advice. C'est la vie! Instead, I checked out some compression socks that are specific to ankle issues, which is something I definitely want to explore in the future, particularly since my most sore body part today is my left ankle. I also poked around through some gear, but for the most part wasn't super interested. And then I figured, since there were a ton of shoes around from all the major brands, plus some local stores trying to sell some stock, I might as well try some on. My shoes are still good to go for many more miles, but as they're starting to wear down, they're not offering the same support they used to, especially in the arches which is really starting to bother my right foot.

So I tried on some shoes. One of the most dangerous things a female, especially a runner, can say! Needless to say, I think I found the next pair I would like to purchase. I tried on a bunch of different brands (some other Brooks, Saucony, Asics, and some natural running shoes, just for fun) and finally settled on a pair of Asics that I was not anticipating liking! I mean, I knew I'd love the crazy colors, but I had tried on a similar pair of Asics before and thought it was pretty stiff and narrow. But this pair that I tried on at the expo, slid right on, felt completely cushy, and seemed to support my arch in just the right way (not too much, not too little). It also helped that I tried them on with some really nice Asic socks (that I definitely need to get ASAP and didn't get at the expo because the line was really long), that offered more cushion than the New Balance socks I use now. But I kept them on for awhile, walked around, jogged in place, etc. and really felt 100% wonderfully comfortable. I was a good girl and didn't buy them at the expo, but did write down the shoe and have already researched it online to see what people think of it.

What shoe, you may ask? The Asics Gel-Noosa Tri 8. I've read conflicting reviews that they aren't good for training, or on the flip side, that they're the most amazing running shoe ever. Amazon has mostly positive reviews (over 500), while other sites have more of a mixed bag. So if you or anyone you know has these shoes, can you share some thoughts with me? I am a neutral plus (neutral on my left, teeniest hint of overpronation in my right) and need a tad bit of arch support in my right foot (flat shoes don't work, but I don't like something with a pronounced arch). These felt great on, but I'd like to know about their longevity!

Anyways, the expo was fun and the next time we go to an expo, I'd like to have a little bit more $$ in my pocket. However, it prevented us from getting anything we don't need, so that was good! My wish list of running gear just got significantly longer though :)

There will be a separate post for the actual race day experience, later!