I ran the ING Miami Half Marathon and today’s post makes a total of…5 posts for the month of January.

You can see how I did on the 31 posts in 31 days challenge!  FAILED!

In my enthusiasm I set my goals high.  If you’ll read back to the beginning of the month you will see that I had the intention of reviewing 2012 and more or less identifying what went right and what went wrong.  Instead of simply going about the 31 day challenge, I set myself a second, gigantic 365-day task of reviewing the entire past year.  The challenge of writing 31 posts in 31 days is something I have done.  The challenge of, not only reviewing an entire year but critically analyzing, sorting and integrating the lessons learned during that time as poignant (and brief) postings that relate to healthier running… well that was too much.

Good thing that I am trying to get better at failing!

Failing is a lot like falling.  You have to go down in order to go up, its simply physics.  Failing allows me to take the bounce… And for me the only way to free myself up to take this bounce is to treat my failure with a sense of playfulness, to hold onto it lightly, as if it  old at any moments just slip through my fingers.  So here I am pointing out my failure, hoping that you will laugh at it a little with me and not hold it against me but rather use it as an opportunity to laugh at your own failures a little.  You might be saying, “My failures are too big to brush off like yours…” or, “easy for you to say, your failure has no real consequence…”  Well, look at it this way.  I make my living working with clients, clients who are likely to read my blog and take it as proof that I am reliable and trustworthy.  Saying I am going to do something and then not doing it says what about my character?  How many clients might I potentially lose by simply failing to follow through on my word?  Seems like a pretty big deal to me!

If I can do it you can do it.  Accept that you tried something and it didn’t go the way you hoped and now enjoy the greater capacity for rising up, now that you have fallen (it helps to smile a little, even if you don’t feel like it right at the moment).

Oh and I ran another half marathon.  So it isn’t all failure.  There is always a bit of both.

My grandfather turns 90 this year and in celebration my family is all descending on him in Boca Raton and many of us are running in the ING Miami Marathon.  I will be running the half marathon and this will be my first in my Vibram Five-finger shoes (I call them my “toe-shoes” which makes me smile every time because they are really different from the toe-shoes I was familiar with during my dancing career).  This race has been a long time coming and is a step on the way towards running a full marathon.

In keeping with my desire to look back over the past year so that I can orient myself towards my intentions for the upcoming, I have to acknowledge the length of time I have taken to transition from regular running shoes to these new funny shoes (and periodic actual barefoot running).  I recall running two half-marathons in the past and each time I completed one I couldn’t walk for a week after.  The shoes cushioned the impact enough for me not to notice when I was doing harm until it was too late.  As I started running with these very low profile shoes the mileage had to drop off precipitously.  I mean I ran 13.1 miles one week and then later that month when I started running agin (now with my “toe shoes”) I could barely run 1 mile without my foot cramping up.  It has taken me just over 2 years to fully transition to a place where I feel like I can finally, safely run those kinds of distances again.  To be fair I have taken a very relaxed approach to my transition, preferring to err on the side of caution rather than ambition.  The reason it has taken me so long is because it isn’t a question of my needing to get stronger (though strength training certainly does help), but a question of developing a process of observing myself as I run so that I can keep track in a detailed way of how I am running and adjusting myself as needed.

Looking back over the past year, what sorts of aches and pains have you experienced?  How did you recover from them and what steps have you taken to prevent them rom returning?  How do you set your pace, not your speed but your pace of training?  How do you observe yourself while you train, do you have a method for sensing yourself and tracking your trainings so that you can search for patterns and correlations between the pace of your training and whatever pain you have?

Over the past few days folks have been asking me if I have any resolutions for the upcoming year.  I’ve always thought resolution to be too firm a word and have gone instead with “intention.”  The difference is that a resolution is a firm decision to act and an intention is an more general aim or a plan.  I may be playing a bit of a semantical game here but being resolved feels firmly committed and while there are times for resolve I feel like in approaching a whole, unknown, year I’d rather have a more general direction so that I can firm my resolve as I go.

Of course it is hard to mark a course forward without having a clear sense of where you are at the present moment and so in setting intentions for the year it is important to also take stock of the previous year.  So my first intention is to take some time here reviewing last year and considering how that can inform my current resolutions.

Have you made resolutions for 2013?  Do they sound eerily familiar (perhaps some edited version of last year’s)?  Do they include running more or training for a marathon or a triathlon, exercising more?  Consider how these “resolutions” might feel if they intentions, if they were the direction you wanted to move rather than the destination of your aim.  If your intention is to run more, what are the steps you might take to get there and how easy can you be about letting some of them work and others fall by the wayside (without guilt because you haven’t broken a resolution you’ve just refined your intention)?

If you haven’t made any yet are there intentions you would like to set for the year?  Can you think back and remember several important moments from the last year upon which you can weave?  These are partly just questions for you to mull over, however, should you care to share, the comment section is open to all and I would love to hear some of your answers.

I learned how to play the violin by practicing the Suzuki Method.  One of the really fun parts of this method is students rehearse repertoire with the most advanced students playing the most advanced pieces and then just going down the book (there are 10 books that all students learn).  As the group comes to a song that a particular student knows, they join in the fun, until we have everyone standing there playing “Twinkle-Twinkle.”  It really is a powerful sight to see so many people playing such a simple piece.  It is, however, a challenge for the more advanced students to make the less complicated pieces interesting, it is easy to just play the piece mindlessly.

It was in this context that I was first introduced to the concept of doing something as if it was the first time, every time.  Since it is the beginning of a new year (and a new challenge for me) I thought I would offer a fun way to look at something with new eyes.

Pick an activity that you do a lot, I mean all the time (like brushing your teeth, like getting in the car to drive to work, like pouring yourself cold cereal in the morning).  Then write step by step how-to directions and read them to a friend or partner and see what happens.

I’ve decided to participate in the Ultimate Blog Challenge… again.  So, for the month of January, I intend to publish a posting for each day, which makes 31 posts in 31 days!

Why do this again?  Well, because it was so much fun last time and because when you revisit something you have the opportunity to notice something new.

What is it like when you repeat something you’ve done already?  What are your routines?  Do you have some that you have been doing for so long they almost seem like part of you rather than something you are doing?

The truth is, we are creatures of habit.  We like habits they make our lives so much easier.  They allow us to learn something and then relegate it to “auto-pilot” so that we can pay attention to more interesting things.

However, habits have the potential to really harm us.  Take for example repetitive stress injuries, carpal tunnel, runners knee, plantar fasciitis.  Most of these are caused by doing the same thing over and over again.  So how do you DO the same thing over and over AND avoid potential damage.

…by paying attention in a way that both allows you to notice the existing habit AND the new things at the same time.  Think of those stories of people walking by the same building year after year confident of their familiarity, only, one day, to notice a weathervane on the roof.  For most people we notice newness when something changes catching our attention; its almost as if noticing something new is something that happens to us.  You can, however, be proactive and actively look for newness, not by changing WHAT you are doing but by noticing and changing HOW you are doing it and then comparing and contrasting.

Like anything changing the way you notice yourself takes some practice. The next time you go for a run, start right at the beginning: how would you describe the quality of your movement as you tie your shoes (assuming you use them)?  When you warm-up are you determined or relaxed?  As you start your run, what is your attitude?  Are you dragging your heels or are you feeling frisky and excited to get out there?

You are practicing how to qualify your action rather than quantify it.  It isn’t a question of how far you run its a question of how you ran.  I’ll let you in on a secret, the easier, more fluid, smoother, softer, qualities are the way to run farther and for longer periods of time without damaging yourself through repetition.

In my family, we have a tradition.  At the dinner table we go around and share our favorite moment of the day.  I like this mostly because it gives us an opportunity to connect with each other around what is wonderful, surprising, exciting, calming, generally good, but also because it is a way to celebrate what drives us, what motivates us, what makes us love life.  There are days, of course, when identifying one good moment is a chore and this practice helps me notice the good when otherwise all I can see is a crummy day.  As I look back over the past few weeks of “favorite moments” I realize that almost always they have to do with running and I thought this was worth sharing.

A colleague of mine from the UK and I recently started up a conversation that has helped me realize that my posts here tend towards the technical, mechanical or theoretical but perhaps lack something in the inspirational.  Why run in the first place? I kind of assumed that if you were reading what I am writing than you already have a passion for running and you didn’t need mine.  Maybe you don’t but I find it easier to see the joy in something when others are shining a spotlight on it.

So here goes…

There is point in my run down at Crissy Fields where I turn a little corner and as I duck under some overhanging leaves, I am gifted with a full view of the Golden Gate Bridge in all its glory and I feel the magic of human ability.  Spaning such distance with such beauty and grace, I can’t help but smile and feel the strength and power and the easy swinging of my arms and legs.  I feel like I am soaring a little, just like the bridge!  On other days, listening to the fog horn’s moaning call across the waters of the bay, I turn the same corner and am awarded with a blank fog-white slate and I feel tiny and hidden and safe to explore, maybe to not be so graceful and beautiful.  This is a wonderful feeling of permission and freedom and I can’t help but erupt in a grin.

Another place I feel my spirit expanding is as I run up the Glen Park Canyon from the end of Chenery Street to the Christopher Park.  Rocks and mud and hills challenge my feet, balance, and eyesight as the strong scent of eucalyptus floods my lungs with each inhalation.  Of course the view from the top down the canyon doesn’t damage my pleasure.

Daydreaming helps you run better.

By taking time to soften your focus, to allow your mind to wander, to cling less tightly to your conscious intent, using less effort, you allow the many interdependent systems of yourself to recognize connections that might otherwise go unnoticed.

It is like trying, unsuccessfully, to recall a name. You know the feeling, it is sitting on the tip of your tongue but the harder you try to remember the more it seems to elude you. Then, suddenly it bursts forth into your mind with a “ta-da,” but only after you have given up and started thinking of something else.

This sudden awareness becomes possible by putting it on the “back-burner” and letting go of unnecessary and counter-productive mental effort, which allows your subconscious mind to do what it does so well: make connections you can’t seem to make on your own. The catch here is that it isn’t enough to simply take a break, the name comes to you because you identified it as important first and then let your thoughts roam for a bit. Letting your mind wander will help with tasks that you are working on, not on everything. So there is a balance I have alluded to in previous posts at play here, do enough to get started but not so much that you get in your own way.

Do Mental Intervals to Apply This to Your Running:

1. As you run pay special attention to some part (or parts) of yourself. Notice how your right foot lands versus how your left foot lands, sense if one side of your pelvis seems to move more than the other, notice where you feel the movement of your breathing, what are you doing with your hands, observe how…
2. Then spend time singing to the music on your MP3 player, or counting the trees (or cars) as you pass them, or checking out theater runners, or thinking about your favorite book, or…
3. Finally, bring your attention back to your running. Has your sense of self changed? Do you feel your feet differently as you land on them, does your pelvis seem to move more (or less), are you breathing differently, are your hands more like fists or less, is there some connection between these and other parts that wasn’t there before?
4. Repeat until you get bored and try again another day!

If you want to run faster, spend less time on the ground.  Literally, bounce off the earth and allow the force of gravity to launch you forward.  You need to feel the earth, but you don’t need to spend much time there, just enough to get you bearings.

Its the same for feeling good.  If you want to feel better, happier, more alive, more vibrant, more you, spend less time feeling bad.  You have to feel a little bad, a little conflict, to get your bearings and then go in the other direction.  Both take practice and may be elusive, but are quite simple.

 To rebound you need a few things:

1. You need to sense, the moment you are contacting the earth — to recognize conflict.
2. You need to be able to engage the structure of your foot, using the lever action to turn the downward force into upward force — to structure your focusing to help point your attention away from feeling bad towards feeling good.
3. You need to be able to convert to kinetic energy of your landing into potential energy briefly stored in the twisting of your spine, — to give yourself permission and allow yourself to feel good without looking to others for approval.

If you are using the muscles inappropriate to the task it is wasted effort, which is tiring.  Worse than that it leads to a diversion of the force generated by your landing.  When the force isn’t following the path through your skeleton the connective tissue and muscles around your joints have to kick in to hold yourself together.  Rather than converting the force from kinetic (moving) energy to potential energy, you change it, through friction, to heat.  This is what damages joints.  This is where joint pain comes from.  Joint pain isn’t inevitable.  It is avoidable and doing so is simple but requires attention and help from others.

If you focus on the things that make you feel bad, you’ll end up noticing more of those types of things.  When couples get pregnant they often report suddenly seeing pregnant women everywhere… there aren’t really more of them, its just that they notice them now.  It is the same in your experience, you have the capacity to focus your attention away from the thing that makes you miserable to the thing that makes you joyful (that can be hard if you are feeling miserable, so lets say, “less miserable”).

When I was young my parents allowed me to watch 20 minutes of PBS a day.  But, of course, I was not to be stopped and I remember sneaking into their room to watch TV, sitting right next to the screen so that I could turn the machine off the moment I heard them coming home.  Most of that time was more or less wasted but there is one moment from one TV show that keeps coming to mind.  It was in an episode of “Duck Tales,” where we are shown the beginning of Scrooge McDuck.  He gets his first job as a shoe shine, works his but off, for which he only gets one dime.  He is disheartened, angry and exhausted, he seems ready to give up when a mentor gives him the secret to his eventual wealth… “work smarter, not harder.”  And then we see him riding a bicycle attached to a belt with multiple brushes so he can shine ten shoes at the same time.

This lesson of finding new, easier, more efficient ways to perform the same task has stuck with me to this day.  I find a thrill in reviewing the work flow of any given group and looking to see if there are superfluous steps, ways to streamline the work to make it both faster and easier, without compromising the quality.

The trick to making a process better is that you have to be able to investigate the process, tweak the process and then review what effect those changes had on the process.  What I am saying is that in order to make your running better, you have to run.

There are two mistakes that are easy to make 

1. Wanting to get it perfect before you start and so you never (really) start.

2. Getting complacent and doing just what you have always done.