I think an individual’s potential might be limitless. It’s cliche, but the only thing holding you back is yourself. Your fear, your inhibitions, your preconceived notions.

What if we were to dream big? What would you say if someone asked you what you would love to do more than anything?

We all have our priorities, and those are important. My biggest goal in life is to raise my daughters to be strong, independent, confident women. I don’t care what sports they play or if they’ll get straight A’s in school. I just want them to love themselves as they are in this mixed up and confusing world. That’s all. That’s the most important thing. I wish them happiness and love and children and a positive life-long relationship with a supportive and loving partner, yes. But above all else, I want them to love themselves.

Teaching them to love themselves involves more than talking. They absorb so much from what they see, what they sense in our home. I am such a huge influence on them, on their perception of women, their perception of relationships, of mothers, of how one should treat other people. That’s an immense responsibility. It scared me at first, when I held Leila in my arms as a newborn, to realize all that parenting involved. What if I messed up? What if I couldn’t do it?

I’m far from perfect, and I have definitely messed up at times. I’m honest about my flaws, and they usually rear their ugly heads when I’m very tired and trying to make dinner and the kids are whining. Sometimes I growl at them when they don’t deserve it, sometimes I let them watch too much tv. Sometimes I send them to bed early because I can’t wait any longer for some quiet.

Failure is ripe with emotional connotation. But I think that one of the most important things to realize is that failure isn’t permanent. Did I fail at my 32k run yesterday? Yes. Do I fail my children sometimes by losing my temper or lacking patience? Yes. But I’m not a failure as a runner. I’m not a failure as a mother.

We all struggle, it’s part of life. We struggle because somethings are hard and we have lessons to learn and we need to gain perspective and for a million other reasons. But there is always a new day to try again. The most important thing to remember is that you can keep trying. The moments that I yell at my children are far outnumbered by the moments we laugh and read books or play dollies together. The bad runs are far outnumbered by the good runs.

So what if someone asked me to make an outrageous goal? What if I asked that of myself?

What if, at nearly 30, the very first thing I put on my Bucket List was to run a marathon in every province and territory?

What if I thought that I just might be able to do it?

32k this morning! I set out at an early hour, snow in the air, wind cold on my cheeks. But I warmed up eventually and enjoyed the sun on the ocean, the sparkling blue. Even the snowflakes, as they swirled around me, never seeming to amount to anything on the ground were pretty. Even at the end of March.

10k down. 20k down. Two miserable disgusting Gu gels packs (choked) down. And then the pain set in.

I’ve been having some trouble with my leg. A weird sore spot in the middle of my quad. It’s not knee or hip pain, but I can’t seem to stretch it and can’t seem to shake it. An easy 6k yesterday felt fine, and I thought maybe it had gone away as mysteriously as it had come.

But at 21k it came back with a vengeance, eventually spreading through my entire quad and into my hip. Remember how I mentioned the last 7k of my run is uphill? I stopped and stretched (to no avail), ran for a couple of minutes and then pulled my phone out of my pocket and called my husband. He picked me up at 28.5k.

I climbed into the car and tears sprang to my eyes. Because dammit!

He reminded me that bad runs are part of it, that bad runs are what makes marathon training so hard. That I am so close I could reach my goal already, I just need to concentrate on avoiding injury. That I’m not injured, just sore. I know. I know, I sniffed. But still, dammit.

He filled the tub for my ice bath in our kids’ bathroom. And he took their bath crayons and wrote on the walls:

And then I really cried.

This was my first really hard run, where I battled both physical pain and mental walls. This was the first run that I’ve questioned how on earth I’m going to make it to 42.2. This is the first time I’ve wondered if maybe I can’t do it.

I guess what I love about this is also what I hate about it. I love being able to push myself farther, but I hate having to push myself farther. Does that make any sense at all? I love the feeling I’m left with, but hate having to accept pain and self-doubt as a part of the equation. In a way, I wish it were easier. But if it were, I know that it wouldn’t mean nearly so much to me.

So, next Friday I’ll aim for 32k again. Because that’s what this lesson is about: failing, crying, and then getting up and trying again.

Olympic bronze medallist Priscilla Lopes-Schliep has announced that there will be some hiccups – and possibly some cravings – in her training for the 2012 Olympics.  In an interview with the Toronto Star, the 28-year old hurdler announced that she and husband Bronson Schliep are having a baby.

Don’t think this means she’ll be slacking off, however.  While her training has been adjusted for the pregnancy, she still plans to go for the Gold in London.  The baby is due on September 23, and according to her coach, Anthony McCleary, as long as there are no complications, she should have plenty of time to train.

Lopes-Schliep told the Star: “I love a challenge. It will give me something to dig that much deeper for. I’ll have that little person I’m trying to be a good role model to.”

Now that my long runs are officially Long (yes, caps), I’ve become a lot more focused on food. Partly because I am hungry a lot more and partly because I’m very focused on fueling properly the day before and day of (including recovery eating) Long Runs.

I go with the standard pasta dinner the night before. Ok actually? I let myself eat as much as I want the day before a long run. Partly because I know that my body is going to need a lot of energy the next day and partly because, well, at what other time in my life am I going to be able to rationalize Tostitos as “carbo loading”?

Anyway, my body goes into this pre-run hunger state, and I am often really hungry Thursday (day before), Friday (day of) and Saturday (day after). By Sunday and for the rest of the week my appetite goes back to its usual levels (marathon training levels, that is).

My kids are sick today. Well, my two year old is sick. And the past two days have been long and tiring and I kind of forgot that I had 32km looming. I didn’t eat as much as I usually do, and wonder how this will play out tomorrow during my run. I had one really bad experience training for my first marathon when I tried to do an epically long run and had only eaten two english muffins and some salad the day before (long story). It was…. a disaster to put it lightly.

That experience is forever burned into my memory as “Lesson Learned the Hard Way” and I am, admittedly, paranoid about the same thing happening again.

This is where you give me your advice, fellow runners. What do you eat the day before a long run? The day of? The day after? And do you use marathon training as an excuse to eat as many Tostitos as I do?

I find that its very easy to fool yourself into thinking things, and others are sometimes happy to help you do it.  I swear that I had myself convinced that no one besides me could see any grey in my hair.  When I weighed a lot more, I never thought for a second that I was the size that I was.  It’s easy to talk yourself in believing what you want to believe.  For more reinforcement of my delusional behavior, read my previous post about sugar.  I really did not think I was eating that much of it, and now totally I see that I was.

So, with this recent epiphany, I started to wonder if I was making any progress.  I mean, iRun, Adidas, Tania and Lauren were giving me all this support and resources and my pace still seemed pretty consistent with what I always do.  I am suppose to have faith in the program but I am a rational girl who really likes empirical data and history has shown that my “gut feel” approach works for lots of other situations (my work, my friends, guessing people’s age, etc) but it is totally inaccurate when it comes to gauging the realities of my life.

So I posed this question to Tania – What does progress look like?  I have to say that it is a wonderful luxury to have a running coach who can provide feedback.  I always thought I did not need that so much.  I didn’t need or a running group at all, because I could just go out and do my thing and I would know progress when it came.  But Tania is a great soundingboard and reality check, and she is so confident that her training plan will work, even on my”bonny lass” body, hich is really made to work the farm fields of some fiefdom during the Middle Ages in the British Isles and then go home to care for my 17 children, as I cook on a open fire while plucking a chicken.

She says I am improving and the micoach trends seems to be bearing this out.  This is what she says

Looking at your easier runs, I would say that you don’t have major differences in pace.  What I like is that even when you added in a new job, you sustained excellent training, pace and focus.  Mileage is steady. Long runs are excellent.  Then, when we added the speed work over the past few weeks, you are adapting, even with one slower day, you recover and come back to pace again on the next one. 

She also said that we are going to begin the next phase of my training, which involves new things, of which I am not totally sure.  One thing it will add is that I have to run a 5K race, which scares me as I have only ever participated in one race before. 

So, I guess I am seeing progress but I think  what Tania is really saying is that I now have built a good enough running base on which to start a more focused approach to gaining speed.  My body is adapting and more change is coming.  Well, lets just add this next change to all the change in my personal life, the new eating regime (a very difficult thing for me) and now anothernew running phase.  I am a person who loves change, but even I might be reaching my limit.

But then again, bring it on Tania.  One more change won’t kill me and likely neither will the 2000+ more that will occur, if I am lucky, over the rest of my life.  But lets be careful, as it might drive me into the arms of  ice cream, my dear abandoned friend and life long support.

I had a crap run last night…..no energy …should I be worried ?

Is there anything that I am doing that is hurting my energy levels or should I just suck it up as it happens?  I ran 7 K last night and struggled to do under 6 K/min.

Here’s how my coach responded:

“Monday was an excellent tempo effort.  It was an important workout and you did a great job of pushing hard.

After a tough effort, you need to let your body recover the next day.  This will help your muscles and cardiovascular system assimilate the hard work and build a faster stronger body.
If you continue to run too fast every day, your body doesn’t recover, you don’t adapt to the faster paces and longer distances.  Running 6 min/ km every day is not required.

Every running day in the week has a specific purpose.  Some of those days in the week are recovery days and don’t have to run at 6 min/km.  These days could be run slower like 6:30 if you have to just to get the distance done and flush out your system for your run the next day.  Other days are focused on a longer run or a workout with a strong pace.”

Did Coach just mention 6:30/km – can I even run that slow?

So Tania says that a sample week would look like this:

Mon – Tempo effort (8 km at 5:25/km)
Tues – easy 7 km at (6:10-6:30/km pace)
Wed. – easy/moderate 8 km at 6:00/km
Thurs – fast fun workout/hills or easy day
Friday off
Sat – long run
Sunday off

Parts of this are hard and parts are easier but I am very motivated to do the very best that I can and that is a problem with me as I tend to be an over-achiever and place high expectations upon myself on a daily/ weekly/ monthly basis.   What kind of person states that they wish to run not only their first marathon but run it in Boston qualifying time?

Hey all – hope everyone had a good winter!  It’s amazing when we sign up for spring races they always seem so far away but they do certainly creep up on us.

Working in a pedorthic clinic which deals with quite a few runners, we are definitely getting quite a few questions about ‘minimalist’  running these days.  Although this is certainly a topic that could fill a book (and has filled many books!), I’d like to answer a few questions here that we’ve recieved lately. 

(1) Is ‘minimalist/barefoot’ running all about the shoes? 

 No.  It seems that all the current research is pointing towards heavily cushioned running shoes as being the cause of many of our running woes.  Because our bodies have so many inherent tools to to be able to absorb shock, we definitely have lost some of those properties by putting a high, soft barrier between our foot and the ground.  We can see this often immediately with most people when we have them remove their shoes and run a few seconds barefoot.  In most cases, within a few seconds the body will adjust naturally by leaning forward, taking more steps (increasing cadence) and landing more on the midfoot because it hurts to land on our heels when we don’t have shoes on.  So, there seems to be little doubt at this point that running without shoes allows our bodies to absorb shock in a much more efficient manner (the way that it was supposed to).  With that being said though, most of us don’t have the flexibity, strength or technique to carry this style of running for for very long before getting injured.  Even though it’s a good change, it’s still quite a change.   And this is where we find people run into problems.   

The ‘minimalist’ shoe push is much more than just a shoe change.  It’s about learning to run better and more efficiently.  Whether someone just does some running drills (which often includes barefoot or ‘racing flat’ drills/running), works on increasing their cadence, works more on flexibility or works on strengthening, they will likely have decreased their risk of injury and also likely become a faster runner.  As someone slowly transitions to better running technique (which involves all the above principles),  they will naturally be able to cover more distance with a lower heeled shoe.

A couple questions I’ll look at next time are, “How slowly is it recommended to transition to barefoot/minimalist shoes?” and “What are running drills and how do I do them?”. 

Ryan