The transformative power of athletics. The change you have inside you when you move from couch potato to active cool runner girl. (which is, yes, how i see myself occasionally.)

I think I can bucket the transformation process in 3 ways. What it did, what it does and what it will keep doing until my legs give out on me.

What it did: i was an athlete since I was 5 (if you count bunch ball as a sport). So i was never without a practice to go to or a game that i had to step up for. Having that as a constant mainstay in your life definitely transforms you. You are the athlete. As much as you don't want to admit it, you are the jock as school and are treated as such, the good and the bad. As you begin to progress and the numbers seem to fall away you understand so much more that you have reached certain athletic levels that most haven't. You have pushed yourself farther. Depending on your sport, it transforms the way you look at tasks. It transforms the manner in which you work (team player or solo act) and it makes you understand how to deal with failure and even more importantly to deal with success.

What it does: I am no longer the athlete that I was. But when i run the hurt brings me back to the days in the weight room. The morning fitness tests. The feeling guilty because my teammates were hitting 6 min miles and I was only at 6:45 mile. It gives me the swagger of an athlete that is lost on the day to day streets of NYC.

What it will do: Every time I put on my running shoes I get to run away from it all and run directly to that amazing feeling of competition, of rising to the occasion, of being at the top of your game. Because when it's a run, it is a game where you know the rules and you can win. Rarely will there be an outside factor that you can't deal with. The only question that you have to ask yourself is if you are willing to work a little harder.

Just Getting Out There

So I know this is a blog about running, but I need to digress for a minute or two to respond to my last blog that I posted on Friday. I you remember correctly, I was going a little nuts because I hadn't had time to just think or run for that matter. The chance to dialogue with myself, per se. Well over the weekend I was able to, however, it took place on an amazing walk that was supposed to be a run. On Saturday I found myself on the West side trying to figure out a way to get to the East side of NYC. My options were 1) take a bus to get there faster and then go for a run OR 2) walk across Central Park - which is what I did.

It was glorious. A perfect song came on right as I started into the park and it kick started it off just right. As I was walking and thinking, I got to thinking how much more of the park that I noticed because i was going at a leisurely pace rather than focusing on the pain of the run. Little things I noticed, the way a leaf swooped down as it fell of a tree, how much a father and son walking along looked alike, the glances people give each other in the park when they find that stranger just a little bit attractive. It was a treat. It was exactly what I needed.

So that being said, this morning I realized that those things can be equally enjoyed when running. I figured this out on a run, of all placed, when I went running early with my roommate. We decided to go around the reservoir, and as we turned the corner to view the West side the sun was rising and reflecting perfectly off the office buildings just like liquid gold. It was a breathtaking sight.

I guess this post really just amounts to the fact that either running or walking, it's just about getting out there to experience the beauty that is in the small things. Just getting out your front door and letting the world take over.

Me and my head have to have a little quality time

It's Friday. TGIF has never rung more true.

Excited for the weekend. Of course. Excited because i get the time to do what I want. Which, as I was thinking yesterday, will be in some part me chasing down the athletic self that I have neglected this week. Come to think of it, it's more just getting a chance to think at all.

Haven't run since what feels like an eternity and it's starting to get out of control. I haven't had the time listen to myself think. Or dialogue with myself. Which sounds a little crazy, I know. But I'll explain.

But that is what happens when I don't have the quiet to decompress the never ending stream of stimulus you get day in and day out in NYC. If it's not a co worker, it's the noise of the subway, if not that, than cell phones. It's constant.

When I run I get to pick the noise (or lack there of) that I want. I get to choose the music that i can dialogue with. The music that gets me thinking. Usually I get more accomplished when my brain gets a chance to unpack and run through everything it's encountered over the week. I think it's time I have some quality time to think.

You'll love it for the rest of your life...if you live through it

Not sure if I mentioned this, but I grew up in Colorado. An amazing state. An amazingly hard state to run or do any physical exercise in as well. Running there as compared to sea level makes me feel that not only am I out of shape, my body is taking the lack of oxygen personally.

My father loves to quote to me (every time I go through an experience like that) that "Pain is weakness leaving your body." Thanks dad. So what do I do about my double calf cramps? Apparently pain is a prisoner desperate to break out at any and all levels of intensity.

Now that I have moved to the east coast I rarely get to visit home much less experience the beauty and the pain that working out in Colorado allows. So when I was given the chance to head out there for an ultimate training camp, I jumped at the chance. This camp was not just your basic summer camp but a collection of division 1 athletes playing sports together, learning how to play to the highest level possible. In essence, we were taught how to endure.

To give a brief overview, the camp starts out nice. You play some volleyball and feel generally athletic. You do this for about 3 days and then you run directly into the grand event of the week. The SPECIAL - a 36 hours competition with about 3 hours of sleep in between. The SPECIAL(which one would think by its name is fun) makes all other tiredness look as easy as a nap. Below is a list of what each team does starting at 3pm on Thursday of the camp and ending at 12noon, the following day:

6 games of volleyball
6 games of Ultimate Frisbee
6 matches of Tug'0'war
Push up contest
1 hour of swimming relays
2 hours of basketball
3 mile road race (as a team carrying a tire and a 2x4)
kickball
sprinting relays
1 mile hill run (picture of the mountain we ran up above)

Talk about pain and endurance bu it comes down to the clear fact, that if you live through it, you will learn more about yourself as an athlete than you could ever have imagined. In fact in a less clear, rather counter-intuitive fact, is I look back and realize it was the best and worst moments of my life. I have found that those moments in sport are separated by a very thin line and more often than not, make you feel the most alive. So much so that I went back the next year and did it again. Though I'm not sure what exactly that says about me, all I know is that I would do it again if you gave me the chance.

I run therefore I am...tired

My running career started at a stand still - well not exactly still, but having been a goalkeeper since I was 10, running came in the form of a sprint -usually a mad dash- interspersed with standing. It was an interesting introduction.

But I may be getting ahead of myself. Fact is, I became a goalkeeper to avoid running. Having started out playing soccer as a wee sprite I eventually figured out through a series of long games and lots of running that I didn't like to run. So I was blissfully placed into the position that no one on the team wanted. Being the goalie. I got to boss people around and I didn't have to run. I had it made.


It was this position on the soccer field that led me to play up on through college. [Enter running career].

Apparently as a D1 soccer player, regardless of position, you have to run...and fast. This was something I had never encountered before. Needless to say it was a shock to me as well as my knees that I would have to complete a 3:00min half mile 2x at the dawn of preseason.


In light of this (and not a little bit out of fear) , I strapped on my ill-used running shoes the summer before that preseason and started running. Now, I fear I will disappoint because there was no euphoria or instant love connection during the run, in fact there was more walking and heavy breathing but between breaths, there was something. A feeling that is the same feeling that gets my running shoes on time and time again now even though soccer has past.

It is the feeling that you get at the end of a run, knowing you have given it all. You're spent. In my book, there is no better feeling. It is a glorious tiredness.

Your legs feel heavy but there is a skip in your step.

You're chest hurts but you can breath and think clearly.

And though all you want to do is sleep, the world you see looks a little brighter.

At the end of a workout, when your body is trying to catch up to what you have just put it through, when you can look ahead to your day knowing that you have accomplished a big thing already. That is the feeling that will always compel me to run. That is what I found through the fitness tests and 3:00 half miles. The agony and the ecstasy.

Becasue of this feeling I now run more often than play soccer. And though I never considered myself a "runner", I am forever grateful to the thing that I once avoided. Being a college athlete has passed (as have the 3:00 half miles, thank goodness) but I will always consider myself one for one reason. I have felt the tiredness. I have felt the burn. And I have felt the glory.