RFKR - Runner Formally Known as Roadkill

After missing the time hack on the last two Qualifiers, today I finally re-qualified for the Arrogant Bastards Trail Race Team.  But's it's not that simple... not only did I qualify... I finished with OVER a minute to spare (32:00) AND... my body fat is sub-30 AND I have not sustained ANY injuries even with an average of 7 training sessions per week (4 CF & 3 trail).  These last two months in particular have created results far beyond my wildest drunken dreams.

I suppose it would be easy to take credit for it, and maybe with some that's expected, but I truly can't.  Left to my own efforts, I fell off the team and couldn't get back on.  Only when I completely let go of all control issues and asked for help from the experts, were they able to work their magic and create such magnificent results.

First, Carla, my spiritual mentor...  I chose this photo specifically to show her fun loving, practical, earthly, and altogether bad ass side.  She's a woman whose history I completely identify with and who is living her life in a way I greatly admire.  I definitely want to be her when and if I ever grow up!

Carla has been consistently giving me tools and accountability opportunities to quiet my overactive brain and super loud ego.  First she made daily meditation mandatory and started recommending a number of perspective altering books.  Then she just sat back and waited while door after door started opening and enlightenment slowly started to dawn. She has always been there to help me work through the rough patches and climb hurdles that no amount of physical effort alone could impact.  I am so very grateful for her loving heart because these tools transfer to all facets of my daily life, making today much brighter than yesterday... and tomorrow... wow, I think I better just let it unfold in it's own time.

Everyone's journey is different, but for me, it's critical that I get quiet every single day, trust God in all his beautiful manifestations and ask Spirit to quiet my ego on a pretty much constant basis.  For me, it works and if any of my super busy-headed friends want more detail, don't hesitate to ask.


Second, Eric is my Coach and an absolute expert in his field.  I chose this photo specifically because it shows a side of him that comes out only when needed.  He is always the charismatic and demanding coach, but when appropriate, he's also that real person who creates real life skill changes... like pulling me through the final acceptance that I don't actually have to walk uphills and that I absolutely must be able to train alone.

Once I was able to quiet my ego enough to ask for his help and continue to quiet my ego enough to actually accept his help, unconditionally, he was able to work amazing magic with my body and even made serious inroads with my head.  First, increasing my caloric load and shifting the macro nutrient ratios while implementing sleep and recovery standards.  Then and only then did he set a training protocol that I was required to adhere to no matter what.  It was insanely hard and had to be performed alone, but by the time today arrived, I no longer needed a pacer and knew I had the potential to finish strong.

I am forever grateful for this Coach who always sets a standard attainable with a stretch, who always believes in me, and who always gives as much of himself as he asks of me.  He has earned my unreserved trust and now whenever he tells me to do something, I do it regardless of what my own head has to say on the subject.  Remember, my head will invariably tell me he is asking way too much from my fat, old body and while I do know better, I now have the tools and faith to ignore it. My head always lies and my Coach never does... unless of course it makes for more effective training. Ha!

Finally, after three years, I finally get to run The Bastard 50k in roughly 10 weeks.  My head of course says there's nowhere near enough time to train for such distance, but I know better, because my Coach says it can be done and I believe him.

So, it's now time to really STFU and train!

Tule River Report...

I'm home and putting up a quick post before the day gets away from me... 

Thank you coaches for such a creative welcoming!  I never worried about the Academy the whole time I was gone.  Thank you all for the gift of your superior skill and commitment to our shared venture.  We would not have been able to take this time for ourselves without you here.  I am very grateful.

The last five days were amazing, enlightening and completely life changing... and that's all I will say on the subject.  This is truly one of those times when what happens on the mountain, stays on the mountain.

My regular schedule resumed this morning and I'm now ready for the final push to the Qualifier next weekend, so let's get this job done!

It's totally happening...

Crazy how two small words could make such a dramatic difference.

Another week of training behind me and another week of a gloriously quiet head.  Only two weeks remaining until the Qualifier and finally we have some decent breakthroughs! Check out the changes in only one week, now that I no longer walk at any point on the qualifier course:

Tuesday's - Start Line to Gate Repeats:

9/18/13 22:30, 24:28, 25:27 

9/24/13 20:41, 22:15, 23:12 

Thursday's - Horse Trail Loops - Yes, I still power hike the majority of climbs, but I now jog parts too:

9/20/13 12:27 (from trailhead to Tollroad), 23:32 (complete loop), 27:19 (complete reverse loop) = 50:51 

9/26/13 12:03, 22:49, 25:47 = 48:36 - Solidly under 50:00.  Yahoo!

Saturday's - Qualifier Time Trial:

9/22/13 20:31 (to gate), 34:44 (finish) 

9/29/13  19:45, 33:52 - this is the first time I've ever been under 20:00 or 34:00 when running alone! 

Granted a lot can happen in two weeks and there are a number of challenges to still surpass... like I'll be out of town this Wednesday through Sunday, on a very promising rural adventure, so this week's training and eating are going to be off kilter.  But, I'm taking my running shoes and plenty of protein and fat, so I'm not overly concerned.  I'll try to blog when I get home Sunday night.

One thing I know for sure, come October 12th...

And leave the results up to a Power vastly greater than myself!

Silence Is Golden

At least when it come to my head!

For the last week, my head has been completely quiet through ALL of my training sessions.  If that's not a record, it's darn close.

Why is that so important?  Because it means that my training can just be training and not a character judgement... either good or bad.

And why is that important?  Because then I can have a good session without glorifying it and I can have a bad session without throwing myself to the wolves.

Translated, that all means I get to work as hard as my body can tolerate (by perception) without my brain sabotaging the effort.

How has all this played out last week?

Well, in CrossFit, it means I thrived in every class and performed respectably.  That's good enough for the time being considering it's not my primary emphasis.

The real showing happened out on the field, which is where my head predominantly tends to explode.  For the last five weeks, I've been doing the exact same runs.  Here are the stats from the first week and this last week.

Tuesdays - three repeats from the Qualifier start line to the turn around Gate. - Goal: 19:30
8/13/13 - 22:05, 25:06, 26:56- I walked EIGHT times that first evening
9/18/13 - 22:30, 24:28, 25:27 - ZERO Walks

Thursdays - Horse Trail Loops - Goal: 40:00
Up the Horse trail, down the fire road, past the bridge, back to the start line... repeat second time, in reverse:
8/15/13 - 14:30 top of horse trail, 27:18 1st loop, 10:00 REST, 31:10 = 58:28 total
9/20/13 - 12:27, 23:32, 27:19 = 50:51 (ZERO Rest)

Saturdays/Sundays - Qualifuer Time Trials - Goal: 32:45
8/17/13 - 22:18 split, 38:28 - TWO Walks
9/22/13 - 20:31 split, 34:44 - ZERO Walks

These may not seem like big differences to you, but eliminating all walking is HUGE because it finally opens the door to speed development.

Why did it take so long to eliminate the walks?  Because my head kept telling me that I was faster power walking than I was jogging.  I was so intent on the finish time, I would drop into a walk just to rush.  The problem was that I plateaued within weeks and wasn't able to drop the time any farther.

Last weekend when I sent Coach yet another crummy result from the Qualifier time trial. I got back a text yelling at me to STOP walking.  So I did... finally.

This week will be a good opportunity to see how quickly the gains come. Will it happen fast enough to get me back on the team on Oct 12th?  We'll see, there is enormous power in a group and it's been a long time seen I ran with my peers...

Oh, for those curious... why is my head quiet finally quieting down?  Three weeks of a minimum of 30 minute daily meditation, non-negotiable.

Body Dysmorphia and Real Change

This week is all about my fitness goals and what prompted last week's post...

I have a double goal.  I want low body fat (19% ideally) and I want to be fast enough to run comfortably with the Arrogant Bastards.

As of Friday, my body fat % was down to 29.58%. It's the first time it's fallen below 30% in at least five years. Just three months ago it was 35.26%... that's a reduction of over 5.5%!  I should be overjoyed and celebrating the achievement!  

So why do my thoughts keep drifting back to the fact that the reduction progression has slowed down in the last month?  That it may only be 1% a month going forward and that I may actually have to stay on this specific eating plan for another 9-10 months?  The fact is I miss eating the way I used to and I don't like having to take the long hard road to real and permanent change... See how easy it is for me to focus on the negative and wallow in self-pity? 

That's why the other half of the goal is just as critical...  Getting stronger in the gym and faster on the trail. 

For me, low body fat is meaningless if my body isn't also strong and fast.  In the last seven years I've learned that what I see in the mirror is rarely real. Almost every time I look in the mirror today, I see the same body I've always seen, yet I know intellectually that my body looks different.  It's called body dysmorphia, so I've learned to just ignore the mirror and focus on the performance metrics.

Tomorrow morning I'll be running the fourth qualifier time trial in a month.  So far, I've been getting progressively faster to the gate, but giving the gains back on the return.  This weekend my focus is to hold my ground on the way out and be relentless on the return... and keep my head quiet throughout.

Enter the tricky part... For the last month Coach has had me training alone on the trail three times a week, repeating the same grueling drills over and over again.  He wants me training alone specifically to force me to push through my default negativity and self-defeating mindset.  (It's an uphill battle and the few times friends have been on the trail at the same time has been a very welcome respite from my head, even though I am rarely able to run with them.)  To keep my head quiet and prevent the negativity when I'm alone, I use music, prayer, meditation, affirmations, etc. Sometimes the tools work and sometimes they don't.  I am still trying to figure out what tools work best under what circumstances.  

Remember the onion peeling...  I always thought I just needed to fix the body and the brain would fall in to place.  I am learning the hard way now that not only is my brain harder to fix than my body, it takes a whole lot more time. By comparison, it was easy to just stop the physical behaviors of drinking, smoking and eating sugar.  But, how the hell does one stop their head from thinking?  Or force it to think only good thoughts?  My mentors say it's just going to take time and patience... and the willingness to just feel feelings without medicating them away with drink, drugs or food.  Eventually they say my brain will be retrained.  

So, while I keep learning new tools, I will keep applying the tools that have always worked so far...  I will stay on the long road, listening to my experts who know me much better than I know myself and just take it One Day at a Time letting the time pass and changes come as they will, trusting that the solutions are in the journey.

Peeling the onion...

Before you read this post, you should know it really has nothing to do with my running, crossfitting, or nutrition. Those are all well on track and I'll post an update next weekend.  So then, just what is the point of this post and why am I putting myself so far out there?  

It's expressly because I am a leader in my communities and there are so many of you will identify with these words I've written.  It's for you; to know you are not alone in your personal brand of craziness and that if you keep persevering, you too will have the opportunity to uncover the layers of who you really are, so that the true healing can happen.  As for anyone using this post for judgement and gossip, enjoy the fodder!

Layer by Layer...

There was a time when I thought the root of my happiness was challenged by...

My mom
then it was my husband
No, really it was my dad
Duh, it must be no girlfriend!

Eventually, I grew to realize that people were all just outside influences and my problems really originated within me...

First my alcoholism
then is was my smoking
No, really it was my nutrition
Duh, it must be my sugar addiction!

In reality, all of these areas are very important, but they are just physical factors, they not the root cause.  How do I know this to be true?  Because each time I peel away a layer, another layer is revealed, and as soon as I adjust to the new vision, another layer becomes visible, so I peel it away too, and guess what?  Yup...  Welcome to my world today.

At least for today, I live clean and sober, eat properly, train consistently, sleep sufficiently and am far more disciplined than at any other time of my life.  I have spent a lifetime focused on creating certainty in my life.  Certainty that as long as I keep all my ducks in a row, my health will be excellent and my life fulfilling and happy.  (Hmm...one odd thing about those ducks is they've somehow kept multiplying through the years!)  Talk about a thousand forms of self-delusion.

So, now that I have all my adorable little ducks nicely lined up, how can I possibly still be experiencing even occasional bouts of depression, irrational fear, shame and self-loathing!? Seriously, WTF! Sure, these bouts are few compared to even a year ago, (and nothing compared to what they were like ten years ago!) but I was positive that cleaning up the food and getting off the sugar would eliminate the last of them and I was truly shocked to find that I was wrong.  It seems another layer has been revealed, and boy is this a painful one.

Thankfully, when I'm obviously over my head, I've finally learned to quickly seek out the advice of those I trust...

My physical mentor essentially says the roots originate in my mind and can only be resolved with the tools of expert assisted introspection.   Sounds clear and like a very good idea for peeling away lots of ugly little layers I'm sure are still nicely buried.

While my spiritual mentor completely agrees that expert assisted introspection can be invaluable for uncovering layers and applying tools for healing, she believes that it will still prove insufficient to provide lasting peace of mind.  The root of all my unrest, she says, is actually caused by a spiritual malady and that I am far from unique and alone in my suffering.  In fact, she pretty much guarantees that my serenity will only ever be as stable as is my conscious contact and reliance on God.   She followed that by saying the best way to maintain that contact and reliance is with constant diligence dedicated to prayer and meditation, along with regular application of the tools for introspection and healing.  

In my heart I've known this for a number of years and while I've definitely made huge inroads in the process, I've still always felt that the outside world needed the most attention.  In one sense, I can see the necessity of this path because the outside influences have always thrown up a serious noise barrier to the silence.  But now that I've pretty much eliminated all other factors, it seems that both of my mentors are right, which means that the real work is still ahead of me...

GORUCK Challenge!

I LOVE challenges that stretch me beyond my known limits. Since 2007, I've found myself involved in a rather eclectic mix of activities... everything from the 2007 AidsRide, 2009 High Desert 50k, 2011 USAW Pan American Masters, 2013 R2R Grand Canyon and now last weekend's GORUCK Challenge. Each one of these grand adventures have helped shape my character as both an athlete and adult woman.  I can't hardly express just how important they have been in creating my destiny, but maybe that's a post for another day.

Tonight, I'll just share about GORUCK.  Let's open with it's not your typical fitness event.  In fact, every single one of the girlfriends I told about it were positive I had gone insane.  I guess I either didn't explain it properly or they just couldn't see past the dirt and discomfort to all the benefits of the event.

I knew I wanted to do a GORUCK as soon as Eric and Elise shared a few stories after their GORUCK Challenge.  I surfed the website and saw GORUCK Lite (6-8 hours), but it didn't attract me... too easy. (Eric has led our community on too many leadership challenges for me to be too easily intimidated.) The thing was I didn't think I could thrive in a Challenge (12-14 hours), I just knew I wanted the experience.  So, I threw out a post on Facebook to see if I could get a battle buddy and within hours Beth Jensen said she wanted to do it too.  I'm really glad she did too!  She was the only person among all of our friends and community who chimed in.  I like to think I would have had the courage to sign up alone if she hadn't joined, but I'm so very glad to have missed that test and been able to share the experience with her.  Beth was the BEST imaginable companion for this adventure... fearless, strong and unflappable. Her constant calm confidence kept us both firmly grounded during all the months and hours leading up to Challenge.


We chose a GORUCK Challenge three months out, in San Luis Obispo.  We figured SLO would give us the best scenery and great opportunities to roll around in the surf and sand.  After we registered, we read and reread everything we needed to know, then went out backpack shopping.   All GORUCK events require that participants wear weighted down rucksacks (another name for backpacks- hence the name "Go Ruck".)

Our challenge required we carry 4 bricks totaling 20 pounds.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, but then add 3-liters of water, plus the weight of the pack, and a few snacks and emergency items.  I never weighed it, so who knows what the actual weight was, I'll just say it felt ridiculously heavy!  At least that was the case during all my weekend training hikes.  In fact, the more I trained the more trepidation I had about my success.  I kept having these visions of being in the surf doing flutter kicks and getting drown in the waves because I couldn't move in a soaked pack.  Ah, the mind can create some pretty scary scenarios!  The reality?  We never even went to the beach, nor submerged in any body of water.  It's a good thing I didn't let my irrational fear demon (you know the little guy tattooed on my left forearm?) win because he was wrong and if I'd have listened, I'd have missed out of an amazing growth experience.

So, fast forward to G-Day.  Beth and I drove up early afternoon, opting out of meeting the rest of the team for beer and burgers beforehand, preferring to just rest and build up our energy reserves for the night.  Our GORUCK launched at 9pm, which meant we would be out all night.  In hindsight that was both good and bad, bad because we missed an opportunity to meet and greet 15 guys and 4 other gals.  Good because we didn't puke during the first session of "Good Livin" like some of those who'd been partying early.

I could go on forever about all the different experienced we shared.  Sure some of the stories are favorites, like watching the fog roll in as we're climbing Madonna Mountain and accomplishing the impossible when we moved that enormous power pole a good half mile.

Others are super humbling like when I put my foot so deep in my mouth with Cadre John that we all paid the price at the top of Madonna Mountain...  The Cadre are a funny breed... as we all know from our own fearless leader, sometimes they're gentle and sometimes they're brutal.  So Beware When Poking Lions!

Then there's the completely ludicrous, like Kellie somehow being passed this beast and no one wanting to take it off my hands.  Are you kidding me???!

Some of the stories are super funny, like my almost getting us all blasted during my leadership turn because I was too excited to find my inside voice in a residential district, (instead we missed our time hack, so I got to lead us to flutterkick hell anyway, lol)

or getting hosed and cookie doughed in a sand box.

There were SO MANY remarkable memories that it's impossible to share them all.  What I will say is that the whole night was everything I had expected and yet nothing at all like I had expected.

I went in to it thinking I would be the oldest and slowest, the weakest link.  I was ready for the night's lesson to be one of humility and teamwork.  What I found was that as soon as we started, my energy spiked and my pack instantly lightened... and it stayed light the entire night, making it much easier to maneuver up and down off the ground than I would have thought possible.  Beth and I were both right in the middle of the pack, the entire night... except she's a much stronger leader and got us all through some sticky teamwork challenges that the assigned leaders were failing... like setting cadence to lift that bloody pole.  Shhh... don't tell but that's also her with the honor of carving Class 742 on our finally resting seat.

There were some moments when I was weaker than most of the guys, like on the freaking weighted push-ups and moments when I was stronger than some like hiking up that endless mountain.  We ALL had our moments of strength and weakness and I was actually able to thrive throughout the entire event.  That was one of my greatest lessons of the event.  To finally STOP underestimating and selling myself short.

So, now I look back to last weekend with a new set of eyes and accept the fact that I chose a goal I wanted bad enough to do what it took to accomplish it.  That meant dialing in my food, sleep, training, and culminated with asking Eric's help to get back on the Arrogant Bastards.  That extra boost of his eagle eye on my performance, nutrition and stressors, helped elevate my fitness foundation to the place of what I consider complete and total success.

Oh, and if that's not enough good stuff to soak in... here's a real kicker... you know how I've been struggling with reducing my body fat for years right?  Well, Eric weighed and pinched me after the event to gauge just how much muscle I had lost through such a long endurance event and not only did I NOT lose any muscle, in the last two weeks I have actually gained over a pound of lean muscle tissue AND my body fat percentage is now (drum roll please...)
29.5%  I am under 30% for the first time since 2008!

Obviously, I'm staying the course and continuing to do exactly what Coach says because, on October 12th... I will again be pushed to the limit to get back on to the Arrogant Bastards, hopefully just in the nick of time to train for The Bastard 50k in December!

Oh, by the way... I have been vetoed on all possibility of forming a custom GORUCK event here at home, so if you want the time of your life, grab a battle buddy and go make it happen on your own!  If you time it right, you just may find me out there with you... because I definitely see another Challenge in my future and am already beginning to wrap my head around the possibility of dare I say it... GORUCK Heavy.