As athletes and as yogis, we spend a lot of time building comfort with discomfort. This is the purpose of training: We stress the body so that it can grow stronger. Without the stress of this discomfort, we miss out on adaptation, and thus the opportunity for growth. Similarly, yoga asana teaches us to grow comfortable with discomfort, whether it’s burning quads in Chair Pose or the challenge of trying our first Handstand. Our adaptation to these stimuli makes us stronger and more flexible, and the tools for staying present we develop in uncomfortable situations help prepare us for all life’s challenges.

Read more at Yoga Journal.

As the light of summer reaches its peak, Michelle Johnson, Hollie Sue Mann, and Sage Rountree will lead us in their version of a summer yoga mala on Saturday, June 22. This mala will include three rounds of 27 sun salutations with a different dedication for each round. Each teacher will lead us in 27 sun salutations and focus on a specific dedication.

Round 1—Personal transformation and self-realization: dedication to self
Round 2—Dedication to family and friends
Round 3—Focus to the world: dedication to all beings everywhere; recognizing our interconnectedness

The mala is a moving meditation, not a competition. We will approach our time together with grace, holding gratitude for the growth of spring and the abundant light of summer. We will start each round with a meditation and end each round with a break for asana, meditation, or savasana. At the end of all three rounds we will move into relaxing hip stretches and twists; a guided relaxation and meditation, and a long, sweet savasana.

$20 until 6/15, $25 after

Register now.

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Feel free to come straight from your workout, but, for your comfort as we cool down, please change into dry clothes before class.

Four weeks, $50, or $15 per session

Details and registration

One attendee asked me a great question. She’d been training for a while, pushing herself, and wondered why she’d hit a plateau and wasn’t getting any faster. Naturally, this is a major issue that could stand deep investigation, but in a casual Q&A setting, here are two things to look at.

1. Underrecovery. All the hard work in the world isn’t going to pay off if you don’t give it time to soak in. Just because you can string three workouts back to back many days a week doesn’t mean it’s a great idea. It can have the opposite of the intended effect, actually making you slower and dampening down your ability to hit the high notes—the fast paces and heavy efforts—in your workouts. Without these peak workouts, there’s no fast race; without recovery, the peak workouts are useless. For more on this, read The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery, my manifesto on how not to train (now in Spanish and German!).

2. Complacent workouts. When you train alone, it can be tough to push yourself that extra bit—to reach for those high notes. When you stay within your comfort zone, or only just beyond it to the start of your discomfort zone, you aren’t applying enough training stress to encourage your body to adapt by growing stronger. Group workouts and training partners can help you break your way through this plateau, by encouraging you to give a slightly greater effort than you’d do on your own.

When you hit such a plateau in training, it’s like you’ve attenuated your wavelength, dampening it down to a comfortable middle range. Your body needs the low points (recovery) and the high points (hard effort) to supercompensate and move you to the next level of ability and speed. Combining these two remedies—resting more and working harder—should help get you there.

As I alluded to in my Active Yogi post today but didn’t explain clearly on social media, even as I was posting photos last weekend, I traveled to Memphis last weekend for a special event: Francesca’s Unvitational Forty-Miler. (Unvitational, as virtually no one wants to be invited to run 40. And for the acronym FU40.) Francesca, aka Kika, her Italian nickname, is my BFF—our friendship dates back to 1987—and a ferocious trail runner. She joined me at the Mt. Mitchell Challenge, my forty-for-my-fortieth race, in 2012. As our birthdays are in August—and August is NOT a time to run 40 miles in Memphis—she planned an April event, laps around the lake at Herb Parsons park east of town. It wasn’t a race proper, either; it was a casual event. Kika suggested charities for her friends to donate to, and ordered some cool stainless-steel pint glasses as swag for folks who showed up to run, bike, or walk some of the course.

(As an aside, you know it’s going to be a great weekend when you are exposed to such luxe and varied transportation as this airport police officer’s three-wheeled motorized vehicle and Elvis’s pink Cadillac within two hours of landing.)

Before

With some help from my sponsor PowerBar and a trip to Kroger, we stocked Kika’s trunk with the essentials (read: junk food) for a day’s jaunt in the woods. Another friend from high school, Hillary, and the wonderful Olivia from Birmingham, constituted the core crew. Hillary, Olivia, and I joined Kika on the first and last of the four laps; in addition Olivia and I did lap 2 with Kika and a few fantastic locals, and Hillary did number 3 with Kika and a number of Memphisians. Memphis has a thriving running community supported by the fantastic Breakaway Running. (Kika took me there on Sunday—what a great resource and what a kind store founder, Barry!)

During

What a joy to participate in an event outside the usual routines of stressful race travel! There was no packet to pick up (though Kika had thoughtfully prepared race bags for us with gels, chocolate, socks, shirts, and the local running club magazine), no alarm clock to set (Kika turned on Donna Summer when it was time to get up), no hard start or finish time. I didn’t even wear a watch. An even greater joy was focusing on a loved one’s spirits and success instead of my own performance. It was such a treat, I may never race again!

After

It was a surprise to me to feel less sore than I expected to after running 30 miles. (Maybe Twix have magical recovery ingredients when washed down with Coke.) Instead, I enjoyed the sleepy fatigue of having spent an active weekend in a cool city with dear girlfriends and not enough sleep. FU, 40! Cheers, 40! Auguri, Kika!

A week ago, I visited my best friend, Francesca, in Memphis, where she was running 40 miles to celebrate her imminent fortieth birthday. Struck by one of those ideas that seem to pop into the mind fully formed during a long run, she planned her own do-it-yourself event in a park outside town and invited some friends to join her for a lap or two around the lake. Several of us did one, two, or three of the 10-mile laps, while Francesca gamely did all four and felt good enough to drive when we went out for pizza and beer that evening.

Read more at Yoga Journal.

Read more on the Running Summit page.

]]> http://sagerountree.com/2013/04/30/scheduled-running-summit/feed/ 0 http://sagerountree.com/2013/04/30/scheduled-running-summit/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sagetree/~3/WmSfeGU5tPE/ http://sagerountree.com/2013/04/29/watch-yoga-for-swimmers/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:15:47 +0000 Sage http://sagerountree.com/?p=3645

There’s a new, short (half-hour) yoga for swimmers video I filmed up at YogaVibes. This practice focuses on the chest and back, with detours into the ankles and hamstrings and a swimming-specific breath exercise. It’s gentle and appropriate for just about anyone, regardless of experience. Please enjoy and share!

MEC Vancouver, Sunday, May 26
MEC Calgary, Monday, May 27
MEC Edmonton, Wednesday, May 29

I hope to meet you there!

An evening of high fives, great clothing, and practical information to get you psyched for the Ramblin’ Rose Triathlons (Raleigh’s race is May 19, Chapel Hill’s is October 6). Bring your questions and get psyched for your upcoming races.

I will speak on training, equipment, and how to make the most of your transition between stages in triathlon. There will also be snacks and giveaways, including copies of The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga!

Free and open to all! Read more on the GOPC site.

Last week’s events in Boston had my eyes glued to my computer, feeling anxious and heartsick. It’s destabilizing to see an injured colleague in an news photo, and to hear from students and friends who were at or less than a minute away from the marathon finish line when the bombs exploded. Many of my Facebook and Twitter contacts are endurance athletes with some direct connection to Boston, and it’s been tough to pull myself away from the refresh button to recenter. Here are three steps that helped me; they can help you not just now but whenever you feel emotionally vulnerable.

Read more at Yoga Journal.

Mom took this photo when she accompanied me at the 2008 Boston Marathon

1. Connection. Yoga connotes union, joining together, connection. In response to the question Why?, certainly the first question my children asked, I can imagine only a deep sense of disconnection—a misperception of separateness, that a violent action affects only an Other. The touching messages of concern from and for the running community I’ve heard from a wide range of folks, all the way from my students to the cheese-counter worker at the co-op, remind me that we are all fundamentally connected. These lines of connection are sometimes more direct than we think. I felt them in seeing an AP photo of a colleague (it’s graphic) who was standing at the finish line as the bombs went off and who had her life change in an instant. While I’m horribly sad, I’m also grateful to be reminded of the fundamental connection we all share.

2. Recovery. For the marathon runners, the mental, emotional, and physical stress of running the race itself is now compounded by the mental, emotional, and physical stress of the explosions’ aftermath. Some spent hours in confusion, many spent hours on their feet trying to locate their loved ones, belongings, and a place to stay. The usual recovery protocols will not be enough. It’s going to take much longer than usual to process the day’s events and to allow for the deeper physical restoration to happen, because the body understands all this stress on a physical level. What might usually be a two- or three-week process might now take two or three months. This isn’t the time to work on quickly turning around and training for a different fast or long race; it’s the time to go out for an easy run without a watch, to take a walk with a dog, to hike in the forest. As I texted another colleague who was finishing the race as the first blast went off (interviewed for that Charlotte Observer article), it’s the time to be extra, extra kind to ourselves. And, remembering our interconnection, to each other.

The Runner’s Guide to Yoga on the Kindle Store
The Runner’s Guide to Yoga on the Apple iBook Store

For the last few days, a robin has been attacking its reflection in the window to my home office. Over and over again, it flings itself at the window in a show of aggression. I’ll shoo it away, and a few hours later it returns. One of my students suggested I Google “robin totem”—it seems the robin, harbinger of spring, is a symbol of change. That’s ironic, as this bird is not changing its behavior. Its now-habitual action is causing it harm.

Read more at Yoga Journal.

Today’s blog post at Active Yogi concerns an action we’ve been playing with in class, and it includes a video demo of how to use blocks as you work your way toward this transition.

It seems simple: rising to standing from the ground. It’s a motion we do often in some variation over the course of a day. But with a few simple rules, it transforms into an exercise that challenges our strength, balance, and sense of humor, building new awareness of where our bodies are in space and how to move them.

Read more at Yoga Journal, and watch the video:

I especially like Roger Cole’s Yoga Journal article on the subject, “Recovering from Upper Hamstring Tendon Injuries.”

Both I and my athletes have coped with this injury, and I must admit, the sensation of strain in that tendon still persists for me, eight years later. When I feel my strained area acting up, I know to look at my training and back off for a few days. In that way, it’s almost a blessing, like having a built-in barometer, or a pressure gauge, that shows me when I’m working too hard and starting to fray.

Recently, I spoke with runner/yogini Diann on the topic of potential yoga-and-running injuries. Enjoy her nice piece on Books and Body, “Three Tips to Avoid Yoga Injuries.”

And here are some tips on careful stretching of the hamstrings: