Tag: body

I’m not going to sugar coat this or tip toe around this often taboo topic: but sometimes being a woman sucks.

As a runner, we deal with things our male counterparts never have to concern themselves with. For example, there is an entire science to choosing the right sports bra: one that will properly restrain your chest while hopefully still providing comfort, and not leaving you with chaffed rib cage and raw shoulders. Chances are when you find that perfect combination, you will end up shelling out as much cash out for it as you paid for your last marathon entry.

And then there is the topic of periods.

Ahh the wonderful, unpredictable, menstrual cycle. Sure, this feat of human anatomy should be celebrated, as it is a reminder of our awesome ability to bring life into this world, to carry on the human species. But let’s face it: periods are not fun. In fact, sometimes they are downright miserable, leaving us in a lot of physical pain and discomfort. On those days it would be easy to justify skipping a training running for curling up on the couch in a pair of baggy sweatpants, blaming our period for what we can only assume would end up being a less than stellar run.

But how do our periods really affect running? The answer might surprise you.

First, let’s have a little refresher on the menstrual cycle as a whole. The first day of the cycle is the first day of menses, or when bleeding begins. Bleeding is usually complete by day 5 or 7. Days 1­-14 are called the follicular phase. By day 14 or 15, ovulation begins with a surge in estrogen and luteinizing hormone. The following phase lasts until the last day (28 on average) and is called the luteal phase.

During the luteal phase, or the weeks leading up to your period, the hormones estrogen and progesterone are at their highest. The change in hormone levels cause a number of changes in your body, including (but not limited to) decreased sodium levels, a drop in blood plasma volume, and an increase in core temperature.

But what does this all mean?

The hormone levels before you get your period are more likely to negatively affect your performance. And here’s how: A decrease in blood plasma volume means your blood will essentially be thicker, and therefore slower moving to the muscles both during exercise and recovery. Further, a decrease in blood plasma volume can slow down our body’s natural sweat response, which will cause an increase in core body temperature, negatively affecting performance.

Once your period starts, specifically on the second day of bleeding, your estrogen and progesterone levels hit rock bottom. In other words, even though you may feel miserable, your hormone levels and core temperature are more similar to that of a male at this point than at any other point of the month. Pretty ironic, isn’t it? From a performance standpoint, this means you are physiologically more likely to hit higher intensities with your workouts.

Further, running can help you get rid of those awful menstrual cramps. The increased blood flow from aerobic exercise produces natural pain relieving endorphins, and helps to burn the

prostaglandins, or chemicals that cause muscle contractions, which result in cramps. And those endorphins do more than just relieve physical pain: these mood affecting neurotransmitters have been proven to help uplift your mood and decrease stress. If you’ve ever found yourself crying over an otherwise not sad TV commercial while on your period, you can understand how beneficial these mood lifting endorphins may be.

So to sum up the topic of how your period affects your running: in short, it doesn’t, at least not negatively.

Sure, you may feel crampy, moody, and uncomfortable, but from a training point of view you may be at your peak while enduring “that time of the month.” So lace up your sneakers, run a few miles… and then grab that pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

No matter what your health and fitness goals are, there’s probably an app for that. And that’s sort of a problem. There are so many apps to choose from that it’s hard to make a decision.
I’ve tried many, including MyFitnessPal, Runmeter and the Fitbit app, but my most recent experiment has been with BodySpace from bodybuilding.com. And no, it’s not just for bodybuilders.
So what can it do? The short answer: a lot. Whether you want to get inspired to work out, track your workouts, design a plan, steal other people’s plans, or find a community to keep you going, BodySpace can help.
It’s not going to drive you to the gym, but it does have a “fitboard” designed to help motivate you when you need an extra kick. You can post photos or a status update (it has a similar process as Instagram or any other social sharing app) or check out what other people have been up to. It’s kind of like having all the motivational stuff on Pinterest all in one place.
Probably the biggest benefit though is the ability to track your workouts in detail.
You can search for plans other people have made, so you never have to worry about what you’re going to do at the gym on any given day. You can find a workout just for that day, or you can choose a whole program designed to meet whatever goals you have set. It even allows you to add your program to a calendar so you can stay organized.
While it’s convenient, I think the calendar function could be improved by letting it sync to your existing calendar. And it doesn’t allow you to customize the days beyond what day you start. Example: You want your rest day to be Saturday but the plan has it on Sunday. You can’t change it.
You could always design your own plan with the same exercises or track a scheduled workout on a different day, but that definitely takes away from the convenience factor, and I really like convenience.
You can, however, change the order of the individual exercises in the workout, add sets, add entire exercises or skip around within the workout. It takes some getting used to, but it’s pretty intuitive.
Physically tracking your workout within the app is fairly easy. You can enter the time, place, your starting weight, and energy level before you begin. Then you just follow the moves that it tells you to do. It even counts out your rest time between sets so you know when to start moving again.
And a huge plus is that if you don’t know how to do a specific exercise, there’s a written explanation and usually a video that shows you how to do it.
The app also tells you how many workouts you’ve tracked and how much total weight you’ve lifted over those workouts. Being told that I’ve lifted 465,000 pounds so far really doesn’t mean much, but it sounds awesome, so I’ll take it. However, being told what weight I’ve previously used on certain moves is a huge benefit. It helps me remember what I lifted before so I can gradually move up in weight without having to guess.
Basically, I like this app because you don’t have to think about anything while you’re working out, unless you want to.
Another small downfall is that the search function isn’t always great, but it usually does what I need it to. If you’re designing your own plan or adding an exercise to an existing one, it’s sometimes impossible to find basic moves. At first I thought this could be user error, but after reading other reviews in the App Store, I realized other people had the same issue.
One more area that could be improved is the process used to save your workouts. Sometimes it will save what you’ve done, but the workout doesn’t actually sync (so your workout history won’t be accurate). It’s annoying, but fixable by checking your workout history.
Other than small glitches, like it being a little slow sometimes and not always clearing notifications, the app is pretty awesome. The weekly recap emails are useful and surprisingly encouraging, too. They’re one of the few newsletter emails that I actually take time to read.
Plus, it’s free, so you won’t be out anything if it turns out to not be for you.

Life gets busy. We all know that. It’s one of the few things that is universally understood. So I don’t have the time—or the energy for that matter—to go to the gym at 5 a.m. to get an hour workout in. Now, there a probably a lot of people who will disagree with me on that who go every morning. And, that’s fine. I applaud you for having that kind of motivation.
It’s just that…I don’t.
But, just like probably 85 percent of population, I still want to look good and be healthy. So, I went out looking for a compromise. I had done the “Insanity” workouts by Shaun T before in college, but those are 45+ minutes and are literally insane.
As in—choice words were usually flying out of my mouth as I did the 100th Burpie of the DVD—insane. (It got me in awesome shape fast, but it wasn’t something I could keep up with nowadays.) But I learned recently about a new Shaun T workout set that came out and decided maybe this could work for me.
I’m five weeks in. Here are five reasons why this is the best workout program I’ve ever invested in.

1. Fast

They’re 25 minutes. (There’s an optional 3-minute stretch after each video, so I guess technically about 28 minutes.) Before you know it, you’re done and you broke a good sweat.
The best part about the shortness is that I don’t have any excuse not to get up 30 minutes early each day to work out for 25 minutes. In the grand scheme of a whole day, 25 minutes is nothing. And research shows that working out in the morning gives you better long-term results because you stay more consistent. It also increases your metabolism throughout the day and gives you more energy to be more productive! That sounds good to me.

2. Levels

There are two levels of difficulty with these DVDs. There’s the Alpha round first, which builds you a foundation of strength and cardio to get you in good enough shape for you to step up to the next level. You wouldn’t build a house without first building the foundation for it, right?
You’re supposed to do this for five weeks, but after about three weeks I felt good enough to step it up. The second level is Beta, which takes what you did in Alpha, kicks it up a notch, and adds some new moves to the mix.
What’s great is that I didn’t feel discouraged because I attempted something before I was ready. And when I was ready, I felt pretty dang awesome when I put a Beta DVD in.

3. Modifying Option

There’s always one person in the group on the DVD who’s “modifying.” This means they’re doing a lower impact version of what everyone else is doing. I always try to do the harder version, but sometimes I get tired and feel like I have bad form or just need a break. So I look to the modifier and keep moving and keep working, but in a lower impact way.

4. Realistic

It’s realistic that I’d get up to get a 25-minute workout in. It’s realistic that I’d not only make it through the entire workout, but I’d be more likely to really push myself knowing I only have to focus for that 25 minutes. And, it’s realistic that I can achieve great fitness and a goal weight when I’m more likely to actually do the workout.

5. Effective

I’m still a T-25 rookie, but I’ve seen some results already. Not only have I lost some weight, I feel an urge to eat healthier and be more active aside from just the morning workout. I won’t confirm or deny that I’ve checked out my more toned arms in the mirror once or twice. But I will confirm that I feel better about my health and body.
I may not always jump out of bed super excited about my morning workout (working out probably will never trump my comfy bed), but I do get up knowing that I just have to push through 25 minutes and that I’ll look and feel better by the end of it.

When I turned eight, I was the youngest girl on my AAU traveling basketball team. I played rec softball, too. I tried my hand at high school volleyball (it wasn’t really my thing). I’ve been riding horses since I could walk, which takes a whole lot more muscle than you’d think (hanging on, lifting saddles, not letting a one-ton horse drag your little four-foot self around the yard…). In high school, I was on the equestrian team barrel racing in competitions.
Needless to say, I was into sports and I was competitive. And, the general expectation for these sports was to run, lift weights, and get faster, stronger and tougher than your competitor. Have you ever done a rebounding drill in basketball when the loser has to run baseline to baseline 30 times in 60 seconds? Yeah, it gets intense (especially with a group of high school girls–talk about some drama). Cue eye roll.
We would lift weights three times a week, run until we couldn’t feel our legs, and scrape ourselves up diving for softballs. My mind was always at high-speed. You have to be at a high-intensity to keep pushing yourself through the pain, the burn, the fatigue. It was exhausting, exhilarating and rewarding all at the same time.
But, that was when I was a spry high schooler that could bounce back after a 20-minute power nap, and my life was just sports.
Now, I’m not ‘old’ by any means, but in the real world, unless you’re a professional athlete, trying to do that kind of intense workout all the time just isn’t possible. Aside from work, volunteering, juggling bills and household responsibilities, friends, family and everything in-between, there’s no room left in my brain at the end of the day to push through a multiple hour workout EVERY DAY. And, I know we can ALL relate to that feeling.
When I realized my workout life could never be the same as high school, I was a bit lost. I didn’t want to become part of the 80% of adults who don’t get the recommended amount of exercise. And, I wanted to be healthy and feel good about my body. But, I only knew one way to ‘get in shape’, and that was to run myself to exhaustion, gauging progress by the level of drenched my shirt was and the soreness I felt.
My competitive spirit took a hit since I couldn’t figure out how to find a new alternative way to exercise in my adult life. Nothing seemed to be quite right to fill the adrenaline-pumped life of sports I used to know.
That was until I signed up for a beginner’s yoga class…
Now, I had my doubts about yoga. “This isn’t a workout. I’ll probably just end up falling asleep while I lay my face on the squishy mat…” (Full disclosure: this kind of happened one time…) But, I was in my twenties and my friends were doing it, so I figured what the heck, I’ll give it a try. What’s there to lose? (I could at least gain a naptime in my day…)
Ha! Was I wrong. Pleasantly wrong. Some forms of yoga may not have made me sweat through my shirt, but I sure as heck felt those sore muscles the next day. I began to realize each week I went that this was doing something great to my mind and body (yes, I know how cheesy that sounds). And, come to find out, yoga is one of the top ten health practices used by adults today.
But, don’t get me wrong, I felt awkward sometimes. I didn’t know what all these new words were (like, what the heck is a ‘downward dog’?), and I wasn’t all that well-balanced and stumbled a bit, but thankfully it was a beginner’s class, so I wasn’t alone in that.
I’m an outwardly optimistic person, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have those typical negative thoughts about how I look or my weight (“I’m so far away from having a thigh gap! Ugh.“) But, as I would stand in some new pose with my foot here and my hands there (maybe a little wobbly), I would shut my eyes, quiet my thoughts, and feel a sort of empowerment (as in, “why would I even want a thigh gap? That’s not something I want to work toward. I like my thighs, they’re strong. I used to work hard to get these thighs, and it made me a better athlete! Yeah, I love my thighs. Boom.“)
I’d leave that room not only feeling accomplished in an exercise, but feeling better about my day and myself. And, since I grew up an athlete, and yoga isn’t really a ‘competitive team sport’, I started competing against myself. How much more flexible could I get? How much more balanced could I be? How many poses could I achieve without falling over?
Don’t let me fool you, I’m no expert yoga master. I just finally got Triangle Pose and Cobra down (and, those are still beginner moves). I still love sports and play them plenty (I need some of that actual competition against other people!) But, yoga showed me a new way to be healthy without draining my mind and body and instead recharging them. Studies have shown that yoga is a proven stress-reliever, brain power-booster, and will increase your happiness, and I now see that all to be true. It was just what I needed to throw into my exercise routine. Bonus: it gives me another reason to wear yoga pants, too.
So, for all you hardcore sports people out there, who are maybe becoming just weekend warriors and maybe having a hard time figuring out how to live a healthy life with less sports, give yoga a try. Or, heck, even if you’re a superstar and still dominate at sports, try tossing yoga into your life. I bet you’ll be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

I wasn’t in what I would consider even moderately good shape until sometime in college. To be more specific, I was that chubby kid whose shoe would magically come untied when we had to run the mile in gym class. Yes, I untied my own shoe. Sometimes twice. I just needed a second to rest. Don’t judge.
My point is that I haven’t always been a runner. And actually, I still struggle to call myself a “runner,” even though I do technically run. I’m slow and inconsistent, but I do it.
I was probably about 15 when I first considered the possibility of running. There were many times throughout high school when I would see other people running and decide to give it a try. I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to not be out of breath all the time, and, of course, I wanted to look like all the other girls looked, or at least how I felt they looked.
However, I was so self-conscious about people seeing me run that I would stop to walk every time a car would pass by (luckily I lived in the middle of nowhere so that didn’t happen all that often). Needless to say, I gave up pretty quickly.
It was during my sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh when I finally started seriously thinking about running. Each student had to take a kinesiology class. I guess it was somebody’s bright theory that a mandatory two-credit class that no one took seriously would solve America’s obesity problem. Anyway, we had to set a health or fitness goal as part of the class. Most people blew it off as the joke of an assignment that it was. But I, being the goody two-shoes student I always have been, took it seriously.
My goal was to run one mile without stopping, something that never seemed to be a problem for anyone else my age. There was an indoor track at the fitness center on campus, and I decided to use it, even though there were always other people there who could actually see me running. It was terrifying. I would just lock my eyes straight ahead and try to block out all the people who I thought must be staring in horror at this girl who clearly had no business being there. That probably didn’t happen, but I don’t remember ever looking around to check.
What I do remember though is feeling really proud when I was able to run nine laps around the track (each lap was one tenth of a mile). In my head I had reached my goal. I don’t actually remember running my first full mile because for some reason I was irrationally excited about those first nine tenths. It felt like a huge achievement. Apparently fractions aren’t my thing, but I guess that’s why I majored in journalism.
My endurance slowly improved, and early the next spring I signed up for my first 5K (yes, it took me about a year of running on my own before I signed up for my first race). Although I previously had run more than 3.1 miles consecutively, I was actually nervous. But it’s that fun kind of nervous. The kind that leads to the type of post-race adrenaline that makes you sign up for longer races. The kind that led to a 10K later that summer, and then a half marathon in the fall.
I don’t think I realized what I was getting into when I signed up for the Fox Cities Half Marathon in 2011. I found a beginners’ training plan online and just decided to go for it. My last long run before race day was supposed to be 10 miles. I planned out a course near my house that should have been about that length. It ended up being closer to 11. Since I wasn’t all that experienced with running, I didn’t think twice about going in the middle of the day when it was unusually hot outside. I didn’t bring enough water, and by mile 6 I was dying and ended up walking most of the last few miles. It was not an encouraging way to finish my training.
Then it was race day. Thankfully, it was much cooler than during my final training run. The weather was perfect, the energy at the start line was amazing, and suddenly I was at mile 10 before I realized what was happening. I remember somebody making a joke about having only a 5K left to run, which made the rest of the race seem strangely doable. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but the running community is just supportive like that. You don’t have to know anyone, but if you’re running the same race it’s like you’re old friends, at least for those 13.1 miles.
Then I saw the marker for the last mile. I felt that same sense of premature accomplishment as when I first started running a few years earlier. I passed that sign and thought the race was done. It wasn’t, and that last mile dragged on. And on. It took 2 hours and 20 minutes (which was 10 minutes under my goal time, by the way), but I finished.
My mom and stepdad were there to cheer me on. It felt like I was actually a real athlete, which is something I never tried in high school, unless marching band counts.
The feeling at the finish line of a race is almost indescribable. Everyone’s congratulating you and trying to hand you medals, t-shirts and water when all you really want to do is lay down or die. But the energy is so positive that you can’t even imagine turning any of the smiles or compliments away.
Between the chocolate milk, bagels, medals, and adrenaline rush, I was hooked. I signed up for another race about six months later, and I completed my seventh half marathon this past fall, where I finally met my goal of finishing in less than two hours.
However, even after discovering that I actually do enjoy running and the highs that go with it, it’s sometimes still a daily struggle to remind myself of that. Sometimes it’s too cold, or it’s too hot. Or it’s too rainy, sunny, windy, not windy enough, or too anything else that I can think of to justify not running that day. If those sound like excuses, it’s because they are. I’m way better at making excuses than I am at running.
But I still do it. Because at the end of the day I get to call myself a runner. Because I run. And that’s really all it takes. I even do it now without the fake “shoe tying” breaks, so nothing is unattainable.