They Call Me Seashell

It feels so good to shake off the dust, stretch out the arms, inhale a fresh breath exhaling in the final yawn of coming out of a deep sleep, rubbing eyes clear of slumber and seeing clearly what is in front of you.  I needed the break to finish my degree and to find a fresh perspective on my fitness.  A lot has come to light in the last few years than I had ever imagined.  With that a refocus on fitness and health has commenced.  In 2017 I am very excited to be working with people I know and love, as well as to represent a new team that I have been wowed by over the past year in how they support the community at large, and how they stand up for the right thing, not the easy thing.  Their products are pretty amazing to boot, and without them I would not have been able to survive the death-march that Ironman70.3 Ohio turned out to be for me.  Here is the dream team, MY dream team - the teams that I am proud to be racing and training with and repres...

  I used to create playlists for races, music for training, and spend hours crafting the perfect mixes of tempos and beats to get me rocking on my feet.  (See what I did there?)  These days though, with the increase in popularity of podcasts and streaming music services like Pandora and Stitcher we can almost outsource the heavy lifting and reap the rewards of another's musical curating.   So here are some musical tools that I use to get going:   MUSIC AND OTHER PODCASTS PODRUNNER: Workout Music (and a subset of that is PUDRUNNER INTERVALS PODRUNNER is great in that DJ Steve  organizes each track (episode) by BPM of the music.  It ranges from 120bpm (great for walking and easy efforts) to 180 BPM - that is what we call WORK!  Some tracks (episodes) contains an interval based workout where he takes the music and starts at a moderate tempo and then adds in faster tempos to sustain a nice workout, ...

I belonged to a motivational Facebook group that was about helping each other get a jump start on any New Year's resolutions.  One of the sayings that I picked up from this group is Always Win Monday.  It serves as the reminder to start off the week on a good foot, get in that workout and win the day. Part of wining Monday for me will be taking in yoga and finally getting my butt back into the pool!  Ironman70.3 Ohio is fast approaching at 145 days away and I will be going from couch to 1.2 mile swim / 13.1 mile run in that time. I can do that by winning Mondays.  I find that it really sets the tone for the rest of the week and I am to the point now that if I miss going to the gym during the week I get cranky and feel out of sorts.    My Monday Win looks something like this: Get in a workout even if it is Yoga or stretching Stick to the meal plan Get a good night's rest These things help me set the intention...

I am on near 2-year return journey to the Ironman.  I am finding it difficult to wrap my head around the new me.  What I mean about that is when I decided to go back to school to pursue a dream, I put my triathlon and endurance training on pause.  Well now that I am un-pausing I am struggling with the fact that my fitness did not pause along with it. I am really feeling like a totally new runner, struggling to find my pace and my level.  I keep thinking that it should not be this hard but the truth is that it is.  It is not because this is difficult, it is hard only because I am comparing it to when I left and I am not at that fitness level anymore. Lesson learned that you cannot rest on your last achievement.  I am embarrassed to even claim to be an Ironman at this point only because I can barely run a 5k. So this is where my health coaching comes into play and I take myself on as a client.  The struggle is mental and because I am comparing ...