Category Archives: Cross training

A Clean House is a Canvas

Posted in bad mom, Cross training, family, Work by

A clean house is apparently just a canvas for my children to defile. We had a cleaner in this morning and 15 minutes after she left, I had to sweep up a giant pile of dirt. Seriously? I give up. Oh who am I kidding, I gave up on having clean floors a long time before today.

Oh well. Life will go on and my floors will be dirty and that is just the way that it is.

My return to running has been slow. I still feel the ankle is off, though there’s no pain. So for the foreseeable future I will only be running a couple of times a week. I’ll just have to do a lot of cross training instead. I am actually having to stay out of the pool now also, because it was giving me a chemical burn on my scalp. I guess I am just a delicate little flower.

I mentioned in my last blog post that I had returned to working part time. Well, that has been going gangbusters. I think I must have a hard to find skill set (can write, understands technology things) because I have found several great clients who are going to be keeping me busy for the next few weeks. Which is great news for me, not such great news for my kids. Apparently when you are a mom, you can’t just decide “I’m going back to work” without advance planning. Because when you don’t have a babysitter, and your kids are used to having your full attention, it is a hard transition for them when they have to entertain themselves. I hope they will get better at it. But also, I think if I am going to be this busy I need to hire someone to help. Nice problem to have!

Since I’ve been working again, I can see that my old workaholic tendencies are still latent – though to look at my house you would never know I am a type A person. I guess bottom line is that I don’t care about housework unless someone is coming over. I am externally motivated – and anyone who knows me knows that this is true. I’m what my grandfather used to call a springbutt – that kid in school who has all the answers and always has their hand in the air. Volunteers for everything. Gets good grades to validate their own existence. I love any opportunity to measure my worth in another person’s opinion. Runs races to prove to themselves that they are faster than the majority of other people in their age group (or, you know, if I was fast enough I’d be trying to win – I take whatever validation I can find I guess!)

A psychologist would probably say that these are not good things, but the good news is, it does make me good at my job. And motivates me to run, too!

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Swimming Pools – Not Just For Relaxing Poolside

Posted in Cross training, Swimming by

I have always been a person who enjoys running. I haven’t always chosen to do it, but I never had anything against it. I have not, however, always been a person who enjoys swimming. For most of my life, I have actually hated it. Okay, maybe hate is a strong word, but as far as exercise oriented activities are concerned, swimming would have ranked pretty low.

I have always liked swimming pools for sitting next to while sipping a refreshing cocktail, but as a place to exercise? Forget it.

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The main reason I have generally despised swimming for exercise is that swimming for any sort of long distance is very difficult if you’re not doing it right. And it is hard to do it right if you are not fit enough, or don’t know what you’re doing. You find yourself struggling for breath and running out of strength to continue pretty darn quickly.

Running, in some ways, seems to be lot more forgiving of your cardio fitness than swimming is.

The last time I did any serious swimming I was training for a sprint triathlon, probably 10 or more years ago, and while the bike and run were fine, the swimming just about killed me every time I had to do it.

I am not even talking about the open water swimming (a blog post unto itself – because I freak out knowing THERE ARE THINGS, LIVING THINGS, IN THE WATER), I am talking about pool workouts.

30 minutes of running was not a problem. 30 minutes on the bike was a breeze. Put me in the pool to swim laps for 30 minutes, and I came apart like an ice cream cone in July.

I think the reason for this is, if you’re running or biking, you can breathe when you want, you can coast, or you can slow down. You can even cheat and turn off your GPS and gasp for air for a couple of minutes.

With swimming, even if you slow down, you’re still dealing with the fact that you’re underwater and can’t breathe when you want to. It will expose your weakness if you are not fit enough to have good breath control.

My husband is a former competitive swimmer, and he says it’s also because water is very unforgiving of bad form and wasted movement. If you push on it, it pushes back. You have to pull with just the right amount of power to move through the water. Pull too hard or not hard enough, and you might as well have a big bag of rocks tied around your neck.

You also need to be patient and calm – neither of which is my forte. You can’t flail and thrash around in an effort to go faster or you will be fighting the water the whole time. In running, moving legs faster means you go faster, even if your form sucks. You might not go as fast as your potential with bad form, but you will probably be moving somewhat faster than you did previously.

In swimming, you need to move arms and legs the right way, with the right amount of force, or you may in fact end up going slower than you would with a more relaxed stroke.

You also have to inhabit your own head more. There is nothing to look at in the pool other than the lane line at the bottom and the X at the end of the lane. No music, no grass, flowers or trees, and no running partner to talk to. No distractions. Just you, your strokes and your breathing.

So these are all the things I have generally held against swimming and why it’s always been pretty low on my list of things to do. I am happy that since I am now stuck in the pool for a while, that these things don’t seem to bother me so much.

I’m actually kind of enjoying it.

Maybe all that running made me a better swimmer?

Swimming pools – who knew they were not just for relaxing with a cocktail?

How about you? Do you like swimming or do you prefer a refreshing cocktail?
Do you incorporate swimming as cross training?
Has running made YOU a better swimmer, or vice versa?

Pool Running

Posted in Cross training, General Fitness, Health and Fitness, Pool Running, Workouts by

On Monday, I still thought I had a plan in place whereby I would be getting back to running and doing PT and all would be well, but I also knew I was having ankle pain and that when that is the case, running on it was not a great idea. So, since Monday was supposed to be a running day, I decided to try something new: pool running.

However, what I did not do was actually investigate ahead of time how you are supposed to do pool running. I mean, it sounds like the name tells you what you need to know: get in the pool and start running. Right?

But no. There is a right way and a wrong way, and there is a bit more to it than just dunk and go. Although, that was my approach. I just went to the pool and found an open lane. It happened to be about 3.5 feet deep. My legs would be underwater, I figured that was probably enough, so I jumped in and started to run.

It didn’t feel so great. There was still quite a bit of impact on the ankle, it was very hard to stabilize the foot underwater for the landings, and the tile tears up the bottom of the feet. So, my little experiment was sort of a failure.

Being the sort of person I am (shoot first, ask questions later) I decided to go home and figure out why what I was doing didn’t work.

For starters, you are supposed to be completely submerged. Most sources recommend you do pool running in 5′ or more of water. Your feet should not be touching bottom. As you are running completely submerged (well, except for your head of course), there will be no impact on the foot structures. This is the part that is important for injured runners such as yours truly to prevent reinjury.

You are also supposed to try to maintain proper running form – standing tall, high cadence, etc. You basically are just running in place, or with slight forward motion, under the water. This is the part that provides running specific training. Evidently your body will try to turn this into a dog paddle or half baked swimming, so you are supposed to be wearing some sort of flotation device so that your legs are working on running, and not trying to keep you afloat.

There is also another type of pool running that involves a tether and not being completely submerged, but that isn’t what you want to be doing with an injury.

This following video gives a good overview of how to do a pool running workout.

Some other resources I found helpful include:
Pool Running and Why You Are Doing it Wrong from StrengthRunning
Head for the Pool from Runners World
Best Pool Running Workouts by Eat Run Read

Now that I know what I was doing wrong, I will probably try this again the right way and maybe incorporate pool running in place of regular running in my workout plan.

So I guess I can keep being the Eat and Run Mom – I might just be doing the running in the pool for a while.

Your turn:

Pool running: have you tried it?
What other exercise is good for injured runners?

Eat and Swim Mom

Posted in Cross training, General Fitness, Health and Fitness, injuries, recovery, Swimming, Workouts by

I’m sitting here with sore shoulders right now, from doing one of the few forms of exercise that I can still do on my sore ankle. Non-weight bearing is pretty much where it’s at for me until further notice, so it looks like I will be doing quite a bit of swimming until this ankle situation gets sorted out. And spin classes (mostly sitting down). And whatever else I can come up with that does not involve standing or moving around upright.

Maybe I will have to change the name of the blog?

Here are some possibilities:
Eat and Swim Mom
Eat and Run in the Pool Mom
Eat and Stationary Bike Mom
Eat and Do A Lot of Knee Push-ups Mom
Eat and Pet the Cat Mom…

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That’s one vote for petting the cat.

And yes, in the absence of running posts, the Eat and Run Mom has been reduced to posting gratuitous cat pictures. That’s how far the mighty have fallen…

So okay, enough whining. Since I can’t run, today was a swim day. And you know what? Swimming is some hard damn work! I suspect that is why I have never particularly cared for it in the past. It’s probably more work than it should be since my stroke is not so great. Something to work on while swimming endless laps for the next few weeks I guess.

Running is so easy – at least, the way I do it, it is. Or was. Can’t say the same for swimming.

Another issue I have with swimming is that unlike running, it’s not just strap on shoes and go. There are two clothing changes involved – before and after.

Plus, the whole showering up afterwards thing is a pain. I can run around town all day long in my sweaty workout clothes if I want to, and nobody looks at me funny. They might not want to stand too close to me, but otherwise it’s not a problem. Can’t walk around town in a wet swimsuit though, or you get refused service in public places.

Also, if I swim, I have to wash my hair more often than twice a week. Those are precious minutes I am never getting back. Actually come to think of it, that part is kind of nice – for me and everyone else.

Showering in peace. Just one more thing I’ve missed since I had kids!

So anyway, I swam laps for about 30 minutes while my youngest monkey was in a swim lesson. I definitely felt it a lot in my butt, lower abdominals, lats and shoulders. Felt like a good workout, and it hurt less than I remember.

If I could work up to an hour at a time a few days a week, I’d definitely feel like I accomplished something.

Okay – now it’s your turn.

If you couldn’t run, what kind of exercise would you do?

How do you feel about swimming? Love it, hate it, or neutral about it?