Vancouver Sun Run

Last Sunday I completed the 10K Vancouver Sun Run.  It was an awesome time and I learnt so much. I have to first start with a great thank you to Sifu Csillag.  She was the best partner to have on this journey.

I had packed my running items, taped up my knees (did a couple of practise taping to make sure I was doing them right), had a small breakfast and headed off to the starting line. We even had our own cheering/support team. The boys got up early to pick up my registration package at 0700 so I didn't need to add 2K before I even started the race. It was us and over 40,000 of our closest friends.

The first thing happened before we even passed the starting line.  I had bought a running belt to hold water and my phone.  I thought I was prepared but I had never used it before.  It felt good while we were walking to the line and waiting for start but as we started running, the belt made my pants slide down.  This was going to be a very long and potentially embarrassing run.  Sifu Csillag took my belt and away we went. 
Lesson 1:  Don't try ANYTHING new on run day.

It was at the 3K mark when Sifu Csillag said to me "You need to breathe!".  I was not focusing on my breathing and so it was fast and shallow.  Not good when you have just barely started.  She tried to help me focus on pacing my breaths with my strides but it was very evident that I didn't know how to breathe.  I thought that just because my endurance was getting better that it will make breathing easier, wrong.
Lesson 2:  You have to learn how to BREATHE!

Around the 5K mark I found my groove.  The 5 to 7K mark went by quite well.  Everything was going pretty good until the part where I thought that because they gave you a full cup of water, it meant you needed to drink it.  All of a sudden at 7K I hit the bridge and started gagging, now I was trying to figure out how to throw up through the barricades without it showing up all over the internet.  We walked until the sensation passed and then headed back off.
Lesson 3:  Listen to your body!


The last 3K was slow but steady.   I ran 10K but Sifu Csillag must have ran over 15 as I kept finding things for her to take pictures of (funny how the more tired I was, the more cool things there were to take pictures of).  We finished the race in 1hour 27 min.  We did it!
Lesson 4: You CAN do this!


We ended the day walking to Stanley Park and taking a boat ride around the harbour.  We did 22K that day but I think all that walking must have been the main reason I was not sore after the run.

I am still pumped about completing this personal goal.  I have never run before but now I want to finish my training program, I want to do another run in the fall, and I know I will do it even better.  I think these are the true measures of success. 

Trust your training!

So this is it...as I have noted previously, one of my personal goals was to do a 10K...and it happens tomorrow.

Am I ready?  I didn't get the entire training program done but I did most of it and I know I'm better than when I started but I am still so very nervous. I woke up this morning early because my mind was already running the race .... varying from questions, self doubt, and then swinging back to confident thoughts.

I thought if I am feeling this way about a 10K run what will it be like on black belt grading day and my stomach dropped.  Then I thought about the last email from my 10K training program.  "TRUST YOUR TRAINING!  You've got this."  Now where have we all heard this before LOL!

Right now as I am in the air, I feel calm.  I have trained and I will do my best.  I have support and an awesome running partner.  I am focused because this week I have also been using a meditation app daily which is helping me focus on being in the present.  Hmmm, another thing some of us may have heard before.  I wonder where?

This one goal has reinforced again the total package needed for the KungFu journey.  Train your body, train your mind, and trust your training.  You've got this!

Full Tank

This week I had a reset but it was mentally instead of physically.  Just like we need to listen to our body when we are training, we need to learn how to listen to our mind.  Both our body and mind need times of rest and reset but we find time to reset physically while we tend to ignore our mental health. 

There are many good ways to reset your mind.  I tend to surround myself with things that I enjoy (reading, family, baking, more reading) but I am reactive instead of proactive.  I wait until the stress is too high and then I deal with it instead of doing things daily.  This time it took me three days and A LOT of baking to come back to a normal state and its been a long time since that occurred.

I don't want to be so reactive so I found a 30 Day Self Care Challenge which for the next month I am going to try to do something daily to become more proactive to promote my mental well being.  Not all of the things on the list are really pertinent to me but I think I will try them anyways, I mean what will hurt to try something new, you never know what you may find.  The one item on the list that I have dabbled in and haven't embraced it to the extent that it warrants is meditation and I am really looking forward to working on that this week. 

I hope that by doing some daily mental health exercises with my physical exercises that I can go longer without requiring a full reset.  Right now I know I have refueled my emotional tank as I am happy and excited about all aspects of my life.  I also am aware that I need to keep it topped off so it doesn't run dry again.

KungFu is about both body and mind so I ask everyone to take a look at what you are doing to keep your mental tank full and make sure that you are replenishing it BEFORE it becomes a necessity. 

See you on the mats!

Stability of KungFu

This week has been a very emotional.  I have felt that I have been on that very fine line where I have been on the edge of tears.  There has been a lot of chaos in both work and home in the last few months and stress was at its highest.

My work is going through very massive changes and one of my colleagues retired so I was helping transition her work and had to take over 5 of her staff.   In the same time, we have been restructuring our teams to provincial areas.  This restructuring means that the majority of my staff that I have had for the last 12 years will no longer be reporting to me.  This has been hard on them and its hard to be supportive when your feelings are overriding your logic.  I know this is the right thing to do but I want to cry and say no!

At home, one of our kinship boys left us in January.  There were many months leading up to this where the chaos in our family exploded.  Now we are trying to find that balance within our family again.  I can't go into details but although it has added another layer of complexity, I will not regret the decision to open our doors.

During the time of ultimate stress, I just dealt with the situation.  Now that things are starting to stabilize, the feelings are coming out and that is why I have been on the edge.  When dealing with work/home balance, as long as one is stable I can deal with chaos in the other but when both are in chaos it becomes hard to keep any balance.  As I spoke to Sifu Brinker, I realized that KungFu is the stability in my life when everything else is out of my control.  It is the one thing that I can control when I am on the mats, or at work, or at home.  During these time of chaos, it would have been easier to stay at home saying I just had too much going on, but getting out the door and attending class is the best thing that I could have done.

So when you find your world in chaos or out of control, don't pull back from KungFu.  Work harder on it and it will help pull you through.

In Control?

Some people said we were crazy and others thought it was cool when we told them we were pulling our trailer to the mountains and going skiing.  I think people had their own ideas of what we were doing, but we had a trailer that was plugged in and really warm and we had a blast so I guess it really only matters what we thought of the experience.

Once we got to Jasper, we had a large dump of snow so there were huge amounts of powder that I have never skied in before.  At the top of the mountain, it was over my knees on the green runs and I couldn't see what I was skiing on and I could only feel the bumps underneath. The wind made it cold and iced up my glasses so there were also many times I couldn't see as well.  I did not like either of these conditions at all!  I found myself fighting for every turn and physically trying to keep my center low.  I didn't want to wipe out, I didn't want to loose control.  So I played it safe and there it is, my normal go to.  This is something that I have been fighting with in KungFu as well.  Taking steps outside of my comfort zone. 

My biggest hurdles come from the times when I feel like I am out of control of a situation.  Maybe that is why I like to be in control as much as I do.  I really don't know how to get past this.  I know I won't give up trying things over and over but that right now I am thinking "I wish I would have been a bit braver and risked a wipeout with such a soft landing right there".

Don't get me wrong, I had a blast!  I  know I will probably never ski in conditions like this ever again.  It was a lot of hard work but it was a great time and I am glad that I did it.   I am also glad that I can start to recognize some of my fears when I feel like I am not in control but now I need to work to get past them and then I should start seeing bigger strides.

See you on the mats!