Get a Wiggle On . . . evolves.

Hey you, half-marathoner, 5K-er, half-miler, and most importantly . . . WALKER!

You’ve likely noticed that this blog is a little bogged down. Sorta rhymes and I like rhyming, so keep watching for more. Never know what’s in store. Anyway, I digress. I began this blog to write out the thoughts I’d been collecting for a book, which became an e-book and then morphed into this blog, and now we’re back to the e-book stage. So……stay tuned. Hoping for a January 2011 release.

In the meantime, I’m shifting the focus to walking. Women who walk. Women who walk fast, slow, languidly, quickly, women who walk with purpose and dreams, women who carry inside them all the memories of good, sorrowful, poignant, hurtful, yummy, and, and, and….the list goes on of the memories that live inside each of us. Those memories go with you on a walk. They color and flavor your every step and your every interpretation of what you see.

Kate Fischer, Managing Owner of Edge

Also, to put in a plug for my new gig at Edge Performance Fitness. Edge is not your average gym. In fact, it’s about as unaverage as you can get. Inspired by Kate Fischer, woman of extreme vision, Edge is really a place to come and get an unusual gym experience. If you’re sick of the big screen TVs blaring and the spandex pick-up scene, well……this might just be your sophisticated alternative. You can go to their website and learn more, but just know it’s hard to feel it unless you’re there.

I am at Edge on Wednesdays giving Feldenkrais® lessons on how to take care of yourself while you’re keeping fit. Think of it as building foundations for fitness. Email me to schedule, kim@kimcottrell.com. Edge Members get 1/2 price lessons for July and August so get on over here!!

And, super fun for me . . . I’ll be doing a 2-hour workshop at Edge on September 12, 3-5, Feldenkrais Foundations for Fitness. $25 for non-members, $15 for members.

It’s a new day, a new moment, a new second. Let’s seize as many of them as we can, what say you?

And, now to the walk . . .

Flat Half on Sauvie Island is FULL

Wow, Sean Rivers, owner-manager of Foot Traffic shoe store, sponsor of the Sauvie Island Flat Half Marathon on July 4, says the race is full. No more room. Overflowing. Satiated. Complete. Sounds like some of us late bloomers will miss out.

It’s a good thing, because the island isn’t very big. It fills up with a thousand cars and you can imagine how the traffic jam doesn’t please the locals much. Never mind that by noon the cars are gone and the berry pickers show up to spend their money. Seems like a win-win to me.

I’m not planning to do the Flat this year, despite my many hours getting ready. When I walked the second and third 8-miler this year, I knew this was my year to kick back and enjoy my coffee. Oh, I’ll be out there again, and I’m still walking. But, my walking is taking many other forms. Up hills, over dales, staircases, neighborhood walks. Tomorrow I’m walking our extinct volcano with my littlest dog.

How did it go for you? This readiness? How are you feeling? So what if you “only” walked 10 miles. That’s a huge distance and nothing to be sneezed at, is it? If you walked 5 and then ended your training, that’s 5 more miles of distance and how many miles logged on your feet? It all adds up.

No matter what, you’ve become a person who walks.

Get a Wiggle On . . . revisits old injuries and pacing.

Most of us have some ache or pain that was there before we began our walking practice. Maybe it was a sprained ankle in our teens or 20’s, maybe it was a series of sprains. Maybe we’ve had a broken bone or accident that shifted the way we move and use our skeletal system. Always, there are ways to work around these issues. But, not if we ignore them and push on.

Pushing through the pain is disrespectful and detrimental to our goals and our well-being. However, regardless of how much we are aware that we’ll get farther if we take it easier, it’s irresistible to push. We’ve been conditioned and taught to not pay attention to the physical self. Often, we are dissociated and not in touch with our own experience.

Pushing through pain is compulsive.

In my worldview, pushing is over-rated. We’ve pushed ourselves our whole lives and where did it get us? We need to ease off and back up to get where we want to go. We need to find the respect for ourselves that lies hidden behind the history of our actions. Dust it off and come at the project from a place of paying attention, having fun, and relaxing.

Who cares how fast you walk? Who cares how much you weigh? Neither of these things makes or breaks a walker. I’ve seen skinny walkers drop out, I’ve seen heavy walkers sail through, I’ve seen fast walkers get injured and slow walkers surprise themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m speaking in generalities. There are thoughtful, fast, skinny people, and checked-out, slow, and heavy people. Slow people can be skinny. Fast people can be heavy.

What is most important is that the tactics match and support the goal of being out there for the distance and for completing the event. If that is the goal, then everything else becomes secondary and respect for the self becomes primary.

De-hydration and how to get some.

Many years ago, a friend and I talked our work colleagues into getting a team together to walk the Portland-to-Coast Relay. Each person on the team was responsible for walking three 5-mile legs over a period of 24-hours. One of our colleagues, a young woman who worked closely with us, came out for the walk even though she didn’t seem very excited about having us as her coaches. Maybe she was acting out some deep-seated rebellion, who knows, but the results were nearly disastrous.

Over the many weeks and months of training and getting ready for our relay event, we captains passed along the information we’d gleaned from walking the marathon and the training program we’d been part of then. The young woman did her own thing, not really training for the event, seeming to scoff at only 5 miles. Her first leg she finished in seeming comfort, but by the time her second leg rolled around, she was lying on the floor of the suburban, nauseated and very uncomfortable. When I quizzed her, she reluctantly admitted that she hadn’t been drinking any fluids. Looking back, I wonder if she was bothered by the thought of peeing in the woods or using the port-a-potties along the way.

Long story short, when it seemed as if she really needed an ambulance, she struggled through that leg with a couple of others accompanying her so she’d have support. She must have begun drinking then and by the time her third leg came around she was doing a little better. How close she was to needing medical assistance, we’ll never know. Likely not too close or she would have required help after she finished the second leg of her part. And, it should be noted, she refused all help, therefore our remaining option would have been to wait until she passed out and then seek help. Moral of her story: don’t drink liquids, become dehydrated.

Some years later, my aunt and I were on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and one of the other passengers was a young woman from Japan. She was embarrassed to wade out into the water and pee there, as we had been instructed to do. Her strategy was to pee in the port-a-potty our guides brought along and to not drink fluids all day so she could last until they set up the toilet at the next campsite.

Unfortunately, the Grand Canyon is hot, very hot. Even though it was September, we were sweating and most of us were not used to the climate, thus we sweated even more. After the third day, when we were hiking on a side-trail in full sun, I was over-heated myself but drinking water like it was kool-aide, I looked at this young woman and noted that her lips were white. She was shaking as she took a very small sip of her water. I urged her to drink more and later I spoke to the guides. They talked with her and it seemed to help since she looked better by the next day. Then the guides told the story of a woman on one trip who didn’t drink anything and they had to stop the trip while they gave her first aid with IV fluids. There was no way to call for an evacuation because the radio reception was limited in the bottom of the canyon. The entire group was forced to wait until the woman recovered before they could move on.

The Power of Fluids
If I have scared you, perfect. That’s my intention. You might limp through a half marathon or longer distances without adequate food, but you will not finish one without water and electrolytes. Let’s just lump water and electrolytes into a category we’ll call fluids. Things that do NOT count as fluids during training are coffee, tea, coke (any soda for that matter), or energy drinks with caffeine. Fluids are things like water, sports drinks, juice that’s been watered down (if the juice is too strong, you might get sick because of the high sugar content), and other electrolyte-laden drinks.

I don’t want you to drink because I suggest you should nor because it’s the thing to do. I want you to experiment and learn to listen and manage and monitor your own system. I want you to notice how you’ve been feeling with your current water intake, drink more, see how that feels, take in less and see if you still have enough oomph to make it comfortably. I want you to make comparisons so you really have the answers to the questions of how much water, when, and why.

While you’re readying for the big event is the time to investigate and explore all the options and nuances of what to fuel your body with and how to manage your energy level. That is the time to pay attention to your unique biology and give yourself what you need to take care of yourself. Training and participating in long distance walking events shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice, except for the time you spend away from your family. You shouldn’t need to collapse after the event. While you’ll likely be tired and sore after the event, you should bounce back within 6-10 hours and certainly by the next morning.

And now, to the walk . . .

Get a Wiggle On . . . and the blurting follies.

I hobbled my way through the morning’s 7-mile training walk, nursing my bum ankle. Somehow I ended up out in front with the map and was meticulously following it when we came to the edge of a bluff and made a wrong turn. No big, we ended up circling the golf course backwards, added a quarter-mile extra to our route. No big. We walked along and the conversation was rambling as conversations do.

And then I blurted. Truly. I did. I’m a blurter, just like Vice President Biden. I love Biden, not just because he’s a blurter and he is, but because he’s trying to make life better for those of us who don’t have as much as the next guy. Anyway, the point is, I blurt. Not as much as I used to when I was a kid, but enough to get in trouble now and then. I used to go into hiding after I blurted, especially if I thought someone was mad at me or hurt. I felt awful and just got the heck out of the way.

When the conversation turned to how great one woman looked because she’d lost over 20 lbs, I blurted, “I hope your self-worth isn’t attached to how much you weigh.” And, immediately I began ruminating, because that’s what blurters do. We blurt and then we ruminate. We spend a zillion hours ruminating over what we said and why and how it sounded and who agreed, disagreed, or objected. And, I’m still ruminating which is why I’m writing this piece, so I can ruminate until it’s done and put it out here and say it and be done and move on.

Photo courtesy Photos8.com

I blurted because of all the women I know who think there is something wrong with themselves. Because I want to take out a billboard and say, “Let’s love ourselves. Let’s be kind to ourselves. Let’s stop apologizing and beating ourselves up.” I’m reading The Tao of a Woman by Michele Ritterman and in it she talks about self-improvement. She says that if you are on a self-improvement mission, then first you must come to a place of self-acceptance. And, I’ve heard it a different way. Another time a psychologist asked a group I was in to think of all the things we wanted to change about ourselves and implied that wanting to change yourself is an act of violence toward yourself.

I’ve been working with women around issues of self-image for close to 15 years and the issue of liking yourself comes up over and over again. A personal shopper in LA told me that she was getting her PhD so she could work with women around issues of how they dress themselves. She said they came into the store and into the dressing room and bought clothes based on how much they disliked themselves and what they wanted to cover up. She wanted to help them dress out of love for themselves.

And, I’m pondering beginning a walking program for women who’ve never walked and for whom to walk further than to the car or around the grocery store is an unimaginable feat. I’ve been thinking how to market and talk to them about health without making it about losing weight or about having one more thing to feel bad about.

And, my blurt included the outward expression of my inner heart that carries the hurt of my own experience and of others I know and love. Women who didn’t like themselves, didn’t feel okay about themselves, who didn’t know they could do things in their own way. Women who deserved more than to be measured by their size.

I blurted because there are so many things to think about when someone says, “How much did you lose? You look fabulous.” But no excuses, no raining on someone’s parade, no intentions of shushing someone. Simply the uncontrollable overflow of decades of rumination on a topic that might never be solved.

And blurt or no blurt, get thee to the walk . . .

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Get a Wiggle On . . . teacher relearns to wiggle.

I just posted this to my A Healthy Stepmother blog, but realized it’s just as pertinent for this column.

A couple of months ago, I started having pain in my left ankle when I took a step. It wasn’t too annoying and I carried on with my half-marathon training walks. I got tired after a walk, but recovered quickly. Gradually, over the weeks and as the mileage increased, the pain intensified and it didn’t go away so quickly. My ankle began to hurt when I wasn’t walking. I began to wince when I took a step.

Then, two weeks ago, I realized my world had reduced to thinking of my ankle. It bothered me and I iced. I took an anti-inflammatory and iced again. I walked and iced. I iced and rested. Still I hurt. I iced. My ankle winced.

Yesterday, I went to the chiropractor and she looked at my foot and ankle and decided they were a little off, but mostly she was impressed by how twisted my sacrum was. After she did some gentle manipulations, I left the office feeling like something was really different.

As I walked the dogs this morning without a limp, I recognized that I had over-focused on my ankle. So much so that I hadn’t noticed that I’d quit moving my hip when I took a step. On the right side, my hip swayed when I took a step and on the left it was as if I had a leg that didn’t bend. With my sacrum untwisted, I could step down and sway to the left when I stepped on that foot.

The experience made me think of being in a stepfamily when things aren’t going right. Naturally, I focused on the  stuff that irritated. Often, I’d try to see if I could better the situation. Nothing changed. In fact, it often got worse. I hurt. I winced. It was not fun.

My world narrowed down to focusing on the irritations. They seemed huge and painful and they grew more and more irritating. Thinking of ways to make irritating things better took up a lot of time in my life. I became exhausted and unhappy. When I finally let go of even thinking of those things as irritating, when I finally paid attention to the other equally important things in my life, especially the ones I had control over, the pain went away. Almost overnight.

That was the same story with my ankle. When I stopped holding my left leg still when I took a step, my hip swayed and the pressure on my ankle decreased. I’m not as uncomfortable. I can feel the looseness and flexibility in my gait. There’s still a twinge or ache as the new pattern settles in to something more familiar, but the pain is about ten percent of what it was.

It was a good reminder for me to hold things gently, including the pain, especially the irritations.

Get a Wiggle On . . . in the redwoods.

Every once in a while, you get in your car and drive out of town and wind up in a place you never thought you’d find yourself. It all starts with a certain degree of familiarity, but soon enough you’re on a path you couldn’t have imagined or known

It’s when you get out of the car and stand and walk among the giants that live along Northern California’s coastal mountains that you find trees that make everything else seem minute and meaningless. They tower up to 350 feet tall and they shelter up to 1700 species. They hover and they protect. They aspire and they drink. They stand tall with integrity, until they can’t any more.

The trunk of a redwood is made to withstand the wind, until it’s roots give way. They don’t have a deep root structure, but the roots can spread 100 feet. Thus, they have a good center of gravity, remaining stable and sturdy until they can’t drink more and their roots become weak. Then, they lose hold of the ground and their grip falters. The next high wind catches their top and pushes them into another tree, or another tree falls taking them down with it.

A tree only partially fallen will still survive and continue growing out of the part of itself that has fallen. It is so filled with tannins that the insects can’t and don’t eat it. The great trees drink and drink and drink, up to 100 gallons per day. And, then they turn around and give back up to 500 gallons of water into the atmosphere. They withstand an incredible amount of abuse, even extensive fires. They stay focused on the sky.

They don’t lean on another tree unless they are injured. What looks like dereliction and waste is aging and decaying and breaking down. It is a dynamic process. What is left is used and reused and incorporated with the next need. There is nothing wasted, nothing is left out of the process.

In comparison to the redwoods and the animals we’ve observed along our journey, we’ve seen places where humans have altered, meddled, muttered, sold, twisted, shaped, extracted, taken, bought, owned, parlayed, and moved, all in the name of progress.

And, what of our human-ness, or our role in the family, is there something we can learn about sustaining it? How can we go about our day, our life, our humanity, with some sense of using and replacing and symbiosis, so that there is some sense of the ebb and flow that naturally to this life?

For my own part, I had no idea I was raised by a conservationist until we drove down the northern California coast right into the Mendocino Headlands, saved in 1971 by two women who knew that if the area wasn’t protected it would be built on by an overly eager developer who saw a chance to make a dollar. Thinking back, I remember my father preaching the rules of being in the out of doors. He said we should not litter, that we should take things out with us even if we didn’t bring them in, and we should always, always, always leave a place better than when we found it. Hmmm, could that be my penchant for picking up the litter and organizing a clean-up in my business neighborhood?

And as the road winds up and down over the mountains and valleys, my thoughts follow in their own up and down pattern. Connecting this to that and the other thing to that thing from long, long ago. Such is the way of learning. We see, we observe, we take in, we incorporate, assimilate, integrate. And, somehow, if we’re lucky, something in our pattern changes and we find ourselves more comfortable, with less struggling, less of whatever is too much and more of what is not enough. Here’s to the learning.

Get a Wiggle On . . . with Vera.

Last Saturday, I walked 8 of the miles with Chris and we parted ways at the Eastbank Esplanade. Before we said good-bye, I asked him to snap this picture of me with the statue of Vera Katz, Portland’s former mayor.

Oh, Vera, we love/d you. Thank you for having the vision to create this amazing linear park on the east side of our Willamette River. Every time we walk out here, I feel much appreciation that we have the opportunity to use this part of our city.

Inspired . . . oh yeah!

And now, to the walk . . .

Adjust Your Workout, Adjust Your Mind

Tinkering with your mileage is one way to adjust the workouts to suit your physical or mental comfort from day-to-day. You can go a little less when you’re feeling sluggish, a little more when you’re the speedster. You could even split your walk into two parts on some occasions. That’s probably not a good idea for long-term results, but now and then, it’s not going to hurt. However, if there were no other choice than to do part of the walk in the morning before work and part of it after work, then do so. Later, during your long walks you can watch to make sure you’re body is managing the long distances adequately.

Adjusting your mental comfort might be a different proposition entirely, but even a crummy mood can’t mar the beauty of walking. Regardless of how cranky, upset, sad, frustrated, or moody you are, if you get out the door and do the first 30 minutes of your walk, you’ll feel better immediately. That is, if you let yourself. Walking is a salve to the nervous system. It is rhythmic, it is comforting. When you are in one of those yuk moods, enter into your walk slowly and let the walk do it’s magic.

Resist the urge to rush yourself. Resist the urge to push through the bad mood to get to something better. Trust and respect those moods. They have something to tell you. If you listen, make some notes on what is there, and then give yourself over to the walk, you might be surprised what comes up besides peace of mind. I’ve done some of my most productive problem-solving when out walking and some of my deepest grieving. It’s good for everything, so no matter how you feel . . . go take a walk.

And now, to the walk  . . .

Your Wiggle . . . prevents Fatigue!

If you are in the middle of your half-marathon training program, you’re up to the six or seven mile distance and you’re returning home from your training walks more than a little tired. You’re likely exhausted. From now on, each walk is a little like doing the event itself. Each walk is a first. The first time you’ve walked eight miles. The first time you will have walked nine, 10, or 11 miles. Now is the time to begin practicing fatigue prevention.

So, let’s strategize.

I have always thought a half or full marathon that is flat is a repetitive stress injury waiting to happen, and its true. Quite literally, after you’ve gone several miles the chemicals in your system such as sodium and potassium become depleted. These chemicals tell the muscles to move and when they get depleted you’re left with very little oomph for the next step.

So, if that’s the case, what can you do? Well, the usual answer comes in the form of replacing the potassium and sodium in the form of drinking electrolytes. That is good and necessary and you won’t survive without electrolytes, so drink up!

But, another lesser known strategy could turn out to be your stealth speed booster—change your gait pattern during the event. Walk like a duck, walk pigeon-toed, mix it up. Wiggle your bottom, walk sideways, jog, pump your arms, do anything to shift yourself out of your usual gait pattern for at least 30 seconds, maybe up to two minutes, per mile.

If you use an altered gait, the synapses between nerve cells will get a rest and the chemicals that fire the nerves will have time to replenish. When you shift to the new gait and new muscles, the new set of neurons will fire and they have plenty of chemicals to drive the neuronal reaction. It’s like your “boost of energy” is sitting inside you, waiting to be taken advantage of.  Drink enough fluids, alter your gait, and you’ll have the sensation of gaining new strength. If you wait until you hit the wall to begin altering your gait, you’ll get some benefits but not nearly as much as if you begin early in your walk.

Now you know my secret weapon. Be imaginative, stick your neck out, wave your arms around, strut like a rooster, do something different when you’re walking. Sing a song, it forces you to breathe in a new way. Your muscles will get a rest and you’ll feel like you can walk another mile or so, until you mix it up again. You’ll be energized which is a really nice way to finish the 13.1 miles.

Now, to the walk,