Monday, February 27, 2012

To 26.2 or Not to 26.2?


When I signed up for the 2011 Boston Marathon, I thought that I was just checking an item off my bucket list. But somewhere during the training process, I convinced myself that not only could I run a marathon, I was a marathon runner.

Following Boston, I set my sights on Marine Corp Marathon for 2012. I wanted something in the fall, it has a great reputation, and it has personal meaning to because my brother-in-law and his brother were Marines. But now that registration is in a few days, I’m having second thoughts.

Training for a marathon is probably the most rewarding thing I have ever done. But it took a lot out of me.  I got up at 5:30am most weekdays, did some sort of intense workout, went to work, got home around 8, and tried to get in bed as fast as possible. I was constantly tired from this schedule, and my social life was limited by the strict nature of the schedule. In February and March, there were a grand total of 2 nights when I stayed up past midnight, and 1 night when I set foot in a bar (where I drank water the entire night). I had exactly zero dates during this time. By the time I started my taper, I could barely even breathe thanks to a sinus infection that turned into a lung one due beating up my body for all those months.

And during this time, I was lucky to not be busy at work.

My concern with signing up this year is that between work and various family/life commitments, I have spent most of 2012 feeling like I have the weight of the world riding on my shoulders. I wake up in the morning, look at the pile of dirty clothes I haven’t had time to put away, and wish the world would just slow down its spin for a few minutes so I could catch up. Then I go to the office, where 15 different people want something different from me at all times. I’m scheduled to second-chair a trial in April, which means the next two months are not going to get any better—in fact, they will probably be worse.

On the other hand, while sometimes my workout schedule may make me appear to the world as insane, it is what keeps me sane. When I enter the gate to Central Park, I feel like I leave the world behind me. Running lifts the weight off my shoulders and helps me process the stress. The one thing I see when I wake up in the morning before the pile of clothes is this Adidas marathon-themed ad on my wall that reads “First you feel like dying, then you feel reborn.” It’s there because that is exactly what a marathon feels like, and thinking of that feeling every morning makes me smile.

The other consideration weighing on me is that as a woman who wants to have children someday, I don’t think I have many marathon running years left in the near future. I know that there are people who push themselves to run while pregnant or not long after childbirth, but I have no desire to put my body through that (particularly given the demands my job will likely place on my time as well). Maybe I’ll come back to marathon running later in life, but at least as the plans work in my head, I have maybe 3 more marathons in me before I transition to a different stage in life (although, Cupid has been giving me some rather raw deals lately, so perhaps I have more than I think).

So, there is a serious dilemma in my mind: do I make the big commitment, knowing that it will be an exhausting summer/fall but that I will be devoting myself to something that I love, or do I take it easy and focus on other things?

At the moment, I’m still leaning toward signing up. I did a 4-mile race on Saturday, and when I hit the 3-mile marker, my immediate reaction was disappointment that there was only one more.  The truth is, I’m not happy unless I’m challenging myself. And there’s no challenge like 26.2.  

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Please Put Your Shirt On and Other Gym Etiquette Tips: An Open Memo to the Ladies of Equinox


I’ve been spending a bit more time at the gym lately due to a sudden and unexplained aversion to running in bad weather, which has made it apparent that the ladies who frequent the New York City Equinoxes lack common sense when it comes to functioning in a large and crowded gym. So I have crafted this handy list of gym etiquette tips for their benefit:
·      Unless you are Gwyneth Paltrow or Cameron Diaz, your midriff should be covered at all times outside the locker room. If I wanted to stare at belly buttons, I would have gone to the beach.
·      If you are an out of shape 60-year old lady, please do not take your clothes off at your locker and then walk naked to the shower. Either take your clothes off in the shower or put a towel around you when you change at your locker. No one wants to see that.
·      The benches between the lockers are for changing, not reading. In fact, perhaps you could find a more appropriate place to hang out and read than the gym locker room.
·      The muscles you should be working on the bike are in your legs, not in your mouth.
·      There is limited mirror space in the locker room. Don’t bring 6 different lotions to put on your face at the gym. No one needs that many lotions to begin with, and you’re hogging the space.
·       If you insist on changing in the shower, you should have your membership revoked. There are limited showers, and pre-work hours, there are always people waiting. This tip should not be confused with the above tips regarding covering up: put a towel on, come out to the locker area, and change with minimal time of nudity.

Enjoy your workouts, ladies!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Why is it so hard to find a decent spin class?


A former colleague of mine often joked that he was going to put a spin bike in a conference room as a way to make it easier for me to combine my love of spinning with my work. He was right that of all my indoor workouts, a good spin class is my favorite. I find it easiest to push myself in that atmosphere and love the combination of great music and sweat to wake myself up in the morning or help me forget a bad day in the evening. But the difficult part is, as I have become more aware of the principles of endurance training, have come to realize how bad most spin classes are; rather than enjoy myself, I spend most of spin frustrated by the lack of skills of the instructor.

My problems with gym spin classes are three-fold: (1) the instructors don’t explain the layout of the class, which makes it difficult for me to figure out how much to push and when to leave a little in the tank; (2) only 30% of the instructors bother to give instructions as to where your RPMs and heart rates should be (assuming you even go to a gym that has put RPM computers on their bikes), which leaves you with little clue as to how hard you should be pushing at any given moment; and (3) their goal is simply to keep you moving for 45-60 minutes, rather than design a workout that is going to push you from a cardio or other athletic perspective.   I’ll also put in a dig against the instructors who think it is okay to use a remixed version of Adele’s Someone Like You in their playlist—it is a ballad and is way too depressing to be a spin song.

When I moved to New York, I checked out a number of gyms and spin classes in the area. Sadly, none were very good. I was most excited to check out SoulCycle, a well-known studio focused solely on spinning and could not have been more disappointed. First of all, the studio charges $30 for 45 minutes of class. I like my weekend workouts to be at least 1.5 hours, which means I would have to pay $60 for just one day of working out. Second, the routine that was used in the class that I went to was just, to put it bluntly, retarded from an athletic perspective. I refer to it as the blow job routine, because the instructor had us bend over the handlebars and bob up and down repeatedly. I think that this was supposed to give the effect that we were working our arms and therefore getting a whole body workout, but I could not discern any actual athletic benefit from the movements. I belong to Equinox, and with the exception of an amazing instructor who worked in Boston who is also a triathlete, every spin class I have attended there has, with varying degree, suffered from the same defect—there is no actual thought given to the athletic benefit of the workout. (My friend Laura Van Orden Rudberg should also be called out as an exception to this, because she runs a great class, but is, alas, several hundred miles from me—but again, she’s a triathlete).

I realize that not everyone who attends a gym spin class is training for an endurance event like I am—in fact, I’m sure many are there to burn a few calories and get out the door. But things like interval training and giving structure to the workout would help everyone, no matter what their athletic goals or abilities—and that’s why I don’t understand the refusal of Equinox or other gyms to incorporate these principles into their classes.  (And FYI, Equinox instructors, having different moves that last 30 seconds and repeat is not interval training. Interval training incorporates real rest periods that challenge your heart to go fast and then slow down). The New York Times health blog had a great post early this week on a study earlier this week showing that interval training is more beneficial to the heart than a short moderate intensity workout (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/how-1-minute-intervals-can-improve-our-health/?src=recg if you are interested). I’m not sure if the issue is that the spin instructor certification is not rigorous enough or the gyms just think the path of least resistance is the one of most profits. Whatever the reason, it frustrates me that I pay a not insignificant amount of money for a monthly gym membership and they can’t do a good job at this basic workout.

So I am stuck with traveling 30+ minutes each way for spin class with my triathlon group at 5:30am or trying to put my own print on the gym classes because at least they have good music.  I think I’ll just start counting down to outdoor cycling time.