Category Archives: Running

My October Challenge: A 21-Day Cleanse

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | 8 Comments

A year ago I ran a half-marathon. I spent six months training. It was mentally and physically challenging. At mile 12, I wanted to stop but I knew I had come so far that I didn’t. It was rewarding on so many levels, but my knees were in pain and I’ve spent time recovering in physical therapy. A year later, I found myself living as a junk-food vegan as you see from the post below and woefully out of shape. It was time for a change. So to honor my half-marathon, I’m challenging myself to complete a 21-day cleanse. No, I’m not just drinking water and cayenne pepper. I’m starting the 21-day detox laid out in Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Diet. If you don’t know this NY Times bestseller, check it out. Kris survived her cancer diagnosis by radically changing her diet. Her cleanse eliminates sugar, dairy, meat, gluten, and caffeine.

After prior hemming and hawing over it, I decided to jump in and start the cleanse. I have two work events towards the end of the month that would make it hard for me to try this later, so today is day one for me. To preface, I’m already vegan, own a Breville juicer, and have never liked coffee so it wasn’t too much of a shock to my system to start. What I do have a problem with is sugar. I love sweets. I usually have dessert every day, which is a problem. Sugar and bread are the two things that I anticipate being hard to give up. I wanted to do this because I’ve been a junk-food vegan lately and I want to start working out again and eating better. Believe or not, just because I’m vegan doesn’t mean I eat healthy all of the time.

Day one: Not too bad. I was nervous that I would be starving but I wasn’t. At the VegNews office we tend to get a lot of food products for review. You can check out exactly what we get here. No joke, today we got a big shipment of bread to try. One of my weaknesses. We also had an open container of vegan peanut butter cups. Weakness #2. But I held strong and refrained from eating either, which in of itself is a huge step for me because normally I’d stuff my face with them. So what did I eat today? I started off with a green juice, a healthy salad and fruit for lunch, gluten-free San-J crackers (I love these crackers), and for dinner, a marinated kale salad and a brown rice bowl topped with tempeh, broccoli, and avocado. Surprisingly I was full at the end of the day. Now I’m off to work out. Here’s to committing to a healthy lifestyle!

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What a Half-Marathon Taught Me About Writing

Posted on October 5, 2010 by | 7 Comments

I recently finished my very first half-marathon, the San Jose Rock n Roll half marathon to be exact. I had a great time. They had bands playing at every mile, local high school cheerleading squads were there to cheer us on, and tons of bystanders held up signs and cheered as we passed. That’s not to say that at mile 9, I wasn’t thinking, why am I doing this? My legs hurt, my calf muscles were exhausted, and the sun was shining down, and a water station seemed so far away. Much like writing, running is a long process. It takes months to train and the increments are slow. And most days I wake up and think I don’t want to run today. Substitute the word “run” with the word “writing” and I think that’s how most writers feel.

This is what I learned through the course of training for 5 months for a half-marathon:
1) Take it slow. With running, the best way to make progress is slowly. The same with writing. You can’t run a marathon by running 10 miles every day. Your muscles would break down. You’d get sick of running after 2 days. You can’t finish a novel in a day. Okay, you could try, but if you really want to get it done, take it slow. So if I write a few pages or even a page, that’s progress.
2) Have a support team. My running friends always congratulated me every step of the way from the first time I ran 10 miles to the moment I crossed the finish line. Running and writing can be very isolating but with a good support team to keep you going, you can get through any hurdle.
3) Not every mile is going to be great just as not every page is going to be great. I had my bad running days just as I have my bad writing days. As long as I accept that, then I keep going.
4) Show up. Get up, lace on the shoes, drink some water, and run. If you don’t show up to run, you’re not going to get very far. Same with writing. The idea of writing is far more enticing than the actual writing process. Show up to the page and get it done.
5) Keep a schedule. I used a training schedule from MarathonRookie.com. I posted the schedule on my fridge and every run I did, I’d give myself a star sticker. Sound childish? I felt accomplished. If I didn’t have a schedule, I’d probably never run. It’s exactly what I do with my writing. Make a fake deadline and give myself set days to accomplish something. People often ask me, “How did you write a novel?” The only magic formula I have is a schedule/calendar. I’d write down the days I’d be writing — realistically — and kept up those dates with myself.

And most importantly, reward yourself for a job well done. Post-race, I’m rewarding myself with a massage. After completing my manuscript, I took myself out to lunch. And if you need, I have some extra star stickers for when you finish.

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Running & Writing: One Step at a Time

Posted on August 16, 2010 by | 2 Comments

My friend Celena sent me What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami for my birthday. I was training for my first 10K and the book came at the perfect time. The memoir of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami who has run every day for the past 23 years (at the time of the writing of the book) is an inspiring, humbling read. If you’re read Murakami, you know how talented he is as a writer. His memoir discusses how he connects writing and running and how they both require discipline and pushing yourself to your limits and beyond.

Now, I’m training for my very first half-marathon. I’m a bit scared. 13.1 miles is a long time to run, at least for me, right now. My training schedule has me running 4 days a week with my longest run on the weekends. My friend Rita asked me, “Are there days you don’t want to run?” And I replied, “Hell yes. Almost every day.”

At the start of every run, there’s a little voice that asks, “Why are you doing this?” Sometimes when the alarm goes off and I know I have a 5-mile run planned, I groan, “Why am I doing this?” But I get up and I do it. Even if I’m slower than the day before, I put one foot in front of the other and run. The reason I love running is that run by run, you get a little stronger. You go a little farther than the day before. It takes time but you get there. I’m not the fastest runner out there but eventually I finish and that’s what matters to me.

Murakami makes a great point that running is like writing. There are days that I hate my computer and don’t want to write and instead do the dishes. But once I started putting myself on a writing schedule, I make myself show up to the page even if I’m kicking and screaming.

People say to me, “I never could run,” or “I want to write a novel, but I don’t know how to get motivated.” This is what I want you to know. I don’t wake up and run a half-marathon in one day. I spend months training. I spend months rewriting. In fact, I spent a year rewriting my young adult novel with my agent.

For those of you who want to write a novel or run a 10K, do it. Sign up for a race, download a training schedule, and put those shoes on. Sit down and write your novel, page by page. It breaks my heart when people say, “My dream is to write but I don’t know where to start,” because you can do it. You can do anything you want. You can write a novel by writing one page a day. You can run a 5K but simply going outside and running your very first mile and going from there.

Challenge yourself. Take it step by step and you’ll get there. That turtle always wins the race.

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