The Merge

Reinvent the running shoe?  Sure.  Have a do-over on the wheel?  Why?  Why mess with what works?  And so I have made the executive decision to merge the Run Vibrations and Well Vibrations blogs onto the Well Vibrations site.  There runners and non-road warriors alike can get the insight and information you need without clicking back and forth for posts and updates.  Thanks for reading Run Vibrations.
This will take you to Well Vibrations!

Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal!

Runners, it's cold outside (cue the Dean Martin tune).  I love having something to look forward to, and since warm weather is not on the horizon, food is where my mind wanders when I'm looking for a pleasant distraction.  So this week I made a delicious knock-off of everybody's favorite maple and brown sugar oatmeal (the kind in the packet that you used to pour right into your mouth as a kid). 

This is a simple, do ahead recipe full of good carbs and comfort.  I used sucanat (AKA rapadura) because this sugar is minimally processed and retains lots of nutrients.  Coconut palm sugar is also a great choice (you can use regular brown sugar or turbinado as well).  Steel cut oats make this hot cereal hearty and filling after an early morning run. 

Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal 

      Recipe by Maureen Hann

The day before you'll eat, combine in a slow cooker:

2 cups steel cut oats (oat groats)

1/4 cup whole wheat, rye, teff, or buckwheat flour

2 cups water

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or whey

Cover and let soak at least seven hours.

Before bed, add the following to the oat mixture:

5 cups milk of choice, water, or a combination

   (I used 1 cup water and 1-32 oz. carton unsweetened coconut milk)

3/4 cup sucanat (ground if you can) or other "brown" sugar

1/2 teaspoon maple flavor

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

Stir well and cook on low for seven hours.  If you have a slow cooker that switches to a keep warm setting after cooking, that will keep the oatmeal nicely until you wake - or just turn off your pot before you run in the morning (if you sleep more than seven hours).

As written, this dish tastes like the bottom shelf of the cereal isle - right where I could grab a box of instant oatmeal for mom's shopping cart as a kid.  Let me know what you think and share away using the buttons below!

In the Slush

If the worst thing that happens in your day is a bad run, you are a pretty damned lucky individual.  You are fortunate that:  a) You are physically able to put one foot in front of the other, b) Your life schedule has allowed you the precious time to do so, c) You had the motivation and mental fortitude to get out there and go.

Today was my first training run for the Buffalo Marathon on May 25.  It will be my sixth marathon, and I have had plenty of disappointing runs over the years.  This morning was one of those instances, not because of sore hamstrings or biting wind, but because my GPS watch fell off of my heavily-layered wrist and is entombed (crushed by a tire or frozen intact) in a dirty snow pile somewhere on a half-mile stretch of Elmwood Avenue. 

That loss, however annoying, provided the setting for personal growth this morning.

After I had completed two scans of the strip of road where my watch must have fallen with no luck, I started pointlessly looking under parked cars in the single-digit air, tears streaming down my frozen cheeks, when Leon popped into my mind.  Leon was a good friend, a high school buddy of my husband, who died nearly six years ago from injuries he suffered in a snowboarding accident.  Although I am blinking away tears at that memory as I type, his life gives me perspective.  Leon was one of those people everybody loved.  He was fun and free-spirited, unassuming and unequivocally friendly.  He was tall and strong, a natural athlete, and he enjoyed running.  I never knew him to train, but he could sign up for a local 8k and knock off 7-minute miles, smiling and listening to music.  We'd drink beer afterward in the crisp March air and that was it; that kind of running made him happy.  And it made us happy to be around him.  If Leon had used a GPS and then dropped it in the slush, I am 150% certain that he would not have been crying in the road, secretly wishing the poor old guy shoveling the business walkways would help him find it.  He would have looked, let it be, and moved on, happy to still have his legs and his tunes, and decided he wasn't really a mile-tracker or pace-keeper anyway.

I cried again later in the shower, not about my misfortune, but because I was ashamed of having broken down on a pre-dawn run that I was so fortunate to have taken.  I wanted to be more like Leon, and I found and cleared the energy blockage and belief that caused me to react to a material loss with tears instead of steadfastness.  Am I pissed that my 9-month-old GPS is gone?  A little, but like an with untied shoelace, I can coil up the emotional loose ends and carry on.  And Leon, thanks for showing up on a cold January morning for a run.

Proteins and Consequences

I have not officially begun marathon training (that starts tomorrow), but I have already learned my first lesson of the season:  Plan what to eat.  No matter that I've been running for over 15 years and trained for dozens of races, remembering to eat enough after a workout continually eludes me.    I KNOW to have a recovery snack within 30 minutes of completing a run and to then eat a meal with a 4:1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein before two hours pass, but forcing rice and tofu down at 8 o'clock at night after an evening run was super unappealing to me last week.   The result was not sleeping well and having sore legs on my subsequent run because my "meal" had been a bowl of organic tortilla chips.
Can I send energy to my muscles to support them throughout my workouts?  Yes!  Can I coach myself through chakra blockages to allow for optimal performance on each run?  Sure!  Will I "nurse" a sore tendon with high-frequency vibrations when my imperfect mechanics inevitably push my connective tissue a little too far?  Absolutely!  Do I have a time machine that can zap my 48 hours into the past to re-eat an appropriate recovery meal?  No, ding-dong.  Not.
Just as in Energy Coaching and daily life, we get out of our bodies what we put into them.  For every action, there is a result, and accountability in marathon training falls only on the trainee.  As a solution to my too-busy-and-stomach-shrunken-to-eat Wednesday evenings, I purchased a raw protein meal replacement to make sure I have no excuse for not properly refueling.  To get the most out of my running, I need to be as vigilant with my behaviors as I do with my inner healing.  That is the truth; read on over the coming weeks for the consequences...

The Why

The following is an excerpt from my latest post at my energy healing and complex homeopathy blog.  It describes how I came to decide to start RunVibrations:
 
Can't is a strong and overused word.  I've said and thought it a trillion times, but in only a handful of those instances has it been true:  I can't make it at 3:30 on Wednesday because I have to work, yes.  I can't start my own business because I don't have the time, clearly no.  

When I was wrestling with the notion of running my sixth marathon this spring, knowing the time and energy commitment, and my husband said, "Maybe you should wait and train over summer vacation.  You like to do a lot of other things on top of teaching and running," I snapped back:  "You like to do a lot, too!" (he is training for his eleventh marathon, swimming, teaching, and fathering).  His response resonated like a Medieval church bell:  "I can handle training and teaching; when I get tired, I don't get mad or take it out on other people." Read more

One Good Night's Sleep

When I was nursing my older child, I remember wishing and aching for a pod of rest, all my own, from which I could emerge, energized and ready for life's next round.  I did get one or two solid sleeps in the first six months of her life (they were true gifts from the universe!), and they helped me to not only make clear-headed decisions (e.g. do NOT step out of the bathroom naked when a visitor comes by) but also to recognize that the rest of my life was not going to be an over-tired haze because that small reward of sleep allowed my to keep my eye on my goal:  To keep nursing for a year. 
During that time, my best friend and super-talented running partner gave me a baby blue, long-sleeved T-shirt that read "Marathon Mom" in an understated type.  My daughter was a newborn, and I had yet to run a marathon as a mother, but I was in the middle of a 20-month life-giving endurance run (including pregnancy and breastfeeding). 

Although the pregnancy experience was largely passive, there had been a tremendous amount of self-care and spiritual communing with my yet-to-be-born little one in order to physically and mentally prepare for her birth. 
Fast forward to that beautiful summer of 2008, baby at the boob day and night, getting my running self back for a 15k race in September, and staring down the schedule change of going back to work and pumping milk twice a day in late fall.  There was a heck of a lot going on at once, but giving my total physical and emotional self made me not only more disciplined and confident, but also gave me a healthy, happy child.  Now, with two children, two blogs, a full-time job and a wellness practice, one good night's sleep can be the difference between sticking to a marathon training plan and throwing in the towel.  Which leads me to the point of this first post. 

Can I:

         -teach full time

         -maintain two blogs

         -service my Total Body Analysis and Energy Healing clients

         -train six days a week for the Buffalo Marathon on May 25 AND   
          run a Boston Marathon qualifying time (BQ)

         -be present as a wife and mother, and

         -keep my shit together

simultaneously?

These six elements will rely heavily on the support of my family and friends, of course, but also on my own use of Total Body Analysis remedies and Energy Healing techniques. 

My next post will describe why I have chosen these goals, a six-day-a-week marathon training program (!), my previous running experience, and the purpose of my alternative wellness practice and its role in this blog.  The next 19 weeks will be quite a run.  Join me for updates on my training, bumps in the road, as it were, and how my alternative wellness therapies are keeping me going for a BQ.