Liquid Motivation

This evening, I completed my vinyasa yoga class with a bottle of liquid motivation close at hand:

You see, during my lunch hour today I went on a little visit to River City Cellars in Carytown to obtain a pinot noir to accompany this evening's dinner of spicy sausage ravioli.

When I left work, I realized that I was going to need to take the bottle of wine in to yoga class with me because it was hot outside and I did not want to leave it in a hot car for 2 hours.

The wine, partially camouflaged in my brown paper bag (I say "partially" because said bag has a giant River City Cellars sticker on it), accompanied me to class. I set it next to my yoga bag and consequently could not take my mind off of it while I sweated it out through vinyasa after vinyasa.

When class was over, I was collecting my things when our instructor came over and said, "I saw that River City Cellars bag over there. Looks like you're going to have a good night!"

"It's my treat!" I replied as I basically bolted out of the door to get home to enjoy my well-earned glass.

Down Dog Did Me In

This past Tuesday I returned to yoga after a few weeks off. Make that 4 weeks off, now that I've consulted my calendar.

No wonder it still hurts so much, two days later.

Aside from having been away for a while, things were not boding well for a good yoga session that day. At around 3 pm I suddenly crashed. The walk from my office to the car and the car into the Y seemed exhausting. What I really wanted to do is go home, sit on the couch, and watch TV for a few hours.

But being the good girl I was, I went to yoga. And boy did I regret it. I don't think that I have ever regretted going to yoga before, but about 40 minutes in to this particular class I was wishing I had gone home to lay on the couch. Our instructor had decided that tonight was going to be the endless night of flows. We must have done 30 vinyasa series and my legs started to wobble during an intense series of high lunges. The remaining 20 minutes of class were terrible, as Penny (our instructor) added side planks into the middle of the last few vinyasa series. At the end we rounded out with two core exercises that I couldn't even do because I was so exhausted.

Then I almost fell asleep during savasana.

When I got home I ate dinner and went to bed at 9 pm... at which point I promptly fell asleep.

My training schedule called for 3 miles on Wednesday. The weather was surprisingly tolerable, so I texted Prabir to see if he wanted to meet me for a short run after work. We hadn't run together in ages and luckily he was available, so we met at the Y at 5:15. I knew things were going to be bad because no matter how much stretching I did, my hamstrings felt like rubber bands that were about to snap.

And boy was it terrible. Not even Prabir could distract me from the fact that my legs felt like two blocks of lead for the entire run. I don't think I've ever been more happy to make it back to the Y.

This morning my hamstrings were still incredibly tight so I was dreading the 5 miles called for by my training plan. During the day I took the opportunity to stretch whenever it presented itself. This included quite a bit of time spent bending over and touching my toes in my cube while at work.

I waffled between running outside and wussing out and running on the treadmill in air conditioned comfort. The AC won out and luckily, while my 5 miles seemed to drag on and on, it wasn't nearly as painful as I had anticipated.

So, the lesson that I learned so you don't have to: don't take a four week break from yoga and then decide to jump back in during the first week of marathon training, unless your goal is to screw yourself.

Return to the Mat

I skipped out on yoga for two whole months - from February 28 to May 1. I won't even bother with a list of excuses because there are no good excuses. Well... there is one good excuse which is after I fell on Monument Avenue I had a huge open wound on my hand and it would have been impossible to even do plank or down dog, so therefore it was pointless to go to class.

But anyhow, since May 1 I have gone to Vinyasa yoga at the Y every Tuesday night. As loathe as I am to give up one of my running evenings to yoga, it is becoming more and more apparent to me how important cross training is to my run game. When I am doing yoga I feel better all around. I become more aware of my posture, am less tense, more flexible, and feel stronger and more toned.

Last night, our instructor mixed things up a bit with some poses that we had not done in a long time and with some new flow sequences. A few of my favorites:

Inclined Plane. Super challenging to keep your hips up.
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Intense Bound Side Angle - which I actually managed to bind!
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King Dancer. I think I managed to get to this point...
but of course I'm probably wrong.
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Tree pose. Just an old favorite.
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By the end of class I was so tired that I pretty much fell asleep in savasana. I did not want to move. That means it was a good class.

And then I undid all of that good work by eating a Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich for dinner. At least I got a baked potato instead of fries as a side. And water instead of Coke! That took a lot of will power.

But then we got some bad news on the homefront, so I ate a piece of cake. A big piece of cake with a lot of icing.

Oh well. Back to run tonight... and there is no more cake, so it will be more difficult to sabotage myself.

Om it Out

Before I took up running, I tried a myriad of things to lose a pesky 10 pounds. None of it ever worked until I took up running, but the one exercise that stuck with me was yoga.

Generally I'm a pretty neurotic/anxious/tense person. I have to wear a night guard while I sleep because if I don't I will clench and grind my teeth to oblivion and need dentures before I'm 40. When I played flute, I would grip the instrument so tightly that I got imprints of the holes in my keys in my fingertips.

You get the picture.

Yoga seemed like a good idea for me. I thought it would help me learn to relax while increasing my flexibility and putting me on the path to some awesome abs. My mental picture of my life with yoga was kind of like this:


Relaxed. Mind at rest. Gorgeous.

 At my previous job, we had Fridays off during the summer, so instead of sleeping and laying around all day I opted to try out the Friday morning yoga class at the good old Y. The class was called "Fitness Yoga" and it absolutely kicked my butt. But I went back all summer and when I had to work on Friday again I started going to either the Saturday morning class or to a Tuesday night session called "Vinyasa Yoga" at the Y near my work.

It took a few months, but I did start to notice differences in my body once I started yoga. I became much more aware of my posture, particularly when sitting at my desk at work. I notice when I begin to clench my jaw unconsciously and tell myself to relax. My life with yoga doesn't quite equal that mental picture up there, but sometimes in the immediate moments after a class, it gets close to feeling like that.

Then I walk out the door and call my husband who hasn't started dinner yet and the calm feeling goes out the window.

Anyhow, nowadays I'm pretty faithful to my Tuesday evening Vinyasa classes at the Downtown Y. I love our instructor, Penny. She focuses on a particular goal for the class each session, so there is a lot of variety. Once 5:30 hits, she welcomes us to class with her customary words and tells us what we're going to focus on. I always smile really big to myself when she says, "Tonight we're going to do hip openers" and inwardly groan when the announcement is "Tonight we're going to do some back bends."

This evening's class was just fabulous. Lots of vinyasa flow going on and I was kind of nailing it. I did a decent eagle pose and a side plank, which I usually cannot do at all. My favorite pose of the night was intense side angle, which I managed to actually bind like this:

Tonight was also the first time that I wore my new Lululemon Deep Breath Tank.

I'm completely in love with this tank top. I paired it with a pair of bright pink yoga crops and didn't want to take it off.

Tomorrow is another 8 miler with Prabir, which I'm looking forward to. The weather has continued to be crazy warm and tomorrow's forecast is a high of 70 so conditions should be perfect.

Do you do yoga? 

Is it crazy warm where you are now?