Running and more

Now that I have five marathons under my belt, I have a little experience on how to complete the distance. But I’ve also learned that there’s more to being a good runner than just running…

When I first started running (I was 14), all I did was run. And I loved it for the simplicity of it. I continued to run through college and into my 20s and 30s. After my fifth baby was born and I decided I needed to do a marathon before I turned 40, I went back to running more and more. I still enjoyed running, but I wasn’t improving. I also ended up getting hurt as I pounded out more and more miles.

So I realized that running a good marathon requires more than running. I realized that weakness in my core and upper body were causing me to fatigue over the long distances. So I started weight lifting. I got stronger and my running improved.

Then, I realized that I needed to get faster, so I integrated interval training, tabatas and plyometrics into my cardio training.

Finally, i realized that I needed to maintain flexibility if I was going to run injury-free. I initially thought yoga was not intense enough, but now I enjoy a yoga practice once or twice a week.

I’ve cut my running down to 3-4 times/week, depending on my goals at the time. I still love it, but making sure that I also integrate strength, power/speed, and flexibility along with my endurance has made me a better runner and more balanced person.

Looking forward to my 6th marathon-NYC 2015!

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Bootcamp!

I am reporting on setting up the accounts we’ll need for class.

WordPress blog site – easy to set up; hard for me to customize it the way I wanted it to look. I tend to spend way too much time trying to make things look right and this was no exception. I saw these cool templates, but I couldn’t make my blog look anything like it. And my picture is all out of proportion so you see the sky instead of the people. I will try to keep working on it, but I just spent hours making a prezi for school so I am just getting annoyed….

Flickr and Tumblr – both these accounts I titled larissaruns. (There are more Larissa Lee’s in the world than I thought…) I uploaded some pictures. Could be useful for storing pictures, but I normally use instagram to share pix.

Twitter – I had an account. Also called it larissaruns. A few problems I have with twitter — there are people/things I’d like to keep up with, but I don’t really have time to read all the tweets that I get. Also (this is the reason I don’t have facebook anymore), I would probably need to have different accounts for all my personae. As a high school teacher, I would like to use a professional account to tweet with my classes, but then there are other things I am interested in that would need to be on different accounts… it becomes cumbersome, IMO.

Soundcloud – so far I have listened to a bunch of music. I access this through google plus.

Youtube – I will also access this through google plus — I have wasted a lot of time watching youtube videos, but there is a lot I can use for school.