Yoga back on the plan

When I think about race training in a large scope, I think of the standard things listed in a training book – a plan is more than just the miles, it’s also stretching, warm ups, cool downs, cross training and strength training.  Then I think about what I could possibly doing better.  Better to both improve my paces, but more importantly lately is to injury prevention.  Or maybe – injury repair and avoidance!

I’ve never done a good job at cross training.  I’d LOVE to, but seriously, there are only so many hours in my day.  Just like most of you, working and being a parent is pretty much taking up most of my waking hours… which is why I choose to run so early on most weekdays, because after work, it’s just not happening!

For the month of February I’ve decided to try something new – yoga!  I’ve seen all of the rave reviews – “Yoga for Runners”, “Yoga changed my Life”, “Do Yoga and Run better”!!  I want to believe.  I’ve found a few videos which were labeled as runner’s yoga and I have been doing them twice a week.  I focused on videos that were less than 20 mins because I have a hard time focusing on yoga longer than that, and I can admit that.  Hey, I’m only human.  I have seen several people using Jasyoga so I also decided to sign up for that website too.

The fun thing about yoga?  I can get my daughter to join me!  We both have a lot of laughs at how inflexible we are – mostly me.  I have quickly discovered that I *dread* downward dog poses.  That pose highlights every pain and my inability to stretch in those directions.  Uggh. But practice makes perfect, right??

The other fun thing about doing yoga with Sydney is that it quickly turns into a competition on who can do the most masterful poses.  For me, I like to think that my balance in the crow pose is pretty good (well, I did until she snapped this picture and I see where I need to improve!).

For Sydney, she is pretty good at headstands!  

I was actually pretty good at getting into a headstand the “proper” way, but since I haven’t done it in a couple of years, I have lost that skill.  Ah….. those days gone by.

But hey, if I secretly practice every night, maybe I can be the headstand master once again!!

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Q:  What’s your yoga factor – love it, trying it, or not really interested?

Q:  Can you do any of those cool looking poses that require a lot of balance??

True story, I tried the headstand because I saw a model on my Athleta catalog doing one and I figured, “how hard could that be??”.   Wrong.  So wrong.

Q:  What area do you consider your weakest – arms, legs, or core?