horsepigcow

One of my mantras in life has always been “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion…objects at rest tend to stay at rest.” I know it’s totally ripped off from Newton’s law of inertia, but it applies nicely to motivation for me. It’s always toughest to get started. Once I get past that hurdle, it gets easier.

March was a month of total inertia for me. Between being on the road for most of it (17 of the 31 days were spent traveling), falling behind on my day to day (email, work, articles, etc) and missing most of my usual workouts and training schedule, I got into a total slump. I got sick…twice. I drank more alcohol than I’ve consumed in years. My work suffered. My mood suffered. My body suffered. I did manage to get in two lovely runs through Golden Gate Park whilst in San Francisco and another two lovely runs along Ladybird Lake whilst in Austin, but not much else. Even the run I planned to do through Central Park in New York fizzled with my overall energy levels. I did 1/2 the runs I did the previous month without any additional gym-time. And I felt it.

So when I got back home on the 1st of April, this object was NOT in motion. In more ways than one.

I’ve talked previously about how much running helps me keep sane during these rollercoaster high stress days of running a startup. I’ve also talked about how I was going to keep disciplined while on the road. I failed miserably at that in March. And I figured out why just recently.

Alcohol.

Other than running and trying to eat fairly well (okay, emphasis on the *trying*), I live a fairly unhealthy lifestyle. I don’t sleep enough. I stay out too late. I burn the candle on both ends. I drink too often. I even occasionally smoke (even though I quit time and time again). I haven’t been great at thinking of the effects this would have on my physical body in the long run. This compounded with the amount of stress that I hold inside on a day to day basis is probably taking eons off of my life. I’m completely useless for the entire day after a party, too, which puts more stress on me than ever.

And when I’m on the road it is worse than when I’m at home. I love the SXSW Festival, but the parties with open bars and unhealthy food (bbq soaked ribs, fried food and sweets) are endless. In fact, the goal is usually to hit about 10 of them a night these days. And when I visit San Francisco and New York, I have so many friends in both places, I tend to overdo the food and drink there, too.

But that’s no excuse. A good friend (and Shwowp’s fabulous marketing director) decided in mid-December of last year that she would stop drinking. She hated the way it made her feel the day after and she decided she could try to live without it. The results? She’s never been happier, healthier and had more fun (that she can recall). I’ve decided to follow her example.

Starting today, I am no longer drinking alcohol. I’ve done it before. Twice. And both times I started up again after a year or so, but this time I’m setting to make it permanent with a caveat: I can have one small glass of champagne for a toast upon celebrating some momentous occasion, and can have one small glass of a really good wine if offered to me. The reasons I went back before is that I missed the ‘treat’ from time to time. I’ll probably even appreciate it more.

I’m really looking forward to the results on my body. I have a feeling my stress levels will go down, I’ll be less prone to illness and my energy levels will go up. I will most likely lose weight, my running will definitely improve and, because smoking seems to be brought on by alcohol consumption, I’ll lose my craving for other bad stuff. Maybe I’ll even lose this awful insomnia that is haunting me these days.

I’ll definitely let you know how it goes and I’d appreciate your support as friends and associates. I won’t be one of ‘those people’ who don’t go out or shun parties and friends who like to have a good time, but it may take me a while to figure out how to have a good time without being tipsy. Wish me luck! For those who know me well, this is a pretty radical move.

Time for this woman to get back in motion!

I love this quote by Marc Andreessen found here on Tim Ferriss’ blog:

“First and foremost, a start-up puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You flip rapidly from day-to-day – one where you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I’m talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs. There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. The level of stress that you’re under generally will magnify things incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude. Sound like fun?”

Yep. I’ve said it before…and pointed to other references. Startup entrepreneurship is one helluva rollercoaster.

I love rollercoasters and I always have. And not only the literal sense of the word. My mother used to accuse me of being manic depressive. Although I think that pathologizing it may be taking it a little far, I certainly am a person who experiences highs euphorically and lows despondently and very little in between. I’m a woman of extremes: I work hard, I play hard, I love hard, I hate hard…I don’t know how to ‘kind of’ think, feel or do anything. I’ve smoothed out the highs and lows a little bit as I’ve aged, but I’ll always be who I am.

The other day I was having a conversation with someone who brought up the fact that she had heard from several sources that they were concerned about my level of commitment to running my company because I “am always posting my runs to twitter.” Yes, I have become a little more than obsessed with running these days. It’s about the only thing that keeps me sane and even-keeled enough to function on my little rollercoaster. I also don’t have much of anything else going on. I live alone. I don’t have a partner/boyfriend (yes, I’ve tried, but that is short-lived at best and I’ve decided I can’t add that extra curricular stress to my life at this moment). I hardly have a social life (unless it involves my startup circle). My son is off and out in the world on his own. I have a dog, but he’s a pug so he spends 23 hours a day sleeping. Running is my outlet.

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but running has helped my lizard brain evolve quite a bit. I used to chew my nails. It was a disgusting, nervous habit. About 2 months into training I stopped and I haven’t bit my nails once since then. Stress used to completely disable me. When faced with rejection, I would go into hiding for days. Since I’ve started running, my crisis coping skills have increased one hundred fold. I get over rejection in hours and even minutes. My thinking is clearer. My focus is stronger. My concentration levels have increased. I feel more creative. And I’m definitely more grounded in reality.

People talk about the runners high. I love it. It’s that one moment of my day where my brain goes into absolute zen state. I recently told my training partner I couldn’t talk during our sessions because that ‘downtime’ for my brain acts as a big recharge. It starts with a tingle, then a wave of something I can’t quite describe sweeps through my entire body. At those moments all I think about is how perfectly in flow my body is. Foot after foot, I fly. I no longer feel the ground beneath them. Every muscle is in alignment like a perfect orchestra. Right after I finish my run, my brain comes back online and it is fired up. I get my best ideas and clearest thoughts in the hours right after I finish.

I don’t feel that my running (and I run 3-5 times per week, not every day) interferes with my focus on running Shwowp. I feel that it helps me run Shwowp. I honestly don’t know if, with my history of manic depressive like mood swings, I could have gotten this far without running. I certainly know that it’s going to get me through everything else. Nothing seems impossible and no problem seems insurmountable when I finish a run.

Consequently, I look around me and see many CEO’s and startup founders running. I’ve also worked with many executives in high pressure companies who ran almost every day. Now I understand why and I understand how they handled the kinds of pressure they were under in stride….so to speak.

So, if you are one of the people who question my commitment to my company because I post my runs to Twitter, I hope I’ve explained how beneficial it is that I run. Also, you should be more concerned when I don’t get my runs in. Just recently as I was traveling in the cold and snow and couldn’t run, I started to panic a little more and feel a little more anxious again. And if it’s merely posting these runs to Twitter that poses the problem, I’d ask yourself, “What of the startup founders who don’t post anything?” At least you know how I’m spending my time 24/7. You should feel secure in my level of radical transparency.

[photo from Flickr Commons]

One of the reasons I got out of shape so badly in the first place a couple of years back was the amount of travel I was doing. It was nearly impossible for me to keep any sort of routine when I was on the road. Depending on the hotel I was staying in and the events around the conferences I was speaking at, I may have been able to squeeze in a little workout here and there, but nothing as stringent as when I was at home and could plan my schedule.

Working on Shwowp and ‘grounding’ myself to focus on that was a huge blessing and allowed for me to set and stick to a routine. It was freeing to turn down speaking gigs, knowing that it would allow me to continue down my path of getting back into awesome shape. But lately I’ve been on the road again – this time for my startup – and the same challenges of sticking with my schedule have creeped back into my reality. Over the past few weeks in Boston and New York, I ran ONCE. Sure, I justified it by walking everywhere, but it really isn’t the same. Not only did it throw my personal goal of prioritizing M-E into a tailspin, but it was also terrible for my personal state of mind. After two weeks of not sticking to my routine, I felt less capable of handling the stress of running a startup.

That was not good.

A couple of things stood in my way of sticking to my routine. First, I was staying with friends in both Boston and NYC, and neither had a gym in their building or even nearby. Then I was planning on running outside more and even mapped out some good routes through RunKeeper, but the weather didn’t cooperate. It was either so cold it was unhealthy to run outside without the proper equipment (which I don’t have) or it was snowing so heavy that people were calling for a snowpocalypse (it was extreme). I thought about finding a gym, but I packed my schedule so tight that it was nearly impossible to get to one.

I hate excuses. I don’t believe in them. I only believe in solutions. But in this case, no solution I was grasping for was cooperating. It was incredibly frustrating and added to my already demoralizing routine (pitching, as I’ve outlined, is a bit of a rollercoaster ride). I resolved after this last fitness fiasco of a trip that I would plan better going forward.

So, what is my plan?

1. Actually PUT time in my schedule for working out. No compromise. No matter what comes up, I’m sticking to that plan just like I do at home. It’s as important as that meeting with a potential angel investor. I wouldn’t cancel on him/her. I won’t cancel on my body either.
2. Build in enough time to get to a gym that is inconveniently located to where I am just in case of weather woes. In fact, plan for the gym and fall back on running outdoors if I’m lucky enough.
3. Map out gyms around my accommodations ahead of time. Put them in my TripIt itinerary. Email or call ahead to make sure dropins are okay and find out the rates. Have hours and backups ready.
4. If all else fails, create a travel routine that at least gets me some equipment free exercises I can do in a hotel room or at a friends. There are all sorts of at home fitness podcasts out there to use. Jamie Eason has an amazing plyometrics routine I’ve downloaded to my laptop for future use:

What I love about running is there is minimal equipment for carrying, but there are options for lightweight travel equipment if you prefer yoga or free weights:

• Gaiam Travel Yoga Mat is nice and lightweight and works in a pinch;
• Bodylastics Resistance Bands or any other sport bands make for a great traveling gym.

Oh…and something I ALWAYS forget, but have put a note in my suitcase to remember is: a bathing suit! There are usually YMCA’s or other gyms with pools in most cities that provide a good workout in shorter bursts of time. Don’t forget a swim cap and goggles, either. These are super light weight to pack and I find a 40 minute swim is equivalent to a 1.5hr workout.

Speaking of which, I need to finish this post and my work so I can get to my pre-scheduled gym session as I’m, once again, traveling (this time in Toronto). It’s nice to be back on track!

I didn’t believe there *was* such a thing. Or rather, I believed there was, but I was never going to be one of those people that experienced such a feeling.

I hated running. With a passion. Besides chin-ups, running was my most hated activity growing up. I could do sprints, but I stuck to under 200m distances. I couldn’t fathom my body moving in that fashion for any longer distances. There were these fitness tests they did in school that included the 12 minute run. I walked for 1/2 of it. It wasn’t that I was in bad shape. I’ve always been athletic. I played volleyball, badminton, basketball, figure skated (for 10 years – I even taught it), I weight-trained, I could do 200 sit-ups without stopping (at one point I held the county record), karate, I was on the swim team (was a jr life guard), etc. growing up. But running was my nemesis.

That was until just after my 37th birthday this year. Maybe it was the training I was doing leading up to my birthday that included a good amount of cardio (I usually stuck to the stairmaster, HIIT on the treadmill and cross-fit challenges that got my cardio up). Or maybe it was my state of mind. But one day, my good friend and now marathon training partner, Eric, decided he wanted to start working out with me and suggested we run on the treadmill. I reluctantly agreed, but did it. And it was fine. I think I ran for 30 minutes our first session. At about 20 minutes, I stopped feeling the pain and started feeling the high.

I’ve been hooked ever since.

Today I ran 9 miles (or 14.5km). This is significant. That is 1/3rd of a full marathon length! For those of you who have run all of your lives, you may be thinking, “Meh.” But for me, that is a HUGE victory. I ran it and it felt good. I had several runners high-gasms. And I definitely could have kept going. My knees where a little achy and, on the treadmill, it gets a bit tedious, but I picked up speed at the end and could have kept going. Next Sunday I do 10 miles. 10 miles!

In the past 6 months or so, my body has fundamentally changed. Running has not only changed my physical shape (my hips are actually narrower than my shoulders for the first time in my life), but has changed my overall stamina all around. As I run, I can feel my muscles lengthen. I visualize how each one is connected from toes to the top of my head. I’m more aware of my body than I’ve ever been in my life.

Mentally, running prepares me for anything. Not only do I become incredibly zen while running, but it has carried into my everyday world. When I don’t run regularly, I start to get less patient, less calm and more anxious. When I’m running regularly, I handle everything in stride (so to speak). Running has helped me become an adult about things in the best possible way.

My training schedule is pretty rigorous over the next while. I’m running the distances, but I need to increase my speed over time. I also need to do more stairs (I still get out of breath!). The marathon we’ve chosen is quite a marathon: The Great Wall of China! There are 5164 steps. The top female runner completed it last year in just under 4 hours. I’m not aiming to beat that – just finishing it will be a victory – but it’s a nice goal to shoot for. Eric bought me the book 4 Months to a 4-Hour Marathon. The thing is…I know if I keep training hard enough, I feel I can complete this one, steps and all, in at least under 5 hours.

Just think. In just 10 months of training, I will go from not being able to run 12 minutes to completing an über challenging marathon in a good time. Crikey. I can’t wait to see what my next challenge will be! We aren’t finished putting together the pieces yet, but we plan to raise money for a school in Nairobi as part of our goal. Eric is even more ambitious than I am.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me, trained me, advised me and just generally followed me along this journey. I promise to keep challenging myself!

I am staying in New York City for the holidays and get to hang out with some of my favorite people (back to that, “I’m a lucky bastard” scenario). Last night I had dinner with one of my favorite people and co-founder of the amazing New Work City coworking space in lower Manhattan. At one point, we brought up the topic of #themewords and discussed mine and his. Although I don’t want to reveal his here as it’s his own, I will say that it sparked something for me. His focus for the upcoming year around on prioritizing his health and personal well-being and it really resonated with me because, without really even thinking about it, I’ve been doing the same thing for the past 8 months…since I started getting back into shape.

We’re often told when we are younger that to put ourselves first is selfish, but in reality, I’ve found it to not only benefit me, but the people around me. Since I started prioritizing my fitness and health, I’ve become a much easier person to be around. I lose my temper less often, I have more confidence in general, I’m easier going when things don’t quite go my way and I can handle much more stress than previously (which is good because I have more stress than previously!). That hour a day at the gym or on the running paths helps me focus on my work, smile while doing it and be a better co-worker. I used to sit at my desk all day being much less productive than I am now by taking that fitness break. My friends have noticed a difference. I get the ‘you seem more content’ observations quite often. So, focusing on myself is not selfish at all. It’s good for everyone around me, too.

When my friends at the Make Yourself Movement asked me to write a post on my one secret to being/staying healthy in the New Year, I instantly thought about my conversation and said, “Prioritize ME”.

That’s it. Set a schedule of ME time and be ruthless about it. If you’ve planned to hit a fitness class or go for a run at a certain time, nothing…I mean NOTHING…gets in your way. If a friend just had a bad breakup with her boyfriend and needs to talk now, she’ll have to wait. If your boss wants you to work late, you can’t tonight. Even if your kids have a request or need a ride to a friends, they’ll have to wait. Unless it is life threatening circumstance or an act of God (like a giant blizzard or an earthquake), that time is yours to go to your run or to your class.

Don’t compromise. Because once you do, you will compromise again and again. Next thing you know it, you’ll be doing everything for everyone else and you will feel stressed and awful.

That’s been my secret to staying healthy – both in mind and body – prioritizing fitness. Prioritizing me. I only felt guilty about it for a couple of months…then I realized the major benefits and everyone who was put off by my rigidity in my exercise schedule did, too.

So…for 2011 and beyond, I recommend that everyone should make themselves the priority. It’s not selfish, it’s necessary.