Running on sleepy: eyes half shut

Okay, hands up who's exhausted? Who would really, really like to catch up on the old zzzzs but is just too busy? Sleeping time gets hijacked when we've lots to do. Up at 4am to get that run in before work. Staying up late to get the ironing done or more pleasurably, to get some time with friends. Every day that sleeping time gets a bit more chipped off it, gradually whittled away, even on a bank holiday! Long gone are the days of sleeping til lunchtime.

I don't know about you, but I've just got used to having less than my allotted 8 hours kip and most of the time it's fine. Less sleep, more time to do things. Lying in wastes time that could be spent doing things - it wastes the day. Yes I am that age and I am now saying things my parents said to me.

Because I'm practicing body-sensing, I'm beginning to understand what sleep deprivation does to me. On our trip to Barcelona in March, the clocks went forward several times so we didn't know which way was up when we got home. Then an early rise for a trip to London, a few a late finishes at work and a long 'to do list'. None of these keep me awake at night, I go out like a light.  No my problem is waking up at 4am. If I've had a long day at work or lots of travelling, that's often accompanied by a night of poor quality sleep, my body restless from sitting down all day, eating crap food and drinking too much tea.  

When I'm tired, things go awry. I struggle to concentrate, I'm easily distracted and I can't resist nibbling on rubbish, high sugar, high fat, junk food. My brain is not engaged with what I'm doing, it floats around on the breeze of random thoughts. Chocolate is eaten with absolutely no conscious input at all, cake slips past the lips barely tasted. My brain is on stand-by and those chattering monkeys rule the roost (apologies for the mixed metaphor there).

So I've been doing some digging round about sleep.  Research shows that we never really catch up after losing that hour when the clocks change. Maybe because I'm a winter baby my body clock is on British winter time, I never really feel right when the clocks are on British Sumer Time. We lose about 40 minutes of sleep every night after the clocks go forward as our body rhythms struggle to adapt. That adds up to a hell of a lot of sleep, especially if we're all paring our sleep down to the bone just to get by.

There's plenty of research that shows that disrupted sleep might not kill you, but it can certainly make your focus a bit blurred.  One study I found recently (www.occdigest.org.uk) showed that a lack of sleep can make us more prone to cyber loafing "frittering away work time on unrelated online activities". Isn't cyber-loafing a great concept,? I don't get time to do it at work (honest!) but I do lot a bit in my own time and it is good sport when you're tired or a bit hungover.

Anyway, they looked at Google's publicly available data for entertainment-related searches and found that these searches were significantly higher after the clocks went forward. The costs of cyber loafing have been estimated at £300m per year. That's a lot of loafing.

One of the theories for 'cyber-loafing' is ego depletion.  Some researchers see will power as a resource that gets used up through effort and sleep replenishes and re charges it. Lack of sleep saps our regulatory resources making us easy pickings for behaviours we need to keep control of - our defences are low. Certainly waking up groggy and out of synch with yourself is not a great way to start the day and is often associated with random thoughts about bacon rolls or muffins.

Lack of sleep certainly saps my will power and gets right at my weak spots. Women's Running magazine cites research that shows that a good sleep helps cut snacking, a real problem for me.  Folks who got less than 5.5 hours sleep a night ate larger amounts of high carb snacks than those who got 8 hours - and don't my scales know it. And this is not counting any impact lack of sleep has on your metabolism, making it easier to out fat on and harder to get it off. 

And of course it can be serious, lack of sleep can affect your running. Running Times had an interesting article on sleep and running.  Decreased sleep for even a few days impaired glycogen synthesis, meaning you're running on a half full tank and may "bonk" earlier than a well-rested individual (stop sniggering at the back). Disrupted sleep undermines our ability to repair training-induced soft-tissue breakdown. Not good if you're putting your body through serious training. 

So, freshly back from a very nice run, feeling replenished and refreshed despite my lack of sleep, what do I make of all of this?  All the advice is about getting to sleep and I don't have that problem, I am out like a light maybe because I already do all the stuff you're supposed to do. My problem is I'm wide awake at 4am wake up and then I start thinking about what I've got to do and the game's a bogie. I think I might just have to love with this for a while, so until I get a cunning plan, I'm going to take two preventative measures.  First I'm going to be limit the amount of running-related damage I inflict on my body. If I'm not repairing myself fully, then I have to watch my recovery times and make sure I take in protein immediately after a long or hard run. Second, I'm going to make the most of those early rises, that bit of extra time, and I'm going to enjoy a run, or get into work early. I'm not going to fret, just go with the flow.

Only two short runs and a spin class this week because of being away at the weekend. So I did 2 faster runs, one barefoot in the beach where I really focussed on form - both quality.  Next week I'm not going to do a long run, I fancy a break from distance, so I'm going to do more shorter ones just for a change and see how my body reacts to greater frequency. I did one today with a cheeky hill in the middle and it feels good.

Have a great week whether you're running, walking, working, playing, whatever.

Take care

Suex

Spring clean your running garden

Some urges just have to be given into if we are to keep balance and harmony in our lives. For me spring cleaning is a must.  Like an itch that has to be scratched, there is no choice but to get on and do it and boy does it give you a Mojo make over!

The urge to purge runs deep. Like the homing instinct of salmon or the nesting behaviour of birds, when spring starts,  up pops the urge to clean out the nesting box and spruce up the territory; to get things in order, ready for the summer to come.

For the past few days, my eyes been honing in on cluttered cupboards, dusty corners, dead plants and overgrown borders. Everywhere I look I've been critically appraising what needs done and what I can get rid of ready for the blitz.

The deed is now done and I've boosted the stock of our local charity shops with books, handbags, coats and knick knacks. I have been ruthless - well almost!  Two years worth of bills have been shredded, Mum's papers filed and my desk is tidy. There is space in my wardrobe. I know that ere long it will stop feeling wonderfully minimalist and start taking on the characteristics of a yawning chasm that must be filled, but not dear reader just yet. I have pruned the garden to within an inch of its life and consigned to the compost and re cycling bins various ancient and woody plants that need to move on to pastures new. New plants and seeds are making themselves at home in fresh compost-rich soil.

My compost bin, shamefully neglected for two years, has been sorted. I got the fright of my life when two tiny mice leapt out as I took out compost for the raised beds.  I ran into the house and grabbed a sleeping cat. Kyle shivered and hobbled back inside again with ne'er a backward glance. I looked at the mouse and it looked back at me straight in the eye, my heart melted. It will live, but if there is as much as a paw over the threshold of the house, that mouse and its family will be toast. I hope we have an agreement. Note to self to agitate compost bin weekly from now on to make it less of a safe haven.

As I type, my hands are calloused and grubby, my finger nails broken and my knees a bit creaky, but my soul is sated. I have transformed the wild and woolly wilderness of the inside and outside of our house into order and harmony.  Soon summer flowers and frocks will grace the empty beds and rails. For now I gaze on order and it feels good.

I love that feeling of everything being in its right place and being in tune with the season. It makes me feel real and human and in balance, like I have met some ancient human need to till the soil. I don't grow much these days, I don't have time to look after things so I have to be sensible or plants just don't survive. I've put in sweet peas in memory of Dad. I love the colours and the smell and the glorious over-the-top abundance of the flowers that you have to pick if you want the plants to keep flowering - how wonderful is that! I don't do much veg now as I used to, but I like my fresh herbs and this year I've put some runner beans and onions in and I'm having another crack at asparagus.  A token gesture but I love the thrill of eating food I've grown.

Looking back, I've done nothing in the garden for the last two years and it was getting me down. The front of our house was festooned with dead plants in nice pots, the back by overgrown bushes of various kinds.  Every time I look out of the window I felt despondent. Same inside the house. Old clothes cluttering up my life. It made me feel unbalanced, out of kilter, guilty.

The root of the problem? Lack of balance: too much running and rushing about.  Every spare moment I was running, up and down hills, building speed sessions, long runs and intervals into a busy schedule. If I wasn't running I was dashing about trying to do things in a hurry so I could run. Life was a roller coaster of charging about, until of course I could't even walk.

With the Chi Running,  I'm back to basics and it feels good. I'm starting to feel at peace with my running and to go with what feels balanced and right rather than what I think I should do.  I've started to feel less urgency about having to run every opportunity and I'm chucking out some weird ideas I've picked up. One notion I had was that a good runner runs all the time, only rubbish runners walk.  Now I stop and walk when my form and pace drop. I'm amazed how quickly I'm refreshed on every level because I'm not grinding myself into the ground

Because running time is still limited, I have to make choices, and just like with the garden, I need to think carefully about what seeds I want to plant and nurture. I chose to keep my long run and I've re discovered the deep pleasure that comes from just running round North Berwick and getting into that wonderful mind and body thing that happens as you run and run. Who cares about times and distances and marathons - they will all come in due course. That's what I want from running now, that's what motivates me.

That feels a bit like treason, but right now I don't care, I have my Mojo and that's what matters. I just want to see where my Chi Running journey takes me. I've a follow up session with Nick Constantine on Saturday, I'll report back!

Lots of you tapering at the moment, about to harvest the fruits of your labours, the seeds you planted are coming to fruition. May your harvest be rich and timely. Good luck! Major respect for taking on this challenge and looking forward to hearing all your tweets.

Take care

Suex

Being Tigger

I've always loved Tigger and I have my moments when I'm bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun fun!   Tigger bounces back and I've had to do that a few times, including now.  It's been a slog but my inner Tigger is bursting through and it feels good.

The grown up version of Tigger is being resilient - a word that's  cropping up everywhere I look at the moment. This usually tells me there's something I need to pay attention to, so I decided to have a little ponder.

I like a bit of definition as you know, so here's what the dictionary says about resilience:

1 the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity: nylon is excellent in wearability and resilience.2 the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness: the oftenremarkable resilience of so many British institutions.

Now doesn't that just say it all! You can't get very far in life without resilience.

I remember very clearly the first time the word 'resilience' made me stop and think. About five years ago  I was struggling badly to cope with everything and felt very close to the edge. Mum and Dad needed more and more care and I was travelling up and down to Leeds to sort out food, medication, the care system. We were trying to get them moved to live near us which Mum really didn't want to do and with a major recession about to start. We were negotiating the care system on both sides of the Border for Dad and buying and selling houses to get us all to North Berwick (we bought and sold 7 in total). At the same time I had to change jobs and my back packed in so I'd lower back pain and couldn't exercise my stress away. This was when I was getting really, really fat. It was a really hard time on every level.

The crunch came in my annual appraisal, something that I find incredibly stressful at the best of times. It was booked for the afternoon of my first  regular mammogram screening and by the time I got to my desk I was a bit tired and emotional. We got started and for once instead of just ignoring what I'd been through (largely because I was about to cry!) I told my boss and said I wasn't sure it was the best time. He agreed and said just in passing as I left the room, 'you're very resilient Sue'.

At the time I wasn't sure if being resilient was good or bad - there must be something wrong with me if I needed to be resilient, surely I should just cope and not make a meal of it. Don't people just get on with it and not make a fuss? They certainly don't want to cry at work or tell their boss just as they're about to have their appraisal. Anyway I just got on with it. Things got much better, life went on, everything got sorted.

I realised as I thought about it, that I'm being resilient again. The clue was wanting to cry at inappropriate moments and bursting into tears over a tv programme.  Things have stacked up again. The calf injury (you know all about that), having to change jobs again; Mum's care needs going up a major notch and I'm struggling to cope with all the demands on my time and my emotions. Yet again, when I need it most, I can't run,  so those stress chemicals are washing round my system. I don't know the science but I am sure that I want to cry to wash them out. Much better to sweat them away.

Anyway, I've decided I'm not going to cope, I am going to be resilient, in fact I'm going to do more than that, I'm going to bounce back.  I'm reconnecting with my inner Tigger. Tigger doesn't just cope, he bounces through life with zest, fun and with his chums.

I've got lots to make me bounce like Tigger.  I have family and friends (real and virtual!) who are wonderfully caring and supportive; Mum may not always know who I am but she loves me anyway and appreciates everything we do for her and this won't last forever.  I have my health and my passion for life, I live in a lovely place, I have a job I love and I will run again.  I am indeed rich and blessed in all the things that really matter and that make life sweet.

It's a cliche to say you should count your blessings, and that's a very Tigger thing to do. Well maybe Tigger doesn't count blessings, he just enjoys them.  It's blessings large and small that get us through the bad times as well as making the good times great.  And of course if you're not feeling bouncy today, there's always that other saying - that which does not kill me makes me stronger! Good times, bad times, they all change.

A quick running update. I got a major bounce from a 10 minute run in the sunshine yesterday. All kitted up, with garmin, yes I know it's daft but it was an important statement. All I need to do now is run a few more of those joined up and I'm laughing. What's great is my leg feels better for running, so my confidence is growing too.  I can now walk downstairs and run for the bus. And I am starting to think a marathon this year might be possible after all..... Now isn't that a Tigger-type thought!

Thank you to all of you who help me bounce!  Take care everyone, keep bouncing!

Suex