All I Know About Running I Learned From Yoga

I have been regularly attending a yoga session almost every Saturday morning for almost two years.  Please understand I am not the yoga type.  I started only because it was available in my building and I thought it would help with flexibility and, with that, my running.  Much to my surprise, I really learned to enjoy it to the point that I could feel the impact after a recent trip to Japan that made me miss three consecutive sessions.

Just yesterday my schedule called for a 23 mile run. That is my usual last long run before a marathon and the Eau Claire Marathon is coming up on May 1.  I particularly enjoy this one because it has been my first outdoor run of the 2011 spring (I don't count the Tokyo Marathon, since, while it was outside, it was not at home).

I will admit that the weather was a tad colder than spring calls for, but I had a great run.  I have been missing my usual Hennepin to Lake and around Calhoun Lake.  23 miles allowed called for four loops, so I got plenty of that.  More so, I got a significant PR for that distance.  I finished in 3:25:18 (9:03 per mile), a 9'54" faster that my previous PR.  Yep, an improvement close to ten minutes.

As I was running and missing my yoga session (forecast called for rain on Sunday, so I had to switch the day for my long run) I was thinking of parallels between yoga and running.  This is what I came up with:

• Relax your shoulders, maintain a straight spine. Running for three or four hours requires paying attention to form.  Eliminating tension from shoulders and neck can allow you to keep going longer.  Open your chest.  I twist and stretch it every so often (without missing a running step) to compensate for the pounding and compacting I subject my spine as I run.  

• Keep breathing.  And do so at the same rhythm.  I take inhale once for every two steps and do the same for exhales.  I do the same for mile one and for mile 26 or a marathon.  If I feel I can't keep the rhythm, I know I need to slow down a bit.  I never understood somebody who is huffing and puffing on mile 10 of 26.2.  How do they make it to the end?

• Keep your eyes in your head.  Regardless of how bad the moment is, keep your eyes in your head, maintain a relaxed expression.  Frowning and tensing doesn't help make things better.  What  helps me get through the tough spots is something I read on runner's world from an ultra-marathoner: it can't get worse all the time, at some point things pick up again.  Knowing that if I keep going things will get better helps me remain relaxed.    

• Enjoy every mile (in yoga every pose).  Now and then during yoga there is a pose that your body is not meant to do.  Similarly, running you will find a hill or a windy section of the road, or simply a time you are just exhausted.  Every mile is part of the same run just like every pose is part of the same yoga session.  Enjoy and embrace every one of them if you want to enjoy running.  There are too many hills in life to hate them.

• Start early in the morning.  That way the good feeling you get from the long run lasts all day.

• And last... relax and enjoy.  Even if you don't feel like getting started, do you best to take pleasure on your long run from the start.  You could be sitting on the couch watching TV and chose to be running instead. There must be a reason.  That said, there is nothing wrong with being happy when the whole thing is over.