Good Morning, friends. Another new week is upon us. For me its starting off a little weird. I’m not in vegas, nor am I Zumba’ing right now. Right now, I’m searching for photos of Grandma for a photo slide show to be shown on Wednesday at the Funeral. We’re not going to just mourn her death, but celebrate her life. I think that’s the way it should be.

I get a lot of questions on running, while I’m no expert, I sure can share my own experiences with others…

I often hear “I want to run, but I don’t know how“. Everyone knows how to run. You used to run your heart out as a kid and play hard, never really running out of breath either. You never wanted to get caught in Hide’n'Seek so you ran, hard. That’s the type of running I want to embrace again. We know how to run, we just need to get our legs our there and try again. Some of the big things I realized when I started running, was I had no idea how to breathe. I literally left like my lungs where closing in on me and I air could not get in. The second thing that I noticed was my legs after a good few minutes left so heavy. Then last I felt like slowly I started to hunch over. What was happening to me!? I was a young 20-something girl, who felt like she just aged incredibly while trying to run a mile!? In reality, I didn’t age rapidly, I had not learned how to run properly as an adult. Lets talk about these three things I mentioned.

It took me a while to control my breathing while running. The key word that helped me was “control”. I tried the Inhale for 3 strides, exhale for 5… or something random like that. That never worked for me. I was focusing too much on counting the strides and not breathing. One day I went running with my sweet friend, Rachel. I was telling how her I just couldn’t get my breathing under control. She told me that I have to take control and forget about the counting and other distracting things and just focus on breathing and to force yourself to inhale, exhale even when you want to just stop running, once you tell your body what to do, it will not rebelling and obey you. Well… I tried it. I ran, I deeply inhaled, exhaled and repeat. It came to that tipping point where I wanted to panic, feeling like I couldn’t breathe and just stop running. I fought though, I fought to run, I fought to breathe and I pushed past the fear. Then what do you know… it felt natural.

For me beginning to run was all new, my legs weren’t used to moving this way for an extended amount of time. People train for races for a reason. You can’t go out there and run a half-marathon tomorrow without any training and expect it to be easy. Your legs are not accustom to this type of movement. So the only cure for me to get passed my legs feeling so heavy… was to keep running. Stay consistent. There will be good running days and not so good running days. I don’t believe there’s ever a bad running day, you got out there and tried right? That’s still good.

I’ve talked about the importance of good posture before in general. When I started running, I was focused on everything else, but maintaining a good posture. So therefore I started to hunch over as I ran… not good, not pretty. I learned that I needed to tighten my abs and keep my shoulders back while maintaining an upright posture. “Abs? I have no abs…” was exactly what I was thinking. But over time I worked on building a strong core. I’d repeat to myself “Abs right, shoulders back, run tall.” Its silly, but it helps.

My last piece of advice to you is Start Slow. Not everyone is a speed racer and naturally can run a 25 minute 5k. Some are built that way, others have to work to become that way. Everyone is different. Never compare yourself to someone else. It will only discourage you. You can have someone you admire and look to as inspiration. I know I have mine. But be sure to focus on you, and knowing yourself, your body, your running needs. Its good to run/walk when beginning to run. Its good to take breaks and make sure your heart rate isn’t through the roof, its good to know thyself. Running is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. It is one of the most rewarding ventures I ever set out on. Everyone starts somewhere. I started slow.

Seasoned Runners, Newbie Runners: What questioned do you/did you ask about running? And did you get your answer?

On a completely unrelated note…

ANGRY BIRDS!!!!