Run baby run

I decided about a month ago that I would start running.  I hate running, but I feel I need to add cardio to my life.  It's hard to continue to convince myself that yoga and the occasional dance class will suffice a exercise when I am constantly being told by every researcher, trainer, and professor in my master's program that it, in fact, is not.  I'm well aware of the benefits of cardiovascular training: increased metabolic rate, increased muscle tone, decreased fat composition, decreased heart rate, decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, better mood, etc etc.  I am also, now, well aware that yoga and dance do not provide the necessary duration or intensity necessary for them to be considered good cardiovascular training.  However, I have avoided activities like running, swimming, cycling because I find them torturous and incredibly boring.

So, why running?  It's free, it's one of the more efficient ways of getting in my cardio, I can do it anywhere, it's high impact so it increases my bone density, and I can catch up on the news while doing it.  All good reasons.  Maybe one day I'll even come to enjoy running, like when people in an arranged marriage eventually fall in love.

Now here's the masochistic part.  I haven't started running yet (though I did buy shoes and a whole bunch of socks), but have registered for my first half-marathon (in October).  I've also told as many people as possible that I will be participating in this half marathon so that I can't back out without being heavily shamed.  Why?  Because if I don't have a goal in mind, then I won't start, nor will I continue to torture myself with this boring, repetitive exercise.  I've been fit all of my life.  I mean, as an adult, I've been fit as part of my occupation: as a dancer and dance teacher, then as a yoga instructor, now as an exercise physiology grad student.  I'm also just vain enough to be willing to torture my self for the sake of wanting to look hot.  I should be able to do this, if not for my heart and lungs then at least for my ass and legs.  In fact, if I can prepare myself for the MCAT (4 hours 20 minutes of testing, 4 hours and 50 minutes total) in three months, then surely I can train for a half marathon in five months.  So, that's the plan.  Start doing a new form of exercise that I've never liked, train for a race that I know next to nothing about, and be ready to run 13.2 miles in a real race in five months.  Excellent.

Study like a runner not a ballet dancer

This round, I've been trying to think about preparing for the MCAT the same way I would train for a marathon.  The problem is I know almost nothing about training for marathons.  I do know that academics and athletics share common features: in order to do well, you must put in the work; overtraining can lead to reduced performance and burnout, and you need to take active rests.  Even though I've been an athlete for most of my life, I did not learn any of this in my years of ballet training.  In fact most ballet dancers (and teachers) are kind of idiots when it comes to smart training as the notion of extremes without logical reason is passed on generation to generation.  In my years of idiocy, I failed to recognize things like two technique classes in a day are not necessarily better than one (your ankle hurts? maybe you need to take even more technique classes! 6 per week just isn't enough), taking a break might actually enhance performance every once in a while (but if I take a week off, it'll take a month to get back what I lost!), and eating will benefit your training (I'm hungry, but if I eat the sandwich, then I'll get fat).  In my undergraduate studies, I went with my ballet dancer mentality of "more is always better" even though, like in ballet, this theory was never actually demonstrated to work, except in rare cases.  I failed to recognize that there is a threshold that anyone reaches and once you surpass that threshold the only way to go is down where you eventually crash and burn in a pile of burnout.  Taking a rest, stopping to recover for half a day, and admitting that I needed to cut back was not hard core, and clearly, only hard core people win.

My folly was to fail to recognize that smart people are actually the people who win.  What I have learned in graduate school, is that you must train in cycles, that there need to be active rest periods, and that one needs to plan so that peak performance occurs when it counts.  (Thank you exercise physiology course work) So, after a very long tangent, we come by to my attempt to approach my MCAT studying like one would approach a marathon: gradually increasing with variations along the way with efforts culminating in peak performance.  In addition to this overall approach, I've recognized that cross training is also important.  When I was dancing, I did Pilates and later, yoga (I never said I was a complete fool).  For the MCAT, well, I also do yoga.  The problem with academia is one can get trapped in this mindset of "I can't lose that hour, I need it for studying!!"  Often, this thought comes after 3 hours of being largely unproductive, except for maybe in updating my facebook status a bunch of times and watching videos of cute puppies on youtube.  For anyone, if this starts to happen, it's much better to take an hour, get some exercise (or eat ice cream, I don't know, to each his own).  In my case, yoga is perfect cross training for academics.  I physically get exercise, I stretch out all the parts that start to hurt after 6 hours of not leaving the couch except to pee and eat, and, most importantly, I take my mind to a place of calm focus.  For an hour I decisively do not think except for maybe the occasional "you want us to hold that for how long?!" or "action potential...gah... shut up brain...... downward dog..... the equation for volta....shhhh.....baby cobra...."

In summary, this method has appeared to work.  It still takes a level of discipline and hard-coreness (After all, the hour study break isn't beneficial if it turns into a half day study break) but it is much more manageable.  Rather than hopping between extremes of intense study marathons and drunken binges, as per college, or doing nothing but studying or working all the time (even though studying often consisted of looking at one page for a really long time and thinking about how much I didn't want to be studying), a la last year's MCAT disaster, I am trying to combine an effort walk the middle path (yes, I'm using honkey yoga language, I'm a yoga instructor, what do you expect) with the sensibility of a runner doing smart training.